A sales funnel is one of the best ways to get your business started. The name doesn’t mean much. Sales funnels are not just
for converting potential customers into recurring clients. They also provide a roadmap to help you build your business successfully. How to build a sales funnel for your business is an important skill for you to be a success.
Are you just beginning to build an e-commerce website? If you are, then growing your client base should be at the top of your priorities.
Customers are more competitive and businesses resort to price conflicts to get more customers. However, more savvy businesses have realized the importance of finding a better way to retain customers and attract them. Thus, the sales funnel has become even more popular.
Today’s customers have access to a lot of information online and are actively researching. You must attract these people to your business through the funnel. However, it is a task to create an online funnel that will help a business grow.
What Are Sales Funnels?
Understanding sales funnels lie in their name. Think of a pipe with a large mouth that channels liquids along a single path. Now imagine potential clients instead of liquid. This is a sales funnel.
Sales funnels help potential clients navigate a series of steps that explain your business and close a sale. This generates revenue for your online business.
The Beginning of Your Funnel
Let’s look at the sales funnel in detail:
- The funnel’s wide side is at the top. It’s narrower at the bottom. Where customers enter.
- Potential customers are just above the wide side.
- Customers who are eager to complete a transaction are at the narrow end.
- You can convert potential customers into buying customers in the middle of your funnel.
Let’s now get into the details with the outline of a sales funnel.
The Middle of the Funnel
It is here that potential clients become recurring clients. It’s where you can use all of the tools and resources available to you to find clients and spread your business’ purpose and philosophy.
You are creating a brand by starting a business. To generate sales, you must teach people about your brand and the services you offer. You need to imprint who you are on their physique. This is the middle of the funnel.
The Ending – Marketing
Marketing and Facebook
Facebook is the dominant social media platform. It is everywhere you look.
It’s a social media platform with nearly two billion users. Therefore, you need to be there to promote your brand and bring potential clients to your sales funnel.
This means you need to create a Facebook account and post content regularly. You should also take advantage of the advertising tools on Facebook.
It lets you create ads and target specific audiences. This saves time and effort since you don’t need to search far to find customers. Facebook’s algorithms will bring them to your doorstep.
Additional Ideas for Your Sales Funnel
You don’t want your entire attention on Facebook or any one specific area, but you do need to be able to create a sales funnel.
These are some of the alternatives:
- Explore other social media accounts to draw traffic.
- Post regularly to your blog.
- Make a newsletter for subscribers and send it out.
- To inform people about special offers, send out email blasts
You might be thinking, “This seems like a lot of effort!” However, hard work is the key to your success. These strategies allow you to control your content and attract the clients you desire.
Why do I have to do this?
Sales funnels are not only a tool but also a strategy to grow your business. It’s a mistake to overlook them. They inform your customers about your company and the products you sell.
Sales funnels are a way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. This makes your brand a trusted source of information and products. Your customers will be more likely than ever to use your e-commerce site if they are familiar with you and what you offer.
Your overall strategy should include a sales funnel as a key component. There is a lot you must learn. This learning process can help your business grow by giving you a framework to engage potential customers.
This will result in many customers returning to you and sharing your business with others.
Let’s now get to the main steps to set up your sales funnels. These six steps will help you set up your business successfully.
Do Your Research
Customers are basically conducting research on companies when they Google a product. So, businesses need to do the same with their clients and get to know them intimately. Therefore, you should investigate the clients, but also your competitors.
From the onset, clients are just your target audience. Learn as much about them as possible.
- What is their passion?
- Do they have preferences when it comes to choosing a product or service?
- What are their education levels?
- Are they educated?
- What age are they?
- Male or Female?
You should know all you can find about them to target them effectively.
Research Your Competition
Do your research about the competition. This includes both indirect and direct competition. Look for businesses producing the same product as yours. Then, look for those that may be producing different products but still targeting the same target market.
Take a look at their funnels to see how they work. Start by learning from some of the most successful competitors before you start building your own funnel. Then, plan how to improve yours so that you can compete.
Create a Landing Page
You don’t want a boring landing page. A great landing page is essential. It is the first thing that visitors to your website will see, so it must move them. Here are some ways to create a converting landing page.
- Include a call to action. You could invite them to sign up for a newsletter or buy a product or do whatever else you want.
- Make the call to action clear and concise so the message doesn’t get lost.
- Make the call to action stand out, by using a different color or design that attracts attention.
- You can give them an incentive to act with a free shipping offer or a coupon.
- Avoid clutter wherever possible and get straight to the point.
- To find the most effective call to action, use A/B testing.
- Use the information you have about your audience to target them.
