How Inbound Sales Funnels Can Transform Your Business

HOW INBOUND
SALES FUNNELS
CAN TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS

What does your website do for your business? It’s a simple ques-
tion, but one that often has vague or complicated answers.
If forced to say why their website exists in the first place, many
business owners would point to the potential to generate sales
opportunities online. That’s a good answer, and it’s true that
most websites exist to sell in one way or another. But how many
of them are actually attracting prospects and turning them into
leads.
Truthfully, not many. That isn’t because you can’t use the Inter-
net for lead generation – thousands of companies get leads from
their websites every day. Instead, it’s because a majority of mar-
keters don’t know how to use their pages as anything more than
online brochures. They put a nice layout and a bit of content onto
the web and hope for the best. Unfortunately, luck usually doesn’t
deliver real-world, bottom line-improving business results.
Rather than wishing the right customers could find your website
and decide to contact you, what if you could make it happen?
Imagine what it would be like if you could put into place a pro-
cess that would allow you to appeal to the perfect prospects,
convince them that your company has the solutions they need,
and convince them to reach out only when they were ready to
buy?
As it turns out, there is a plan you can follow that will deliver
exactly those results. In the web design and Internet marketing
industry, we call it building a sales funnel. And in this brief report,
we’re going to show you why they can transform your business
into something better, more profitable, and easier to manage.
Copyright © 2017 All rights reserved worldwide. | www.webfullcircle.com
2
HOW INBOUND
SALES FUNNELS
CAN TRANSFORM
YOUR BUSINESS

A Quick Sales
Funnel Overview
As you may have guessed or already known, sales funnels
get their name because they mirror real-life funnels, like the
one a mechanic uses to put oil into your car. It’s designed to
take traffic at the wide top, and drip out sales opportunities
near the bottom. Not every lead will progress all the way
through your funnel, but that’s a good thing (more on this
later).
Best of all, the sales funnel works with a gravity that’s similar
to a real funnel. That is, leads move naturally and at their
own pace, taking the pressure to sell off of you and your
team.
At the top of the funnel is your first interaction with a
potential customer. They find your website, come across
your social content, or meet your company in some other
way. As they move through the funnel, they respond to a
series of offers you place that are designed to create trust,
engagement, and an ongoing relationship. Finally, by the
time they reach the bottom of the sales funnel, they are
ready to contact you to go further.
As with anything in life, that’s a simple-sounding process
that gets a little more complicated when we get into the
individual steps. But, building a sales funnel is by no means
impossible. You just have to know what you’re trying to
accomplish with each new activity or interaction…
3

Step into a pet store and you’ll be reminded that differ-
ent animals require unique kinds of food and care. What
you might give to a cat, for example, would be useless (or
worse) to a fish.
This is a useful analogy when thinking about web traffic and
sales funnels. It’s all well and good to have a website that
gets “lots of hits,” or social profiles that attract thousands
upon thousands of views, but that interest is only meaning-
ful if it comes from the right people. If the men and women
who come to your blog or view your content don’t have
sufficient interest in your products or services, they aren’t
going to become leads.
A first step in building your sales funnel is recognizing who
it’s going to be built for. You have to know who your best
potential customers are, even if it’s just as a broad group. It’s
better if you have demographic data and a sense of what
they really want from a company like yours.
It’s only when you have that knowledge that you can begin
pouring website visitors into your sales funnel. That’s usually
accomplished through search engine optimization, pay-per-
click advertising, and social media marketing. You’re prob-
ably at least somewhat familiar with each of these tactics
already. The big takeaway here, though, is that none of these
action should be taken for their own sake. It doesn’t matter
that your website ranks well in Google; what matters is that
it ranks well for the right keywords, so good prospects can
find your website and see your content.
We should also point out that when you have a good under-
standing of your market, it’s easier to make all the pieces of
your website visibility campaigns work together. It’s not that
buyers are seeing you on Google, Facebook, or YouTube.
Rather, it’s that they are coming across your content in all
of these places because you have identified a certain niche
within the market and have created content for these types
of buyers to find.
Your sales funnel can’t work unless you have new contacts
who are being funneled in. Without traffic, your website is
like an engine that has no fuel. It just can’t work. So, while
you shouldn’t confuse the process of bringing people to
your website with the bigger exercise of building a sales
funnel, know that generating visits is a crucial first step.
4
STEP
ONE ATTRACT THE RIGHT VISITORS

