“Sales funnel” is one of those phrases that sounds like it belongs to big companies with marketing departments. It doesn’t. A sales funnel is just the path someone takes from never having heard of you to becoming a customer, and every business has one, whether it’s been thought about or not.
The question is whether yours is deliberate. Most small business websites are built as a shop window: here’s who we are, here’s what we do, here’s our phone number. That works for the small number of people who arrive ready to buy. Everyone else leaves, and you never know they were there.
I talked through this in a series of episodes on the Start-Up Student Podcast. This guide pulls it together in one place, with each episode below the section it belongs to.
The big idea: most people aren’t ready to buy yet
Picture everyone who could possibly want what you sell. A few are ready to buy today. Rather more are thinking about it. Most don’t yet know they have the problem you solve.
A funnel is simply a way of meeting people at each of those stages. Wide at the top, where lots of people get something useful from you at no cost. Narrower in the middle, where people who are interested get to know you. Narrow at the bottom, where the ones who are ready buy.
The mistake almost everyone makes is building only the bottom. A website full of services and prices speaks only to people who are already convinced. There’s nothing for anyone who isn’t, so they leave and buy from whoever helps them think it through.
Two principles matter more than any tactic:
- Give before you ask. Be useful first. It’s what earns you the right to sell later.
- Let people move at their own speed. Some people buy in a week, some take two years. A funnel keeps you in touch with both, without you chasing.
The top of the funnel: getting in front of people
The top of the funnel is about being found by people who aren’t looking for you yet. They’re looking for an answer to a problem.
That means content built around your customers’ questions, not your services. A web designer writing “our web design service” reaches people already shopping for a web designer. The same designer writing “how much should a website cost?” reaches everyone who’s wondering whether to get one at all.
In practice, the top of your funnel is:
- Useful content on your website: blog posts, guides, videos, podcasts that answer real questions you get asked.
- Somewhere you already have an audience: social media, networking, an existing customer list, a local group.
- Search: content aimed at real questions is also what gets you found on Google. More on that in why does my business not appear on Google?
- Paid ads, if you have a budget, pointed at something useful rather than straight at a sales page.
The aim at this stage isn’t to sell. It’s to be helpful enough that people remember you.
The middle: a website that actually sells
Once someone arrives on your website, the job changes. Now you need to turn interest into an enquiry.
A few things make the difference:
- Answer the question they arrived with, before anything else. If they came for an answer, give it to them properly. A page that bait-and-switches into a sales pitch loses trust immediately.
- Say what you do in their words, not industry language. Plenty of businesses describe themselves in terms only a competitor would understand.
- Make the next step obvious on every page. One clear thing to do: call, book, enquire. Not five options, not a phone number buried on a contact page.
- Offer a smaller step as well as the big one. “Book a consultation” is a big commitment. “Get the guide” or “have a quick chat” is a much easier yes, and it’s how people enter the next stage.
- Show that other people trust you. Reviews, testimonials and real examples of your work do more than any claim you make about yourself.
- Make it fast and make it work on a phone. Most people will see your site on a phone, and a slow page loses them before they read a word.
There’s more detail in planning an effective sales website and what makes a good website.
The next stage: email marketing
Someone visited, found you useful, but isn’t ready to buy. Without a way to stay in touch, that’s the end of it. This is exactly what email is for.
Once someone gives you their email address, you can stay in front of them for months without chasing them:
- Give them a reason to sign up. Not “join our newsletter”, which offers nothing. Offer something genuinely useful: a guide, a checklist, a short series of tips on the thing they were just reading about.
- Set up a welcome sequence. A handful of emails, sent automatically over a couple of weeks, each one helpful. By the end of it, they know you. Our guide to email automation walks through how to build one.
- Keep being useful afterwards. A regular email that helps people is read. One that only ever sells gets deleted.
- Ask for the next step once trust is there, not in the first email.
This is the part most small businesses skip, and it’s the part that converts the people who weren’t ready the first time. Costs are modest too: see what email marketing costs in the UK.
Where to start
Don’t try to build all of it at once. Start with whichever part is weakest:
- Nobody visiting? Work on the top of your funnel.
- Visitors but no enquiries? Work on your website and its calls to action.
- Enquiries that go quiet? Work on your follow-up and email.
Build one part properly, then move to the next. A modest funnel that exists beats an elaborate one that’s still being planned.
If you’d like help working out where yours is leaking, get in touch.