Make a Front-End Offer
The landing page’s front-end offer is very important. It is the lure for your target. Your offer should be compelling enough to get your target to try your product or service. You should not simply put together an offer without thinking about it. Lowering the price is not enough to create an appealing front-end offer.
Your business’s front-end offer sets the stage for your back-end offer, which is where the real money is. This offer should create demand for the backend offer.
It should include the following components:
Highest quality: You want to create a desire for your product or service. So make sure that you offer the highest quality. The future prospects of upselling and getting referrals should be more important than the price.
Over-deliver: Your promise to deliver will raise expectations, meet or exceed the expectation. You can do this with a bonus that you never advertised. Surprise them with more goodies.
Give the best experience possible: Make their first purchase the most memorable experience of all.
Up-sell
Once you have made a front-end offer to the customer and they have bought the product, it is time to provide more value. Make your next offer more valuable than the first one. It should be more like an upgrade to make the customer feel that it is worth the extra effort.
A back-end upsell is your main dish, this is your goal but it must be of the highest quality and value. The appetizer was what you offered to them as a way to prepare for the main dish. This will ensure that they are satisfied and feel better that they bought the last offer, not the previous offer.
Down-sell
Realize that not all of your customers will be able to make the purchase at the same level. You can also down-sell. This will help you retain customers. To keep customers loyal, it is important to take care of them.
It is possible that customers may experience financial hardships or choose not to spend the extra money on the upsell. However, they might be able to upgrade in the future.
Keep the Relationship Alive
Don’t let the first or second sale be the end of your relationship with the customer. Keep in touch with them and make sure they are satisfied with their purchase. A loyalty program may be an option where customers who purchase often get more benefits.
Don’t forget potential customers. The funnel should get more customers. Convert potential customers into buying customers. Keep up with the momentum to draw more customers through the funnel.
Conclusion
This type of funnel is best for an online business, but it can also be used for a physical company as well. Funnels are about building and maintaining a relationship with customers. Therefore, a funnel allows you to plan how to gain an advantage over your competition without getting into price wars that can sometimes run your business to its knees.
If this has helped you in your research, I would love you to leave a comment, or a like and share.
Thanks for visiting.
LILY
Thanks for the brilliant article. I found it to be very interesting and refreshing. Although most of this information is by no means new to me personally, I still think that it can be good sometimes to refresh your memory on some of these things from time to time. i have to agrree that downsells are all too often underestimated and should be included.
It sounds like you have had lots of good experiences with landing pages and funnels which are so important to your customer growth. Keep working away at your strategy, it has been proven to work,
Hi, great article and useful stuff here on creating a sales funnel which is key critical when selling anything. This I’m sure will prove to be a very helpful crash course for many out there so keep up the good work 👍 some good tips here also on creating compelling offers to lure potential customers in on the landing pages.
I’m very pleased that you found such good value in my article, Dan. Sales Funnels are such an important part of building your business and it seems that you heard my message. Let me know how you go setting yours up.
This is the first time I have ever heard the word “sales funnel” anywhere. This article offers a couple good points. You want to learn as much as you can about your potential customers and what they may be interested into buying. You also want to find a way to engage your potential customers as that will help to expose your business and the products/services that it offers.
You really understand how a sales funnel works. The whole idea is to add subscribers and upsell to other products.
It can work extremely well if it isn’t used with too much pressure.
Lily 😁🎶
I think I have been wasting a lot of energy in my online business in things that really don’t move the needle. But I have been reading that sales funnels are really where all the magic happens. So, I will focus in building a good sales funnel with a well thought landing page. I know this needs a lot of A/B testing. But I am convinced that this is the route I should take.
Hi Ann, that sounds like a great idea. The more I look around the more I notice that these funnels do work in bringing traffic to your website and converting them to sales.
Respect for the article. Useful, interesting and clear. A lot of this information is by no means new to me personally I think it may be good sometimes to remember some of these things from time to time. I think discounts are often underestimated, they should be used carefully.
I learned a lot being an article full of details and experience.
Palnie seemed a bit complicated and strange, now it’s clearer to me.
Respectfully
Vasile,
Thanks for your comment Vasile. We need to be clear about funnels and their uses.
This is the second practical tutorial of yours that I have read. The idea of creating a sales funnel is important. You have explained it well particularly in the examples you suggested. You have described something other than the “shotgun” approach which so many people use attempting to reach everyone. Having a target audience and knowing that audience is very important. I hope lots of people new to affiliate marketing find your articles.
Thank you for your kind words. I love helping people and it would be great if you share my tutorials. A sales funnel is a must for anyone who is serious about building a large businesss.