Side Hustle: How to Create a Marketing Funnel

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Rising Star
BGOL Patreon Investor
What is a marketing funnel? No, it’s not what you use for cooking. We’re talking about the kind of funnel that you absolutely must get right if you want your business’ sales process to run as efficiently as possible.
Before reading on, check out this short video we made called How to Make a Sales Funnel that Converts Loyal Customers which shows you how to create an e-mail sales funnel in an automated sequence:




Basically, your marketing funnel is made up of several stages through which would-be customers move from first awareness of your brand to post-sale evangelism. It’s the process of converting a visitor or browser into a paying customer.
Think of pouring rice through a funnel: a lot goes into the top but only a trickle comes out the bottom. That’s how leads pour into a funnel: a lot of interested people go into it, but a much smaller number of people come out the other end — with your product in their hand.
Some business owners are moving away from the term “marketing funnel” because they think it’s too mechanical or simplistic to describe the lead nurturing sequence by which customers move from awareness to purchase. I think it’s still a useful way to describe a complex process and it’s a good visual to imagine the entire process from start to finish.
Here’s a more in-depth break down:

What is a marketing funnel?

A marketing funnel is a way of breaking down the customer journey all the way from the “awareness” stage (when they first learn about your business) to the “purchase” stage (when they’re ready to buy your product or service).
First, you want to attract awareness to your business by ranking high in search, publishing white papers, etc. As leads progress through your funnel, your outreach methods will get more and more personalized (sometimes involving a product demo or a phone call) until the sale takes place.
Single-Grain-Marketing-Funnel.jpg

Free Bonus Download: Don’t reinvent the wheel – use this marketing funnel worksheet to get a 50,000 foot view of your customer’s buying journey. Click here to download it for free right now!

Let’s define this idea further by looking at two examples:

Example 1

Norman Newbie owns a software company with ten salespeople and one product. He’s not a very savvy marketer, so his sales process currently involves handing his salespeople lists of leads that he purchased online and having them “dial for dollars.” His salespeople frequently get frustrated since his leads aren’t always good quality. Because they’re usually calling on people who A) aren’t interested in his services and B) are not a good fit for them, the salespeople close less than 1% of the prospects they initially reach out to.
Example 2

Molly Marketer has a similarly-sized company, but instead of taking Norman’s traditional outbound marketing approach, she’s created a marketing funnel that helps her three salespeople close more sales with less effort.



Molly started by building a series of attention-grabbing content marketing pieces that are tied to landing pages on her website. Potential customers can engage with her content (blog posts, infographics, videos) and learn about her company and its services without a cold call from a salesperson.

When these would-be buyers become interested enough in her products, they request an online demonstration by filling out the form on her landing pages. These requests are routed directly to her salespeople, who, because they’re dealing with warm leads, close roughly 50% of the customers to whom they demo. Molly’s company closes more sales than Norman’s, with fewer salespeople and no time spent on cold calling.
Obviously, these are simplified examples, and most businesses will fall somewhere in the middle of this “0 to 60” spectrum. Even if you’ve never heard the phrase “marketing funnel” before, make no mistake about it: you have one.
Whether you’re an old hand looking for fresh ideas on optimizing your current funnel or a newbie wanting to learn how to make an effective marketing funnel, you’ve come to the right place!
Free Bonus Download: Don’t reinvent the wheel – use this marketing funnel worksheet to get a 50,000 foot view of your customer’s buying journey. Click here to download it for free right now!

Here is a compilation video of 6 marketing funnel strategies from Growth Everywhereepisodes.

