How To Create a Proven Sales Funnel To Boost Sales

If you want to generate sales and make your campaigns profitable, it’s very important to have a reliable, proven sales funnel that works!

Achieving great results that are profitable doesn’t just come from guessing which sales funnel strategies might work. It comes from using tested sales funnels that are proven to work and you can rely on for the long run.

In this guide you will learn everything you need to know to create proven sales funnels that will actually drive you sales. 

So make sure you read the entire guide because I will share  some of the best strategies that worked the best for us.

A sales funnel is a set of steps that help turn visitors from not knowing about your brand into a dedicated customer.

The name “funnel” comes from how these steps look when laid out visually.

Most sales funnels have four main stages: 

• Awareness
• Consideration,
• Conversion
• Advocacy

These are the typical stages, but if you search for terms like “marketing funnel,” “sales funnel,” or “advertising funnel,” you’ll often see more complex versions. Many of these extra steps aren’t necessary for most businesses, including affiliate marketing.

So now let’s break down these four main stages.

Stage #1 – Awareness

The widest part of the sales funnel is the awareness stage, often called the top of the funnel. This marks the start of your sales process, where potential customers begin their journey.

At this stage, you are basically introducing your business or brand to new potential customers for the first time. Before this, they had no idea of it, which means they’re considered a “cold audience.”

In the awareness stage, your goal is to introduce your brand, products, or services to these visitors. This section of the funnel is broad because you want to reach as many people as possible and narrow down your audience as they move through the next stages.

Stage #2 – Consideration

Then, we move to the next stage of the funnel, which is also known as the consideration stage or engagement stage. This is where people find themselves after they’ve just come from the awareness stage.

At this point, these people are not so new to your brand anymore, they’ve become familiar with it through platforms like social media or Google Ads.

In this stage, we refer to them as a “warm audience.”

Before these potential customers can progress to the next stage which is the conversion stage, you need to start filtering out those who are NOT really interested. The goal is to focus on people who are both aware of your brand and engaged with it. 

We’ll discuss strategies for this soon, but it’s important to avoid letting unqualified leads waste space in your funnel.

Stage #3 – Conversion

The next is the conversion stage, also called the bottom of the funnel. This stage is the narrowest because not everyone who starts at the top makes it to the bottom.

Only those people who are likely to make a purchase reach this stage. We refer to them as a “hot audience” because they are engaged and already familiar with your brand.

At this point, these people have shown interest and taken significant actions that indicate they are planning to buy your product. This might include sharing their contact information, like their email addresses, or adding items to their cart, although they haven’t completed a purchase yet.

Your marketing materials at the bottom of the funnel should be designed to encourage them to take action and convert into customers. Usually they just need a little extra motivation to make that final step.

Many people stop discussing the funnel at these three stages, so it’s important to pay attention to the fourth stage and include it in your sales funnel strategy as well.

Stage #4 – Advocacy

The Advocacy stage is for people who have already made a purchase. They’ve gone through the sales process and are known as retargeting customers.

If you run ecom, focusing on retargeting customers is a key strategy. This stage is all about making existing customers buy again from you.

For B2B or service-based companies, like ours, this stage is important for nurturing current clients. It helps maintain long-term relationships and can lead to referrals.

Also in both B2C and B2B scenarios, you may have additional products or services that you want to upsell to these customers. The Advocacy stage is where you can encourage existing customers to consider these options.

Overall, the Advocacy stage allows you to work more efficiently. It maximizes the value of your current customers without needing to guide them through the entire buyer journey again.

How To Craft a Proven Sales Funnel

Now let’s outline 9 simple steps you should focus on to create a sales funnel that converts:

1. Define Your Goal: Decide what you want from this funnel. Is it direct sales? Leads? What’s your budget? Set clear goals upfront.
2. Identify Customer Problems: List out the pain points or goals that your product or service addresses. What specific solutions do you offer?
3. Provide Free Value: At the Awareness stage, share valuable, free content to build trust and establish authority in your field. If you’re unsure what your audience values, refer to your list from step 2.
4. Offer Gated Value: Provide more detailed content in exchange for contact info. This “lead magnet” could be a free eBook, quiz, discount code, or other incentives.
5. Qualify Leads: Identify which leads are a good fit and likely to buy by the end of the funnel. This also helps filter out those who aren’t.
6. Nurture Qualified Leads: Engage with qualified leads to move them closer to purchasing. Offer more valuable content, answer their questions, and address any objections.
7. Ask for the Sale: Give a clear call-to-action, guiding them to buy your product or service.
8. Upsell: Once someone becomes a customer, encourage repeat purchases. Maintain a strong relationship to keep them in the Advocacy stage.
9. Track Results: Measure how many people enter versus complete the funnel. Use lead segmentation and adjust your approach as needed to ensure only qualified leads move through the funnel profitably.

