Well-designed inbound marketing funnels are the secret ingredient for an efficient sales process. Funnels define the entire process of guiding a visitor along their journey and eventually turning them into paying customers.

It is a great way to visualize and also maximize the customer journey to yield the best results.

This article will show you how to create well-designed inbound funnels and leverage them to convert more leads for your business.

Creating Effective Inbound Funnels

You create a successful inbound marketing funnel by putting out content that appeals to people at every point of their customer journey.

The typical marketing funnel consists of these main stages:

Awareness stage

This is the point at which potential customers find you. Traffic flows towards your business and content through several channels. These include blog content, social media, paid ads, referrals, etc.

A well-designed inbound marketing funnel at this point would focus on providing information about a potential solution. At this point, the content introduces your company and your offering.

Interest and Decision making

At this point, the leads are more aware of their problem and are actively seeking solutions. They are looking for all possible options, often driven by varying factors like price, convenience, etc.

With all the content and information available to them through different avenues, they start to evaluate their options to see which one would provide the best value.

So, at this point, your content ought to address such needs and present your offering as a great choice.

Purchase decisions

Here, after evaluating their options, they decide to buy, try, or signup for your offering. This process varies depending on the product, service, or industry. They may book a call with the staff in charge, add the product to the cart, etc.

Typically, the content at this point facilitates their buying process or makes it smoother. For instance, they could now seek a demo video, step-by-step guides on the purchase process, etc.

With an understanding of this process, you can now create an effective inbound funnel.

At Funnelbud, our well-designed inbound marketing funnels follow this sequence:

1.   Attracting leads

Create initial points of contact to attract potential customers. They are exposed to well-crafted ads. These promote the value of the content we create.

For example, a potential lead may come across a social media post promoting the blog post “How to use automation for your B2B business”.

When they find value in this information, they can seek out more content we have to offer. In doing so, they are very likely to click through to our landing pages to access even more.

Content that draws traffic must be relevant. It must also add value to the viewers rather than just advertise your offering.

2.   Nurturing leads

Leads that want more from your offering engage further and respond to your calls to action. They may even be willing to share their contact information with you, such as names and email addresses.

Pro tip: Ensure that your Landing Pages have only a single Call to Action. They should have a minimum of an email field or other contact collection mechanism. This ensures that the leads give you their information rather than if they keep browsing and lose interest.  

Potential leads offer contact information in exchange for valuable content. After they complete the lead forms, the content is either sent to them via email or via a downloadable link on the site.

Email campaigns

After a few days, you can then automatically send a sequence of emails with content related to what they signed up for. This content is a blend of information they may find useful and soft sell pieces about your products and services.

Furthermore, you can create an interest list based on the topic they originally asked for. So, as you create new content, you immediately send it to them.

Pro tip: You want to avoid aggressively selling yourself at this point. Otherwise, you risk driving away potential customers. Even worse, they could easily unsubscribe.

The leads' response to these nurturing emails would then help you determine which ones have buying potential and which ones do not. The information guides lead scoring.

Automation tools like SharpSpring have lead scoring systems. They help you sort your leads based on factors like:

• Forms completed
• Number of pages viewed
• Email open rate
• Click through rates,

…among others.

You can then isolate "warm leads" or Sales-Qualified leads whose information you would now send to your sales team for further action.

3. Conversions

Highly promising leads are sent to the sales team, who then reach out to them. At this point, such parties have expressed a high interest in purchasing. So the sales team contacts them to address any concerns they might have regarding the product.

The sales team may also provide additional information to convince the potential customer further that your option is worth it.

What Are The Benefits Of Creating Inbound Funnels?

1. Leads pay for content with their email addresses

Inbound funnels encourage leads to share their contact information in exchange for content. It helps you compile a database of potential leads that you can use for marketing purposes.

It also helps you to identify and filter out "dead leads" early enough since these will likely not give you their contacts in the first place. You can then assume that those that provide it are at least remotely interested in your offering.

2. It ensures that leads receive content they are interested in

Inbound funnels ensure that you keep providing them with valuable content they might need. Doing so further exposes them to your brand and your offering, which keeps you top of their minds.

As such, they become more likely to purchase from you when the time comes. Valuable content also positions you as an authority among these visitors. It makes them more likely to consider you as a purchase option or even recommend you. 

3. It automatically tags leads with their interests

When visitors request or sign up for content, you can automatically tie them to such interests. This enables you to provide information that suits their needs.

Statistically, 80% of customers prefer personalized brand experiences. Doing so, therefore, boosts brand loyalty, which increases the conversion rates.

Additionally, knowledge of visitors' interests enables the sales team to derive the best strategies when contacting these leads later on.

4. Inbound marketing funnels boost your conversion rates

By creating a funnel, you get to filter visitors who are more likely to pay for your offering and those that aren't. Those who are not interested in buying often fall off when asked to sign up or respond to nurturing content.

Therefore, you get to quickly identify and focus on the most promising leads to maximize conversions. This saves you time and resources in the long run.

5. Creating inbound marketing funnels makes your process more measurable

With this strategy, you get to share content and then monitor the users’ response to it. For example, you can measure email or social engagements, which would then facilitate your lead scoring tactics.

As a result, you can identify the best leads early enough and also draft better strategies moving forward.

Conclusion

A well-designed inbound funnel is invaluable in generating and nurturing high-quality leads.

The above process has produced excellent results for Funnelbud clients and would certainly do the same for yours. Download our comprehensive workbook on this page that goes through each asset you will need to get started in building your first funnel.