What is a sales funnel and how does it work?

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In general terms, the concept of a sales funnel refers to a set of stages and triggers whose objective is to support people's purchasing process. Therefore, an assertive and successful funnel is one that makes the process predictable and scalable. In addition, it facilitates the customer acquisition process and decision-making.

For the funnel to be even more assertive, marketing and sales need to work together, each at certain stages of the buyer journey (Learning, Problem Recognition, Solution list of timeshare owners Consideration, Purchase Decision).

Content for each stage of the sales funnel

How does the sales funnel work? Practical example
Let's assume that you've already purchased a pair of sneakers for everyday use. This means that you've already been through the purchase journey at least once. And so, when you decide to buy another pair of sneakers, you'll start with a recognition of the problem (I don't have a pair of sneakers for everyday use) and go through a quick consideration process (do I really need them? Do I have the money to buy them?) and then make the decision to buy the shoes or not. This is a journey that we consider low risk and low impact, because it's not complex.

Now, let's imagine a more complex purchasing process: buying running shoes for the first time, as you're going to participate in a marathon. In this case, the purchasing journey will not be the same, right? Because, even though you already know that you need specific shoes, you have no information about the problems that running in shoes that are not suitable for running can cause, and you also have no idea how it will affect your performance in the race or what options are available on the market.

As you can see, the sales funnel represents the phases that a consumer goes through to acquire a certain product and can be used for simple or complex purchasing processes.

Now, defining the content for each stage of the sales funnel allows your company to create automatic triggers to convert visitors into leads , qualify those leads into opportunities and, finally, convert them into customers, so that marketing and sales work in alignment, optimizing resources.

That's why you need to be clear about who your visitors are and who you want to reach, since the content for each stage of the sales funnel will be different for each customer profile. So what should you do?

Defining buyer personas
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A good content marketing strategy should be based on the audience you want to reach.

Today, with digital transformation , the marketing world is becoming more and more consumer-focused. That's why all the tactics and content for each stage of the sales funnel that will make up your digital mix need to be of interest to your ideal buyer.

However, only orienting your entire strategy to serve a broad and varied target audience can undermine all your efforts and be the Achilles heel of your content marketing strategy. With this in mind, Alan Cooper, the father of buyer personas, created the concept, which has become the indispensable tool for any successful strategy. Let's see what it is about:

Buyer personas are archetypes of real customers that will help you develop strategies to promote your products and services. A buyer persona is created after a series of interviews with current and potential customers. It can also be said that it is a fictional profile that represents a company's ideal customer, created to help your business better understand who the customer is and what they need.

Buyer personas allow you to create more precise content marketing strategies. The applications of a buyer persona are countless, but for those of us who work with content marketing, only one is of interest: defining your buyer persona well means that your strategy has the potential to become much more effective.