Do you connect the words blog sales funnel with content marketing? You should. Blogging is a vital part of content marketing. Just like the blog sales funnel, content marketing has been around for quite a while despite the myriad of evolving applications and tools online.
If you look closely at the trend in the past few years, you’ll see that most of these applications are still in use, while a good majority of them seem to have disappeared overnight.
Let’s take a look at Snapchat. Before the evolution of Tik Tok, Snapchat used to be the leading application of its kind, but today it is practically non-existent as everyone seems to be going crazy over Tik Tok.
Despite the changes in the myriad of evolving tools and applications online, content marketing has been around and will continue to be around for a very long time to come. Why? This is because content marketing is an important part of every business strategy.
Content marketing has shifted from aiming for a wide appeal to generate awareness, to becoming as personalized as possible.
A blog sales funnel is supposed to follow the AIDA model: Attention, Interest, Decision, and Action. As the content marketer, you’re meant to provide your prospects with motives to continue down the funnel until they’re out of it. By this I mean when they’ve made their first purchase.
Nowadays, a blog sales funnel is crafted in such a way that your leads become repeat customers.
What You Should Know About Content Marketing
Content marketing has evolved over time. In the past, what comprised content marketing was creating an awesome blog post and putting it in front of as many people as possible. It was all about getting the most number of people to visit your website in a bid to rank on Google.
In those days, very few content marketers cared about using their content to sell goods and services. What they cared about was establishing themselves as an authority in their niche while they made money off ads on their website via the increased traffic.
Then content marketing began to change. Companies began to push out content with the aim of selling their products and services. This was achieved by putting a strong call to action at the very end of the content piece. Storytelling was the preferred form of content marketing and social media was used to disseminate this content.
Nowadays, content marketing has evolved to the extent that content marketers now create content for each stage of the blog sales funnel.
Marketers vie with one another to render value at each stage of the blog sales funnel. This yields the result of pushing leads further down the sales funnel until they make their very first purchase. Then these converts are nurtured until they become brand loyalists.
Content marketers now make use of eBooks, email newsletters, and blog articles to push leads down the sales funnel until they become repeat customers and brand loyalists.
Today, I will be taking you through the stages of the blog sales funnel, laying emphasis on their usage.
See also: How to make money online
Stages of the Blog sales funnel
1. The attention grabber
The first stage of the blog sales funnel is the attention grabber. The main aim of this stage is to hold your reader’s attention. It’s right here your readers become acquainted with your brand and what they stand to gain from you.
When it comes to creating content for the top of the sales funnel, it is safe to assume that your target audience doesn’t really know much about you and your brand.
Your audience may sometimes be subconsciously unaware of their pain points. Thus, you successfully guide your readers through this stage of the sales funnel by crafting content that introduces your product or service.
The goal and mission of your content at this stage of the funnel is to create awareness of your brand and also establish yourself as an authority. Get this stage of the blog sales funnel right and you’re a step closer to gaining converts for your business.
Every content or write-up produced by a person has and depends on its target audience. It’s a good idea to come up with a content marketing strategy that makes use of both social media and SEO. This will help your content grab attention. This way, you’re sure to have the attention of the most possible number of people.
Content-heavy businesses like Social Media Examiner achieve this by regularly publishing high-quality information that they know would interest and draw the attention of their audience.
You too can achieve similar results by using Buffer to schedule your social media posts.
2. The allure
The next step in your blogging sales funnel is to create content that is specifically designed to attract more people to your email list.
Email list is one of your most valuable marketing channels.
Email marketing is the most performing digital channel when it comes to acquiring new headlines or leads, sales, and customers. Those who subscribe to email are far more likely to share your content on social media than any other channel.
Having this in mind, turning someone from a casual visitor to someone who is actively engaging your brand is the goal of your content at this stage.
This simply means having them subscribe to your email list so they can start receiving your content directly from you and not from some other source.
It’s in this stage of the blog sales funnel that a lead magnet is helpful. In case you’re wondering what a lead magnet is, it’s a free product that a potential customer gets while they give you their email address. A lead magnet could be an eBook, a short video, or even a small tutorial.
