Sales is a result of communication, meanwhile, every communication has its consumer, which is the target audience, and there are three types of target audiences:

• Cold Audience: An audience that is cold to us, is not familiar with us and that’s why there is no trust shaped towards us and no perception of positioning or interest towards us. That is to say; it has not entered into any kind of interaction with us.

• Warm Audience: An audience that has initially been cold, but we had some successful communication with the members of this audience. Wholly or partially, we have gained brand awareness; therefore a warm audience has formed a certain trust and perception of our position. The warm audience also has a specific interest toward us, and as a result of the above-mentioned factors, it has already entered into some interaction with us.

• Hot Audience: An audience that has initially been cold and has gone through all the stages of warm audience and only after that has discovered and discussed our product in detail and made a purchase.

Now to get a better idea, let's look at everything from the starting point, when we are working with a completely new audience, that is, the cold audience. The process from the beginning of a cold audience, from brand awareness to acquiring a new customer, and maintaining and returning the latter, we call MARKETING & SALES funnel, which consists of consecutive logical stages through which the participants of the target audience go. At each stage, for one reason or another, their number is significantly reduced.

At each of these stages, you should act:

• based on initial and/or dynamic data
• exclusively within the logic of the given stage
• by having outcome measurement metrics
• by striving to have the least possible loss of audience in case of transition from stage to stage
• Apply appropriate tools

Now, let's understand what are the stages of Marketing and Sales funnel:

The word funnel is not just part of a successful metaphor because if you graphically depict this phenomenon, it resembles a funnel or an inverted pyramid.

It describes the journey that potential customers go through on the path to purchase, in other words it is the potential customer's path (stages) to purchase and further repeat purchases. Here, the entire user journey is represented, from the first contact with your company (ad, internet search, etc.) to the purchase (and further purchases). In this context, it is considered a strategic tool.

It is also important to note that this path includes all the paths the user can go through, for example, advertising on social networks, landing pages, mail, operator call, repeat purchase, etc., and allows us to measure and understand the effectiveness of each stage (obtain data), in this context, it is considered a research and analysis tool that shows what marketing and sales tools should apply to the purchase at every stage of the journey.

As it becomes clear from the above, the marketing and sales funnel is a strategic-analytical tool that allows you to define and use the customer path and understand how your potential customer makes a decision to buy your products or services, what motivations guide him when making this purchase, which sales and marketing tools are effective, based on which you get the opportunity to increase the probability of possible conversion - the effectiveness of marketing and sales.

It is important to understand that the implementation of the marketing and sales funnel is a purely scientific approach based on experience, in the next steps, when we talk in more detail about the stages of the marketing and sales funnel, we will also understand that each stage of it is quite logical.

First, let's get acquainted with its main five steps and structure with the visual version below and discuss each stage and further steps in detail.

1. Awareness, ensuring/increasing/maintaining visibility, as well as

• To create sufficient awareness of your company and the product you offer
• To develop the sufficient trust of your company and the product you offer
• To provide and make available both the company's and the product's positioning
• To ensure sufficient interest in at least the proposed product
• To gain sufficient reputation in the result of complex actions

Note that the success of these processes depends on the quality of the target audience and competitor research, the selection of the target audience, product-market relevance, and the use of effective content and triggers.

Note that it's important to establish success metrics in advance and to take measurements during key processes. Make changes based on these metrics as needed.

Keep this in mind, and let's go ahead.

2. Based on the above-mentioned, one needs to provide interaction. Interaction must be targeted, and being targeted depends on the work done at the first stage. This is a very important stage, as in the first stage you communicate with the client, a monologue takes place, and if you are able to record success in the first stage, it turns into a dialogue, which implies an engagement. It will be impossible to sell without a dialogue, which is why this stage is so important. Interaction can be:

• The lead
• The comment
• Received email
• Received call
• Visits etc

It is important to understand that at this stage we must have strategic, technical, and logical possibilities to initiate a dialogue as effectively as possible and to have as much influence on the other side as possible during the dialogue.

It is also important to understand that the types of engagement differ in their qualitative characteristics for sales. Quality features are defined by their ability to sell in the short, medium, and long term. Qualitative features are defined in a pattern based on international experience.

Let's understand the types of engagement according to qualitative groups:

High-quality group

• Traffic generation to the platform that has an opportunity for lead generation or commerce
• Leads that are generated via landing pages
• Calls
• Visits to the physical store

Middle-quality group

• Messages in social networks
• Email sent to our email address or any other communication channel
• Lead generation through lead forms suggested by social networks

Low-quality group

• Comment
• Discussion in community forums
• Video views
• Getting reactions on social networks
• Achieving numbers of “Save”s in social networks

Considering the above and your goals, you should make the appropriate choice of its technical capabilities of engagement.

