The first step in the sales journey is attracting visitors. No matter how effective your conversion process is, if you aren’t consistently feeding new strangers into your pipeline, the sales funnel will dry up. If you think of your sales funnel as a physical funnel, you’d instinctively know that in order to function correctly, it needs to be placed between the source and the container. The funnel simply will not perform as intended if there is nothing to contain the result, or if there is no source to fill it up.

So how do you effectively build the top of the sales funnel?

Filling up the funnel

Note: before we begin to focus on attracting new visitors, make sure you have a solid foundation. If you are hemorrhaging your current traffic, increasing traffic will not solve all of your problems. Almost half of website visitors to our sites in the past year have been from mobile or tablet devices, which means having a mobile-friendly website is no longer a luxury. If you’re website has this or other fundamental problems, checkout our free resource at the end of this post.

Create – Start with content

There are three elements now that will drive traffic to your site, and it all starts with content. People use the web for many reasons, and one of the most prevalent reasons is to search for information. If you provide the information they are searching for, you will earn their attention. This is why Blogging has become so important for businesses, because it provides a medium to provide content to those who are searching for it.

Blogging takes understanding your audience, your subject, and time. If you cannot commit to the time it takes, we’re still getting in the swing of things here, then find a partner who can learn your business and create the content for you.

Formulate – Search Engine Optimization

Of course if you don’t optimize your content for search terms it will take much more effort for people to find you. If you are just starting out with SEO and keywords, then remember to keep it simple. You can easily overwhelm yourself with the amount of information available out there on SEO. After all, searching on a search engine about search engine optimization is bound to get a lot of results.

Use long tail keywords – this means use a phrase instead of one or two words. You are much more likely to rank on these, and if you use it correctly, your audience will be getting exactly what they searched for.

Experiment and track  your results, you will learn quickest by doing! Here are some more SEO basics to help get you started.

Proliferate – Go viral on Social Media

Ok, so you’re going up against the 100 million view kitten post, who wants to read about the best way to obtain widgets? Social Media can be effective, but just like the earlier steps, you probably won’t get it right immediately.

You may also be wondering what exactly is Social Media? Its not just Facebook and Twitter, but it encompasses any number of sites, and maybe even your own, with the idea of social interaction. If visitors to your site can comment and discus your articles, that is a form of social media. This is the reason it is so powerful as well. People share your message, they talk about it with their friends, and they spread it to others who would never have found your site.

Make sure your content can be easily shared and discussed. Create a conversation, and the as more people get involved, it will draw in even more interest. It is much like a forest fire that grows so large it begins to create its own self-sustaining wind.

You can learn more about the specific types of social media and how to optimize for them here.

Why build the top of the sales funnel?

Unless your goal is to sell fewer widgets and to downsize your business, you need visitors to your website. I used the word “build” instead of “grow” because it really is an intentional process, which eventually will obtain an organic response. But it might not feel like it right away. So remember, “Build it and they will come.”

Image Credit: HubSpot