Quick Navigation:
- What are Interactive Sales Funnels?
- The Best Interactive Sales Funnels
- Interative Sales Funnels by type
- How to Build an Interactive Sales Funnel
- Pushing people down your Interactive Sales Funnel
- The power of Video Marketing in Sales Funnel Development
- How Interactive Sales Funnels can Improve Your Conversions
- Conclusion: The Main Benefits of Interactive Marketing
In marketing, there is no such thing as a one-way conversation. In recent years, we have made a switch from traditional to interactive sales funnels to improve clients’ return on investment and customer experience at the same time. While there are different types of funnels you can implement, it is not always straightforward where to start. We got together with the team to bring you everything you need to know in one post. Educating clients about digital marketing is what we do here, at LMNts Marketing.
What Are Interactive Sales Funnels
Simply put, these are funnels designed for maximum engagement and interaction. With interactive sales funnels, you are actively encouraging your website visitors to become a co-creator of their experience and let you know how you can best serve them. Many companies can benefit from implementing this digital marketing method, such as accountants, coaches, consultants, software developers, and those offering custom solutions. Interactive marketing can supercharge your lead generation.
Sales funnels that take into consideration customers’ preferences and priorities will deliver higher return on investment for businesses. If you can determine what the next logical step is for your prospect based on their answers and interaction, you have a much better chance to get them to become customers than trying to send them an offer that might not even be relevant.
The Best Interactive Sales Funnel Templates
In our experience, the best templates for building a funnel that includes customer interaction use artificial intelligence, quizzes, surveys, and video content. They also draw on the extensive knowledge of the prospect, based on market research and behaviour analysis.
You can also use these types of funnels to improve your eCommerce conversions. If you ask the right questions, and offer an incentive, you can gain new customers with a high lifetime value.
The more information you can collect from customers before they make a buying decision the better you can tailor your offer to their needs. Let’s see a simple example of an interactive sales funnel on the right.
Interactive Sales Funnels By Type
Depending on your audience and your industry, you can choose one or more interactive funnel to get to know your customers and their needs. Here are a couple of types we love using here, at LMNts
Quiz Funnels
One of our favourite ways to create engagement and improve conversion rates is by implementing quiz funnels. With this method, we are asking potential customers directly what they want and what their goals are. This way, the client can provide them with tailor made solutions.
For example, someone is undecided whether they should get one product or another. With a quiz funnel that uses conditional logic (a bit of programming and coding is required), we can point them in the right direction based on their answers. Find out more about quiz funnels in this blog post.
Social Media Funnels
Of course, you can also create a social media funnel based on people’s interaction with your brand. Those who contact you through Instagram or Facebook can be put on an auto follow up sequence. You can now automate your Instagram messaging, too, using Manychat’s new feature. If you have a great offer that is too good to pass, and want people to take action, it’s a great solution.
This method is fantastic if you are doing Facebook challenges or want to get people to be notified of your seminars, free events, and paid webinars.
However, it also works on brands and awareness. Here’s a brilliant example of a social media funnel post (beginning of the funnel) for a well-known healthy food company.
Multi-step Funnels
Multi-step funnels are great if you would like to take people from one level of engagement to the next. Let’s say that you have a questionnaire, and you point your visitors to the direction of a free download on your site. They will be receiving a number of emails, but what happens after?
You will need to give them a nudge to take action. However, as they haven’t interacted with you for a while, you don’t really know where they are in their buyers’ journey. The good news is that you can check in with them and get them to reply some more questions. This will further qualify them and help you understand their needs. Most of the autoresponders today allow list segmentation and tagging, and they will work with your survey software to help you create different buckets for your audience.
Email Marketing Funnels
Email marketing funnels are pretty much the “daddy” of funnels. They are simple to implement, and they aim for relationship building and conversions. The good news is that now you can make your email marketing interactive, so you can get instant insight into your market’s behaviour.
From countdowns to quizzes, there are many options you can implement in your interactive funnels using email only. We recently switched a couple of our clients to Klaviyo from other autoresponders, as it actually measures engagement and helps you segment your list based on the level of interest they showed in your content. However, it is recommended that you add videos and interactive content to really make it fun for your audience to send you feedback and let you know about what they think.
Qualifying Funnels
Sometimes you just want to work smarter instead of harder. This means focusing on people who are the most likely to buy from you and have strong intentions to do so. This, in fact, is the difference between the shotgun and the rifle method of marketing. An interactive funnel will help you qualify your leads and pre-close them, so you don’t have to pay for a huge sales team to follow up just to get to feel the intention of the prospects.
How To Build an Interactive Funnel
Before you start building a funnel, you need to make sure which part of it you would like to focus on. The four main stages of client engagement and interaction are:
- Awareness
- Interest (Also called Consideration)
- Demand (sometimes also called Decision)
- Action (closing the sale)
Quizzes are great to use at the interest and awareness stages, and when you want to work on closing more sales, you will need to actively ask for the sale instead of just talking about yourself.
