A sales funnel (sometimes referred to as a marketing funnel) is a series of prompts that encourage individuals to take action towards a final buying decision.
My earlier posts focused on starting email marketing & then creating a lead magnet in order to grow your contact list. These steps are all part of the sales funnel process, a strategy used to turn prospects into eventual loyal paying customers.
Here are 10 steps to build a simple sales funnel using a lead magnet:
1. Identify your ideal client’s problem or pain point
2. Produce an easy to digest lead magnet that provides an immediate solution or a quick win
3. The content needs to be relevant for your services/products & appropriate for your audience
4. Promote your freebie far & wide, wherever your potential clients hang out, providing a link to a sign-up page or opt-in form
5. Visitors then follow the link & provide their email address on the form in exchange for the download
6. Your contact list, your audience then grows as a result
7. You keep in-touch with these contacts, initially with an automated welcome sequence of messages
8. Then by sending regular emails packed with pertinent content & an occasional offer
9. This begins to create a good relationship with your audience & helps them to ‘know, like & trust’ you
10. Sales should then result, perhaps low value first, with a higher value upsell later.
When planning the build of your sales funnel, follow the well-known AIDA model: Awareness, Interest, Desire & Action:
AWARENESS – of you, your brand, product & services etc, or Attraction to these
INTEREST – in you & your brand etc & an opportunity to increase engagement
DESIRE – generated from a deeper interest in your services/products & the solution/s they provide
ACTION – the decision to purchase, or not, so reinforcement of your offer may be required.
A few further steps could be added – here are the 4 Rs:
RETENTION – keeping a audience interested & committed to you
REPETITION – with consistent action, new customers will progress through the funnel
RETURN – loyal clients will return to purchase again
REFERRAL – satisfied customers will also recommend your products/services & refer others.
The best customers are repeat customers so expand your sales funnel strategy to take advantage of these warm leads.
Think about what higher value products or services you can offer customers as they move through your funnel. For example:
Bring prospects into your sales funnel with a lead magnet, a useful freebie (ebook, report or guide)
Communicate with your audience so they begin to know, like & trust you (via consistent email marketing)
Sell a low price service/product to your contact list (power hour, short course or book)
Keep in touch with these customers by continuing to provide good content to demonstrate your expertise (via email marketing, links to blogs or videos)
Upsell a higher cost product or service to these leads (group coaching, signature course or membership group)
Continue to share valuable content with these special customers (by use of your email marketing application to tag, segment or group the contacts)
Promote your premium ticket item to this smaller group of committed fans (121 coaching, retreat or mastermind)
Remember to keep in constant contact with your wider audience to keep moving more people all the way through your sales funnel.
What applications do you need to build a sales funnel which begins with a free lead magnet?
This actually depends upon what you already have in place & how they (can) integrate – website, email marketing platform, landing pages, online storage, CRM etc.
Basically, you need:
- a place for people to enter their contact details (name & email address)
- somewhere to keep this information in compliance with data protection
- an alert so you know when a sign-up has been made (this can be automated)
- the lead magnet download link to be sent to the person signing-up (which can also be automatic).
Website Page:
Create a form or landing page directly on your website, but the entered information needs to be captured & stored somewhere & the backend of your website is not the most convenient place.
Email Marketing Platform:
Is a better option for saving your contacts’ name & email addresses & you can then send out news & updates in compliance with GDPR. Connect your website sign-up form to your email marketing provider via the provider’s integration or plugin. Alternatively, create an embedded or pop-up form within the email marketing platform & link to your website. Some providers even have dedicated landing page builders with a specific URL.
Download my free guide to help you choose the best email marketing application.
Landing Page Creator:
Free versions of these platforms are limited as they usually come at a cost, but the apps do generally have great templates & analytics. This option is also a good solution if you don’t have a website.
Lead Magnet:
Needs to be stored somewhere online to enable a link to be created to access the download. This could be in Dropbox, Google Drive or similar, or within the media library/files on your website. Some email marketing applications enable attachments to be sent, but these messages could be interpreted as spam by some inboxes.
CRMs & other All-in-One Solutions:
Could enable all the steps to be undertaken within one application, but may be too complex & costly for most entrepreneurs with small lists & limited budgets.
In summary, if this is your first attempt at setting-up a sales funnel, then keep it simple & cost effective (or cost free) to begin with.
Save your PDF freebie in a free Dropbox or Google Drive account; create a landing page in the free version of Mailerlite (or similar) & use this application to automate email sequences & keep in-touch with your new growing audience.
Meanwhile, consider the high-value products or services that you want to sell & work backwards. Think about the steps & sales necessary to get your ideal customer to agree to that final purchase, tweaking & adapting your offers where required.
A competent Virtual Assistant will be able to help you produce a lead magnet, setup your email marketing & send regular news updates. Contact me for further details.
Download my FREE GUIDE for further information on how to create a lead magnet & build a sales funnel.
A further thought. This article from Mailerlite, my favourite email marketing platform, explains how to implement an upside down funnel by focusing on customers first. Let’s read the Mailerlite blog.