Understanding Your Sales Funnel
A Sales Funnel is a representation of the steps brides take to become your customer. Your sales funnel is key to building a marketing strategy that nurtures your relationship with brides all the way from first hearing about your shop to saying yes to their dress! If you already have a marketing strategy in place, understanding and effectively using each step to your advantage can help ensure that there are no “leaks” within your funnel where leads don’t end up converting. Once knowing if there are leaks in your funnel, you will want to give that area your attention to fix the “leaks”.
Awareness
The first step in any sales funnel is awareness. This is the step where brides hear about your shop for the first time. When looking at building a marketing strategy for this stage, pay attention to how it is that brides become aware of you. Is it from google searches? Paid Ads? Events or friend recommendations? Once you know where it is that brides first find your shop, you can see what areas of your awareness marketing strategy is working or not working. For example, what pages on your website do brides click on and what pages do they not stay on?
If awareness is a step in your sales funnel that has a “leak”, try capturing your bride’s attention by organically putting content in front of your target audience across all platforms or run paid ads. If you choose to run paid ads, ensure to set up a landing page for brides with a “can’t miss” offer. Here, you want to focus on capturing the lead rather than pushing the sale. This takes brides to the next step in the sales funnel, interest.
Interest
Once brides know about your shop, they will then do research into your shop as well as others and compare their options. While brides are in this phase of the funnel, work towards providing brides with content that will inform their decisions rather than sell to them. Getting brides to express interest in your shop can range from interacting with social media content to offering them something of value known as a lead magnet. Lead magnets are ways to get the bride’s information such as their email address in return for something of value. Some examples of lead magnets are exclusive offers or results of a style quiz.
Decision
After expressing interest in your shop, brides will make their decision and be ready to buy. This is when a bride books an appointment and is working with one of your team members to look at their dress options. During this time it is important to make your best offer and nurture the sale not only in store during the appointment but also by using follow up emails expressing your gratitude.
Action
Once your bride finds her dress and makes the purchase, they have reached the final stage of the sales funnel. When brides reach this step you may think your work is done, but there is still more that your shop can do to turn this sale into another purchase or a recommendation. This is done by focusing on customer retention, expressing gratitude, and reaching out for feedback through email blasts, and keeping the brides involved in your social media marketing efforts. These goals can be reached by posting their wedding photos on your social medias and creating email campaigns designed specifically for brides who have already found their dress.
Working through your sales funnel and identifying each step will help with your understanding of how to reach brides while they are in each step. With this understanding, you can stop any “leaks” in your funnel and ensure you reach your target audience and convert those leads into sales.
Want to Learn More?
Working through your shop’s sales funnel can be intimidating- we understand! We help bridal shop owners create a sales funnel marketing strategy that creates a consistent stream of newly engaged brides connecting and coming into their store! Check out how we can help you create your own Sales Funnel Marketing Strategy and follow us on Instagram for more tips for marketing your bridal shop!
