Paid advertising is an investment in the growth of your business. It can help you drive more awareness for your brand, generate more leads, and increase revenue. Whether you’re on the fence or eager to invest in paid ads, it’s crucial to establish your advertising infrastructure before diving in.

One of the first steps in establishing an advertising infrastructure is to develop a sales funnel. Your brand is more likely to make sales under the following conditions:

• the contact has interacted with your business
• the contact has become familiar with your brand
• the contact decides that they like and trust the brand enough to make a purchase.

This process referred to as the “Know, Like and Trust” factor in marketing and advertising. It means that blasting an offer out into the universe won’t translate into more sales. Instead, your contacts must have a series of interactions with your brand that help them know, like, and trust your company before they make a purchase or become a client.

These interactions are all part of the sales funnel, the blueprint plan for how you will acquire leads and funnel them down, converting them into revenue-generating customers.

The funnel consists of three sections. Marketing and advertising efforts cover the top levels of the funnel, awareness, and interest. Sales efforts generally include evaluation and purchase at the bottom. Marketing and sales tend to converge in the mid-level of the funnel to cover prospects in the consideration and intent phase.

With a well-planned sales funnel in place, paid ads can help generate traffic and promote awareness while you focus on closing the deal.

Many small businesses and solopreneurs are missing revenue opportunities because they lack a tactical sales funnel. There is so much information available about this concept, but it can be difficult to digest if you’re just getting started. This article gives a simplified, high-level introduction to the sales funnel concept.

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