In part one of this series on the Sales Funnel, I related my story of how a photographer needs to look at the entire sales cycle in order to give it strength and work to grow a successful company over time.

The sales funnel is a systematic marketing process where you filter your prospects into customers, then refine them into raving fans that refer you again and again. But before you can build your base of raving fans, you have to attract high quality prospects at the top  of the funnel. This is where your marketing can really shine.

See You At The Top

The top of your sales funnel is the one area that requires the most experimentation. It’s the area where you can try different things, achieve different results, tweak it, and start all over again. There are limitless possibilities when it comes to how you can attract quality prospects, limited only by your imagination and your resources.

For many photographers, they immediately start with the more traditional ways of marketing: business cards, sales brochures, postcards, phone books, magazines, newspapers, etc. You can also dip into the higher priced marketing methods, such as expos, tradeshows, displays, billboards, etc

Thanks to the Internet, you can also find many methods to market and capture leads in the online world. Many people stay with the “free” concept, which can work. Things like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter can all work well if you have the time. Yet the Internet is filled with opportunities – most of which are a lot less expensive than traditional methods. Banner ads, ezine placements, pay per click advertising, blogging, podcasting, guest posting and many other Web 2.0 tools.

The method you use to drive prospects is optional. Yet your ultimate goal is to attract and qualify people that may at some point purchase from you further down the road – down your sales funnel. At this stage, you goal is to drop as many people as you can into the funnel, then use other mechanisms to qualify them and continue them down the path. [Read more…]