A good sales funnel runs like a well-oiled machine. Leads go in, and customers come out.
At the top of your funnel (TOFU), eye-catching content makes people aware of your brand. Mid-funnel (MOFU), your lead nurture campaigns help your audience develop a relationship with you and see your brand as valuable. And the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) educates people about your products and services and makes the well-earned sales pitch.
But you don’t want just anyone in your sales funnel. Some brands make the mistake of assuming that all traffic is good traffic. But you want to focus your time and energy on the people who are most likely to benefit from (and therefore, be drawn to) your products or services.
You need to invest in strategies to get the right people in your sales funnel. Here are four ways to get leads that convert.
1. Create content your target audience is looking for
The people you want to reach use the Internet to ask questions, explore concepts, reach goals, and solve problems. If you want them to come to your website, you need to create articles, pages, videos, infographics, and other content that addresses the topics they’re looking for.
When church leaders search for “church apps” or “church loans” in Google, do you want them to find you? Then you need to write the most valuable and authoritative content related to those terms.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is about creating content that does the best job delivering what people are looking for online. Investing in SEO can bring the right visitors to your website for years to come.
2. Pay for traffic
Advertising is a great way to drive the right people to your website and fill your funnel with qualified leads. Depending on the platform you choose, you can target your ads to people with qualities you know matter to your business, like location, or even job title. You can also advertise in the places where you know your audience will be: websites they likely visit, search engine results pages for key terms, and their favorite social network.
Google Ads lets you pay for traffic on relevant keywords or certain demographics on websites within the Google Ad Network.
Facebook’s advertising platform lets you target the demographics you want to reach and then display your ad in their newsfeed. (Other social platforms like Twitter have similar options.)
And banner ads give you the opportunity to reach a publisher’s audience directly on their site, where your ad appears alongside brands your audience loves and content they want to see.
Where you advertise has a big impact on who you’re going to reach. So it’s important to choose platforms that let you focus on the demographics you need or work with publishers that attract the right people.
3. Grow your own audience on social
Social media gives you an invaluable opportunity to publicly present your brand and build a following around what you do. Whether your product or service is about Bible study, missionary work, or church technology, creating social content that relates to your brand helps you reach people who are interested in those things.
As you build your audience and create content they love, your audience will naturally point other people to your brand as they share and interact with your posts. So your social channels become places to continually remarket to your existing audience and reach new people.
4. Choose the right lead magnets
Obviously, if you want to draw the right people into your sales funnel, you have to make the right offer.
If your lead magnet isn’t relevant enough to your audience, they’re not going to download it and move down your funnel. If it’s not relevant enough to your organization, then everything else you say to your leads is going to feel like it’s coming out of nowhere, and they’re going to be confused about exactly who you are and what you do.
For example, say you help churches find quality job candidates, and you’re trying to reach executive pastors. Some of them might be interested in a lead magnet offering Bible study tips, but that’s going to be a lot less relevant than an ebook like Leadership Succession 101: How to Hire Your Next Senior Pastor.
Fill your sales funnel
Once you put in the work to create a sales funnel, conversions come easy—you just have to fill it with the right people!
