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In this post, we’re going to look at how we can leverage the Sumo tools in our digital sales funnel so we can achieve business growth and drive sales!

I discuss the digital sales funnel at length in my book, Getting Digital Marketing Right.  The book ranked at #1 Best Seller in Marketing & Sales on Amazon, so I’m excited to share this framework with you!  Others have found it very helpful in understanding digital marketing.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s see what a digital sales funnel looks like!

The Digital Sales Funnel’s Six Stages

  1. Generate Demand (Attract Traffic)
  2. Capture Quality Leads
  3. Nurture Leads
  4. Convert Leads into Customers
  5. Close, Deliver, & Satisfy
  6. Referrals and Follow Up

Now let’s see what tools Sumo (formerly SumoMe) offers that fits into this online sales funnel.

Highlighter, Image Sharer, and Share to Generate Demand

Wouldn’t it be nice to just automate all of our marketing?  That’s the digital marketer’s dream, isn’t it?

With tools like marketing automation and autoresponders and the dozens of social media tools out there, it seems like we’re making progress.  But no matter what, it seems human intervention is always needed.

Ahh, technology, you tease!

But don’t worry, we can automate human intervention as well!

Introducing, HighlighterImage Sharer, and Share.

What does this really do for us?  Well, it’s all a way to have your visitors do the work for you, and love doing it!

Assuming you develop great content, people will want to share it with their network.  Some people share amazing content to help others.  Some use it to show how they study from the best.  Some curate it to establish their own authority.  And some, thankfully, share it to support the creators.

The reason for them sharing it isn’t as important as the fact that they are sharing it!

We won’t get into “virality”, but the formula to spread your content throughout the internet is a simple one:

(Excellent Content + Relevant Readers) x Ease of Sharing = HUGE EXPOSURE

It’s your job to develop excellent content and have a handful of relevant readers (also known as Ideal Customers).  What Sumo does is fill in that last, exponential element: Ease of Sharing.

And the beauty of it all?  When you start with your network of relevant readers and they begin sharing it with their network, a good portion of their network will be, you guessed it, relevant readers!

Now that you have this flood of visitors from your huge exposure, you can capture these quality leads.  And that brings us to our next set of tools!

Scroll Box and Smart Bar to Capture Quality Leads

Now that we are generating demand, how can we capture this opportunity?

Ahh, that’s an easy one to answer.  How about the Scroll Box and Smart Bar tools?

Let’s focus first on the Scroll Box.

There’s a good chance you’ve seen a tool like this on other sites, especially in the SaaS field.

You start going down the page and all of a sudden from the corner of your screen, BOOM!

A small box slides in, grabs your attention instantly, and compels you to give up your email address!

Well, that’s the short of it.

Let’s talk about how to make the Scroll Box grab attention and be compelling.

Design is a scary thing for non-designers.  Fortunately, our friends at Sumo kept it simple for those of us who fear creating CSS style sheets!  They have options across all their tools to easily customize the look and feel of their offerings.

But the look and feel is just the start.  What are you going to say?

In my book, Getting Digital Marketing Right, I explain how to develop a strong headline and give 57 headline formulas!

It’s something that hugely cuts down the process of creating amazing headlines for myself, so it’s part of the book as a bonus.

Make sure your headline grabs attention and speaks to a benefit the reader would love to have.  (This is why you need to know your Ideal Customer, something else I majorly focus on in my book.)

And in the main copy/text, offer something of value.  If you mentioned the benefit in the headline, flesh it out here!  Keep it concise, but make sure it’s clear why someone would give up precious access to their inbox!

Next, link Scroll Box to a custom landing/Thank-You page for those who enter their email.

Here’s an example of the one we had used at Primal Digital Marketing:

Now you have:

  1. A quality lead in your system
  2. A happy, potential customer who received your bonus offer
  3. A chance to turn traffic into revenue!

This is what we call opportunity my friend!  Now we need to make sure these leads eventually become customers.  It probably won’t happen over night though, so that’s why we enter the nurture stage!

But wait, what about the Smart Bar?

The Smart Bar is what I call old faithful.  Always there when you need her, but happy to wait her turn.  She’s perfect.

Seriously, the Smart Bar is this cool little tool that sits at the top of your page.  You can make it look amazing and read great to you visitors.  And you can set it all up in less than 10 minutes! (Probably 5!)

