Some of you might have heard about the concept of a “Sales Funnel” before. Perhaps this is completely new information. In any case, I want to introduce you to a very powerful Digital Marketing tool. An extremely beneficial instrument that you can add to your sales arsenal today!
Concepts like “digital marketing tools” or “sales funnels” might sound intimidating. Don’t be scared! They are actually very “straightforward” and “user friendly” (as you will learn in this article). The reason you should learn about Sales Funnels is simple. Sales Funnels can help you get more leads and materialize more sales! I know that as entrepreneurs, we are ALL trying to accomplish that goal.
A Sales Funnel is a simple website that helps you turn prospects into customers. In other words, think of Sales Funnels as a “conversion optimization tool.” They achieve this by taking your leads in an optimized “sales journey.”
A Sales Funnel has “strategic focus.”
They are “pre-engineered” to achieve a couple of specific tasks. Mainly lead generation and selling a product or two. Funnels consist of a series of simple web pages. Each page has a specific purpose and consequently achieves a clearly defined goal.
You, as the Funnel “engineer”, will define what is the most adequate purpose for each page. Thus, you gain complete control over your customer’s journey. Similarly, to “chaperoning” or “escorting” a customer inside a big department store. You can hold the customer’s hand and take them directly to the aisle that has the products you are aiming to sell!
These Funnels give you the capability of designing your customers’ experience. Enabling you to guide them each step of the way. You can navigate their journey with simple actionable commands. Essentially, “holding their hand” until you make the sale. Finally, Funnels gives you the capability of not only getting more sales but also bigger sales.
A Sales Funnel is generally used to achieve three goals:
- Obtaining a lead’s contact information. Expanding your email contact list.
- Selling a low-ticket product.
- Selling a high-ticket product.
Creating a Sales Funnel is very easy. Simply us a leading Sales Funnel Builder.
Sales Funnel Builders are software platforms that provide you with a template for each page of the funnel! This means you never really have to create a Sales Funnel from scratch.
The leading Funnel building platforms are Buiderall and ClickFunnels. At the end of this article, I will give you more information about both of them. You can easily use either of them to create Funnels for your products or services. This means you don’t have to be a coder or a website builder to create or use a Funnel. You don’t need any tech background whatsoever! These funnel builders are extremely user friendly. You simply “copy & paste” the specific info about your products into their templates.
Let’s analyze the typical Sales Funnel structure and general objective of each page:
1.) Opt-In or “Squeeze” Page – Entice & Capture email information:
Think of this page as the “cover” of your funnel. This page has 2 main goals. Entice the viewer to continue to the next step of the funnel, and capture their email address before going to the next step. You shouldn’t try to sell anything on this page.
For example, let’s say you are a Gym Supplement company and want to create a Sales Funnel to sell fat burning pills. Therefore, you need to pitch your product as a solution. The problem your potential customer has is losing fat. The solution to that problem is your fat burning supplement.
Therefore, this page should say something like “FREE video of new revolutionary pill that destroys fat.” Simply enter your email address to watch it!
Pages that achieve these goals are typically called an “Opt-In” or “Landing Page.” I suggest trying to get the prospective buyer’s email as quickly as you can on the Sales Funnel. That way you can re-target that audience later down the line with an email campaign. Capturing their email provides you “another chance” of making a sale (in case the viewer goes through the funnel without executing a purchase).
2.) Sales Page – Sell the 1st Product or Service:
The main goal of this page is to educate the lead and convert them into a customer. In other words, executing the sale. This page is designed to “warm-up” the lead, and get them ready to buy at the end of this particular page. This page should have accurate and convincing information about the product you’re trying to sell.
That product should be branded as the solution to the problem your customer currently has (and entered the funnel trying to solve). This information is pitched in the “FREE Video” you promised them on the funnel’s cover page. By keeping your promise, and showing an educational “Free Video”, you’re effectively increasing the customer’s trust.
On this page, the lead watches the video and learns the specifics about the particular Fat Burning Supplement you’re selling. For example, the great ingredients the product has. How those ingredients will help people LIKE THEM burn fat. Therefore, the lead gains awareness of the product, and how/why it will solve their problem.
On this page, you could also provide testimonials of happy customers that have used your product. For example, you can show “John Doe’s” testimonial stating he lost 8 pounds of fat in just 3 months! And how he tried other pills that gave him subpar results.
After this information is presented and digested, the customer is warm, and their intent to buy should be considerably higher!
You have also established a higher degree of trust. You have provided the audience with TRUTHFUL information on how the product you’re selling solves the problem they currently have. The information you provided on this page has added value to them.
To entice your customers even more, you could also give them an additional incentive like a “limited time offer”. For example, buy the product NOW and get 25% percent off!
At the bottom of the page, you can have a big “Call-To-Action” button that says “BUY NOW.” This is perhaps the most important page of the entire Sales Funnel because it is where you start monetizing the traffic that is going through it.
3.) Order Form Page – Capture Payment Information:
This page is extremely important for two reasons. Number one, you need to obtain the payment for the first product you’re selling. In our example, the fat burning supplement. The second reason is that it will make purchasing other products in the next page of the Sales Funnel much easier. They won’t have to enter their credit card information again. The customer will simply have to click a button.
