What Is a Sales Funnel? A Guide to Building One

In business, conversion rate will never reach a perfect 100%. Marketing and selling always carry different kinds of risk. A sales funnel helps you measure risk and make sounder business plans. Today the sales funnel model is used in both physical retail and online business. Let's MONA Media find out what a Sales Funnel is and how to build a sales funnel effectively, and in as muchdetail as possible, in this article.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is known in English as a Sales Funnel. It is a tool for summarizing and mapping the stages of a professional sales process accurately. You can use a sales funnel to work out why sales fail or succeed, and then improve the selling process.

A typical sales funnel has 4 main stages::

• Attention: capturing the customer's attention. You target potential customers and market to them in a way that stands out. Prospects who are shown the right product line pay close attention.
• Interest: building interest. Once customers notice your product or service, they spend time looking into it.
• Desire: weighing up and choosing. Customers evaluate your product or service and decide whether or not to buy.
• Action: buying the product or using the service. Customers see your brand as the best fit and decide to use your services.

Watch this VIDEO for the simplest explanation of what a Sales Funnel is. WATCH NOW!

The role of a sales funnel in business

A marketing and sales funnel brings many benefits to a business. A company that plans and builds a professional sales funnel gains a lot of advantages, for example:

• It is easy to analyze strategy through the funnel. Sketch out customer profile the most detailed customer insight. This stage is very important in any sales strategy.
• It keeps your sales strategy consistent, with a professional sales playbook and a scientific process.
• It lets you measure every customer boundary, the chance of success and the risks with ease.
• It raises conversion rate and keeps you aimed at your business goals.
• It increases online sales once you understand your customers' insight well.
• Most importantly, your marketing and selling time and results stay on track.
• It helps you keep existing customers and grow your pool of potential customers.

Common sales funnel models

Marketing funnels are spreading across businesses of every size. Almost every business strategy uses a sales funnel to grow revenue and build interest among potential customers. Here are the most common sales funnel models in use today.

1. The AIDA sales funnel model

According to the AIDA model, the funnel covers everything from awareness and interest to desire and the customer's conversion. With this funnel you market, advertise and sell through 4 stages.

• Build awareness of the product (Awareness). Strong visuals and big advertising content. Customers become well aware of your product and brand.
• Raise interest and grab attention (Interest). Offer attractive sales policies and show customers the benefits of using the product.
• Build desire to own the product or service (Desire). Hit the customer's real need. Give limited-time promotion details, customer care and more.
• Convert into a purchase (Action). Create Call to Action high-quality, engaging content so customers go on to buy.

2. A sales funnel built on customer experience 

A funnel based on customer experience is built on "loyalty" and "advocacy". With this model, customers move through 5 steps as follows:

• Customers become aware of your products and services through advertising channels.
• They consider using the product or service based on features, price and what they need.
• They convert and buy after comparing the product with other brands or trying a free version. Attractive offers and good advice from the business matter most here.
• They become loyal to your brand based on how satisfied they are with the product.
• They recommend your products or services to friends and family, naturally and at no cost to you.

3. The TOFU – MOFU – BOFU model

TOFU – MOFU – BOFU combines the sales funnel with the AIDA formula and helps sales succeed even more. It is also used at a larger scale, although most sellers and businesses still use AIDA more often.

How sales funnels are applied in Vietnam

The most common sales funnel in Vietnam is direct selling, also known as the telesales funnel. Many experts call this kind of phone selling "spam". Staff hold a list of customers' phone numbers and call each person to introduce products and services.

The next form is building a sales funnel with online advertising. This works better and is used by almost every business that sells online. They run their marketing across all advertising channels. Google Ads, Sales Landing Page, social networks, email marketing and more are all used for advertising. Conversion rates are higher and revenue grows more if you apply a sales funnel model.

How to build a professional sales funnel

Now you know what a sales funnel is and which sales funnel models are common today. Next, MONA will show you how to build a sales funnel that works best for your business plan.

Understand your potential customer profile

The first and most important step in building a sales funnel is to define the customer profile potential customers you are aiming at. The more detailed and specific the customer profile, the easier it is to run your later marketing campaigns. 

For example, at MONA.Media we target businesses that want to grow and scale up online through Digital Marketing. 

A small tip MONA uses to understand its customer profile: we put ourselves in the position of a specific group of customers (rather than speaking to everyone in general). This helps MONA reach the right audience and works far better than speaking in general terms. 

Build a marketing funnel that fits your potential customers

Next, work out which marketing channels suit your potential customers, then run your campaigns on them. 

At MONA we use two main platforms: SEO and ads on Facebook and Google. If you run an F&B or retail business, you can also use other channels such as TikTok, Zalo, YouTube and LinkedIn, or run sales programs on e-commerce marketplaces.

One more note: a single marketing campaign should have more than one sales funnel. Each funnel serves a different customer group or a different stage of the buying process: 

For example, an advertising campaign needs these sales funnels: 

• For new potential customers: This funnel introduces your product or service to potential customers through ads, SEO or any other way of getting your product in front of consumers.
• Sales funnel for existing customers: Used to get customers to buy again or to introduce new products to them. To get the most from this funnel, only suggest products the customer has bought before, or products they often click on or look at.

Build a marketing strategy for each stage

Once you have a sales funnel for each customer group, you need to draw up a marketing strategy marketing strategy to suit each of those customer groups. 