The quick, easy setup is one of my favorite aspects of Sumo‘s tools, and a large part of why I support them so much.

So how exactly does this fit into the digital sales funnel?

Well, we have an opportunity to grab the attention of someone with Scroll Box.  Alas, timing isn’t always on our side.  The visitor may just need more time to trust us.

Now, the Scroll Box is of course triggered after scrolling a certain amount, but it may not reappear for a while based on what settings you use.

The Smart Bar is always there though.  That’s why we call her old faithful.  Never lets you down, always easily visible yet not bothersome to your visitors.

Install the Scroll Box and Smart Bar today and start capturing leads.

And now, lead nurturing!

Content Analytics and List Builder to Nurture Leads

Time to talk content.  Seems like it’s always part of the conversation these days when talking digital marketing, huh?

Well, for good reason.  “Content is King” is mostly just a cutesy saying, but there’s truth to it as well.

The question is, do people actually love your content?  Do they at least like it?

The Content Analytics tool will help us figure that out.

How could it benefit you to know that 80% of your readers make it 30% through your post, then 60% make it 50% through, and only 20% make it 80% through?  Doesn’t that signal something?

It means there’s room to improve your content, yet you never would have known without Content Analytics telling you about it!

What did Content Analytics tell me about my homepage?

  1. 48% Stopped after reading my main offerings
  2. 35-42% Stopped at the end of my testimonials
  3. 31% Stopped at my Map section
  4. 27% Stopped at my contact form
  5. 25% Stopped at listing my recent blog posts
  6. 22% Stopped at my confidential consultation offer
  7. 18% Stopped before the footer
  8. 15% Read the entire page, footer included

Now I can see the bottleneck areas and address them to keep people on my page longer.

The same is possible for where Content Analytics really shines: blog posts.

See where readers stop reading your blog post and you’ll see what spots are boring your visitors, and you don’t want that!  Can’t nurture them if they don’t read what you offer!

Isn’t List Builder for Capturing Leads?

Of course!  I mean, it’s right in the name of the tool.

But that’s something so simple, it isn’t worth talking about.  I already discussed capturing leads with Scroll Box and Smart Bar.  Let’s get more creative with using these tools now!

List Builder will pop-up on the screen, potentially just before your visitor decides to click the “x” and move on to their next task (I.e., Facebook News Feed).

Now, I know pop-up is a dirty word in digital marketing these days.  But I assure you, this stuff works!  And, people aren’t upset by it.  The pop-up is in the same window, so it isn’t quite “invasive”.

Getting to how we use it to nurture leads…

The purpose of this box is to capture contact information and deliver high quality, educational content to our new leads.  Whether you have a visitor in your system already or not, when you can offer bonus content that they want and need, you’re onto something!

And when you use the pop-up to show the amazing benefits you offer in exchange for a simple email address, you can compel your visitor into filling out that form for the bonuses you offer.

That’s why you want to set up the List Builder with a custom “Thank You” page!

What’s the deal with this “thank you” page?

It’s more than a thank you page; it’s a portal.  It’s home to all the resources that your ideal customers want and need in their buying process.  It’s educational, engaging, and maybe even entertainment.

I discuss writing with “the Three E’s” in mind in my book.  It’s a simple, effective way at ensuring your content has a chanceof being read.

The nurture stage is about helping your leads along in their buying process.  Whatever they need to know, tell them.  Teach them.  Make it easy for them to buy.  That’s what the world’s top salesmen do, so you need to do the same, but digitally.

Now that we are nurturing leads, we have to make “the ask”.  This is a critical moment, so let’s see what tools Sumo has to help us out.

List Builder and Contact Form to Convert Leads into Customers

Remember we said we were going to start getting a little more creative and a little less straight-forward?  We’re going to continue that trend in talking about using List Builder to convert our leads.

Getting Creative with List Builder

List Builder lets you set “Rules” so the form appears, or doesn’t appear, on certain pages.  We’re going to use that to our advantage!

Set the “Rules” so the List Builder only appears on product pages and other relevant points where your lead may just need a slight “nudge” into becoming a customer.

Now how do we give that nudge?

How about offering anyone who completes the form a free consultation with one of your specialists to help answer any questions they have and make sure the product fits their needs?

