The sales funnel is a strategy addressed mainly by the areas of sales and marketing, but it offers benefits to all sectors of the organization. However, this result will only be achieved if the structuring of thisfunnel is efficient and targeted to the right audience.
What you will see in today’s content
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What a sales funnel is and how it organizes the journey up to the purchase decision.
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How to use stage transition criteria to avoid outreach at the wrong time.
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The role of CRM in centralizing history, contacts, and funnel tracking.
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Data care in forms and campaigns, with transparency and clear purpose, considering the LGPD.
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How to map the audience journey using a persona or conversations with people who have already bought.
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How to define stages, create audience specific stages, and set milestones.
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How to align marketing and sales through vendarketing and plan targets and qualified lead volume.
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How to identify qualified lead characteristics and distinguish engagement from buying intent.
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How to implement lead scoring and continuously optimize the funnel.
In this post, we will explain in more detail what is the sales funnel, in addition to explaining step by step how to develop this strategy thinking about your audience and get the best results in attracting customers.
Sales funnel: how to tailor it to the right audience
A sales funnel organizes, in stages, how a person moves from initial interest to the purchase decision. It helps marketing and sales adjust messages, content, and approaches according to the lead’s moment, reducing noise and increasing consistency in the commercial process. To work well, it must be structured efficiently and targeted to the right audience, with clear criteria for moving between stages and aligned actions across teams, focusing on lead generation and qualification.
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Map the audience journey to understand interactions and motivations.
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Define stages and milestones to guide movement between lead moments.
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Align marketing and sales actions through “vendarketing” to nurture and hand off opportunities.
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Implement lead scoring to score, segment, and prioritize outreach.
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Optimize the funnel continuously by analyzing stages, strategies, and audience changes.
Next, you’ll learn how a sales funnel structures the path from first touch to conversion, and how to tailor stages, qualification criteria, and team actions to your audience, with a practical focus on lead generation and lead quality.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a stage based model that organizes how people move from initial interest to a purchase decision. It helps marketing and sales align messaging, content, and outreach to the lead’s current context, reducing friction and improving process consistency.
This strategy is divided into several steps, which are known as steps of the sales funnel. Each of them requires a different approach on the part of the company, so that the user can go through all of them, and in the end, become a customer.
To make the process easier and richer in data, institutions use CRMs to monitor this strategy. Now, you might be wondering: what is CRM and what is it for?
CRM combines strategy, processes, and technology to manage relationships with customers and prospects. In practice, it centralizes interaction history and contact data so marketing, sales, and service teams share the same view, enabling segmentation and funnel tracking with more consistency.
When capturing names, emails, and phone numbers through forms and campaigns, handle that data with clear purpose and transparency, keeping only what’s necessary for the journey. Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais requires safeguards such as a valid legal basis, user notice, and secure storage, especially across lead capture and nurturing flows.
How to make a sales funnel targeted to your audience?
Now, it's time to understand what are the steps that are part of this process so that you can create an effective strategy for your audience.
- Map the audience's journey;
- Define the steps for each stage of the funnel;
- Establish the actions of the sales and marketing teams;
- Identify the main characteristics of a qualified lead;
- Implement lead scoring;
- Optimize your funnel constantly.
Continue reading to learn more about each of these steps!
Map the audience journey
The first step to creating a sales funnel is precisely to seek to understand who your audience is and how he is interacting with your company. There are two ways to do this, one aimed at existing customers and the other at organizations just starting out.
A public mapping strategy for institutions that already have clients is mainly based on the creation of a persona, which is a semi-fictional character created from information collected by the company from its current clients.
As for organizations that still do not have a significant number of customers, the main strategy is to try to talk to people who have already purchased their product or service and understand what were the motivations for them to become involved.become your customers.
It is important to keep in mind that this journey mapping may undergo changes over time, as your own product or service may change, or the interests of those you want to reach may have changed according to different factors.
Define the steps for each stage of the funnel
After you understand your audience, define funnel stages based on lead maturity, such as awareness, consideration, and decision. This reflects how people research, compare options, and choose.
Clear criteria for moving forward helps marketing and sales act at the right time and reduces mismatched outreach.
This is a very necessary moment that directs the marketing management and customer relationship.
You can start this process by defining the main steps, which are attraction, consideration, and decision. However, it is interesting that you go beyond them and also create steps that are specific to the particularities of your audience.
This is also the ideal time for you to define the milestones of these users, that is, the actions taken by them that show the achievement of a certain maturity and, thus, they can move on to the next stage of their sales funnel.
The definition of milestones will be of great help to direct the action of your team of marketing and sales (something we'll talk about in the next topic). They Will get identify the triggers that indicate the need to convince this user to move to the next step quickly and efficiently.
Establish the actions of the sales and marketing teams
Despite the sales funnel needing the collaboration of the entire institution, the sales and marketing areas are the ones that are most commonly engaged in this strategy. Therefore, it is important to define the actions of each one of them, as well as how they can help in this process.
For example: if your sales team needs to hit a target of X sales per month, you should expect the marketing team to be able to bring in as many qualified leads as possible for this target to be met.
