How to Create a Lead Generation Funnel That Actually Works

“Quality leads are the lifeblood of any business.”
– HubSpot

Find me a businessman that disagrees with this, and I’ll show you a business that’s dying.

Lead generation is the process of driving eyeballs in the form of traffic to a website page that persuades your visitor to buy or get in touch with you. If you’re selling products through an ecommerce site, you probably want them to just buy. 

But when you’re selling services, you want them to get in touch with you for a proposal or an appointment. Services are often customised and higher in monetary value, so it is not realistic for you to sell them through a simple buy button.

If you want to create a strong lead generation funnel, no matter what you’re selling, you first need to give these questions some thought:

1. What are you selling?

In order to create a lead generation funnel that actually works, you need to first make this distinction. Are you selling products or services?

2. Who are you selling it to?

The second consideration is who are you selling it to? How will your product and funnel appeal to the people you serve?

3. What is the customer journey?

What does the customer journey of your typical customer look like? How can you shape your funnel to facilitate easy progress from one step of the journey to the next?

4. What makes them buy?

What elements do I need to build into my funnel to increase the chances of closing a sale?

If you can collect thorough information when answering the questions above, you will have everything you need to build a strong funnel for any business.

Lead Generation funnels for your product or service-based business

A product funnel and a service funnel are very different in nature. Product funnels are pretty basic and often require simple visibility without too much audience segmentation. Reaching a mass audience is key for ecommerce sites to make enough sales.

This is why in this article I’m going to focus mostly on funnels for service-based businesses. They are more complex to put together and require a totally different level of ideal client knowledge.

There are mainly two funnels that can help your service-based business grow. Both are content based.

Companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month compared to those that don’t​ (DemandSage)​​ (WebFX)​.

The most effective funnel for B2B companies and service-based businesses is the blog funnel. Blogging is the undisputed winner when it comes to lead generation – even when everyone around you is saying they don’t read. 

While this may seem true on the surface, the truth is that we have culturally moved to consuming the written word in different formats other than newspapers and books – but people still read – a lot. Two of the modern, preferred ways to consume the written word are blogs and e-books. We need to keep this in mind when creating our funnels.

Which funnel generates better leads?

When creating your lead generation funnels, you need to make sure that they complement each other instead of fighting for attention – the more choices you give your visitors, the less they will click. 

Every website should have only one goal – and push towards this one goal in every single page. This is why the simplest funnels are also the best.

Blog funnels create better leads because you have the opportunity to warm them up and persuade your lead through the content they were looking for. If they are aligned with your perspective they will read till the end and a percentage (around 3%) of them will book a call with you or request a proposal.

Lead Generation funnel 1. The simple blog to call funnel

The secret of an effective blog to call funnel lies in these 3 simple steps.

1. Write content based on keywords your ideal customers are looking for.

You’re probably thinking that it’s all well and good, but it’s actually a very hard thing to do in practice – it actually isn’t. You can create content that effectively attracts your audience by:
a. surveying your audience and asking them what they were looking for and where they were shopping around before they bought your services. Armed with this information, you can do your keyword research and find good keywords with decent traffic and little competition to begin with.

2. Focus on keeping people on the page

Write copy that is easy to read and flows like a conversation. Add subtitles so that skimmers can skim your article and then decide whether to read it. Write a strong introduction that makes people curious – without curiosity, you can’t keep people interested. Use statistics, quotes and infographics to substantiate your points.

3. Write a strong call-to-action (CTA)

Write a call to action that is highly connected to the content they just read. Make sure you make it very clear why they should get in touch with you. Don’t simply say “click here to book a demo” say ”click the WhatsApp button below to speak to Ale, our CRM specialists so that you can understand whether HubSpot is a good match for your business”.

Lead Generation funnel 2. They didn’t book a call funnel

I’m going to contradict myself now. I said earlier that it’s best to only have one goal per website, and I still stick with that, but it also helps to have a plan B for those visitors who do not book. You want your second CTA to be hidden. It cannot appear alongside your first CTA, so I like to add it in as a pop-up that appears when a visitor is leaving the website.

So when someone moves their mouse to the back button to leave your site, you can have a pop-up appear that asks them if they want to join your email list. You can offer them a free download, an e-book or just a newsletter membership. Strangely enough, I’ve seen the newsletter pop-up work way better than a download before, however I always test. Try each for a month or for 90 days depending on how much traffic you have.

This allows you to create an email list of people who were not ready to buy right away (that’s most of your visitors, by the way). You can then warm them up by sending more content and inviting them to book a call or enquire about an offer at a later date.

Want to build a lead generation funnel that grows your business?

At 9H, we help clients create funnels that convert and run SEO and PPC campaigns to drive the right people to your site. Want to understand how we can help your business grow? Drop your request here and let’s talk!