What is a funnel and how can it actually help your salon? No, it’s not funnel cake, and yes, funnel cake would help at least emotionally.
What is a Funnel?
It is an automated sales process designed to boost conversions and ultimately sales. It can help grow your business fast, as the funnel basically serves as a path that directs potential clients and customers to your business.
Here’s How the Process Looks Like
The process is just a collection or a sequence of digital steps that end in conversions or making an appointment. Visualise it like this, at the very top of the funnel is your website, and at the very bottom is the actual visit to your salon. The further down the funnel the customer gets the closer they are to becoming your client. Sort of like following the yellow brick road.
- Land on the Website
- When your customer has reached your website, use a pop-up tool like DRIFT to give them a complimentary voucher or ask a question.
- Capture Email Address
- Using the same tool, ask for their email address or activate a chat bot.
What is the Goal?
You want the content you feature on the website influential and captivating enough so that the customer follows this path down the funnel, and potentially enter your salon one day. Every step of the way has to be some sort of value or incentive, that will get them to the bottom of the funnel. The number of steps is of course determined by you and remember, this is all automated. A set and forget kind of a process, no manual labour once it’s all set up.
The ultimate goal here is to lead your potential customers to the salon and convert them into clients by using the power of persuasion. Think of how you can persuade your website visitors to make that appointment.
Let’s illustrate this with a simple and short example, just so you have a better understanding of how it actually works:
- You launch a Facebook Ad that leads your followers to your landing page or website. At this stage, these are your prospects and this is where the funnel is the widest.
- While they are on the website, you ask for them to sign up for the newsletter. If they type in their email, then they are no longer a prospect, now they are a lead. The sales funnel just got a little bit more narrow.
- The next couple of weeks you send out valuable, educational newsletters that talk more about your service, offers tips and trends. Then, in one of those emails you offer them a code or voucher for 10 or 20 per cent off their next colour or cut. Boom, they click and redeem it. Now they are a customer. But wait, it doesn’t end there. Remember with each action the funnel gets more narrow.
- Now, you make a completely new list of subscribers including the emails of the people who took advantage of the offer. But now, you just show different content, offer more. Get them to come back. This is how we reach the bottom of the sales funnel.