We call this partnership of marketing and sales teams “vendarketing”. Betting on this strategy is very efficient, as it aligns the customer relationship from these two areas.
In practice, the marketing team will be able to work better with your leads to deliver to the sales team and at the same time sales professionals will be able to do their part considering the work already done by the marketing team.
Identify the key characteristics of a qualified lead
We talked a lot in the previous topic about lead, which is precisely the central point of our next step to create a sales funnel targeted to your audience: define and identify a lead as qualified.
There is no general situation that identifies when the user becomes a qualified lead, this is something that needs to be defined in a personalized way by each institution, after all, only they will know the characteristics of a person who is highly inclined to do business with them.
One way to identify the qualified lead is to assess whether it fits into certain scenarios. For example: a qualified lead has an “identification” with the product or service you offer, that is, he is aligned with your segment and has the power of decision and purchase.
It is also necessary to analyze whether the lead is showing signs that he is interested in buying. Many may be engaged on their social media, but that doesn't mean they really want to complete an order. Search for more direct actions, such as placing a product in the cart.
Read too:
- Marketing 5.0: get closer to your potential customers
- The 6 best tips on how to make a communication ruler
- What is a communication guideline and how does it work
Implement lead scoring
Have you heard of lead scoring? It’s a scoring method that evaluates leads using criteria defined by your organization, such as fit and behavior.
The score helps prioritize outreach, segment communication, and automate workflows, improving how opportunities are handed off to sales.
In this way, leads that manage to reach a certain goal of points can be classified as a qualified lead, advancing in the sales funnel or be passed on to the sales team, which may initiate an approach aimed at transforming you into a customer.
One of the main benefits of adopting lead scoring is that it allows your marketing and sales teams to work more efficiently. This happens because the analysis of these is much easier, and can even become automated
In addition, the sales team will always receive the most qualified leads, since they already have a long relationship with the brand and have shown themselves, through actions, to be more inclined to close a deal.
Constantly Optimize Your Funnel
Following all these steps, you can already create a sales funnel very efficient and directed to the particularities of its own public. However, don't think that the work is over here.
It is very important that you always analyze each of the stages of your funnel and the strategies that are being made based on it. This way, you can more easily identify problems related to them and think of ways to optimize your results.
Besides the sales funnel, it is also necessary to always keep an eye on your audience, as they may undergo changes over time and this may also require adjustments in your marketing strategy.sales funnel.
As a result, your metrics will also improve, as well as the relationship you cultivate with your future client. Your communication and adopted strategies will be more assertive, which will ensure frequent and high frequency conversions.
If it fits your team’s approach, you can end the post with a short FAQ to address common questions and increase the page’s ability to satisfy conversational queries. A Q&A section can also be eligible for structured data using FAQPage, as long as the content is visible on the page.
In short: to create a sales funnel suitable for your audience, you need to map the audience's journey, define the steps of each stage of the funnel, establish the teams' actions, identify the main characteristics of a qualified lead, implement the lead score and constantly optimize your funnel.
In this way, learning how to create a sales funnel targeted to your audience, you will achieve significant gains in lead qualification and, consequently, increase your sales.
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Frequently asked questions about sales funnels
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a model that organizes, in stages, how people move from initial interest to the purchase decision, helping adjust messages, content, and approaches according to the lead’s moment.
What are the main stages of a sales funnel?
The main stages can start with attraction, consideration, and decision, following how people research, compare, and decide, and they can be expanded with stages specific to the audience.
Why define clear criteria to move between stages?
Clear criteria make it easier for marketing and sales to act and help avoid outreach at the wrong time, bringing more consistency to the commercial process.
What are milestones in a sales funnel?
Milestones are user actions that indicate maturity and show they can move to the next stage, helping teams identify triggers for advancement.
What is CRM and what is it used for in the funnel?
CRM is the combination of strategy, processes, and technology to manage relationships with customers and potential customers, centralizing interaction history and contact data for segmentation and funnel tracking.
What data care should exist in lead capture?
Data captured in forms and campaigns should be handled with transparency and a clear purpose, keeping only what is necessary for the journey, with appropriate legal basis, notice to the data subject, and storage security.
How do you map the audience journey to create a targeted funnel?
Mapping can be done by creating a persona based on current customer information or by talking with people who have already purchased the product or service to understand their motivations.
What is vendarketing and how does it help the funnel?
Vendarketing is the partnership between marketing and sales that aligns customer relationship work, improves nurturing, and supports handing off opportunities to sales.
What characterizes a qualified lead?
A qualified lead is defined in a personalized way and may involve identification with the product or service, alignment with the segment, decision and purchasing power, and more direct signals of interest in buying.
What is lead scoring and why implement it?
Lead scoring is a scoring method that evaluates leads using criteria such as profile and behavior, helping prioritize outreach, segment communications, automate flows, and improve the handoff to sales.
Why optimize the sales funnel constantly?
The funnel should be continuously analyzed to identify issues, adjust strategies, and track audience changes, improving metrics, relationship building, and communication accuracy for frequent conversions.
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