When your leads subscribe to your email list, offer them something that is valuable enough to make them want to pay for your products or services. Be sure you don’t give away all your goodies for free; otherwise, people won’t be motivated to make use of your paid products and services.
See also: 7 Benefits of Building an Email List
3. The first sale
At this stage, you must have been able to gain your audience’s attention and get them interested in viewing what you have to offer.
Traditionally, once you’ve attained this point and made sales the customer’s journey is over.
But in the modern blogging sales funnel, you would begin to start making your first sales. Next, you continue by making a strategy in turning a one-off customer into a lifelong one.
Getting to that point, one needs to be able to create a compelling initial offer. This is not the time to attempt to get your leads to buy all your products.
Your prospects are likely to dawdle here for some time as they make up their minds on what to purchase.
You can create a sense of urgency in your potential customers by putting out a discounted product with a specific time limit. This is likely to make people purchase your products fast.
Ideally, your initial offer should be low in price and should also solve a genuine problem for your customer.
It should also be something that is likely to make your prospects become repeat customers.
4. The next phase
Many blogs make their bulk profits through the back-end.
This back-end is made up of more costly products which are given almost exclusively to existing customers and are a vital part of your blog sales funnel.
At this stage, you might be wondering why you have to go through efforts to create many products to give along with arising and new content for each of these products. And in this sense, it is easier to sell a product to someone to who you have previously sold to before.
It’s a lot easier to make profits from those who have made use of your products or services in the past.
Humans are creatures of habit and we love going back to people who satisfied us the very first time. It’s way cheaper to retain existing customers than get new ones, just in case you don’t know.
How do you achieve this? Simple. By knowing what your customers purchased in the past, you can push relevant and higher-priced products their way.
In order to increase your overall bottom line, you can create sales funnel with other individuals that offer what you are doing effectively.
5. The next sell
This is the final stage of your blog sales funnel and where you are liable to make big profits.
By the time a customer gets to this stage, you can comfortably say for sure that they habitually engage with your content. They have patronized you before and are open to most, if not all, of your efforts to connect with them.
It is easier to make sales at this point as you have built up a lot of authority with your customers.
If you measure it, you will discover that an average of less than 5% of the prospects who entered your blog sales funnel will end up at this stage.
Don’t fret about it! This is the time you can start selling your big-ticket items.
There is no set formula for how much you can sell your back-end products to your audience. But then, there are series of content marketers out there who sell their products for thousands of dollars.
Note that you do not necessarily have to create multiple online courses for your back-end product when doing your own blog sales funnel.
Also, while some content marketers offer consulting services, others give their customers the opportunity to attend boot camps et cetera.
Endeavor to research and figure out the products to offer, price points to use, and the means with which you will offer them.
Doing this may take a bit of time to decipher but the moment you get it right, it can transform how you generate revenue with your business.
See also: Grammarly Review – Is It Worth Paying for This Software?
FAQs
How do you create a killer blog sales funnel?
First of all, you should know your audience. Then you hold their attention and guide them down the sales funnel by offering them a lead magnet.
Next, you make your initial offer and follow up with the next phase of customer retention.
What are the main parts of a sales funnel?
Attention, Interest, Decision and Action i.e. the AIDA model.
How is a blog sales funnel calculated?
Simply divide the total number of converts by the total number of prospective customers who entered your blog sales funnel. Then multiply by 100.
See also: How To Sell Your Blog For Profit – The Complete Guide
Conclusion
Before selling your next product to your prospects, ensure you take time to optimize your backend.
Now that you fully understand what blog sales funnel entails, keep an eye out for it whenever you’re purchasing something online.
Businesses, entrepreneurs, especially content marketers often utilize this type of sales funnels in some way.
Building a blog sales funnel is hard work. In fact, it’s time and energy consuming.
This shouldn’t serve as a deterrent as it is the key to long-term sustainability and profits for your business.
A major feat for this type of sales funnel is that the entire process can be automated provided classic contents are created and products sold.
This means that the moment you set up and optimize your blog sales funnel, you do not have to be stuck there, but can confidently leave it for your sales funnel to generate revenue, and then focus on other areas of your business.
So what’s holding you back?
Get to work!!!