If you’re doing online business for quite a while, I’m pretty sure that you’ve encountered the word “sales funnel” at least once.

What an earth is the sales funnel is? Why this is important to understand?

I first understand this sale funnel thing when I master how to use Facebook ads. In my opinion, if you don’t understand what does the sales funnel means, it will be harder to understand how to advertise on Facebook.

First, why it is called a “funnel’ in the first place?

As you can see in the usual sales funnel picture, the funnel itself is usually divided into different sections in varying sizes.

This is because sales funnel segments your audience/traffic into different classifications. On a high-level, I call these classifications as “cold”, “warm” and “hot”

🧊 Cold – These people don’t know you as well as your business. Think of these people, as random people passing by on a boutique in a mall/department store. These group is usually large and will require some effort from you in order for them to know you, trust you, and appreciate you and your business. That’s why they are located at the top of the sales funnel and they are tagged as “cold”.

Your job here is to catch their attention and stimulate their curiosity and emotions.

🌡️ Warm – These people came from the cold group. They are among the cold group whom you’ve managed to catch their attention. They are now curios to you and your business but not yet so into it and are not yet willing to buy. Since they are sub-group(they are fewer) of the cold group, they are located a little bit lower below the cold group in the sales funnel.

Your job is to provide value, information, relationship, and connection to these groups so that they will be more engaged and attached to you and finally, make them purchase whatever you are selling.

🔥 Hot – These people are sub-group of the warm group. These people are now your followers and buyers. They like you as well as your brands. They are located below the warm group in the sales funnel since they are sub-group of the warm group and they are fewer too.

Now, your job is to take care of them – this is where customer relations will come in. But let’s talk about it on another blog. You offer this group loyalty cards, VIP cards, and any other discounts that only loyal or repeat customers will get.

Roughly, those are the main level of the sales funnel.

Another thing worth mentioning is that in online marketing, different levels of the sales funnel is represented by your website pages.

For example, the cold group will see or will be sent to your lead pages. Lead pages are supposedly designed to catch attention and stimulate curiosity. Not so many details – yet just to trigger their curiosity.

Now once they give their e-mail and opt-in, they now belong to the warm group. You will now give valuable information to them (blogs, vlogs, and any other informative pages of your website) so that you build trust and relationship with them.

Finally, some of the people belonging in the warm group are most likely hot, so you’ll now send them to the sales pages where you’ll now sell products and services.

.. And that’s it! I hope that you’ve now a clearer idea of what is sales funnel is and why it’s essential to understand its concept to be able to be successful with your business.

P. S. The sales funnel model is also applicable to offline business too!