How to create an internet marketing funnel

An internet marketing funnel is a marketing strategy whereby you constantly funnel new leads to your business, hoping to develop a sale and user relationship. A marketing funnel is often seen as an inverted pyramid. At the top, you drive potential customers to your website, in the middle you offer them valuable services if they sign up for your list, and at the end you convert them into customers. There are a number of processes that need to be in place to ensure you capture leads, communicate properly with them, and value your repeat customers. This article will tell you how to create an internet marketing funnel.

Method 1 – Plan an Internet Marketing Funnel

1) Set up an attractive website. Remember that for most websites, a soft sell works better than a hard sell. You get more leads if you appear trustworthy and loyal to customers, include reviews of your products, and provide users with articles, newsletters, tips, and other valuable content. The idea behind adding value to your website is that people who become daily users are much more likely to become customers as well. If you don’t sell a product yourself, you can become an affiliate marketer and run affiliate ads on your website. If you sell a product, a daily user will have the opportunity to see more of your offers/products and buy them.

2) Invest in lead capture software or programming. You can hire a company to provide you with a lead capture landing page or program it on your website. With lead capture, your website users need to sign up for an account or submit their name and email address to get valuable content.

This lead capture software ranges from simple to complex. You can have a landing page that captures the data, or you can sign up for a system that tracks your users’ accounts once they log in. You can see what products they looked at, what pages they read, and judging by their account activity, you can see how likely they are to become customers.

3) Define your lead acquisition strategy. You need to choose 5-10 ways to grab the attention of your target demographic(s). Some common internet lead capture strategies are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, guest blogging, SEO/search engine optimization, article directories, online advertisements, affiliate marketers and more.

4) Define the valuable product or service that you can offer for the customer to register. You may need to brainstorm with your marketing team what you can provide. Ideas include a free trial, free services, a coupon, a video, educational content, a free account, or access to multiple of these services.

5) Define your ultimate goal. This is the ultimate relationship you want to have with the information you collect, and it differs a lot for online businesses. In some cases, a person’s contact details are your internet-based target, because you can funnel leads to a service-based business calling your customers on the phone, and in other cases, you’re developing repeat customers.

Method 2 – Set Up Your Internet Marketing Funnel

1) Start using all 5-10 lead collection strategies at a time. With an employee at the helm of each strategy, ensure that employees coordinate new offers, posting consistently and timely as you add more value to your website with free content. Use links from websites that have embedded web analytics codes. You can do this through your website provider or with a free Google Analytics account. Make sure each strategy uses a different link, so you can keep track of your most successful lead collection strategies. Most web analytics programs will automatically flag leads that come from major search engines.

2) Have someone examine the ratio of visitors to your page, versus how many people enter their contact information to access the content. A high percentage means that you are targeting your demographic well and should continue to offer similar content. A low percentage means that you need to spend more to add value to the free content or service you offer.

3) Gather leads from your lead generation software. You should get information to add to your content management system (CRM) or database every week. Be sure to code new leads according to the offer that prompted them to sign up.

4) Communicate with your database through email blasts and newsletters or direct mail. Target your offers by sending your potential customers emails that suggest similar products or services to the ones they signed up to see. These communications bring potential customers to your website to convert them into customers. If you’re collecting leads for a service-based job, you can also call them. If they requested a quote, then this is an essential part of the communication process.

5) Mark the people who buy your products as “customers” in your database. Customers should receive additional content and loyalty discounts. The desirable end of the funnel is for customers to continue to enter the funnel on their own and purchase more products as they become available.

6) Don’t let your funnel get stagnant. Your marketing team should be constantly updating lead generation points, offers, and the database on an ongoing basis. Unless you have cornered the majority of the market, a successful marketing funnel can continue to function the same way for years.

Understand that the ratio of leads to customers is usually quite small. However, if you attract thousands of people to your website every day, you only need a small percentage of them to buy to create a successful marketing funnel. You should always try to test new lead generation points, especially if the relationship data shows that you are not collecting many leads from your current points. Try new social media accounts, blogs, and ads until you find the right mix.