Chelsi Nakano
March 02, 2017
If you’re in sales or marketing, then you’re intimately familiar with the sales funnel. It’s the set of guardrails designed to help you guide prospects into becoming buyers with highly organized content and strategies. Unfortunately, funnels don’t always lead to the amount of success desired, leaving marketers scratching their heads in bewilderment (or shaking their fists at the sky).
If you can relate, trust us– you’re not alone. A leaky funnel is a common problem, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. Some popular beliefs are that holes are due to a lack of targeted content, handing off leads to sales too early, or handing off leads too late. While these might apply, our recent research with Heinz Marketing has revealed a different kind of blind spot.
But first, let’s take a look at the three major sections in every company funnel:
Awareness
Everyone knows how to handle the top of the funnel. This is where you attract prospects by sharing content on various channels. Which is wise, because as it turns out, B2B researchers do an average of 12 searches before ending up on a brand’s specific site. Here are some average click-through rates for reference. Of course every industry is different, but this gives you a decent baseline to work with and adjust accordingly:
- Social has a 2.32% CTR
- Google has a 34.36% CTR (provided you’re the top search result)
- Banner Ads have a .17% CTR
Interest
Let’s say we started with 10,000 prospects in the awareness stage. With those average click through percentages, that pool of 10,000 has been knocked down to 3,436 people who are interested in your product or service at best. At this stage of the funnel, it’s appropriate to reach out via email, or direct prospects to additional information on a blog or website. Here’s how those channels average:
- Websites have a 5.31% conversion rate
- Blogs have a 20% CTR
- Email has a 6% click rate
Evaluation
When it gets down to the evaluation stage, there are about 687 people left from that original 10k who are ready for a sales pitch. These people are the cream of the crop; the most interested; the ones who want to be sold to. And yet it’s at this most promising moment when companies are dropping the ball. In our recent survey with Heinz Marketing, it was revealed that 66.7% of management attributed missed goals to poor presentations.
Prezi = Answers
Losing opportunities because of a poor presentation can be easily avoided. For starters, we don’t recommend walking into the room with slides. While you can certainly deliver information in this traditional format, people in the workplace have gotten so accustomed to it that they almost immediately zone out. In other words, slide fatigue is real. Our survey with Heinz Marketing showed that simply using Prezi over PowerPoint led to 35% more engagement.
Second, we suggest presenting conversationally. This method allows you to interact with your audience throughout the presentation, rather than save the Q&A for the end. Our 2016 State of Presentations report shows that this method allows you to be more engaging, more memorable and more persuasive.
If you’re going to invest the time, energy and resources into creating the content it takes to attract prospects to that moment you can pitch them, you should be just as focused on the moment itself. If you’re interested in learning more about how to improve your presentations, check out our webinar with Heinz Marketing below.
