Lead Generation Funnels: Smart Guide to Effectively Build One

Making cash while doing sales isn’t as easy as it seems to be. As the market saturates with more online coaches and consultants, the stakes go higher and higher each day. Through proper planning and strategic marketing, one can rightly target the leads that are further turned into prospects.

Now the question here arises, how does lead generation work? And how to target the right audience. Well! The answer is not as tricky as the question seems to be. And the simple answer is, “through proper process mapping and expert consultation.” Here in this article, we will concisely discuss the step-by-step guide for creating lead generation funnels.

What Is a Lead Generator Funnel? 

Starting with the funnel. As the name suggests, the funnel is quite broad in the beginning, unlike the bottom, where it’s relatively narrow. Likewise, when we target the audience, we have many wandering customers, nurtured with a systematic approach to turn into recurring leads (potential customers). 

The lead generation funnel may be simple or complex, based on the approach adopted to target the leads. So, there are three lead funnel stages, namely, TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU.

• Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

The most broad-spectrum phase of the entire funnel. The very first stage in the lead gen funnel is primarily introduction. Formally known as creating and spreading awareness. At this stage, the future clients are presented with blogs, articles, advertisements, infographics, or even videos. 

The content needs to be super powerful at this stage, as it’s the first interaction with future clients.

• Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

This stage requires even more nurturing clients as they have now started to engage with your company. Thus, the relationship is starting to get heated. To make them stick longer with you, this is the time to offer more about your solutions to their problems and how you can really help them, through content email marketing and a more optimized selection of ad content. In short, generally, the more, the better.

The critical point at this stage is to make continuous progress by developing even a more increased and personalized relationship with leads. This requires offering them a free call, trial offerings and case studies to get these them closer to the purchase. 

• Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

The narrowest and precisely most profitable phase of the lead conversion funnel. It’s not easy to bring potential clients up to this level as it requires sheer consistency and hard work. But once you have driven the client to this stage, it is essential to focus on two things, i.e., sustain and recur.

Sustain means developing strong communications utilizing seamless automation to service clients, so they want to stick for longer durations. And recurring means to recommend your programs, products and services for frequent and repeated sales.

The need for this phase is essential for the growth and health of your coaching business by offering a bonus session, discounts, courses, or group programs.

By following these tri-steps lead generation funnel, you can quickly turn any wandering person into a long-term proficient and rewarding paying customer.

Now later in this article, we will discuss and mention some of the most reasonable and additional steps for the proper execution of lead gen marketing.

What Are the Steps Involved in Building a Lead Generation Funnel? 

Now the main problem is to reach the leads. Lead capture means influencing the leads to turn into profitable sales. These involve many stages like valuing them, ensuring them the best return and quality, and designing more responsive and personalized strategies for customers. 

Here are a few of the steps involved in constructing the lead generation funnel:

• Research about the Client:

In building a lead generation funnel, the foremost step is to analyze the customer’s needs. You can’t satisfy the hunger if you are unfamiliar with the needs of the customer. Research involves the insertion of analytics and creating core content that your audience needs.  This up-front work is how you get paid for your expertise. 

• Draft Innovative Roadmap:

Now, understand your dedicated targeted audience. The systematic and strategic road map designed to inspire and educate your potential clients, will let you do your job. Examine the other opponents in the coaching field. Focus on creating your unique coaching value and brand. Build awareness through content. 

Start with some organic search (SEO). It’s one of the cheapest methods to guarantee the most relevant traffic. Better keyword research will aid with better lead capturing.

• Optimize And Value More Competition: 

Once you have designed the roadmap, it’s time for implementation and bringing things into action. To drive traffic on our site, you need to adopt several methods; like social media marketing, search engine optimization, paid advertisements, webinars, or other marketing approaches.

Social media is one of the most powerful marketing platforms these days. You can quickly drive tons of traffic by posting on different social media platforms. SEO helps you to rank upright in the top searches. Paid advertisements or Google AdSense programs are popular traffic-driving tools these days. 

Email marketing is still one of the best ways for engaging customers. Through proper and periodic interactions with clients through emails, you can turn them into paying customers in no time. 

• Observe Traffic and Scrutinize It:

Undoubtedly, despite having large traffic, it doesn’t mean you get happy over all of it. Not all traffic is useful for sellers. To make the right use of incoming traffic, use lead magnets. Lead magnets are free subscriptions and contributions offered by you to your leads for attaining their interests or emails. Free digital materials, webinars, or even complementary sessions can act as a lead magnet.

After creating a lead magnet, now is the time to make a landing page to collect your prospects information to continue building trust. Through an optin form we transfer the landing page information to your email service provider (ESP). Although it sounds difficult, believe us, it’s worth using, and above all, it’s just a one-time hassle. For more professionalism, you should also design a thank you page. 

If you are interested in free consultation from experienced top experts. Let us know. We provide top class services, but you don’t have to spend any money to test it out. You can check out our free consultation if you are interested in boosting your potential customers.

• Make A Database:

Now, as you have a complete list of potential customers, it’s time to make some effort and make a convenient and easy access to the database. These databases can help you with nurturing clients efficiently. 

Emails as a Lead Capturing Tool

Though many tools can be used to capture leads effectively, email is one of the best ways to do so.

It sounds simple to use emails; however, there are few things to take care of:

• Include Tech in Email Marketing:

Though you have a wholly researched list of leads, it’s efficient to incorporate technology and automation in email marketing to boost your sales and lead generation.  A skillfully made plan and email structure is the center of your online coaching business. A funnel project manager can help you stay tuned in and impress your clients to increase sales. Unleash the power of automation.

These tools enable the coach to be more productive and allow to monitor hassle-free sales. Likewise, you can focus more on the paying clients.

• Make It as Easy to Access as Possible:

Try to make divisions of your email lists. This saves a considerable amount of time and allows you to target the right people instantaneously. A manageable and straightforward email grouping will help you enhance the output of the leads funnel.

• Active Emailing:

The key to an increased lead conversion funnel is to remain active. As soon as the client shows up for interaction or query, immediately address them. Make sure you are targeting the right people through the right tactics. Use personalized and triggered emailing for improved transactions.

Stages of Lead Funnels

Another way of looking at the lead funnel is that it has two divisions, i.e., marketing and sales leads. 

The marketing lead funnel contains awareness, lead capture, prospect, and marketing qualified leads. 

The awareness is done through different campaigns and email marketing. The goal is to spread your message as far as possible. Generally, the more, the better. Then comes lead capture; it’s done to attract the clients and develop more association with them. Possibly with an exchange of an email address. Lead magnets and call to action (CTA’s) place a significant role in this regard.

The associations are even more strengthened with more exchange of messages and information. This is where prospect comes in. The consistent nurturing of leads turns them into permanent clients. Finally, the marketer schedules an exchange of dialogues and leads are transferred to the sales team.

Now discounted and promotional offers are communicated to leads by the sales team. Loyal and smart customer support gains more confidence. At this time, the leads are your paying customers.

Wrapping It Up!

Finally, to conclude the lead generation funnel discussion, we mentioned three stages of the lead funnel, i.e., TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU. Then we saw the methods of systematically and periodically building a lead funnel. These methods range from researching, drafting, optimizing, observing, and storing data. The main aim for doing all this is to convert strangers to potential and profitable clients. 

Then among most of the methods available to capture leads, like PPC campaigns, social media advertisements, SEO, and much more. However, we discussed the best one, i.e., email marketing. Email marketing is extremely powerful, but it needs to be automated, partitioned, and triggered. Finally, we saw the lead generation funnel from the perspective of sales and marketing.