Introduction
“Content is King but engagement is Queen, and the lady rules the house!” – Mari Smith
Marketing is the process of getting potential clients or customers to buy a product/service. We are surrounded by marketing everywhere.
We see them on billboards, on our TVs, radio, social media everywhere. So as marketers or brands, we must often ask ourselves this – How do I get more engagement on my brand? how to best increase my sales through advertising?
We are here to help you in this area. In this article, we’ll be talking about a popular marketing strategy which is funnel hacking.
What is a Sales Funnel?
In 1898, E.St. Elmo Lewis developed a marketing model that spoke about the 4 stages consumers go through to finally buy a product.
Awareness – The customer becomes aware of a product/service. There are many ways to create awareness in the minds of your consumers. One easy way is by starting a blog for your business, For guidance check this complete guide on surejob.in.
Interest – The customer expresses interest in the purchase of your product/service. Interested customers will look into product details, do some research and decide if they want to buy your product.
Desire – The customer aspires to buy a product/ service from a brand. The customer here will actively express interest in buying your products/services.
Action – This is the final step a customer takes which is to buy that said product/service.
This funnel holds even for today’s marketers though a few processes may have been added along the way. But the basic idea remains the same which is to get a customer to buy our product/service.
Marketing is an ever-evolving process and marketers are looking for new ways to advertise their products to increase sales.
Why are sales funnels required?
- Funnels generate more qualified leads.
- Funnels help grow your business faster.
- Sales funnels can convert visiting customers into actual customers.
- Funnels get more customers to repurchase your product/service
- Sales funnels get your customers to take a specified action i.e – to buy the product/service.
- Funnels have proven to increase your sales and your average order value per sale.
There are various types of funnels and marketing strategies that are used while marketing a product/service. In this article, we are going to be exploring some of these marketing strategies.
What is Funnel Hacking?
Funnel hacking is the process in which a company digs into its competitors’ marketing funnels. It uses various versions of these funnels to build, optimize, test, and ultimately sell its products and services.
Marketers undertake many strategies and come up with different and new effective methods of marketing their products with the ultimate goal of increasing sales. We already know what a sales funnel is, but why it is important, and what makes funnel hacking different from the rest?
Types of Marketing Funnel Hacking
We have identified these 2 types of marketing funnel hacking, they are
Funnel Hacking for E-commerce
We can use a 2-step order form of funnel hacking for the e-commerce industry. In the first step, the customer is introduced to the products/services to encourage him to make the purchase. Even if the customer fails to make a final purchase you now have your customer’s contact information. This way you can send your customers push notifications about visiting your product/service. The 2nd part of this system is just before your customer reaches their check-out cart, they are introduced to a one-time offer or a limited offer period. This encourages users and gives them the final push they need to buy your product.
Funnel Hacking for Business To Business
In this marketing strategy, a visitor puts in a quote by putting in their requirements. They also provide you with a little bit of information about themselves such as who they are and what they do. For example, on websites, you can see a pop-up box next with a contact form. It asks customers to fill in their email address, their name, and any comments if any. Then on the next page is a thank you page with a physical link to the product store.
Why Should You Use Funnel Hacking?
According to us, these are 3 main advantages to funnel hacking, they are –
- It gives you an insight into the various sales strategies that other successful businesses are using online.
- It shortens up your sales funnel development time at least 10 times.
- It’ll save you some valuable time, money, and energy investing in a strategy that may or may not work.
One of the main advantages of funnel hacking is that it can be used by any industry. Whatever product/service you may want to sell, there will be other businesses in that field that are successful. So learning their marketing strategy could help boost your sale.
What are the Various Stages To Funnel Hacking?
Listed below are the steps one must undertake to funnel hack your competitor’s
Research
No matter what you do, do not skip this step and jump straight to building a funnel that you think may work. Even though it may be a successful business in your field, their ultimate goals could be different. Proper research will give you the clarity to make the right decisions so that you can best move your business forward. Some of the research steps you can take to help reach your decision are –
- Getting to know your target audience – You may have probably heard of this a million times but the more you know your target audience, the more you connect with them. It increases the chances of getting repeat customers and thus helps you generate more revenue. Ask yourself questions like – Is my primary target audience men or women? Age group, geographical location, socio-economic status, the kind of money they make, etc. Once these basic questions are answered then move onto their interests in social media platforms, the kind of books they read, the people they follow, the Facebook groups they’re most likely interested in, etc.
