Are you an entrepreneur who wings it with your marketing? We don’t judge folks doing their best with what they know. There are times, though, when some concepts from traditional marketing can help you feel less like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. Sales funnel marketing gives insight into how clients make decisions and where to spend your energy. In this post, we explain the concept of the sales funnel and how it can make for low-maintenance, high-impact email marketing.

Intro to Sales Funnel Marketing 

Imagine the sales funnel as guiding people from broad information about your brand to the specifics of your services over several stages. Marketing researchers have broken the funnel down into many stages. Rather than overwhelm entrepreneurs with an unnecessarily level of complexity, we like to break down sales funnel marketing this way:

Brand Awareness

Before you even begin to consider selling your products or services, people need to become aware of your brand. Tools to raise brand awareness include ads, optimized blog posts, and social media posts.

Interest Generation

Once people know your brand exists, it’s time to get them interested. Now is the time to share the heart of your marketing messaging. At this point, people who don’t align with your “why” may fall away. That’s ok. The point of the sales funnel is to attract highly qualified leads. 

Consideration

Now people will start considering your offer more seriously. At this point, you’ll want to find a way to share relevant stories. Even the most analytical people use some emotion in their purchasing decisions. 

Conversion

Finally, people are primed to buy. At this point, it’s important to explicitly lay out your offers’ details and prices. The more personalized the experience can be, the better. This is a crucial time for many service providers to get clients on a sales call.

Loyalty

Sales funnel marketing doesn’t have to stop at conversion. If you want to get repeat customers or clients, you can target them accordingly. For example, some photographers want their wedding clients to come back for family photos down the line. Loyalty can also take the form of advocacy with clients referring others to your brand. 

Why Sales Funnel Marketing with Email is So Powerful

The concept of the sales funnel can apply to most marketing channels. It especially maps well onto automated email marketing with nurture sequences. An automated nurture sequence creates a low-maintenance marketing channel that feels high-touch and highly personalized to potential clients. It makes space for you to focus on other things while your automated emails drive leads from people already very excited to work with you. 

Sales funnel marketing with a nurture sequence is one of two approaches to email marketing for entrepreneurs. It’s good for entrepreneurs who want to drive leads from one-time clients, such as wedding planning clients, or product purchases. One of the great things about email nurture sequences is that you can use them in conjunction with weekly or monthly emails to your list without having to keep track of who got which email. Automation is kind of the best.

An Email Marketing Strategy

If you want to use sales funnel marketing with email, you first need a freebie. There are other ways to get people into your sales funnel, but freebies typically are the most effective ways to get people’s email addresses. Freebies solve a relevant problem for potential clients. They’re also something you could charge for but are willing to give away for free knowing that there’s a bigger sale coming down the line.

Your freebie ought to be relevant to the service you offer. Business coaches love using webinars as freebies, but you don’t have to record yourself teaching if that doesn’t feel good for you. If you want to get a sense of how diverse freebies can be, grab 30 Freebie Ideas for Photographers. This free resource divides freebie opt-ins into Guides, Checklists and Templates, Inspiration, and Scripts and Prompts.

Once people are on your email list, you can design email content to guide them through brand awareness, interest generation, consideration, and conversion. Here’s how it works:

• Brand awareness: Deliver your freebie and introduce your core marketing messaging.
• Interest generation: Give valuable content and tell stories that help people understand the benefits of your offer.
• Consideration: Share a behind the scenes look at your process or what it’s like to use your service.
• Conversion: In the case of email marketing, conversion may refer to potential clients booking a sales call. Emails can do a lot of the heavy lifting of marketing, but calls still help service providers close deals.

Getting Your Pieces in Place 

Do you want to automate your sales funnel marketing with a nurture sequence that converts? I’ve created a nurture sequence template just for wedding photographers. This sequence includes customizable plug-and-play templates for a seven-email sequence. The content highlights what sets your brand apart so potential clients get invested in you before you even get on a sales call. Get your template here and start automating leads from dreamy wedding clients!