For this stage you can use marketing approaches such as:

• Ways to reach your target: social networks, website SEO, paid ads, email and more.
• Create high-quality ad content that is rich in useful information and images.
• Include testimonials about your products and services.
• Keep the marketing system running continuously to raise conversion and spread the brand.
• Use scarcity strategies: limited quantities, short promotion windows and so on.
• Offer real-world and online sampling so customers can try the product.
• Offer deals and discounts to loyal customers, and more.

Create ad content for each part of the funnel

Each marketing channel has its own language and content. You therefore need to study each ad channel to plan the right content strategy and posting times.

Each ad platform also has policies you must follow, so read each platform's policies carefully before creating ad content. That way you avoid violations that could hurt your campaign.

Build a strategy to spread the brand

Besides video ads, you need to give customers more reasons to buy: added benefits, extra value, offers or good discounts. Create urgency and encourage customers to come back and buy again, which also spreads your brand to potential customers more effectively.

For MONA, brand awareness comes from commitments to real conversion results in every MONA service. We always put customers' interests first and keep customers at the center, and that is the compass for building a stronger MONA brand. 

Track changes, analyze and adjust your plan in time

The steps above are everything you need to build an effective sales funnel. For the funnel to work at its best, though, MONA suggests adding a step after you launch your campaigns: track results, analyze them and improve. 

For example, you can use tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console to track how well your funnel converts. Then make changes in time so your strategy always performs at its best.

In short, a sales funnel is the "key" that helps businesses set the right strategy for each stage of growth, and so shortens the time it takes to turn potential customers into real ones. 

In recent years the sales funnel model has become familiar and is used in many fields. The most common use is in bán khóa học online (selling courses online). 

And if you also want to run a sales funnel for your own training center, school or business course, then MONA Elearning is the product that fits you best. It is also the system that Khánh Hùng, CEO/Founder of The MONA, used when selling his business e-learning course Khánh Hùng Academy.

Here are the features that let you track and measure your sales funnel performance with just one single MONA Elearning system. Here they are:

►Automatic student and user classification

The system automatically sorts students or users by specific criteria such as behavior, interests and level of engagement. With this feature you can easily identify potential customer groups and adjust your approach for each group.

►Automatic AI training for ad platforms based on the funnel

This may be one of the FIRST features of its kind in the Vietnamese market. MONA Elearning integrates AI technology that automatically optimizes ads on platforms such as Facebook and Google based on the sales funnel model. The AI learns and adjusts the ad campaign from user behavior, which saves cost and improves ad performance.

►Analyze user information and the user journey on your e-learning website

The system reports in detail on user behavior, from the moment they visit the site until they register as a FREE student. This lets you track, observe and measure each student's journey, improve the user experience and raise your conversion rate.

If you run a clothing website, for example, you can measure which products customers added to the cart but did not pay for, find out why, and come up with a way to get them to buy. 

►Evaluate and manage your student sources

The system tracks, evaluates and manages the whole process of students joining courses. You can easily see how many students sign up, the course completion rate and how well your outreach campaigns perform. 

►Track sales funnel performance

With a single sales funnel model, you can see detailed data on the number of students and that funnel's percentage of all students coming to the course. 

From there you can judge whether that student data is good quality, see where problems come from, and easily adjust your sales strategy or improve your course.

MONA Elearning also has other features that support your selling, such as:

• Order management
• Writing marketing emails
• Setting up filming scripts
• Managing Ambassadors
• Automatic Ambassador updates
• Automatic promotions (custom, code hunting, voucher cards, Flash Sale and more)
• Managing the Affiliate page
• Evaluating funnels, student sources, lesson quality and more

Remember that one ad campaign always produces a lot of customer data, and you will not be able to manage all of it with manual tools such as spreadsheets and Excel. Let the MONA Elearning system automate the whole process, optimize your data and improve your sales results starting today!

Contact MONA through HOTLINE 1900 636 648 and our Account specialists at MONA are ready to give you detailed advice.

Metrics for measuring a sales funnel

Sales metrics are based on your outreach rate. From outreach you get the share of customers who qualify and become your potential customers, and finally the closing rate when you sell the product. To reach these rates you will rely on metrics such as:

• The percentage of the sales team that hits its target.
• The average deal size in the sales funnel.
• The conversion rate for buying a product or using a service, also called the win rate.
• Revenue metrics.
• Customers' order closing metrics.

Common misconceptions about sales funnels

Now that you know how to build an effective sales funnel, MONA will help you spot the "misconceptions" about this model. They are as follows:

• The more potential customers, the better. This is a mistake when building a sales funnel. You are better off engaging with potential customers to get them to take action.
• Closing rate is the measure of success. This only shows results at a single point in time. What matters is that the number stays stable over time and across the stages of a campaign.
• The faster you close the order, the better. This is a misunderstanding. What still matters is what customers get from your product and service, and how you get them to come back and keep using it.
• It is wrong to think that potential customers who have not converted have no value. It only means you have not yet built brand awareness or shown the value of your product. Make sure you have better strategies to get them to act.

A sales funnel is very important to the strategy of every business in every field. We hope the guide above on how to create a sales funnel helps you build a funnel that works best for you. Good luck putting it into practice!

However well a funnel is drawn, it needs a place at the bottom to catch customers and close orders. With separate landing pages, every campaign has to be built from scratch, while a complete sales website can be reused for every campaign. To see how MONA builds this bottom part of the funnel, see the details here.