This is the foundation of an effective sales funnel. Now, let’s dive into how to put it into action.

The Best Marketing Strategies For Each Sales Funnel Stage

Awareness Stage

The key thing to remember is that at this stage, you’re dealing with a cold audience, people who’ve never heard of your brand before.

Many marketers make the same mistake by running conversion based campaigns for a cold audience that is only at the awareness stage.

People seeing these ads for the first time are likely just scrolling by. Even if you’re following our best practices and addressing your audience’s needs and pain points, you haven’t built the trust to ask for a purchase yet.

At the awareness stage, the goal isn’t getting sales immediately! Instead, look for positive interactions like likes, comments, views, and follows. Some website traffic can also help lay the groundwork for future trust.

Make sure your marketing at this stage is focused on these objectives!

Best Marketing Strategies to Boost the Awareness Stage

–Social Media Postings

An organic posting strategy on the platform your audience uses the most is a powerful way to build brand awareness. You can boost these campaigns by using relevant hashtags, location tags, and keywords to reach more people.

If you’re posting on Facebook and Instagram, consider boosting the posts with an engagement campaign on Facebook. 

This type of campaign is optimized to increase post interactions, video views, and direct messages.

–Sales Campaigns

For businesses selling low cost products, a Sales Campaign in the awareness stage might actually work.

If your product is cheap and could be an impulse buy, try running a sales campaign directly to a cold audience and see if it drives any sales. For most other products, though, you’re better off with an ad funnel. 

This approach introduces your brand and, importantly, provides value first.

–Traffic Campaign

Providing value to a cold audience means directing them to a content based platform like your social media, landing page, or blog. The goal is to help your audience address a problem or pain point.

To drive traffic to your landing page or blog, run a traffic campaign. Set the conversion location to “Website” in the ad set level, and adjust the performance goal to maximize landing page views.

Setting your campaign this way ensures it’s shown to people who are more likely to wait for your landing page to load, rather than just clicking without further action.

So, you’re directing visitors to a content page, like a blog post. Here, you can include a pop up or sidebar widget offering a lead magnet in exchange for their contact information.

This option is useful for those who already feel confident about your brand and might be ready for the next step. But remember, this page isn’t meant to be a squeeze page.

At this stage, the main goal is simply to provide value. This should help increase brand recall and build some initial trust in you.

–SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

If you don’t know how to run ads or don’t have the budget to advertise, SEO is a free but much slower way to promote your blog.

To start, you can optimize your blog for specific keywords so it ranks higher in search results. For example, if you run auto insurance, you could create a blog post around “how to save on car insurance.” 

Then, when someone searches for that topic on Google, your site could be one of the first results. If they find a helpful answer on your site, it initiates their buyer journey with you.

This approach builds trust by giving them useful information.You can use Google Keyword Planner to find popular keywords relevant to your business. This free tool helps you identify terms your audience is actively searching for, making your content more effective.

Keep in mind, though, that SEO takes time, it can take months or even a year for a new site to rank well. Keyword optimization is only one factor Google uses when deciding which pages to display in search results.

Consideration Stage

This stage focuses on encouraging high intent actions while filtering out those who are unlikely to convert in the future.

Keep in mind, you don’t want to spend resources, time, effort, or money on leads that won’t bring a return down the line.

Best Marketing Strategies to Boost the Consideration Stage

–Lead Generation Campaigns

If your business requires conversations with leads before they convert to customers, then lead generation is a strong next step.

For this, Facebook offers several ad campaign options:

If you have a landing page specifically for collecting leads, use the Sales campaign to direct people there. This way, you can track how many Facebook users complete your lead form.

If you don’t have your own landing page you should try Facebook’s Lead campaign instead.

With this campaign, people can fill out your lead form directly on Facebook, so they don’t need to leave the platform.

Their contact information is saved in your Facebook Ads Manager, where you can either download it manually or integrate it with your CRM for automated follow up.

Another option is to use Google Ads to direct traffic to your landing page.

The key difference between Google Ads and Facebook ads lies in targeting and payment. With Facebook ads, you target users based on their interests, demographics, or behaviors, and you’re charged per impression. 

Google Ads, however, reach people through search terms they enter, and you pay for each click, making it a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) model.