Stages in the Buying Process

No matter what kind of purchase we’re making or how much we intend to spend, all of us follow a relatively similar path when it comes to deciding what to buy. This buying process was first introduced by John Dewey in 1910, but even now — more than 100 years later — it’s still the foundation of understanding buyer behavior and marketing funnel creation.
Stage #1 – Problem/Need Recognition

Understandably, if a person doesn’t recognize that she has a need that must be filled, she’s not going to make a purchase! That said, these needs can range from obvious, easily-solved problems to issues without clear solutions.
Suppose your furnace goes out in the middle of winter. Your problem is obvious: you need a new furnace. And the solution is easy — you need to call HVAC providers in your areas for quotes. But say you need a new car. Should you look for an SUV, a compact car or a mid-size sedan? Even vaguer still, if you’re frustrated with how much your accountant is charging you to do your business’ taxes, you might not even be familiar with all the different solutions, like cloud-based accounting services.
For different types of businesses, buyer needs at the problem/need recognition stage would be different. For example, if you’re running a consulting business, then at the very beginning, your clients would realize that they’re having certain problems around your service area – like a high cost per lead (if you’re in marketing), disorganized spending (if you’re in accounting), etc.
This emotional state is important because it’s the state buyers will be in when they look to buy your services.

Stage #2 – Information Search

Recognizing a problem or need is the step that triggers a search for more information. Depending on the need at hand, the information search can take a number of different forms, including:
  • Reading reviews online
  • Asking friends for recommendations
  • Checking the newspaper for coupons
  • Visiting a store for a hands-on demonstration
  • Searching Google for options
According to Pardot, 70% of buyers turn to Google at least 2-3 times during their search to find out more about your business, their problems or solutions, etc. For example, at this stage, buyers would be most interested in tactical content they could use to solve their problems.
If you’re in marketing, you might create content around link building, SEO, Facebook advertising, or any other strategy that your customers would be searching for.
If you’re in accounting, you might create content around helping solopreneurs figure out their finances for the first time.
The strategies used to gather information tend to vary based on the size and scope of the purchase. Recognizing that you’re hungry, for example, might result in a quickYelp search for restaurants in your area. Deciding which provider to use to place a new in-ground pool at your home might involve calling around, reading company reviews online, visiting showrooms, and talking with salespeople.

You can do some keyword research to figure out what types of content you should be creating — you can find out which search terms in your niche get high volumes of traffic, and create content around some variation of those keywords.

Stage #3 – Evaluation of Alternatives

Following your information search — or, sometimes running concurrently with this process — you’ll start comparing the alternatives that your research has uncovered. Again, the time spent in this stage will vary based on the type of purchase being contemplated. Choosing a restaurant might be as simple as deciding, “Well, I feel like Chinese food, not Mexican, tonight.”
But say you’re evaluating marketing automation programs to help improve the sales funnel you’re creating. Because these programs can require investments of $1,500 a month, you’re likely to undergo a much more careful and thorough evaluation process. You might request free trials of the different systems you’re considering, have online demonstrations with each company’s representatives or view training videos to get a feel for how each system will perform.
If you’re running an accounting business, at this stage, your customers would be evaluating different potential service providers. They might need resources like pricing guides (so they know what ballpark rates are), how to evaluate the landscape of accounting services (i.e. whether to hire a solo accountant, an agency, etc), or how to choose an accountant.
If you’re running a marketing services business, you might create content about how to choose a marketing agency, pricing guides, whether a company should go contract or hire in-house, etc. At Single Grain, we’ve created content resources around this for companies that are considering hiring marketing agencies.

Stage #4 – Purchase Decision

The purchase decision is the natural conclusion of the preceding three stages. You determine that you have a problem, investigate your options, decide which one is best for you, and then pull the trigger. However, businesses need to be aware that there are two things that can disrupt this stage: negative feedback from fellow customers and the prospect’s motivation to accept this feedback.
At this stage, the content you’d need to create would be content that helps your buyers feel confident that the decision to purchase is the right decision. For example, you could create case study content that showcases a success story a previous customer had, and what new customers could potentially expect.
It’s important to create case studies with customers that reflect different customer “profiles” or demographics. This will help persuade people that your product will work for their specific situation.
Let’s suppose that you’re big into cycling and you’ve decided to purchase Trek’s latest Emonda line road bike. You read a few less-than-positive reviews online, but brushed them off on the understanding that all internet comments should be taken with a grain of salt. But then a fellow cyclist whom you respect tells you that he didn’t love the bike. Where you were less inclined to let anonymous reviewers’ feedback affect your buying decision, you are much more motivated by the advice of somebody you know personally.

