Decoding The Sales Funnel: Gently Pushing Customers Through The Decision Stage

Continuing our series on decoding the sales funnel, in the first part of the series, we introduced the AIDA sales funnel and broke down its components. If you missed the previous Awareness and Interest parts, check those out first. This part will pick at the Decision part of the funnel. So let’s look at some methods a business can use to ensure you’re leading them farther down the funnel to the Action stage.

5 Stages Of Decision Making

There are five primary stages of the decision-making process:

Stage 1: Discovery of a problem or a need (Awareness)
Stage 2: Information gathering (Interest)
Stage 3: Evaluating alternatives (Decision)
Stage 4: Making the purchase (Action)
Stage 5: Post-purchase evaluation

The important takeaway from knowing the five stages is that customers weigh the value of your business compared to others in the decision stage. So the goal is to convince the potential customer that you are the best choice.

Sweeten The Pot

Sometimes the easiest way to get the business is to be the best deal in town. This can be accomplished through a “deals page” on your website where you offer seasonal or year-round discounts for certain groups of people.

Along with discounts, it’s not uncommon to offer bundles or packages. For example, an RV resort that rents golf carts may attract more customers than the RV park down the street when they offer a 30% discount on golf cart rentals for summer stays of four or more nights.

Advertise Your Deals

If you’ve got a good deal for your customers, make sure you post on your socials, add popups to your website, and include those deals in your monthly newsletters. As mentioned in previous articles, it’s also a good idea to ensure your staff is up to date on all current specials so they can educate your potential customers about them.

Need Ideas

Big Rig has been in the business quite a while, and many of our clients own RV parks. We’ve seen just about every deal, bundle, and holiday special you can imagine. If you’re looking for ways to sweeten the pot that won’t break the bank, give us a call, and we can help you develop some options and marketing strategies.

Ensure Your Employees Practice Good Customers Service

Discounts aren’t the only thing that causes customers to choose you. Many purchase decisions throughout history have been made through an excellent customer service experience. There is no secret magic to good customer service. Companies find ways to build long lists of seven, ten, or 42.5 pillars of customer service. That’s well and good, but when it comes to customer interaction, it boils down to about four basic things.

• Listen and understand what your customers needs.
• Know your product well enough to make intelligent suggestions.
• Personalize the customer’s experience based on your gathered information and the products or services that best fit their needs.
• Stay engaged. Continuing to engage with a customer, listening, and making adjustments based on feedback all show the customer that you genuinely care about their experience with your business.

Stay Up With Monitoring And Responding To Reviews

Many customers want to know what others thought of their experience. Reviews and comments are left on business profiles like Google My Business and social sites like Facebook. While you can’t control what people put online, you can control how your business responds.

Sometimes softening a bad review is as simple as reaching out to the customer on the review platform and acknowledging their frustration or asking them to contact you via email to see how you might serve them better in the future. If a customer has a legitimate complaint, owning up to a mistake and thanking them for their input may show potential customers reading that review later that you care.

Of course, it’s not all bad reviews. Responding to excellent reviews with a thank you shows customers looking at your reviews page that you are actively engaged and care about your customer’s opinions.

We Can Help

From claiming your online business profiles to helping you with ways to engage with your customer reviews on social media, Big Rig isn’t just here to build websites. Get in touch, and we can consult with you on the best ways to engage with your customers in your industry.

Utilize Your Email Lists To Stay Engaged

You have probably heard the phrase; The squeaky wheel gets the oil. The same holds for newsletters. During the interest phase of the sales funnel, many potential customers and current customers sign up for newsletters to start gathering intel on a product or service.

You can use newsletters to market your latest deals and tell potential and current customers about upcoming events and other products or services you offer. This helps in the decision part of the funnel in two ways.

1. It keeps your business on people’s minds when they regularly see you in their inbox.
2. A good quality newsletter will give them relevant information that provides value. The more useful and valuable your newsletters are, the more they will perceive the value attached to your company.

Moving Down The Sales Funnel To Action

Getting your customers through the decision part of the sales funnel boils down to hitting the following marks:

• Are you the best value? (Sweeten the Pot)
• Do you project that you care about your customer’s needs? (Customer Service, Review, and Social Media Engagement)
• Do you stay on their minds? (Newsletters)

Need to talk to a marketing team with over 20 years of experience in digital marketing, web design, and sales? Big Rig Media is just a phone call away, and when you choose Big Rig, we become YOUR marketing team.

Get Started

Or call Big Rig Media today! (866) 524-4744