Sounds helpful, doesn’t it?  And with List Builder, you’ll target anyone who was on the fence and maybe even about to “x-out” your page.  A last-ditch effort that can go a long way!

This is just one example.  You can try other ideas as well, like giving case studies for those purchases that require a little extra thought.

And you said something about a Contact Form?

Ahh, yes!  The Contact Form!  This isn’t anything new to you, but let’s talk about two reasons I love Sumo’s Contact Form tool.

1) It’s so easy to set up!

Again, this is a huge selling point with me for these apps.  You don’t need any coding or technical expertise to get these things set up, looking great, and performing well.  Just a (very) few minutes of your time and you’re all set.

2) It’s the Old Faithful that People Will Look For!

Like I said, everyone pretty much knows about contact forms.  Whether your target is a 20-something millennial or a senior executive/citizen, the contact form works!

I keep the “Contact Us” button hidden on the right side of my website so it’s easy to find, yes subtle to avoid distraction.

This helps in the Conversion stage because your best buyers will probably be the ones with objections and questions.  They’re the ones that want your reassurance in one or two areas before taking the plunge.

So make sure you’re available to them.

And on that note, I want to add one more thing for the Contact Form tool.

Make sure you link the Contact Form to a highly frequently checked email address!

There’s no sense in letting an email sit in your inbox while the lead cools off.  They can easily go from a hot prospect to a disinterested visitor, or worse, a customer to a competitor.

Set it up so someone on your team will notice any time someone reaches out to you.  Make the incoming messages flagged as important.  Do whatever you have to do to make sure these prospects are helped immediately!

Got that?  Good!  Now we can close it out after working through our digital sales funnel and almost reaching the end: Close, Deliver, & Satisfy.

Heat Maps to Close, Deliver, & Satisfy

Heatmapping is a technique that the internet marketing world fell in love with in the past few years.  Sumo capitalized on that by developing a great tool very simply named Heat Maps.

To quickly describe heat maps, they allow you to see what your visitors do on your website.  Google Analytics is helpful, of course, but this let’s you see what visitors do.
How awesome is that?

And it looks awesome, too.  The brighter the spot, the more clicks are happening there.  Here’s an example on my site, where people clearly love checking on my blog the most, but also like seeing what’s next on the homepage slider!

So what does that say about navigating the site how I want visitors to navigate it?

Apparently, our blog and select service pages are doing a great job of gaining attention, and in turn, establishing authority. I wouldn’t have this reassurance without Heat Maps.

What else does this tell me when paired with another Sumo tool?  Well when I scroll down and see few clicks elsewhere, it explains why my Content Analytics show most of my visitors leaving at the Above-the-Fold area!  They know what they want next as soon as they get to my homepage!

And what if you’re selling a product online?

How wonderful would this be on your checkout page?  Knowing exactly what did, and did not, get clicked?

The most important part of the digital sales funnel may be this stage.  It’s where you finally generate revenue, after all.

So, it makes sense that you would want to optimize it to ensure it functions as well as possible for your business, and your prospects.

That’s what using Heat Maps to Close, Deliver, & Satisfy is all about.

You need to make everything as clear as possible to your potential new customers!

Make it easy to buy.

In my book, I discuss making decisions “high value and low friction”.  That’s a recurring theme throughout the digital sales funnel.

This is where it matters more than ever!  And what the Heat Maps tool allows you to do is to see where friction exists and remove it from the equation.

How about another equation to finish things off on a high note:

High Value + Low Friction = New Customers

I like to keep things simple.  My favorite quote is by Leonardo da Vinci:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Remember that in all you do and you’ll find success.

In Conclusion

I share Sumo with you because it’s incredibly useful, and free.  The team there has put together amazing tools to help businesses grow, and you can see amazing results without even having to upgrade to the paid versions.

And when talking about the Digital Sales Funnel, sometimes we can end up looking at it as just another concept we’ll read about but never think about applying.

It was a big part of my book to change that, and the same goes with this post.  I want you to see how there are tools out there that fit into the sales funnel.

Used randomly, these tools may end up being near useless.  But when you incorporate them into a sales funnel, you’ll see that they can generate revenue and the ROI of setting them up will be exponential.

Have you used Sumo tools for your business?  What have you found the most helpful?  Let me know in the comments below!