Just as a website is useless without traffic, visits mean nothing
unless they lead to conversions. But, in this stage of the sales
funnel, a successful “conversion” might not mean exactly what
you think.
That’s because a lot of business owners and marketers tend to
associate conversions with sales, or at least scheduled ap-
pointments. However, in many situations it is simply not likely
that someone who comes across your website (from a search
engine listing or pay-per-click add, for example) is going to
take such a big step forward. That’s especially true if you have
a complex product or service, or one that requires a decision
be made by a whole group.
We would define a conversion as any action that pulls some-
one who is searching for information deeper into your sales
funnel. Signing up for your email newsletter could be a conver-
sion, for instance, as could downloading a PDF guide. In either
case, someone is making a conscious decision to get informa-
tion from you, both now and in the future. That might not be
as good as a sale, but it’s a step in the right direction.
There are really two keys to generating these kinds of small-
scale conversions on your website. The first is having content
that is targeted to your niche audience and enhances your
own credibility. If searchers aren’t interested in what they see
when they click through to your site, they are going to leave
before signing up for anything. And, if they get the sense that
you can’t be trusted or don’t have anything of value to offer,
the chance will be lost. Good content helps you to not only at-
tract potential buyers to your website, but will also keep them
on your pages.
The second piece of the puzzle is a strong call to action. This
can be an offer for information, a tool that helps the buyer to
make a better decision, a discount code to be used later, or
something else altogether. Usually, it comes at the end of the
page or article, and it relates to the subject the person was
researching. It gives them a chance to go forward and learn
more, while at the same time giving you a piece of their con-
tact information or some other foothold toward an eventual
sale.
Remember that a “strong” call to action is one that is com-
pelling, not necessarily one that advances quickly towards a
closed order. The magic of a sales funnel is that it gets pros-
pects to engage in a series of small commitments. That lets
them get comfortable with you, and builds trust, so you can
move smoothly from one interaction to the next.
GENERATE CONVERSIONS
STEP
TWO
5

Getting someone who visits your website to register for
your email newsletter or download a report isn’t the same
as gaining a new customer, but it is a step in the right direc-
tion. And more importantly, it can lead you to the next small
movement forward.
Most sales funnels aren’t built upon a single offer, but rather
a series of them. That’s especially true in business-to-busi-
ness and complex sales environments. The more informa-
tion buyers need, and the more time they take to deliberate,
the more conversion steps you should give them.
There are a number of ways you can introduce the next
call to action and a series of offers. One way is to simply
lead from one into another. For example, a short PDF guide
could end with an offer for a longer, more detailed ebook.
An online video could feature a final call to action that
points at a landing page offering free samples. A blog post
might end with a time-sensitive discount code for a new
product.
The possibilities are practically endless. What matters is that
each successive offer has value to the potential customer,
and makes sense in the context. You never want to ask for
too big of a jump or commitment; instead, you should give
the buyer a little bit more value in exchange for more in-
formation. So, while you might ask for an email address to
send a PDF report to, they might have to share more details
about company size or location to get a longer report –
both because it lets you deliver the appropriate information,
and because it’s easier for you to complete a sale when you
know what a customer has on their mind.
There are three big benefits to this approach. The first and
most obvious is that it keeps a customer interacting with
you and looking at your marketing content. The second is
that it develops a sense of familiarity. When prospects see
that they can trust you with small details like an email ad-
dress, they become more apt to feel comfortable buying
from you later. And finally, this continuous communication
allows you to stay in touch with the prospect while giving
them no reason to look to your competitors for answers.
When you have a truly efficient and effective sales funnel in
place, it’s hard for other businesses to even try to compete
with you.
For this kind of approach to work, though, remember that
you need a steady flow of traffic to your website, the right
kinds of buyers seeing your content, and a set of offers that
logically build upon one another. No one piece of the sales
funnel is independent. It’s the way they work together that
matters.
USE A SERIES OF OFFERS
STEP
THREE
6

One of the greatest things about a working sales funnel is
that it lets prospects move from one step, offer, and in-
teraction to the next on their own terms and timeline. A
marketer can set up a series of built-in calls to action and
automated emails that lets a buyer choose to respond, de-
cline, or wait.
That might seem like a negative, or frustration, when your
used to approaching things from a traditional sales and
advertising point of view. However, the goal of your sales
funnel isn’t to generate raw numbers – you’re looking to let
prospects qualify themselves as they move along.
Think about it this way: with each new download or sub-
scription, a buyer is telling you (and themselves) that what
you have to offer is a good match for their wants and
needs. If they find they don’t fit within the market niche
you’ve been targeting, they’ll simply unsubscribe from your
list or fail to take the next action. Conversely, when they
feel as if the content you’re giving them resonates strong-
ly, they’ll develop a closer and closer tie to your company.
Why would they work with someone else when they’ve got-
ten nothing but great tools and information from you?
This kind of approach lends itself to a couple of logical
conclusions. The first is that the buyer decides to reach out
to you directly when they feel comfortable taking the next
step. This might be after one or two interactions, or follow-
ing several different emails and downloads. Either way, they
haven’t been pressured so there isn’t the sense of tension
that exists in so many sales situations. They’ve turned to
you because they want help, answers, or products. You’re
simply providing them with what they need. That often
makes negotiating terms and coming to agreements much
simpler than it would be otherwise.
The other conclusion is that the prospect leaves your sales
funnel altogether. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, partic-
ularly if they weren’t a good fit for what you sell. It’s better
to have them figure that out on their own then it is to waste
your time or get multiple presentations from a salesper-
son who could be working with prospects who are a better
match.
The beauty of the sales funnel approach isn’t just that it
gives you better leads, but also that it tends to generate
fewer bad ones. That’s great for buyers and marketers alike.
GENERATE CONVERSIONS
STEP
FOUR
7