To maximize results, your ads should offer a free, valuable lead magnet that users can access by providing their contact information.

–Automate Comments and Messages With ManyChat

You can easily set up a free ManyChat account to automate responses to comments and messages on your social media platforms. This tool can help you engage your audience and foster trust with them.

If your business model doesn’t require a meeting with leads before they purchase, you can still utilize these lead generation campaigns for other goals.

For example, you could collect contact information by offering different lead magnets in exchange. These could include things like discount codes or exclusive early access to upcoming product launches.

Once you have their contact details, you can leverage them for email marketing campaigns and retargeting on Facebook.

–Qualifying Leads

Regardless of which strategy you use to capture leads, it’s key to qualify and disqualify them at this stage. Proper lead management ensures that only the most suitable leads reach the end of your funnel.

Qualifying a lead means being upfront about what they can expect from your business, no overpromising, no under delivering. This helps set realistic expectations for the lead and builds trust.

Disqualifying, on the other hand, involves identifying if a lead isn’t a good match for your business. Although it’s tough, especially for growing businesses eager to take on any customer, it’s just as important as qualifying. Sometimes, this means turning away interested leads.

Typically, leads are disqualified for three main reasons: they lack the budget, are outside your service area, or are looking for something you don’t offer.

If you’re spending time on leads who can’t afford your services, aren’t in the right location, or won’t be satisfied with your offerings, you’re wasting resources on leads that aren’t truly a fit for your business.

–Disqualifying Leads

How do you go about qualifying and disqualifying leads? Start with the content you put out and especially your lead forms.

Probably the easiest way is to ask targeted questions in your forms, if they don’t match your criteria, remove them from the funnel. Offer a lead magnet designed to appeal to those who are likely to buy later on.

For example, if your business involves roofing services targeting homeowners, your form could ask, “Do you own your house?” If the response is, “No, I rent an apartment” you can end the process there.

Similarly, if you’re offering a free spring maintenance guide for homeowners, it should attract only those who actually own homes, not apartment renters.

In the middle of the funnel, you’re looking for actions that indicate interest and readiness, like “They’ve completed XYZ or shown engagement, so now it’s reasonable to ask for a purchase.”

This part of the funnel is about nurturing the relationship. Just like you wouldn’t propose on a first date, you don’t ask for a sale immediately. The middle funnel is where you build enough trust to confidently move toward the sale.

Conversion and Advocacy Stages

In the Conversion and Advocacy stages, you’re working with a hot audience, people who’ve already shown strong interest in your brand. At this point, the goal is to close the sale or upsell with targeted ads that encourage them to take that final step.

Best Marketing Strategies to Boost the Conversion and Advocacy States

For the Conversion and Advocacy stages, most businesses rely on Facebook’s Sales campaign or a Search or Display campaign through Google. Whichever platform you choose, it’s essential to track your funnel analytics, such as how many people saw your ads, clicked through to your site, or visited your store and completed a purchase.

You might wonder how to retarget people who didn’t fill out your lead form. No worries, any previous interaction can be used to retarget them. In Facebook and Instagram’s Ads Manager, you can create a custom audience. 

This lets you retarget people who have engaged with your brand, like followers, video viewers, post engagers, website visitors, customers, and leads. Just make sure you set up your Meta Pixel on your website from the start to capture this data.

On Google, make sure to set up their tracking tool, called a tag, to monitor activity on your site. Some of the people in your retargeting audience will already be clients or recent buyers, so it’s a good idea to exclude them from these retargeting efforts. This helps avoid spending ad money on users who have already converted.

However, you can still engage these customers separately in the Advocacy stage by creating targeted ads to upsell them. By the time your audience reaches the bottom of the funnel, your ads should be straightforward and clear.

You’ve invested time in educating, providing value, and building trust. Now, it’s time to focus on conversions, whether that means a sale or an upsell if they’re in the Advocacy stage. 

This is the essence of an effective sales funnel: attracting the right people from the beginning, positioning your brand with valuable content, and ensuring they choose you when they’re ready to purchase.

Conclusion

In summary, a well designed sales funnel guides potential customers from awareness to conversion, helping you connect meaningfully with audiences at each stage. By offering value early on, qualifying leads carefully, and nurturing those who show interest, you build trust and encourage engagement. 

As prospects move down the funnel, your strategy becomes more targeted, ensuring only high-intent customers reach the final stages. Finally, by retargeting and upselling in the Advocacy stage, you maximize value from existing clients. 

This structured approach positions your brand as the go-to choice, helping you attract, convert, and retain loyal customers.