Surely you have heard the term funnel many times and it is not very clear to you what it is. In this post I would like to explain what sales funnels or sales funnels are, why they are so called and what types of sales funnels there are. This way you will be able to advertise as a dog trainer or canine professional.
To sell our services and products we have no choice but to make ourselves known (and I'm telling you, I've had a hard time making myself known on social networks). One of the best and most effective ways to make your canine products and services known and profitable is through the use of sales funnels.
Sales funnels will help you to attract more customers as a canine professional and scale your canine business. You will be able to advertise effectively on social media as a canine professional.
What are sales funnels?
Sales funnels, are a key part of digital marketing strategies. But we really live surrounded by funnels in our daily lives and we use them without being aware of it. To negotiate with our work team, with our friends, family...etc. If our goal is to sell, then we call them sales funnels.
Why are they called sales funnels or sales funnels?
Because we start with strangers (a large audience of potential customers) that we lose along the way, until only some of them become customers (a smaller audience than the potential one). If we were to draw this process according to the number of potential customers we have at each step of the funnel until we reach those who become customers, we would have the shape of a funnel.
If only we could get the shape of a square! It would mean that every potential customer that comes in becomes a real customer. Then we would speak of a sales square😉 (Haha...I just made that up, huh?)
In this image you can see the three phases of a sales funnel.
We have dog families who are not aware that their dog needs professional education and care. They are looking for information on google or youtube about "how to make my dog not to pull the leash", "how to make my dog not to bark at other dogs or people". etc... At that point, they hardly recognise their problem. Here we would have as potential customers all the families that live with their beloved dogs in your area or in the geographical area of your choice 😉.
- TOFU (Top of the Funnel): The top of the funnel. donde establecemos la conexión entre las familias perrunas y nuestro negocio canino. En sus búsquedas las familias leen un post interesante o ven un vídeo tuyo pero no tienen tiempo de practicar con sus mascotas y piensan que pueden esperar porque aún la situación es sostenible.
- MOFU (Middle of the Funnel): This is the middle of the funnel. One day our families get a good scare with their dog, it hasn't bitten but almost, the behaviour of their dog makes them feel scared when someone goes to their house or they take it on a trip. Then they remember that they read you, they try to look for you, they may or may not succeed, someone else will find you and call. Here it is important to work on the relationship of trust between your dog business and the families with furry dogs. Here families start to become aware of all the value you can offer them and their dogs.
- BOFU (Base of the Funnel): The bottom of the funnel.. Here they already know you, they know your solution, your irresistible offer and families are eager to invest in you and enjoy a full coexistence with their dogs. Interested families will be eager to hire you.
To create a good sales funnel that converts, it is necessary to know and apply certain techniques and the basics of digital marketing. It is necessary to define the ideal customer (avatar), create a good segmentation, design ads with appropriate photos and videos, persuasive texts and implement and optimise the tracking of each campaign.
The sales funnel can work organically but usually slowly. If we want to accelerate this whole process, to move from one phase to another as quickly as possible, my recommendation is to buy traffic and run advertising campaigns. In addition, I will be able to tell you exactly how many potential customers move from one stage of the funnel to another and how much each of these movements costs us. The idea is that the cost of moving them towards conversion is much lower than the benefit obtained for each sale and visibility achieved. Can you do the same with newspaper, TV or radio leaflets or advertisements😉? I read you below 👇
Types of sales funnels
Depending on the business and strategy, we can differentiate between two types of sales funnels. The evergreen sales funnel and the one-off or launch sales funnel.
Evergreen sales funnels
It means that it is a sales funnel that is always available. Any dog family can access it at any time. It is always open.
They can be had organically but their profitability is small, especially in the short term. If you want to take full advantage of this funnel, the ideal is to buy traffic for the creation of advertising campaigns on a recurring basis so that you will never be short of hairy people. The duration depends on the investment you want to make in advertising.
Minimum Viable Funnel
This funnel is the one I have implemented for local businesses. Businesses of physiotherapy, aesthetics, opticians, decoration, etc... by clicking on the link. minimum viable physiotherapy clinic funnel you can see it. In this other link you have a summary of the advertising strategy in social networks que seguimos para este funnel.
It consists of buying traffic to take our dog families from an ad on social networks to our landing page. Here they can find out about the offer and the solution you are offering and leave their details if they are interested. Once we have obtained the data from potential customers, they are redirected to the thank you page where we usually add more value if they take action quickly.
This funnel can be maintained forever depending on audiences and offers, although in my experience, local businesses tend to have defined offer periods and often run seasonal campaigns, offering different offers and products throughout the year.
Funnel for webinars
This type of funnels are based on the purchase of traffic to enter an automated webinar or also called recorded webinar Do they sound familiar? They are the favourite funnels for online training or digital products. I recently wrote a post about it. You can find it here.
Funnels for ecommerce or online shops
There are different strategies and funnels to approach ecommerce and veterinary or canine products shops depending on the route and sales they already have. The strategy is different if they start from scratch than if they already generate sales. But I think I'll tell you more about this in another post. 🤔
Timely sales funnels
These are Jeff Walker's famous pitching funnels or PLF strategy. This type of pitching has its name because Jeff Walker was the pioneer, all the rest of us are copying him....jaja. This type of pitching positions you very quickly in your niche. For the record, I haven't done it yet eh?...again my fear of exposing myself on social media 😖.
PLF achieves something that was previously unthinkable for small businesses that cannot invest millions of euros in advertising campaigns. A small entrepreneur can go out with a bang and achieve great results. This is what really motivates me about this work.
It is a lead and sales system that lasts about two or three weeks. This type of launch is the subject of many posts, but I will tell you that its stages are generally the following: pre-pre launch, pre-launch, launch and post-launch. the key ingredients are knowing your audience very well, having a story to tell, a well-planned content strategy with four videos and making good use of email marketing.
Do you have a sales funnel already in place to advertise as a canine professional? Let me know how you got on with it.…