Stage #5 – Post-Purchase Behavior

Finally, don’t think that the sales process is done just because a purchase decision has been made. What happens after the sale has been completed is just as important as what went into bringing about the sale in the first place!
If your new customers are greeted by a thoughtful onboarding process, personal attention, and all the resources they need to use your product successfully, they’re more likely to confirm to themselves that they made the right choice. And when they’re confident, they’re more likely to pass on their satisfaction to others in the form of recommendations and product endorsements. If, on the other hand, your new customers experience disappointment after their purchase, they’re more likely to request refunds, write negative reviews, and recommend that others in their social circles purchase from your competitors.
There’s not much content you can create to help facilitate a good post-purchase experience — apart from just creating a great product. If you have a great product that solves a problem, post-purchase behavior will take care of itself.
There are certain pieces of content you can do to help facilitate better post-purchase behavior. For example, you could create FAQ content, make it easier to get support, etc.
Although most people enter the funnel at the top — the “problem/need” recognition section — not everyone does. Some will enter at subsequent stages, but the process remains the same no matter which stage someone enters the sales funnel.



More:

Free Bonus Download: Don’t reinvent the wheel – use this marketing funnel worksheet to get a 50,000 foot view of your customer’s buying journey. Click here to download it for free right now!
Creating Content for Your Marketing Funnel

Now that you know how people make decisions, you can use this knowledge of the buying process to make a marketing funnel by creating content that will appeal to people at every stage. Take a look at the following sales funnel template from TechValidate to see how this translates:
funnel.jpg

As you can see, each color-coded piece of the funnel pictured above roughly corresponds to stages 2-4 in the buying process. The widest tier at the top of the funnel represents “awareness,” the point at which potential customers are beginning their information search. The second tier is “consideration,” roughly corresponding to the evaluation of alternatives described in the purchase process above. And finally, the third tier, “decision,” is self-explanatory.
As a note, stages one and five have been left out of this model. Though all companies should have a plan for addressing post-purchase follow-up, it’s up to you to determine whether or not it’s worth your company’s time to try to reach buyers in the first stage of the process. It can be difficult to convince people that they have a problem if they haven’t already felt it themselves, but if you’re selling a new type of product that meets a previously unrealized need, you might want to focus your energy on this area.
For each stage of the funnel, you’ll need to answer the following questions:

  • How will customers at this stage find me?
  • What kind of information do I need to provide to help them move from one stage to the next?
  • How will I know if they have moved from one stage to another?
The image above gives some hints as to how you might answer some of these questions, and you’ll find that some are easier to answer than others. To continue with our earlier example, let’s explore how Norman could answer each of these questions in order to create the foundation of his marketing funnel:
Stage 1 – Problem/Need Recognition

Because Norman sells a high-dollar software product that meets a need that most businesses are familiar with, he decides that it’s easier to focus on attracting and converting customers who already know that they need his product, rather than trying to create the need in the first place. If he was a startup or a company with a new idea, he might choose to invest more of his time and energy here.
Stage 2 – Information Search

How will customers at this stage find me?
Given the broad appeal of his product and its high-dollar nature, Norman decides that the following strategies will be most appropriate:

