Sales funnels are one of the most misunderstood, yet important aspects of a business.
A well-constructed sales funnel can turn browsers into buyers and free up your time to focus on other important aspects of your business. This article, sheds some light on what a sales funnel is and the basics on how to build one that will work for your needs.
Most marketers know the science behind relevance and personalisation. The more you know about your customer, the more you can provide them with a tailored experience. We first saw this during the mobile phone adoption phase when marketers needed to learn about their customers. When it happened again with the onset of desktop computers, marketers were used to this science.
Today, most marketing decisions are made by changing a website's underlying code. For example, if a customer searches for a product that is out of stock, you may choose to redirect them to another product, or offer them a discount. However, taking that approach alone can be a risky proposition – it's hard to know how different changes will impact your overall conversion rates and revenue.
I firmly believe that the future success of marketers (and ultimately the survival of your business) will depend on being able to deliver the right customer experience, at the right time, in the right medium or channel. It is about being able to communicate with customers in a way that recognises their personal context, and delivers them an experience which is relevant, useful and of value to them.
Before a customer decides to part with their money, we need to have built trust and convinced them that we have the solution to their problems. The best way of doing this is by going through a well-thought-out sequence of steps and information (steps down your sales funnel).
The sales funnel is simply a way of breaking down the sales process into stages where you can measure how well you are converting visitors into leads, leads into prospects and prospects into customers.
Tripwire funnel
Tripwire refers to a type of sales funnel or process that offers a low-cost or free product in order to get leads into the sales cycle. What's funny is that a lot of people have never heard of the term tripwire, yet it's being used by online marketers every day. Each online business has a tripwire, be it an e-book, consultation, service trial or even temporary access to a system at a very low price (5 – 30 euros), the latter is more relevant for SaaS solutions or online courses.A tripwire is intended to give potential customers a taste of what they can get in exchange for their contact details and leads them to a paid version of the same offer. Let’s understand this better.
Usually, a tripwire funnel consists of four phases starting from lead magnet, tripwire offer, which then leads to a core offer and additionally but not always necessary a high-end offer.
The first step in any sales funnel is to capture leads. A lead magnet is a piece of content that you give away for free in exchange for someone’s contact information. It could be an e-book, a white paper, a video tutorial, or even just a guide.
The most important thing to remember is that your lead magnet should offer real value to your target audience. It should help them solve a problem or teach them something new. If you can provide value upfront, people will be more likely to buy from you later on.
A tripwire is a low-cost introductory offer specifically designed to convert cold traffic into paying customers. It’s something so irresistible and valuable that customers will not resist buying it, even if they don’t need the product or service you’re selling.
The goal of a tripwire is to get customers through the door so you can start building a relationship with them. Once they’re in, you can start pitching them your higher-priced products and services. Tripwires are a great way to increase average order value (AOV) and reduce customer acquisition costs.
Your core offer is the main reason why people should do business with your company. It's what differentiates you from your competitors and what customers can't find anywhere else. Your core offer should be clearly stated on your website, in all of your marketing materials, and in every conversation that you have with a potential customer.
When you’re selling a product or service, it’s always important to remember that not everyone is going to be interested in the basic version of what you’re offering. You need to have a plan for those who want something more, and that’s where your high-end offer comes in. A high-end offer is a premium option of your services or products. On top of a core offer you can add premium help. This could be anything from additional features or benefits to personalisation or even hand-crafted products.
Average conversion rate of tripwire funnel
Conversion rate is the key factor for understanding whether your marketing and sales efforts are bringing satisfying results. An average conversion rate of a tripwire funnel is 30-40%, whereas for some it can be as high as 60%. That means that out of 100 visitors who see your lead magnet (white paper, marketing landing page, etc.) 30-40 visitors will click on a CTA and exchange their contact details for your free offer - a lead magnet. Then, straight after these leads download / get through your lead magnet offer you can trigger an automatic email campaign informing these contacts that they can go for more at very attractive price only for them. This is where tripwire comes in. The conversion rate of a well-planned tripwire offer may vary, however on average is about 2-3%. This means that at this stage you have already converted cold leads into buying customers. After the tripwire offer, those leads are typically pushed through a nurturing campaign before they ever see sales content.A nurturing campaign is led by an automated email sequence that includes a series of emails that are sent over the course of a week or two. The sequence uses email automation software to send out the emails at specific times and makes adjustments based on how the user interacts with the emails.
These emails typically include content like blog posts, videos, and other helpful resources that are designed to help the lead learn about our company, our product, and ultimately drive them to make a purchase.
By this time your leads are already aware of what your organisation focuses on and are ready to see your core offer, which is ultimately your main service or product. On average, the conversion rate of selling a core offer via a tripwire funnel is around 40% - 60%.
To sum up, a tripwire funnel is a very effective broken-down process of generating and nurturing leads to becoming customers with a much higher conversion rate rather than other types of unstructured digital sales processes.
Learn more!
Register for our short webinar during which we will explain the meaning of a sales funnel and discuss the tools that can be used to create a triggered sales funnel based on customer behaviour. Click here to register.Sources:
https://datadrivenmarketing.co/blog/tripwire-sales-funnel-conversion-rates/