In the old world of selling, there have been dozens and
dozens of books written on the art of closing a new account.
There are all kinds of tricks and verbal maneuvers business
owners have used over the decades, not to mention old-
school “power moves” and negotiating tactics.
For the most part, these tend to fade away when you’re
using an inbound sales funnel. In fact, being too aggressive
with your selling can actually hurt your interactions with
customers, because they are almost always going to be
approaching you when they’re ready to buy.
You can help this process along by including stronger
and more definite calls to action with each new offer
you present, but there isn’t any incentive for you to rush
things. Once your sales funnel is up and running, it’s going
to generate leads at a predictable rate. You can improve
those percentages by getting more or better visitors, or
experimenting with your various offers. That means it’s just
going to get better and better over time.
Just because you’re letting buyers set the pace doesn’t
mean you’re being purely reactive, however. Savvy marketers
will always stay in touch with the prospects they have in
their sales funnel. They will use email, social media, and other
means to reach out and maintain top of mind awareness.
These marketing channels are quick and inexpensive, but
they also allow buyers to leave the sales funnel and come
back in at will.
You’ve surely had a situation your life where you started
researching a purchase (like a car, home, or a vacation) only
to be distracted for a while. But, with a few reminders and
a little bit of encouragement, you were likely to get back
into the market sooner or later, and more apt to work with
someone you already knew and trusted.
The same thing is going to happen with your customers.
They might stop moving forward in your sales funnel
because they have to raise money, reevaluate their priorities,
or focus on another project for a while. But if you stay in
touch on a consistent basis, there’s a good chance they’ll
come back to do business with you later.
Closing new customers and accounts using an inbound sales
funnel is a simple matter. You just make the right offers and
let buyers respond. If you’ve never liked arm-twisting sales
tactics (either getting them or giving them), this might be
your favorite part of your new marketing plan.
MAKE THE CLOSE
STEP
FIVE
8

Now that you’ve seen how we put the different parts
of a sales funnel together, you probably recognize
how logical it all is. In fact, you may be able to see
how other companies have pulled you into their sales
funnels in recent weeks or months.
Often, clients ask us to design lead generation systems
for them simply because they want to start seeing bot-
tom-line improvement from their web marketing activ-
ities. That is, they want to use things like search engine
optimization and social media to get results they can
measure. However, after these systems are in place,
they sometimes began to notice there are other huge
and unexpected benefits, as well.
SOME BENEFITS OF
USING A SALES FUNNEL
9

Here are just a few of the things you might appreciate about having
a working sales funnel in place:
• They make generating leads a more efficient activity. As your
sales funnel grows (because you add new content and calls
to action), it becomes more effective. You’re easier to find
on Google and social media sites, and you start to develop a
reputation. So, you aren’t just getting more leads, but each
one is costing you less, both in terms of time and money.
• Having a working sales funnel makes your business more
scalable. You can ramp up your marketing at any time (by
increasing your pay-per-click budget or social media pres-
ence, for instance) without having to hire new staff, bring on
new creative partners, or by putting brand-new campaigns
into motion. That means you can be flexible with your future
plans and budgeting.
• As already mentioned, the leads that come from your sales
funnel are likely to be higher-quality and close faster. Be-
cause buyers have already identified themselves as being a
good fit to work with you, and have cultivated an interest in
your products or services, they are more focused on getting
the right solution than they are the lowest price. You’re left
with less haggling and higher profit margins.
• And finally, having a good inbound sales funnel takes a lot of
the stress out of running your business. Because the process
is predictable, as are the percentages, you don’t worry as
much about the future. Nor do you have to try to outwit or
confuse your customers to make a sale. They simply turn to
you because you’re the best match for what they want.
10
If you’re looking to get more out of
your website – and your business
as a whole – putting a well-
planned sales funnel in place could
be the perfect solution. Call the
team at WebFullCircle today so we
can help you start outlining the
major pieces and get you the kinds
of results you’ve been hoping for!

CONTACT US
Are you ready to propel your marketing
strategy to the next level? Our expert team
has years of experience helping businesses
of all sizes upgrade and streamline their
marketing efforts. Contact us today with
your questions.
ADDRESS
1000 NC Music Factory
Blvd.
Suite B9
Charlotte, NC 28206
PHONE
980.216.8847

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