Funnels in Marketing

What Are Funnels and How Do They Work?

In marketing, a funnel is a sales technique that is used to "capture" prospective buyers and customers. The "funnel" will attract people to the store (website, etc.). A low-priced product will be offered to attract the buyer's attention. When the buyer makes the purchase at the widest end or "layer" of the funnel, they will be led to the next level of the funnel. The funnel narrows as the customer goes through the "layers" of the funnel. The customer may stop at any level. That is, the customer may not progress through every layer.

"Layers" or Levels of the Funnel

Once the customer makes the first purchase, they are immediately taken to the next "layer" or level of the funnel. There, the buyer is offered another good deal. This next offer will enhance the first purchase in terms of add-ons that will make the first product so much better or easy to use. This product is generally slightly more expensive than the first product but not so much so that it scares the customer away.

Funnels "Upsell" the Product

The third layer of the funnel will, again, be more costly but will offer the purchaser a product that enhances the use of the first two. The first product does what it says it will do without purchasing the next products but the "upsell" products just make so much sense and the price does not usually add a whole lot more to the cost. The upsell product(s) may be one-time-purchase products or they may be a subscription or membership type of product where there is an ongoing regular payment, perhaps monthly or annually.

There can be many levels in the seller's funnel. If there is a membership or subscription funnel, it may be that the seller will add more layers (or more products) to the funnel as time goes on.

Example in Marketing

Purchasing a Motorcycle 

A buyer purchases a basic model of a motorcycle. Once the buyer has decided to purchase the bike, the salesman may work to upsell the product - leading the purchaser further into the funnel. The purchaser may decide to add a windscreen to the bike. The next add-on may be an upgrade on the seat to allow for a companion to ride behind on the bike. Perhaps then, the salesman will show the purchaser a comfortable backrest for the bike or dressier mirrors.

Not All Buyers Move Down The Funnel

Not all buyers will opt to purchase beyond the first layer of the funnel. That's okay, because they may eventually come back and add to the bike at a later date. They may not add to the bike later but they may come back to purchase the parallel products or accessories. These might be riding boots, a helmet, riding gloves or leathers. Once the seller determines how far the purchaser will travel down the funnel, they will remember this and further advertise to the buyer in future, announcing product sales, new products or whatever. By that time, the buyer may be ready to make other purchases.

End of the Funnel

The funnel in marketing often never really has an end. There is likely to be a new product, an improvement to the original product, an upgrade, a new style or model and so on. It is wise for the seller to continue to advertise to their customers on a regular basis. They do not want their customers to forget about them and they do want to keep their customers informed about the latest and greatest in their product line. In online marketing, sometimes the buyer will be referred to another seller's product whether or not the seller is still advertising their own product to the customer. An example of this would be affiliate marketing, where the referring seller will receive a percentage of the sale for the referral.

Watch for the Funnels

Next time you are purchasing, whether it be online or in a regular store, watch for the "funnel". Sometimes it is more obvious than others. In a grocery store, watch for the "funnel" as you go through the checkout. What about the magazines and candy for sale. They were not placed there just because there wasn't anywhere else to display them!!

ENJOY YOUR SHOPPING

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Create Your Own Business From Home - Is It Possible To Quit Your Job And Reinvent Your Future?

Creating a business from home is not as difficult as people may think. There are a multitude of home businesses that offer people the chance to earn income from the comfort of their own home. All you have to do is find the right home business opportunity to join. Better Business Bureau is a non-profit organization that gives people the opportunity to get an objective review on most home business opportunities. If you are searching for the right opportunity, this non-profit organization is a safe place to see if an opportunity is legit or not.

According to home business magazine, marketing contributes to 58% of a business's success.

Once you find the right opportunity, you will have to use effective marketing techniques. Being involved with the right opportunity is half the battle, you will have to use up-to-date techniques in order to get the best attention from the marketplace. Below are some effective marketing techniques to use when you are launching your marketing campaign.

1. Seasonal marketing

Seasonal marketing is a great way to attract new customers for your brand. For retailers like Hallmark, Valentine's day represents the biggest portion of their business, according to Google. I would recommend that you do some research as to when your products are most in season for your market. If you know when your products and services are in season, you will be able to find demand and promote your products at the best possible time. I would recommend that you go on any search engine and search for free trend-tracking services in order to see when it will be the best time for you to market your product.

2. PR marketing

This type of marketing is expensive. If you have a big budget, you can use the power of public relations in order to bring awareness to your product. When Steve Jobs was alive, apple constantly held press conferences to announce new products. You can go on any search engine and research the best public relation marketing services in order to get started. I suggest that you start off with the lowest possible budget first before going to the more expensive packages.

