Customers go through a buying journey before making a purchase. They make a purchase decision based on many factors. How advertising increase sales can be well understood when we discuss the customer’s buying journey and a company’s sales journey.
How advertising increase sales?
Advertising increase sales by creating awareness in prospective buyers about a product or service. When people are well aware of a product and interested in it, they tend to buy the product, hence increasing sales. This conversion from awareness to loyal customers happens through the sales funnel.
The purpose of advertising is to grab the buyer’s attention towards a specific product so that they buy it. In this article, we will discuss how advertising leads to an increase in sales, the sales funnel, and how prospective buyers convert into loyal customers.
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Explanation of how advertising increase sales
Let’s dissect how advertising plays a role in increasing sales, but first, repeat the words.
Advertising increases sales by creating prospective buyers’ awareness of a product or service. When people are well aware of a product and interested in it, they tend to buy the product. Hence increasing sales. This conversion from awareness to loyal customers happens through the sales funnel.
Let’s break that down:
We can see that advertising increase sale by:
- Creating awareness in prospective buyers
- Converting prospective buyers into loyal customers
- Use the process of the Sales funnel
In the following section, we will illustrate each phrase in more detail.
Creating awareness in prospective buyers
A prospective buyer is a person who has landed in your shop or on your website. Any person that you can convert into a buyer is called a prospect. Therefore, a prospect can physically visit your store or scroll through your website. But the question is how the prospect will know about your brand to reach your store.
When you launch a new product, you have to tell people about your product. That is mostly done by adverting. A simple and well-informed advertisement goes a long way. If you don’t inform people about your product, it will be difficult for you to make sales.
Here comes the role of advertising. Advertising mainly informs people about new or existing products, services, brands, or places. It creates awareness about your product. It also tells people how your product can be useful in their life and can help solve certain issues. Once people know the product and its benefit, they want to see it.
People develop an interest in your product or service for its benefits. These prospective buyers who are now aware of the product are looking at your product. They are now interested in it and have more queries. So, advertising has played a part in enticing their interest in the product.
Your advertising will create awareness in your target market and spread the information among the masses. Once the word is spread about the product, now is the time for the next step; converting prospects into buyers.
Converting prospective buyers into loyal customers
Once people are aware of your product, now you need to persuade them to make a purchase. Advertising again plays an important role in influencing prospects to buy. To beat your competitor, you must convey a competitive edge to consumers. Tell the world that your product is better than the others and everyone should buy this.
Advertising adopts different approaches for that. Some advertisements focus on quality, price, features, and environmental safety to make their product stand out. Others use consumers’ emotions and make them realize that this product is the savior. Hence, they need the product to solve their problem.
For example, a detergent advertisement uses the emotions of young mothers. The children play in the playground, and their clothes have harsh stains, which are difficult to remove. Marketers say that our product will make your life easy. Don’t stop children from playing; instead, buy a detergent that can solve the problem of harsh stains. This kind of advertising will not make low prices their unique selling proposition but people’s emotions.
Advertising has a great influence on people. After watching an ad, they will think about buying the product. Once they make a purchase, now these people are called buyers.
Turning these buyers into loyal consumers and retaining them is another debate. We can discuss that in the sales funnel.
Sales funnel
The sales funnel is sometimes also called the purchase funnel or marketing funnel. It is a process that explains all the stages a customer goes through in the course of making a purchase. There are typically four stages in every sales funnel.
- Awareness
- Interest
- Decision
- Action
The sales funnel describes the mindset of the prospect. Keeping in view this mindset, marketers make strategies that help them push the consumer to make a purchase. At the right time, marketers should send the right message so the prospect moves on to the next stage. The right kind of message conveying is important.
For example, a waiter does not ask for a dessert before the appetizer. That would be a turn-off in a dine-out experience. Same as, marketers also go step by step. So they prepare the mind of the prospect towards the sale.
Awareness
Awareness is the first step in any buying or selling process. Audiences have a problem, but they do not know the solution. They have no idea what or which product can solve their problem. The target market needs to know about the product or service that can solve their issue. Companies create awareness about the product that can help the audiences.
How do marketers achieve that goal of awareness? The answer is pretty simple. As we discussed earlier, advertising plays a huge role in spreading awareness. It can be an Instagram reel, tweet, Facebook post, or TV commercial.
Interest
At this stage, people have developed an interest in your product. They want to know more about it. Prospective buyers will search for competitors’ similar products and enquire about prices, safety hazards, waste materials, etc.
Buyers want answers to their questions. Prospects check if this product meets their needs. It is the right time to push as much beneficial information as possible. Useful information can persuade them to make a purchase. But don’t push sales too much you might scare them off. Try to be as helpful as you can. Help the prospective buyers make an informed decision.
As you go down the funnel, the number of prospects decreases. The first stage has the most amount of prospects. In the second stage, the number decreases as not all people who are aware are interested in your product. Now prospects are converted to leads.
Decision
The decision stage is very critical, as it involves high stakes. The lead customer shows interest in your product. It is time to make a decision. The lead customer may or may not buy the product. The marketer can only try their best to sell the item.
Marketers should give an irresistible offer that lead cannot refuse and buys the product. Propose something that your competitors are not. It could be free shipping, a coupon, buy one get one free, voucher, etc. Push yourself to convert this lead into a buyer.
Advertising is also helpful in the decision stage. Frequently, adverts show very lucrative offers like discounts or season-end sales, which make the lead decide to buy the product.
If the prospect decides not to buy a product, make sure your product stays at the top of their mind. Whenever people need to buy again, they have your product in mind.
Action
The final and essential step of the sales funnel is action. Your prospect has decided to buy the product and has become your client. They are now a part of your ecosystem. Reaching the bottom of the funnel doesn’t mean the end of a task.
Action means work for both marketers and consumers. Consumer acts by making a purchase, and marketer acts by retaining the customer. You don’t want to make one sale only. Your goal should be to increase sales from 1 to 10 to 100 and many more.
Take action to retain the client. Thank him for the purchase, ask for feedback if he had any difficulties with the shopping experience, be courteous, and reach out if he has some problems. It is not only the product that retains the customer. The whole experience, ease, and support turn prospects into loyal clientele.
Role of advertising in sales
After knowing the sales funnel, you have realized that advertising is of paramount value in increasing sales. But you cannot say that advertising is the only factor that increases sales. There is no hard and fast formula bout increasing sales; otherwise, every other business would be like Apple.
A sales funnel describes that one sale occurs after a lengthy process. The buyers go through many things in their minds, and the marketers do many things to make the sale happen. He uses different techniques and tools. One of these techniques is advertising.
So yes, it is evident that advertising plays an important role in increasing sales. Yet it is not the only tool that increases sales. You have to optimize your sales funnel and repair the holes in the funnel so that all prospects are converted into loyal buyers.
Conclusion
Every business wants to increase its sales. One of the finest approaches is to advertise the product effectively. Advertising can prove to be fruitful in increasing sales for any company.
Advertising increase sales by creating awareness in prospective buyers about a product or service. When people are well aware of a product and interested in it, they tend to buy the product. Hence increasing sales. This conversion from awareness to loyal customers happens through the sales funnel.
The buyer goes through 4 stages before making a purchase. Awareness, interest, decision, and then action. Advertising plays a major role in creating awareness and interest in the target audience. Hence they make a purchase.
After taking action to buy a product, the prospect is converted into a buyer. But the task doesn’t end here. Marketers should put their maximum effort into retaining clients, so they come back again and again for purchase. You can translate a prospect into a repeating consumer with effective advertising.
Want to learn more about advertising? Read the article Where to Advertise a Product.
