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A powerful sales funnel is a catalyst for long-term growth. It guides prospects through each stage of the purchasing process and can mean the difference between a near-miss and a long-term business relationship.
So if you’re looking to improve your sales processes and create better relationships with your customers, mastering sales funnel management is vital. In our detailed guide, you’ll learn why it’s crucial for your company’s success and how to accomplish it with ease.
Sales funnel management is the overseeing and improving a potential customer’s buying journey, from their first interaction with your business to making a purchase. Each funnel stage represents a different phase of that journey.
Brand awareness marks the entrance to the funnel. The desire to learn more falls in the middle, and loyalty lies at the end of the funnel. The better you can manage each of these stages, the smoother your customer’s journey will be.
The marketing and sales funnels are distinct parts of the customer journey, though there is some overlap between the two. Like your sales funnel, your marketing funnel should revolve around making people aware of your brand and its products or services.
However, the outcomes are different. The marketing funnel ends with a customer taking a desired action that preps them for the sales team to take over, such as signing up for a newsletter. The sales funnel, as its name suggests, has a singular goal: getting people to buy something.
The marketing funnel feeds into the sales funnel and provides your team with qualified leads that they can nurture. You’ll need both funnels to achieve long-term growth.
By getting better at funnel management, you can unlock many advantages. Some of the primary benefits of a sales funnel are:
Virtually every experienced salesperson has wasted time working on a lead who never had any real purchasing intent. A great sales funnel helps prevent such scenarios through better lead qualification. You can vet prospects and make sure they genuinely want to learn more about what you have to offer.
Use your funnel to identify any parts of the sales journey that might be frustrating potential customers. Remove barriers that could slow down the purchasing process or cause people to give up on your products altogether.
The funnel doesn’t end at the sale. Stay connected with your customers so you can encourage them to renew their subscriptions or buy more products from your company later on.
Proper sales funnel management gives you insight into where prospects are in their journey, allowing for more accurate sales forecasting. You’ll be able to predict your revenue with greater confidence based on how many high-quality leads are in the pipeline and what stage of their journeys they are in.
By analyzing your sales funnel, you’ll gain valuable insights into how your marketing efforts are performing. With that information, you’ll be able to help promote better teamwork between your sales and marketing teams.
The sales funnel consists of five distinct stages. Effective journey management requires that you understand what each stage entails and how best to connect with prospects during those steps in their purchasing process.
The sales funnel stages are as follows:
Awareness sits at the top of the funnel. It’s the phase in which people learn about your business and its products or services. They’re often seeking information to solve a problem or meet a need, and in response, you want to grab their attention through content and advertising efforts.
In the middle of the funnel, you’ve piqued the person’s interest by providing a glimpse into your products or services. They are eager to learn more and may be comparing your offering with that of your competitors. It’s important to make detailed information easy to find and interact with.
In the business-to-business (B2B) space, you should focus on case studies, webinars, and product demos. If you target consumers, use creative advertisements that are fun and engaging to share more about your offer.
In the desire stage, your prospect is leaning toward purchasing your product or service. A few alternatives may still be in contention, but they feel strongly about your offering. Now’s the time to offer incentives or deliver personalized follow-ups to prime the prospect to take that final leap.
At the bottom of the funnel, the prospect becomes a customer by making a purchase. At this point, your sales process should be frictionless. Offer a smooth checkout or contract-signing experience, and keep your new customer in the loop about their order’s status.
As mentioned earlier, the funnel doesn’t end just because a customer has made a purchase. The last of the five stages focuses on retaining customers and encouraging repeat business. That could involve follow-up emails, loyalty programs, or personalized offers to keep them engaged with your brand. Re-engaging customers who may have gone quiet is also key to maximizing their lifetime value.
Your first step when building a sales funnel involves identifying your ideal customers. Make a list of the pain points they may be facing and the ways in which your product or service solves such challenges.
Next, create great, tailored content that meets the needs of prospects at every stage. You should focus on awareness and education when targeting prospects in the first and second stages. By stages three and four, audience members are primed for more direct messaging that spurs them to action.
With plenty of great content, it’s time to get those assets in front of prospective customers. Use a variety of marketing tactics and channels, including your website, social media, and Connected TV (CTV) advertising.
Getting leads into your sales funnel is only the start of the process. You need to manage their journey by consistently nurturing them with follow-up content. Personalized offers and fun, memorable ads are great tools for keeping them progressing through the funnel. Hand things off to your sales team to close the deal, then circle back with personalized marketing efforts to make your new clients feel appreciated.
Some key marketing metrics to help determine how effectively you are managing your sales funnel include the following:
You can get creative with these metrics to obtain more granular data about the customer journey. For example, you could track conversion rates between each stage of the sales funnel.
Optimization is key to making sure your funnel runs smoothly and efficiently. Here are some sales funnel optimization tips to do just that:
Use these strategies to establish a fast and efficient funnel that keeps prospects motivated to learn more about your brand and make a purchase.
You’ll need to tailor your sales funnel based on the needs of your business. For example, an ecommerce business might use targeted ads to raise awareness and offer special promos to create desires. They could follow up with personalized emails to drive action and periodically check in with new customers to encourage repeat business.
A software-as-a-service (SaaS) company might offer a free trial at the awareness stage. During the trial, they will nurture the client with email campaigns to encourage conversion.
Managing your sales funnel can be challenging, but full-funnel marketing solutions like MNTN Performance TV can help you engage with prospects at every stage of their journey. MNTN provides comprehensive OTT advertising solutions, helping you nurture leads and promote loyalty after sales.
