Every business has a sales funnel. Even if yours isn’t well-defined, it’s there. It could be more efficient by defining it and graphing it a little more clearly. Nevertheless, your sales funnel shows how you generate and develop leads and turn them into customers.
An online sales funnel does the same thing for your online marketing efforts. There are three ways to look at your online sales funnel:
- As a standalone – If you keep your online sales and your offline sales separate–that is, they don’t overlap at all–then you’ll have one sales funnel for your online business and another one for your offline business.
- As an integrated unit with your offline sales funnel – Many businesses had a well-developed sales and marketing funnel for their offline business before ever going online. Now that they have an online presence, they are figuring out how to integrate their online sales with their offline sales because they see the entire business as an integrated whole.
- As the primary driver of your business lead generation system – Some businesses realize that customers begin the purchasing process online. They do product research, read reviews, and narrow down their choices by finding what they need online. Then they start looking for the best place to buy the product or service. It could be online or offline, but the process begins online. That’s why many businesses use their online resources to drive leads into their sales funnels. Once those leads are captured, the process moves offline.
Which Sales Funnel Diagram Is Right For You?
Your business is unique. For that reason, you need a unique sales process. It should be a reflection of your business values and culture. The sales funnel is simply a way to visualize how customers interact with your company from the lead generation process to the final closing question.
If your business is a traditional brick-and-mortar business, online sales may be something new to you. That doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from it. In fact, chances are, you can incorporate online sales into your total marketing somehow. The question is, How?
On the other hand, if your business exists only online, then it’s a no-brainer. Your online sales funnel is your sales funnel.
The tricky one is when you have an existing offline sales funnel and you want to incorporate an online sales funnel into the business culture without impacting the existing sales funnel in a negative way. It can be done. Other businesses have accomplished it, and yours can too.
Sign up for a consultation on developing an online marketing strategy today.