What can we assume from the above-mentioned?

In order to optimize sales, one must increase effective brand awareness by directing the audience to a dialogue which is the interaction. Here we need to select a high-quality group of interaction choices from a sales perspective and provide the appropriate technical and content solutions for the selected groups.

At the same time, taking into consideration the international experience we can state that the first two points of the first group-traffic generation to the landing page, where the lead generation will take place is the best solution for sales optimization.

Traffic generation to the landing page and leads generation through landing pages working together to optimize sales are considered the most effective interaction group.

Note that it’s important to establish success metrics in advance and to take measurements during key processes. Make changes based on these metrics as needed.

Now let’s keep all this in mind and move on to the third stage of MARKETING & SALES funnel.

3. Discovery and discussion, a stage that we can consider the most critical because it is at this stage that the potential client makes a decision, which means that the content for disclosure should:

• be as simple and understandable as possible, without excesses
• have a logical description: Title, description, which will carry corresponding Triggers and Actions
• visualize all possible and necessary components
• have performance measurement metrics

Meanwhile, keep in mind how you have an impact on the discussion, for example:

• Through Live chat, Call order, Hotline
• Through FAQs, reviews, or other components that can really be highly effective

Please note that impact on discussion should also have metrics to measure effectiveness.

Please note that the main goal of the first two stages is to get the audience to this sector, and here depending on your content, its structure, logic, and technical capabilities, you should get the opportunity to ensure the highest level of the audience's desire to buy.

Also, Note that it is important to establish success metrics in advance and to measure key processes, and make changes based on them as needed.

Let's keep this in mind as well and move on.

4. At point 4, the MARKETING side of the funnel ends and the SALE phase begins, here the customer is at the highest level of desire to buy, if you use the right techniques and processes, sales success will be guaranteed. Here`

• First of all, you need to ensure that you have simple and effortless processes for purchasing the product, receiving the money, and delivering the product, the customer generally does not like complications.
• You must be sure that you have a complete grasp of the product and present it in all its aspects, emphasizing competitive advantages
• You should be sure to have opt-out processes in place
• You should be sure that you will have ready-made actions for rejections
• Pay attention to Cross-sell, Upsell, and Down-sell strategies
• Be sure that your content is able to provide exposure and maintain a high level of desire to buy

Note that it is important to establish success metrics in advance and to measure key processes and make changes based on them as needed.

Let's keep this in mind as well and move on.

5. Customer retention and customer return, this stage is the most important stage, because it is not so important how many people entered this funnel, but more important how many people make purchases and repeat purchases, because almost always acquiring a new customer is more time-consuming and more expensive than maintaining existing ones, both marketing and sales processes are launched at this stage.

• Note that it’s important to establish success metrics in advance and to take measurements during key processes. Make changes based on these metrics as needed.

1. Every sale is the result of some kind of communication.

2. Every communication is aimed at one or some of 3 types of audience

3. Communication and sales processes with any kind of audience are conducted according to the logic of the sales and marketing funnel. In case of breaking this logic your results will drop significantly, and implementing the logic will definitely lead to growth. This fact is both scientifically and logically proven.

4. The sales and marketing funnel consists of 5 main stages, each of which has its important components that we need to consider.

5. First of all you need to ensure sufficient brand awareness, which should be aimed at creating an appropriate interaction. Creating brand awareness can be considered the most important stage before the stage of discovery and discussion because it is in this stage that communication turns from monologue to dialogue, without which we cannot do anything.

6. For us, the desired qualitative interaction should be to generate targeted traffic to the LANDING PAGE as a result of increasing brand awareness and visibility, where we will generate LEAD with the appropriate structure, content, and technical means, will impact on exposure and discussion due to the content on the LANDING PAGE and other functional solutions. We will be able to continue to communicate with the generated lead, influencing its discovery and discussion, using retargeting and communication automation tools, for example, Email Marketing, Messenger Marketing, SMS Marketing, etc. The functionality of LANDING PAGES also provides large opportunities for automation of further communication.

7. At the sales stage you should be well prepared both in terms of informational and anti-rejection and sales strategies.

8. At each stage, it’s very important to establish success metrics in advance and to take measurements during key processes, and make changes based on these metrics as needed. LANDING PAGE analytics tools can provide you with as many metrics as possible.

9. It is very important to optimize and automate the implementation of the above actions as much as possible, for which the LANDING PAGE is again an excellent tool.

10. It is mandatory to combine this scientific/logical part with experience.

Now let’s talk about the experience/experimental section.