  • Paid advertising on Google AdWords that lead visitors to a landing page with an opt-in form requesting a free online demonstration
  • Guest blog posts on industry websites that provide viewers with unbiased information on what to look for when buying his type of software
  • Optimizing his website for keywords that indicate an information search in progress in order to capture organic search traffic
  • Social media posts that educate viewers on a wide variety of industry issues
What kind of information do customers at this stage need?
  • Content that confirms that the need they’ve perceived is valid and should be remedied (for example, blog posts that appeal to the visitor’s frustrations with emotional descriptions of the problem and how the product solves it—“Why X is a Problem and What You Should Do About It”)
  • Content that describes the attributes of the product to encourage viewers to include in their future evaluation of alternatives (for example, blog posts with titles like “Getting to Know Product X”)
  • Content that introduces the company and intrigues the potential customer enough to move to the next stage of the buying process (for example, Facebook posts on “Behind the Scenes at Norman’s Company.
How will I know if customers have moved on to the next stage?
Norman will know when customers have moved on to the “Evaluation of Alternatives” stage when they request a free online demonstration, indicating that they are interested enough in the product to compare it against others.

Stage 3 – Evaluation of Alternatives

decision-making.jpg

How will customers at this stage find me?
Most prospects will enter this stage after identifying Norman’s company as a possible alternative and completing the information search process described in Stage 2. However, some customers might be introduced to his brand after completing Stage 2 with his competitors, as in the case of an industry blog running a comparison chart of the different competitors in his space.
As a result, Norman decides that it’s prudent to set up Google Alerts for his competitors’ names. Whenever they appear online, he makes it a point to try to get his company mentioned as well by reaching out to publishers, leaving comments, and responding to questions he sees about his competitors.
What kind of information do customers need at this stage?

  • What differentiates Norman’s product from his competitors’ products? Instead of relying on external sites, Norman could create his own product comparison chart showing how his product is different from others.
  • Have other buyers been successful with Norman’s product? Case studies of past customer successes can be extremely helpful in terms of moving customers from the evaluation stage to the purchase decision.
  • Why should they purchase from Norman? To meet this need, Norman might publish a white paper based on primary research he’s conducted that establishes himself as an industry authority (or, better yet, he might place this behind an opt-in form that causes visitors to take the psychologically-compelling step of engaging further with his brand).
How will I know if customers have moved on to the next stage?
Visitors who move on to the next stage are those that make a purchase, so any indication that the buying process has begun means success — from verbal confirmation of a deal’s acceptance to the receipt of a formal contract. However, if Norman uses an online shopping cart system, he might also find it useful to track abandonment rates, as reaching out to these customers could help reveal reasons visitors aren’t progressing to the next stage or provide salespeople with leads that can be easily closed with a single outreach phone call.
Further Reading:

Stage 4 – Purchase Decision

How will customers at this stage find me?
Customers at this stage will have already found Norman’s company by progressing through stages 1-3. There is no extra outreach Norman needs to do at this point, as it is exceedingly rare for customers to purchase without conducting any type of information search or comparison of alternatives.
What kind of information do customers at this stage need?
Since Norman is selling a high-dollar product, he needs to do two things: help prospects be comfortable with the purchasing process and make the purchase process as easy as possible.

  • To help make customers comfortable, he decides to create a few blog posts on what happens after the purchase is completed to ease potential worries about investing with his company (for example, “10 Ways Norman’s Company Simplifies Software Onboarding”).
  • To minimize confusion, he adds information to his checkout pages in order to make it as obvious as possible what prospects should do next in order to purchase his solution.
How will I know if customers have moved on to the next stage?
Customers will move on to Stage 5 when the sale is complete. Although we won’t detail it here, Norman should brainstorm the kinds of information these customers will need, as well as how he’ll provide it as part of a cohesive onboarding process. Though he doesn’t need to worry about customers finding him at this stage or moving on to the next one, it’s still important to meet their needs so that they walk away feeling good about their purchase decisions!
After completing this brainstorming process, Norman creates an overall list of all the different content pieces he’ll need to create and deploy, including:

  • Google AdWords ad copy
  • Landing pages with lead generation forms for customers requesting online demonstrations
  • Guest blog posts
  • On-site page and blog content written for SEO keywords
  • Blog post: Why X Is a Problem and What You Should Do About It
  • Blog post: Getting to Know Product X
  • Blog post: 10 Ways Norman’s Company Simplifies Software Onboarding
  • Social media posts: Behind the Scenes at Norman’s Company
  • Product comparison chart
  • Case studies from successful customers
  • Whitepaper
  • New checkout page content
Since this is a significant amount of content, Norman can choose to roll it out over time, enlist other employees in the creation process or outsource some of it to freelance workers.
Free Marketing Funnel Map: Get this FREE resource on how to map out each stage of your marketing funnel. Click here to download it free.