3. Online marketing

Online marketing has elevated to a new level. You can use a multitude of online marketing services, like e-mail lists, in order to come in direct contact with the people who are interested in what you have to offer. To succeed in e-mail lists, you will have to master the art of prospecting and closing. Once people respond to your promotional e-mails, it is best to call them in order share what your product has to offer.You can master the art of calling leads by getting prospecting and closing scripts on any search engine.

According to home business magazine, any person who is affiliated with a home business opportunity can succeed as long as they master effective marketing techniques.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9790905

Why Should Businesses Use Twitter?

If you do not yet have an account on Twitter, you must. It is the most growing and widely visited networking site and is becoming more famous as the days are going by. According to a research conducted by StatisticBrain.com, Twitter has 135,000 fresh sign-ups everyday while more than 9000 tweets are made each second. Currently, Twitter has more than 554,750,000 users.

Why should you follow statistics like these? That is because it could be of a real advantage to your business and besides 

Twitter is absolutely free!

Businesses can use Twitter as a very effective social media tool for marketing. These days, businesses are beginning to realize the importance of Twitter and its true potential.

Businesses can use it to:

• Talk to clients
• Introduce new services or products
• Advertise existing products
• Keep a check on competitors
• Do brand building
• Gain new clients
• Improve and develop the business

The Benefits Of Using Twitter For Businesses

Twitter is an amazing platform and everyone should be making use of it. The following are the reasons why businesses must be Twitter friendly:

No Monetary Investment

It only costs effort and time with Twitter. It is absolutely free and anyone can sign up for it, let it be a business or an individual. Business owners must not miss the chance to create a Twitter account.

Information

All networking sites are well known for information they provide to their users. They keep users up to date with all, which is going around in the world. The same goes for Twitter. Businesses can keep their clients updated about business events, offers and any other information, which the clients need, through Twitter.

Customer care can also be ensured through Twitter. Businesses can reply to the issues faced by clients and their solutions. Clients always appreciate recognition and after sales service.

Create Stronger Bonds With Clients

Businesses can use Twitter to create a much more personal bond with customers, which is important in developing brand loyalty amongst clients. This enables customers to have a bond of trust with the company, which is a long-term investment towards gaining more customers.

Gaining New Clients

Along with communicating with the existing customers, Twitter can also help businesses to gain new clients. This article would further explain how that would be possible.

Link To Other Websites

Online marketing consists of several channels. Twitter is the choice of many businesses for their online promotion because they can redirect their followers to the host website of the company, Facebook profiles, YouTube channels and blogs. This creates a chain of clients going over different platforms resulting in more effective promotion of the business.

Keeping A Check On The Competitors

It is more important for a business to have a Twitter account because its competitor might already be using it. If businesses do not avail this opportunity, it means they are giving their competitors the chance to grab their potential and existing clients. So, you really need to keep a check on your competitors and it is really possible through Twitter.

You can also get information about your competitors through twitter. For example, your competitor's marketing strategies, upcoming events and special offers. Your business can position itself according to this information and plan on making a successful counter attack.

Targeting The Tweets

Businesses must know their target audience and hence, their tweets must not be for everyone. They should be targeted towards the people the business is catering. You simply cannot target everyone so do not commit that mistake.

Businesses must have client centric marketing strategies and they must focus on their target audience or the people who are most likely to buy their products or services.

For instance, if you sell cosmetics then you should market to the audience who will be interested to buy your product. Promoting it to the people who do not belong to your target audience will be an utter waste of time and hard work.

Once you know who your target audience is you must know how to create and structure tweets in order to target and engage with the audience you are catering.

Marketing Strategies To Get More Sales On Twitter

There are several marketing strategies that a business can use. The main incentive is to get users to your corporate website through Twitter. The following are some strategies that a business can use.

Using Hashtags

This is very important to give a popular tag to your tweet so that more and more people can view it. Hashtags are really helpful to get potential clients to view your tweet. They basically use a keyword through which the users of Twitter search. Hence, people looking for similar keywords can end up at your tweet and you can promote your products and services to them.

Building Up A Following

When you set up your Twitter account, your first aim would be to get the maximum number of followers. Keep in the mind the advice given to you earlier in this article; only focus on getting your potential clients as followers and do not waste your time attracting people who will not be interested in what you have to offer. Your basic aim of creating a Twitter account should be to have a following, which represents a certain segment of your buyers. If you need any kind of assistance or additional help in this matter, you can get in touch with us and we will offer our help to you.