MNTN’s platform allows you to create performance marketing campaigns that target precise audiences. You can move your prospects from awareness to the action stage while building trust and nurturing long-term relationships.
Explore MNTN Performance TV today. Request a demo to get started.
Effective sales funnel management is essential for driving growth and making your business more efficient. By understanding your customer’s journey and optimizing each stage of the funnel, you can build better relationships and close more deals.
How to Start Advertising on Connected TVEager to reach your most important audiences and deliver measurable results with streaming TV? Read this first.
You’ll learn:
Connected TV is expected to top over $42 billion in advertising spend by 2027 — how are you keeping up? Whether you need a refresher, or you’re new to CTV, our cheat sheet provides an overview to the key terminology you’ll likely encounter in your day-to-day.
You’ll learn:
Connected TV (CTV) has opened up an exciting new world of retargeting opportunities for digital marketers. Once reserved for digital marketing channels like search and social, now wide television audiences are retargetable, too. Thanks to CTV, brands can now target consumers with a series of curated streaming ads that nurture them through their purchasing journeys.
In the following guide, we’ll dive into what CTV retargeting is, why it works, and how you can implement it in your advertising campaigns to maximize your return on investment (ROI).
CTV retargeting is a digital advertising technique that allows you to deliver targeted ads to viewers who have previously interacted with your brand. It works by employing users’ behavioral data to retarget them while they’re streaming content on CTV platforms like Roku, Hulu, or Amazon Fire TV.
As an example: suppose someone visits your website and looks at a product, but ultimately do not make a purchase. With CTV retargeting, you can serve that user ads as they stream their favorite shows to remind them about said product. Each follow-up interaction will help keep your brand top of mind and nudge them closer to returning to your website and completing their purchase.
Here are some of the reasons why brands are already using CTV retargeting (and why you should be, too):
CTV retargeting allows you to target your audience more precisely (and affordably) than traditional TV advertising will ever allow, as you won’t have to serve content to an entire designated market area (DMA). You can instead focus on people who have already shown interest in your brand, thereby increasing the likelihood of engagement.
Users who have interacted with your brand before are more likely to do so again if you present them with intriguing content. You can even customize your ads with personalized offers that are relevant to their needs and interests.
Traditional television ad campaigns fail to provide much in the way of data regarding the reach and impact of your ads. You simply have to cast a wide net and hope for the best.
CTV retargeting, on the other hand, allows for precise tracking and measurement — when you power your campaigns with MNTN Performance TV, for example, our platform gathers relevant data in real time, and allows you to monitor key metrics like impressions and conversions. You can then use that data to improve on what works, and fix what doesn’t.
Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of CTV retargeting is that it allows you to integrate campaigns across multiple devices. People are bound to interact with your brand across more than one device these days, including their smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs. If you are running OTT ads on all of these touchpoints, you can provide a more consistent experience and connect with users on their terms.
In a cookieless world, CTV retargeting leverages first party data and deterministic matching to identify and reconnect with users who have shown prior interest, ensuring relevant ads are displayed to the right households across connected devices.
MNTN’s particular approach emphasizes the use of CRM-based data and behavioral signals, enabling advertisers to strategically retarget without cookies.
Here’s a streamlined look at how it works:
This method guarantees precise targeting while preserving user privacy.
You need to personalize your content to align with each person’s product preferences and position in the sales funnel. And that means choosing the right type of CTV retargeting ads.
Here are a few popular options you can integrate into your campaigns:
All of these ad types have a place in your campaign. Storytelling content, for instance, can be a great tool for nurturing consumers who are at the top of the conversion funnel. It is also excellent for nurturing feelings of loyalty among existing customers.
CTA and product-focused ads are all about making the sale. They are useful when someone has already lingered on a product page or added an item to their cart but failed to make a purchase. Limited-time offers play to viewers’ fear of missing out (FOMO), making them feel as though they have to act now.
The only way to ascertain whether your CTV retargeting campaigns are working is by tracking the right data, which includes metrics like:
Here’s a breakdown of some of the platforms where you can deploy your CTV retargeting campaigns:
Cross-device retargeting on phones, desktops, and tablets ensures your ads are delivered to viewers on their mobile devices. That helps create a cohesive advertising experience no matter where or how your audience consumes content.
Devices like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV each provide access to streaming platforms where your retargeting ads can be displayed. They are incredibly popular, too, meaning your ads have the potential to reach a broad audience while still being highly targeted.
Smart TVs have built-in apps and internet connectivity. They are one of the most important platforms for CTV retargeting.
CTV has become one of the most popular mediums for running retargeting campaigns. If you want your brand to stand out, you’ll need to do the following:
You’ll also need to choose a user-friendly and feature-filled platform to manage your campaigns. That’s where MNTN Performance TV shines.
MNTN Performance TV makes CTV retargeting simple and effective. Our performance marketing platform features advanced audience segmentation capabilities and a wide range of customization options. You’ll have access to premium ad inventory, ensuring your content is displayed alongside hit movies and TV shows.
MNTN advertisers also have access to our proprietary system MNTN Matched, which allows marketers to use generative AI and keywords to reach those consumers most likely to be interested in — and actually purchase — their products or services.
For everything you need to win at CTV retargeting, try MNTN Performance TV. Request a demo to learn more.
CTV retargeting has become an essential tool for modern advertisers. Through retargeting, you can connect with your audience in a meaningful way and deliver personalized ads to those who have already integrated with your brand.
Now that you know how retargeting on Connected TV works, it’s time to put it into action and reap the results yourself!