- Challenges faced by your customers – What is the biggest problem that your customer is facing when it comes to your business industry and how best can you solve them.
- Gain clarity on the why‘s – Your aim should be getting to know the why and how best to solve that problem. If you want one customer to leave the use of their existing product and move onto yours, then give them a reason as to why you are better than your competitors and these are the problems which you are solving.
Learn From Your Competitors
Who are the biggest players in your industry? What are the strategies they have implemented that have boosted their online presence and sales? We want to study which products/services are selling heavily online. In this situation, you come across two types of competitors –
- Direct competitors – Direct competition is between two companies who are selling similar products. These are the businesses that are targeting the same audience or potential customers that you are. An example of this would be One Plus and Apple.
- Indirect competitors – The companies whose products or services are not the same but could appeal to the same target group. These competitors are a little hard to identify. An example of this would be Subway and McDonalds.
Become Your Competitor Customer
This may sound a little bit out of the box but the next step would be to buy your competitor’s product and opt-in for their lead magnets. Targeting competitors who have a strong online presence and marketing strategy is beneficial. It’s usually safe to assume that if someone is spending sufficient time or money on a marketing channel that it’s proving to be beneficial for their business and in turn could be profitable to you. Think of this as an investment for your business. Study their product, their advantages, and disadvantages, and advertising strategies. Because what’s working for them is probably going to work with you too.
Join your competitor’s email listings. A lot of the selling also happens through promotional emails. So set up a separate email account to sign up for your competitors and know their promotions.
Hacking Ads & Traffic
Now that you’re looking into your competitors’ funnels you’ll even want to break into their ads, the keywords they use, their website referrers to give you a digital insight into how well they’re doing. The things to keep a lookout for are
- Keep an eye out on their traffic
- Keep an eye on their advertising.
Ad Library provides advertising transparency as it offers you a searchable, comprehensive collection of ads that are currently running across Facebook products. Here anyone can explore their library, with or without having a Facebook account.
Compiling Keywords
Keywords are crucial when it comes to creating a search campaign. Build a content strategy around the keywords used by your competitor’s rankings and this will place you right there with them, bidding for the same customers. Create a document and list out all the potential high-ranking keywords which you’ll use to help drive traffic to your promotions. Use a comprehensive keyword domain and research analytics too. Use them for desktop/mobile search breakdowns, proactive SEO recommendations, backlink tracking, etc.
Find Out What Makes Their Funnel Convert & Effective
In every marketing funnel, there are many moving parts and variables. As a funnel hacker, it’s your job to figure out how everything works together to create the desired result. For example- some funnels may have landing pages that are short, crisp, and to the point while there may be some pages that have a lot of information that’s crammed up together before they ask for a sale. The same method can be applied to ads on Facebook and Instagram. Pay close attention to any patterns that you may see along the way. Maybe there’s a particular layout that’s being followed or they’re using a similar message strategy and once you have a good idea for what you need to do the next step is building your funnel!
Building Your Funnel
If you’ve followed the plan which is given above, you should ideally be able to put together the pieces and would be ready to use whatever you’ve learned about your competitors and can build your funnel. Build your funnel by following these 5 super simple steps –
- Start by crafting your pages and use the guide of your competitors’ funnel builder. Make your crafting page similar to your competitors in concept but different from your competitors. Use different graphics, and verbiage and don’t forget to add your little twist.
- To help save time, use an automated response for your emails.
- Try nailing the sequencing and refined them as possible for your incoming traffic.
- Make ads and put them up on your social media handles you’ve found to be the most effective when targeting your niche audience.
- Create a buzz and launch your funnel.
All of this is just an oversimplification for the kind of work that you’ll be required to put in to make it work. What’s important to remember is that just because you’ve managed to hack into someone’s funnel doesn’t automatically necessarily mean that you have a functioning business. Owning and running your own business is much more important than that.
Why Ignoring Funnel Hacking Costs You Time & Money
When building your business and trying to sell your products or services, you should always study what your competition is doing. Being able to study your competitors’ marketing and sales strategy can give you valuable information about company insights and implementation of some of those strategies can help boost your business.
Conclusion
Testing what your competitors are doing and how they’re successful can help you find new strategies and innovative ways of growing your own business or learning how to market a product/service. It’s often believed by most that funnel hacking is extremely important for the effective growth of your business.
Use the resources, processes, and tools that we’ve provided in the article and use them to hack into your competitor’s funnels.
