Revitalise Demand: 5 Sales Funnels For Ecommerce Wins

Understanding the Sales Funnel Concept

It seems like the ‘sales funnel’ has become this mysterious buzzword that everyone throws around, but few know what it actually means. Some people think it’s just a one-and-done thing, or worse, some mythical pipe that miraculously spits out a loyal customer at the other end. And then, there’s all this noise about optimising sales funnels for conversion that seems to magically boost online sales overnight (um, not exactly).

So before you get carried away with sales funnel hacks and trending tactics, let’s pause for a sec and remember what the idea is really about - and why it matters in a world where every platform is an endless marketplace. This concept actually goes as far back as 1898, and came from the AIDA principle that tried to help marketers define four stages of awareness: awareness (hey, I need this product), interest (I’ll take a look), desire (I want this right now), and action (add to basket). But if you really think about it, this all-or-nothing approach seems a bit old fashioned for 2024 - especially when you consider how many different platforms we’re on at any given time.

Someone could see your product on Instagram or TikTok and buy off your website, while another customer who keeps coming across your ads on Amazon might decide to finally buy from your store once they see your products in person at a pop-up. That’s why traditional sales funnel ideas are falling by the wayside in favour of more modern strategies that capture attention through the right balance of experience-led marketing and content-driven calls-to-action. Now here’s where it gets confusing - does this mean ecommerce businesses can just set up their own rules. I wish it were that simple, but there are too many moving parts at play.

Sort of. Even though consumers seem to be doing as they please these days (well done privacy laws), businesses still need some structure for their marketing teams to know where to spend their resources most effectively. But here’s the real talk: sales funnels are not a destination or end goal - they’re just maps that help us understand how potential customers move through each stage of the buying process with repeat customers driving demand through ever-widening circles of trust.

Sales funnels can relatively work for both big box stores and boutique brands alike. The way I see it, the trick is knowing how they work for your business - because there is no one-size-fits-all approach anymore.

Crafting Compelling Offers

While most people think of making offers as being a piece of cake, I’ve found that the way you structure them actually makes or breaks your sales pipeline. Some companies tend to offer a discount to increase their conversion rates on-site or across email, while others bundle products together and give free shipping. There’s no right or wrong approach, but it depends on what brings your ideal customer closer to purchasing with you.

What offers are not about is just peppering anything and everything on the table. I say this because consumers have become so used to seeing a variety of offers that they’re pretty picky about who they purchase from anymore. So if you’re a store in the sports and fitness industry, an offer like ‘get a yoga mat free on purchase of $300’ will bring in only those who are really interested in making the most of it.

And yet, sometimes we’re not so sure if an offer will click with our audience. What I do then is offer a couple of them in A/B tests or for a limited period of time to test how my audience feels about it.

If there’s interest, I run the offer again, and if not, I focus my attention on improving my product and website experience till another offer makes sense again. Then there are some who use scarcity tactics like ‘limited stock’, ‘selling fast’, etc. These work wonders for certain industries with big brands like Nike leveraging the FOMO they generate when dropping limited edition collections - but may backfire for others. At the end of the day, I think it’s about understanding your audience - and going with what doesn’t feel forced at all; else your brand risks losing authenticity.

Sort of.

Leveraging Data and Analytics for Improvement

It can be a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but many brands get tied up in knots over metrics that sound impressive but don’t help drive meaningful decisions. There’s a lot of talk about surface-level analytics, and people want to be seen as being on top of their data game. But most don’t realise the sophistication required to truly understand how their brands are performing with so many moving parts involved.

To avoid this slippery slope, we need to step back and take a proper look at different aspects of the data we’re looking at, not all of which can potentially be easily quantified. Creating healthy sales funnels depends on understanding both the quality and quantity of your engagement - if you’re only looking at one aspect, you’re losing out on a host of insights that could be hiding under the surface. A powerful example would be email open rates and clicks - where you can actually determine who’s interested enough to take action on something.

Then there are heatmaps, which reveal exactly what’s grabbing attention and what’s being ignored. The way I see it, this is closely followed by conversion rates, which give us great insight into what aspect of the product offering needs more attention. Across all of these factors, there’s a lot more to look into before we try making sense of things.

Cohort analysis tells us everything we need to know about why certain audiences behave in certain ways. All these data points can appear quite overwhelming at first glance, but breaking them down with simple cohort strategies is arguably vital.