4.) Thank You Page / Up-Sell Page – Sell a 2nd Product or service that is more expensive than the first:
The Upsell page is designed to take maximum advantage of a customer that is already warm. This customer currently “has its wallet out”, and is in purchasing mode. This is the best type of customer a company could have. The main concept of this page is to thank the customer for their first purchase, and “upsell” by providing the customer with a clear opportunity of purchasing a “complementary” product.
That second product should be related to the first product they just purchased! The main difference here is that this is a higher-ticket item (more expensive). Here is where you want to push products that have high margins. You need to take advantage of the fact that the buyer is committed, and has materialized his intent of purchasing your products.
For example, you could sell an Online Training Course related to Fat Burning. You could offer them the possibility of “increasing” or “accelerating” their fat burning by purchasing your course.
On this page, you pitch the benefits and advantages of the second product designed to burn fat. For example, you could state the course contains 12 videos with the best “Online Workout Routines – For Burning Fat at Home or the Gym”.
You could also provide them with an additional incentive to purchase this second product.
You could say that since the customer already purchased the fat burning pills, they will get 30% off on the Online Course as a “bundle deal”. But they have to buy TODAY (again use a strategic call-to-action)!
If you offered the high-ticket item first, it is very likely the customer would’ve not purchased it. But, the Sales Funnel has helped you generate a “buildup.”The funnel started small and finished big. It took the customer from a free educational video. Continued with an inexpensive product (let’s say the fat burning supplement costs $20). And finished with a more lucrative proposition! Let’s say the Online Fat Burning Workout videos cost $100.
Conclusion for Sales Funnels
Sales Funnels are strategic digital marketing tools that will help you get more leads and sales. They will capture your leads and take them in a “pre-engineered” sales journey. Funnels are generally composed of four efficient pages, designed to help you “warm up” your leads and convert them into paying customers.
If you want to read more about them, check out this article where I compare and contrasts Sales Funnels vs Websites vs Landing pages.
My actionable Tips for Sales Funnels
I strongly encourage you incorporating a Sales Funnel into your business. Whether your business is big or small, if you have a product or service to sell, a Sales Funnel will certainly help you.
There are dozens of different Funnel Building programs available, but not all of them are created equal. Some of them are much harder to use than others. If you want a powerful mechanism to quickly generate more leads and optimize your sales, I suggest you take a look at the following two leading Sales Funnel builders.
The two of them have a FREE trial, so in theory, you could try both, and decide which one resonates with you more. My advice is for you to take action and begin your free trial with either today. Get your hands dirty and experiment with the power of Sales Funnels. Once you start using them, you will see they are very easy!
Buiderall
Builderall is one of my favorite Sales Funnel building platforms because it is an extremely powerful “bundle.” Builderall actually offers a wide range of tools and features aside from the capability of creating your Sales Funnels. The extra bonus perks you get with this Funnel Building platform are massive (so this is worth considering in your decision).
Essentially, Builderall is a “one-stop-shop” that has everything you could possibly need for your online business. The company provides you with 30+ tools including:
- Sales Funnel Building platform.
- The capability to create mobile applications for both Android and iOS.
- Blog, Website, and e-commerce platforms.
- Webinar hosting platform.
- Facebook Chatbot.
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
- email marketing platform.
- Search Engine Optimization tools.
Builderall has a FREE 14-day trial and is the cheapest priced alternative on the market! But, I believe the learning curve is a little steeper than with Clickfunnels. Meaning you might need to practice a little more with their Funnel Builder Platform before you develop your finished product.
That being said, their funnel builder is very user friendly and they even have pre-built templates that you can use! This means they have already generated and tested these Funnel templates for you, so you don’t have to do it yourself. In other words, you don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” in order to create a powerful funnel. You can simply use a pre-built funnel template that is already proven to work and “plug & chug” or “drag & drop”.
Click HERE to visit Builderall and take advantage of their FREE trial!
ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is another one of my favorite Sales Funnel builders because it is extremely user-friendly. I consider this funnel building platform the easiest to use in the entire industry. Like Builderall, ClickFunnels also offers a wide selection of pre-built Sales Funnels templates that you can use. ClickFunnels calls these easy-to-use templates “Share Funnels.” They even have a video of Grant Cardone (a CEO with NO technical background) creating a ClickFunnel to sell his latest book in under 2 hours.
Additionally, ClickFunnels has a lot of useful experimentation capabilities. You can easily test, get sales data, and adjust your funnel according to what is giving you the best results. These features allow you to tweak the funnel to optimize your sales conversion.
Russell Brunson is ClickFunnels founder, he is world-renowned digital marketing authority. He has written several books which complement the ClickFunnels software extremely well.
You can get the books for FREE here:
If you’re an entrepreneur I highly suggest you get these FREE books. Even if you don’t end up building a Sales Funnel in your life! These books add tremendous value from a marketing perspective to any type of business owner.
Additionally, Russell Brunson has created several Challenges/Summits/Training boot-camps to teach you how to use ClickFunnels effectively:
If you sign up to Builderall or get any of the Russell Brunson/ClickFunnels products using my links, feel free to contact me if you have any questions! I will happily help you use Sales Funnels to grow your business!