The sales funnel is a powerful tool that can help marketers and sales teams design conversion-conducive content experiences.
But before you can utilize it for lead generation, nurturing, and closing, it’s vital to understand the sales funnel’s different stages.
Here’s a closer look at how the sales funnel works.
What is the Sales Funnel?
The sales funnel consists of the different stages in the buyer’s journey: awareness, interest, evaluation, decision, and loyalty.
- Awareness: Leads get to know your brand for the first time.
- Interest: Leads interact with your brand by watching a webinar or subscribing to your newsletter.
- Evaluation: Leads start comparing your offerings with that of competitors.
- Decision: Leads make their purchase decision and become paying customers.
- Loyalty: They become loyal/repeat customers.
You may come across various models of the sales funnel. Some only have four stages, while others even have six or seven.
Whichever model your organization uses, the stages of the sales funnel always fall under three categories: TOFU (Top of the Funnel), MOFU (Middle of the Funnel), and BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel).
Here are 10 copywriting tips to make leads glide through these categories:
TOFU (Top of the Funnel) Copywriting
- Research your target market
Get to know your audience on a deeper level and develop customer personas to guide the rest of your content writing process.
Casting a wide net and drawing the attention of as many people as possible is beneficial for TOFU marketing. However, you need to prioritize people who will benefit from what you’re trying to sell.
Use the Make My Persona tool from HubSpot to create an audience persona by answering a handful of questions, like:
- What is their industry?
- How many employees do they have?
- What is their job title and how is their job measured?
- What are the biggest challenges between them and their goals?
- Focus on Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is any brand’s ticket to getting recurring, organic traffic from search engines.
With your customer persona in hand, you have the first clue on how to create SEO-friendly content. It should tell you about the topics you can cover, actionable tips you can include (based on their buying power), writing style they’ll understand, and so on.
Use these pieces of information to create an SEO content strategy that will help you attain high search engine rankings. Tie it all together with a link-building strategy that targets relevant, authoritative sites.
- Curate from popular creators
Pique the interest of social media users by curating and sharing content from popular creators.
In addition to providing high-quality posts, content curation also lets you leverage the influence of popular bloggers, influencers, and thought leaders to generate engagement. This builds your credibility as an information source and encourages more prospective leads to follow your brand.
MOFU (Middle of the Funnel) Copywriting
- Target commercial and transactional keywords
Use SEO platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush to find commercial and transactional keywords.
These are keywords used by searchers who are more likely to become paying customers.
Searchers use commercial keywords if they want to investigate brands and compare products. Transactional keywords, on the other hand, are used by searchers when they’re ready for a purchase.
Here are some examples:
- [Product Name] alternative (commercial)
- [Product Name] pricing (commercial)
- [Product Name] discount code (transactional)
If you plan to buy SEO articles to elevate your rankings, ensure your contractor or agency understands how to create content that matches transactional and commercial keywords.
- Use content tracking
Track the performance of your content in generating engagement to answer the questions:
- What content types and topics get the most engagement?
- Which content strategies should be dropped?
- Where can you make improvements?
The rule is simple: double down on what works, change what can be improved, and remove dead-end failures.
Implement a content tracking strategy with a traffic analytics platform like Google Analytics to start analyzing content performance. It will help you identify your top pages, site-level engagement metrics, and “exit” pages where users abandon your website.
- Connect on social media
Nurture your leads by connecting with them on social media.
Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook offer a variety of engagement tools that foster your relationship with leads. You can request their feedback using Instagram polls, grab their attention with trending TikTok quotes, keep them hooked with Facebook Live, and more.
Augment your social media efforts with third-party tools like the LinkedIn Prospect Finder to accelerate your lead nurturing efforts.
- Create lead magnets
Convert your audience into Marketing-Qualified Leads (MQLs) with lead magnets or opt-in “bribes.”
In most campaigns, this usually takes the form of a downloadable resource, like:
- Free eBook
- Industry report
- Templates
- White paper
- Checklists and cheat sheets
Offer lead magnets in exchange for your audience’s email address and work from there. Create an audience segment and design a drip marketing campaign, which promotes content and offers aligned with the resource they downloaded.
BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel) Copywriting
- Nail your email offers
Use email automation workflows to send timely content based on your prospects’ actions.
Don’t just send coupon codes, freebies, and special offers to your leads randomly. Instead, wait for clear purchase intent signals before you spring into action.
For instance, a cart abandonment email lets you recover lost sales by automating a follow-up offer for customers who leave during checkout. Welcome emails can also set new customers on the path toward brand loyalty.
- Define lookalike audiences
Improve your targeting over time by defining lookalike audiences based on your past customers.
The more sales you close, the more accurate your lookalike audience profile becomes. Work it into the customer personas you created back in the first step.
- Optimize the onboarding experience
Turn successful customers into loyal customers and brand ambassadors by creating an impactful onboarding experience.
Use customer onboarding software to implement features, like:
- Self-service help centers
- Integrated feedback system
- Custom notifications
- In-app tutorials
- Email onboarding course
Get a Head Start in Lead Generation
Lead generation is never easy, especially in an age where every brand is adopting the “user-first” approach to marketing.
The good news is, you can get a head start with sales acceleration platforms.
You can take advantage of features like an email finder, CRM, and lead discovery solutions. There are also tools like Snov.io that will give you a peek at your target prospect’s technology stack—perfect for orchestrating competitor displacement campaigns and crafting hyper-personalized marketing content.
Good luck!