Inviting Fans From Other Channels

If you have accounts and fans from other networking websites such as YouTube, Facebook or Pinterest you can invite them to your Twitter page in order to increase your followers. Inviting your current fan base to an additional networking site will increase your hold on your current customers and will enable you to get a hold of newer ones as well.

Stalk The Pages Your Followers Like

This is probably one of the finest promotion strategies that any company can follow. Following pages and accounts that serve your target segment will keep you updated with the happenings of your niche and then you can adapt your promotional activities accordingly. For that a bit of stalking is required on your part. You can keep a check on the pages your followers are following and keep yourself updated with the likes and dislikes of your target audience.

Re-tweet Request

Many businesses might feel shy or embarrassed to ask their followers to forward their tweet to their friends and family by re-tweeting. They do not need to be shy anymore because everyone is doing it on Twitter and now it is totally acceptable. However, you need to know how and when to do it. If you start doing it too often you might seem desperate for re-tweets, so do not do it every now and then. Also, do not ask your followers for a re-tweet in a cheesy manner.

How to ask them for a re-tweet depends on what kind of people you are serving and having an understanding of your target audience will help you out in this. Ask for re-tweets for specific reasons, for example if you have a 50% off sale coming up, you can ask your followers to re-tweet that to create awareness among people. If your tweet is providing some useful information, your followers will not have problem re-tweeting it. The power of this function is immense. Let us say for an example, that you manage to get 300 re-tweets and each of your followers have 80 followers then you can imagine the number of people your tweet could get across to.

External Links

You can do marketing on Twitter through both internally and externally. For instance, you can use Twitter to target your followers and talk to them directly. However, you can also redirect your twitter followers to external pages like your Facebook profile, YouTube channel, corporate website, Pinterest account etc.

Having A Twitter Schedule

No one likes a boring page and that is probably the last thing you would want on Twitter. What you post on your Twitter account is extremely important and will have a lot of influence of the popularity of your page. Businesses should schedule and plan their tweets. You can take inspiration of big brands in the management of their Twitter accounts and try to duplicate those strategies. The research would definitely require some patience and hard work but it would be worthwhile. Having a good visibility to your twitter followers is extremely essential. If you over flood your followers with meaningless tweets which do not provide value nor information, your twitter page will definitely be a failure. You do not want that to happen to your page and hence you need to keep your tweets as interesting and engaging to your target audience as you possibly could.

Focusing On Quality While Tweeting

If your tweets will not interest your followers, your page would lose attention. If your tweets are nonsensical and pointless, or if you over flood your followers with too much posts, your page will most likely be un-followed and you will start losing customers.

As mentioned in this article earlier, creating tweets for special sales and offers to keep your clients informed is great, but that is not the only topic you can make tweets about. There are more things you can tweet about other than discounts.

All social networking websites including Twitter are a great way to connect with your clients and have their feedback on how well you are doing. People love to give their personal opinions and this is a great way to keep them engaged with your business. You can ask your followers to give their opinion on a certain product or service. If you ask questions, you will most likely be getting answers. This will create customer engagement and will also enable you to have valuable information that you can work on to improve the way you work.

You can also include contests in your Twitter page by using hashtags. Contests are known to increase customer engagement. You can also host photo contests and ask your followers to submit pictures in order to participate in the contest. You can keep small gifts or vouchers as prizes for the winners.

For example, recently a Spanish restaurant, La Tasca, based in the UK created a photo contest on Twitter and had a prize of a £50 voucher. Clients were asked to send in pictures of La Tasca's Tapas. Many other businesses have created similar contests. It increases the interaction on the Twitter page and it is very easy for the customers to participate in such events as well. It just needs a few seconds to upload a picture through a Smartphone these days.

Small businesses should research and get inspired by the marketing moves of the giants. This will give them insight and motivation to move further. Social media of today has an incredible power if it is used in the right way. The techniques and strategies mentioned in this article are just for the beginners. There is a lot more that could be done via Twitter!

We hope that our article has motivated you to have you own Twitter business page. We have already emphasized a lot on this earlier that even if you do not choose to be on Twitter, your competitors definitely will. You have to be on Twitter to retain customers from going to your competitors.

We are packed with several techniques and tricks that you can use of Twitter for the ultimate business promotion. We are here to offer any kind of help and assistance to the people who need it.

It is always better to let the professionals do their work. You can take a shot at creating your own business Twitter page as well but it would be more likely not to get noticed by anyone. Besides, it will take you a lot of time to figure out how you should be using it for your benefit. You can save your efforts, energy and time by letting us train you on how to use Twitter to its maximum advantage.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8143020