An essential step in building a product is designing an effective Buyer Centric Funnel. In the world of
sales and marketing, the funnel is simply a step or the process walked by the customers from being
normal visitors to becoming loyal customers. An effective Buyer Centric Funnel addresses all the
concerns and questions of the potential customer discovering our product, hence converting the lead to a
loyal customer.
How to build an Effective Buyer Centric Funnel?
The first step is to map the buyer’s journey from awareness to consideration and to purchase. We
need to observe what the buyer goes through while attempting to buy our product or service. Then
identify the funnel blockage points and optimize the process. As we aim to persuade our customers to do
something which they are not motivated to do, we need to inlay various trigger points. It is these triggers
that make the customer buy our product. Many times organizations treat their customers as though they
were in the purchasing phase. Organizations must identify the phase their leads are in and provide
incentives to move further in the funnel. Our aim must be to reduce the friction or eliminate funnel
blockage points to increase our conversion rate.
Awareness
During this phase product owners focus on creating awareness of the problem the product is going to
address. The benefits of its consumer are the primary topic of discussion. Besides, we need to find
loopholes in the current solution and present it before them. The most important of all is, the product is
never mentioned and never attempted to be sold in this phase.
Consideration
In this phase, we provide detailed information about our product to the customer. According to
forentrepreneurs, providing free trials, demos or free basic services help build trust and provide a first-
hand impression on the customers. Try and understand the personae of our customers. Is the problem a
high priority for them? What are the key features that benefit the users the most? It is necessary to
understand their areas of interest, their concerns, and the parameters which influence their decisions. We
may also need to propose schemes and special offers to attract customers in buying our product.
Purchasing
This is the final step in the process and we need to ensure that there is no difficulty for our customers
while purchasing the product. We also need to make sure that they are fully satisfied and become our
fervent customers. This could be done by promptly replying to their emails, providing loyalty bonuses,
setting up an immediate response team, and continuously taking feedback from them.
Now let’s study a use case.
A lot of website owners struggle to bring traffic to their websites. There is a tool called SEO Analyzer,
which provides a score for your website which tells how well it performs on search. Then it states various
ways in which the ranking and the score can be improved. Then in the end it proposes their service of
helping website owners in increasing the SEO. What we can see here is that they provided a free tool to
grade our website, provide an honest score, and mention steps to help improve them. Once we have built
our trust in them, they go ahead and tell us about their services and pricing.
The theory of Flip The Funnel
Referrals bring you business. This is one of the key mantras of businesses. Yet many firms fail to identify
their main source of gaining referrals. An organization must invest in retaining customers rather than
always looking to get new ones. After-sales services are as important as running campaigns to acquire
new ones. One needs to run through various metrics like the cost of acquiring new ones vs. the cost of
retaining. Companies should adopt various policies to keep the existing customers satisfied. It can be
done by providing rewards to outstanding customers or when they bring in referrals. In a study it was
found, around 92% of respondents trusted referrals of a product. The organization must analyze acquired
data and modify its business model to suit the needs of its loyal customers. I would like to conclude by
saying that, building the right funnel requires market study and an aim to provide the best service to the
customer.