The difference between closing a sale using traditional and interactive sales funnel is that in the latter the prospect will qualify themselves and almost sell to themselves.
Here are the simple steps to building type of funnel:
Research topics your audience talks about
To create engagement, it is important that you talk about things that your audience considers as one of their main priorities. If you don’t know what they value and what their motivations are yet, you can download our ideal client sheet to get to work!
Find the right platforms
It is also crucial that you know where your target audience hangs out. Is it Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook? Do they interact through Zoom, Google Meet, WhatsApp, or Messenger? What is their main platform they call “home”?
Build the technology
Once you know the questions and the platform, it’s time to find the right software to automate the conversations. You can use DFY software, such as messaging apps, or ClickFunnels. There are, however, some great new software you might want to check out, such as Typeform, SurveySparrow, Interactr, and VideoSuite.
Test and tweak
Your first ideas are not likely to be your best ideas. Therefore, it is crucial that you spend some time on
Measure engagement levels
It is important that you measure interaction and draw conclusions. If you don’t know what your audience is interested in, you will never be able to make continuous improvements for your digital marketing campaigns. Tracking visitor behaviour and getting heat maps created will give you a good indication of where people are interacting with your site.
Ask for feedback
If you are unsure what needs changing and don’t have enough data for measuring interaction, you might select a pool of past or present customers, friends, or business partners to give you feedback on the interactive features of your sales funnel and lead generation pages.
Roll out and scale
Once you have enough data on what’s working, you can start allocating a larger budget to the campaign. If you know that you have a positive return on investment (meaning you get more back than what you spend on acquiring new customers), you can really start growing your business.
Pushing People Down Your Interactive Sales Funnel
There are a couple of digital marketing methods advanced professionals use to improve their conversion rates. Here are a couple of them to implement in your marketing funnel.
- One time offers and discounts
- Personalised recommendations
- Live chat options
- Retargeting ads
- Onboarding surveys
- Case study presentations
Sometimes you feel like you are really good at generating leads and adding them to your pipeline, but you have no idea how to turn them into customers. That’s when you have to focus your efforts on the bottom of the funnel: closing the deal and enrolling the client. If you cannot do this, chances are that the bottom of your sales funnel is blocked.
Here are a couple of tips to help you overcome the “blocked sales funnel” syndrome.
- Make your offer irresistible but believable
- Create a sense of urgency
- Provide leads with case studies and social proof
- Offer guarantees to reduce the risk of buying
- Follow up with people dropping out of your funnel, ask them for feedback, so you can make adjustments
The Power of Video Marketing In Sales Funnel Development
It is proven that video content can significantly increase your conversion rates. If you are not currently using video, you should start right now. Depending on the type of your business and the audience you are targeting, you can place videos to the beginning, the middle, or the bottom of your funnel. Here are a couple of examples.
- Explainer videos for software companies (beginning or mid-funnel)
- Customer testimonials and case studies (end of the funnel)
- Personalised videos (beginning of the funnel)
- Branding (about) videos (beginning of the funnel)
- Personalised invitation videos (mid-funnel)
- FAQ videos (end of the funnel)
When it comes to video marketing, many businesses use interactive content on their social media funnels. Whether you are looking to engage with your audience, get your message across clearer, or grab people’s attention, you will not be disappointed by the conversion rates.
To build a marketing funnel entirely on video content, you might want to check out VideoAsk, which is an interactive funnel builder that allows you to quiz your audience, qualify them, and convert them into leads, customers, and raving fans.
How Interactive Sales Funnels Can Improve Your Conversions
In 2021 and beyond, people don’t want to be sold. As the old saying goes: people hate being sold, but they love buying. This means that they love creating their own buying experiences. They want to be a co-creator of their product or service.
If you show your website visitors how your product or service is relevant to their needs, you will have a better chance of getting a conversion. Asking questions and tailoring the buyer’s journey to individual needs is the main benefit of using quiz funnels and interactive lead generation tools.
The main purpose of interactive content is to help people choose the most suitable solution and improve the conversion rates. At the bottom of the funnel, it should also provide great customer experience, increase retention, and customer value.
Once you have interactive features implemented in your marketing funnel, you will see the cost of acquiring a new client drop significantly. Offering a product or service that is the “perfect fit” for clients’ needs will always result in higher conversion rates.
Conclusion: The Main Benefits of Interactive Marketing
We have almost exhausted the benefits of interactive sales funnels for businesses. However, it also provides several advantages for buyers, too.
Customers love being listened to. If you ask questions, you are establishing a two-way conversation and treating them as individuals, even if the process is automated.
Customers don’t like repeating themselves and filling out multiple forms. Using an interactive funnel software, such as TypeForm or VideoAsk, you will make it fun to interact with your brand and make it appear friendlier.
Once you have asked the right questions, you can segment your leads into “buckets”, and make your communication relevant to their needs.
Have you ever thought about implementing an interactive marketing funnel? Why not have a chat with one of our strategists to explore opportunities for improving your return on marketing investment? Book your free 15-minute consultation below.
0 Comments