Another Way to Remember Content Creation Stages

There’s another way to remember stages of the sales funnel and match it to content creation — with the acronym AIDA:
  • Attention: This is similar to the problem/need recognition stage. Customers experience a problem, but must recognize the problem. You create content to draw attention to the need.
  • Interest: Interest and information both start with the letter “I.” This is the stage at which customers are actively seeking, or interested in, information to help them solve their problem. As they move through the sales funnel from recognizing or drawing attention to the problem, their interest is sparked in a solution. They need information to move into the next phase.
  • Desire: Customers have moved from attention or recognition of the problem through information-gathering and interest. Now they have a desire for a solution. Customers evaluate alternatives and your job, through content creation, is to spark a desire for your solution. You must convince customers, as they examine various solutions to their problem, that your solution is the right one for them.
  • Action: Now it is time for customers to make the purchase decision, or to take action. Make it easy for them to say “yes” to taking action. Have a strong call to action in your copy, and a simple path to follow to complete the sale. The easier you make it for people to take action, the more sales you’ll generate through your sales funnel.
Whether you prefer the traditional sales funnel stages or the acronym AIDA, the results are the same: customers enter the sales funnel and through a process of discernment, choose to either move to another solution or purchase from you. The action at the end of the funnel, or the purchase, concludes the stages of the sales funnel.
Further reading:

Qualifying Leads

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At this point, Norman has a great marketing campaign outlined. But in order for it to be truly effective, he needs to take things one step further by determining how leads will be qualified throughout the process. Adding in this extra element will allow him to better utilize his salespeople by bringing them into the sales process only when qualified prospective customers are identified.
Unfortunately, not everyone who makes it through the first few stages of his funnel will be a good fit. As an example, a prospect might complete stages 1-3, but not have the financial resources available to complete the purchase. Or a lead might be enthusiastic about the product, but not the decision-maker in his or her organization. While the content pieces Norman has created will be helpful in educating all prospective customers and moving them through the different stages of the funnel, Norman needs to familiarize himself with and implement two concepts:

  • Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
  • Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a prospective customer who has demonstrated a particular level of engagement that leads the marketing team to conclude that real sales potential exists. The level of complexity involved in this assessment will vary based on the resources available to the team. Norman, for example, might conclude that anybody who fills out his online demonstration request form is an MQL. A company that’s using a marketing automation program might be able to set the bar to MQL qualification at something involving a combination of viewing specific pages, interacting with certain forms, and opening a certain number of email messages.
Learn more:

Once an MQL has been identified, it can be passed on to the sales team for future follow-up. Salespeople can then further qualify the lead by measuring two things: interest and fit. Interest, as you might expect, refers to how invested the prospect is in moving forward with your company’s type of solution. Fit refers to how closely the lead matches your company’s definition of an ideal buyer.
This analysis results in four possible primary combinations:

  • Low interest and low fit – The leads don’t meet your company’s target criteria and are unlikely to make a move soon. A common example of these types of leads is the low-level employee who’s browsing solutions out of curiosity, not an immediate need.
  • High interest and low fit – These MQLs are often people who are searching for a solution, but are unlikely to ultimately go with yours. If, for example, you sell a cloud-based software program and the prospect will clearly be more comfortable with a desktop solution, you could be dealing with this type of MQL.
  • Low interest and high fit – Typically, these leads closely resemble your target customer, but aren’t actively seeking solutions. Even though they may not be a good fit right away, it may still be worth pursuing them to create brand awareness that will pay off down the road when their need becomes apparent.
  • High interest and high fit – These MQLs are the “sweet spot” of people who are actively seeking your type of solution and are likely to convert to buyers. These leads should be the highest priority of your sales team.
When a salesperson qualifies a lead and deems it likely to eventually lead to an opportunity, this becomes a sales qualified lead (SQL). Again, it will be up to you to determine exactly what constitutes an SQL. Norman, for example, decides to send every MQL through to his salespeople for qualification because he runs a small company with a single tier of sales reps. A larger company with both junior and senior sales representatives may, on the other hand, choose to have junior representatives conduct initial calls to qualify prospects before assigning only those that fall into the “high interest and high fit” category to senior reps for online demonstrations.
The specifics of each stage of qualification aren’t particularly important. What is important is that you assign them in the first place! Not only will this help you to identify the content pieces that are leading to the most new prospects (as well as any additional pieces that should be created), it will ensure that you’re using your salespeople’s time effectively.
More on this topic:

Free Bonus Download: Don’t reinvent the wheel – use this marketing funnel worksheet to get a 50,000 foot view of your customer’s buying journey. Click here to download it for free right now!
Marketing Funnel Metrics

So now you’ve created your funnel and defined exactly how your personnel will interact with it. The final step in the process is to figure out which metrics you’ll track to determine how well your funnel is functioning.
One quick word of caution, though. With every piece of content you create and every stage of your funnel, you’re generating data. Though all of it is useful to your sales process in some way, it’s easy to get bogged down in data and metrics tracking instead of focusing on the few key performance indicators (KPIs) that will actually give you the information needed to make meaningful improvements.
For that reason, while you might want to experiment with tracking all the different metrics below (or any others that you think could be valuable), it’s best to choose a core 2-5 to focus your attention on. You can always add more later, but be sure you’re actually making changes based on the data you generate from these few metrics before expanding your data operations.

  • Sales funnel conversions – If you’re going to choose only a few metrics to focus on, make sure this is one of them. Essentially, this metric involves tracking the number of prospects that enter your funnel at any point and then convert into customers. As you make changes to your marketing strategy in the future, seeing this number improve will let you know you’re on the right track.
  • Entry sources – Monitoring the sources from which people are entering your funnel can be useful data to track, as it gives you ideas for expanding the reach of your marketing campaigns. If, for example, you see that a large number of your prospects are coming from a single guest blog post you did, seeking out similar guest author positions can be an easy way to increase your overall sales.
  • Time in stage – In an ideal world, your marketing content would be so compelling that people move from the top stage to the bottom in a single day. But since that’s rarely the case, it’s worthwhile to know if your prospects are getting hung up in one of your stages. If so, you’ll want to add more content to your site that answers the questions that are unique to this stage of the funnel.
  • Exits from stage – Similarly, seeing an excessively high number of people falling out of a particular stage is an indication that you aren’t doing enough to answer their questions. Add more content to give them the information they need to move forward.
  • Content piece engagement rate – If you have calls to action on multiple blog posts or other on-site content pieces, you’ll want to know which are sending the most converted customers through your funnel so that you can replicate your success with future releases. Tracking engagement rates on each call to action will give you this information.
  • Opportunity arrival rate – Opportunity arrival rate refers to the number of opportunities that are currently in your funnel. Track this rate and see how changes to your marketing strategy impact it. Ideally, you’ll see positive increase in the number of opportunities you’re able to generate.
  • Close rate – Your close rate (or “win rate”) refers to the number of these opportunities that turn into eventual sales. If your close rate is lower than you expect, look to some of the other metrics you’re tracking for ideas on improving the success rate of your marketing funnel.
There are a number of different tools on the market today to help you track these and other metrics, though for most businesses Google Analytics represents the most comprehensive, easy-to-implement solution. Since it’s free, use the service’s funnel tracking tools until you determine that you need something more advanced and then move on to another sales analytics program or a complete marketing automation program.
Make no mistake, creating a sales and marketing funnel using the process described above is no easy feat. This isn’t a project you’re going to complete in one afternoon—it’s a pursuit that you’ll want to actively address as long as your company is in business. It’s not a simple undertaking, but it’s one of the few opportunities you have to drive significant improvements in your efficiency and effectiveness when closing deals.
Watch:

Growth Everywhere Case Studies

Automation Master Brad Martineau on How to Set Up Successful Sales Funnels
Marketo’s Jon Miller Tells How Their Content Funnel Cuts Lead-to-Sale Time by 48%
Free Bonus Download: Don’t reinvent the wheel – use this marketing funnel worksheet to get a 50,000 foot view of your customer’s buying journey. Click here to download it for free right now!
 

mailboxpimp

Rising Star
BGOL Patreon Investor
Method1
Plan an Internet Marketing Funnel



  1. 1
    Set up an attractive website.
    Remember that for most websites, a soft sell works better than a hard sell. You get more leads if you look trustworthy and loyal to customers, if you list reviews of your products and if you provide users with articles, newsletters, tips and other valuable content.
    • The idea behind adding value to your website is that people who become daily users are much more likely to also become clients. If you don't sell a product yourself, you can become an affiliate marketer and post affiliate ads on your website. If you do sell a product, a daily user will have a chance to see more of your offers/products and buy them.

  2. 2
    Invest in lead capture software or programming.
    You can either hire a company to provide you with a lead capture landing page or program it into your website. With lead capture, your website users are required to sign up for an account or submit their name and email address in order to get valuable content.
    • This lead capture software ranges from simple to complex. You can have a landing page that captures the data, or you can sign up for a system that tracks your user's accounts once they sign in. You can see what products they looked at, what pages they read and, judging from their account activity, you can see how likely they are to become customers.

  3. 3
    Define your lead gathering strategy.
    You should choose 5 to 10 ways to get the attention of your target demographic(s). Some common Internet lead capture strategies are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, guest blogs, search engine optimization (SEO)/search engines, article directories, online ads, affiliate marketers and more.

  4. 4
    Define the valuable product or service you can offer to get the client to sign up.
    You may need to brainstorm with your marketing team about what you can provide. Ideas include a free trial, free services, a coupon, a video, educational content, a free account, or access to a number of such services.

  5. 5
    Define your end goal.
    This is the end relationship you want to have with the information you gather, and it differs greatly for online businesses. In some cases, the contact details of a person is your Internet-based goal, because it may funnel leads into a service-based business that calls its customers by phone, and in other cases, it is developing repeat clientele.
Method2
Set up your Internet Marketing Funnel



  1. 1
    Begin using all 5 to 10 lead gathering strategies at once.
    With an employee heading up each strategy, make sure employees coordinate new offers, posting consistently and timely as you add more value to your website with free content.
    • Use website links that have embedded web analytic codes. You can do this through your website provider or with a free Google Analytics account. Make sure each strategy uses a different link, so you can track your most successful lead gathering strategies. Most web analytics programs will automatically mark down leads that come from major search engines.

  2. 2
    Have someone examine the ratio of visitors to your page, versus how many people enter their contact information to get access to content.
    A high percentage means you are targeting your demographic well, and should continue to offer similar content. A low percentage means you need to invest more in adding value to the free content or service you are offering.

  3. 3
    Gather the leads from your lead generation software.
    You should get information to add to your content management system (CRM) or database every week. Make sure you code new leads according to the offer that enticed them to sign up.

  4. 4
    Communicate with your database through email blasts and newsletters or direct mail.
    Target your offers by giving your leads emails that suggest similar products or services as what they signed up to see. These communications bring leads back to your website in order to convert them to customers.
    • If you are gathering leads for a service-based job, you may also want to give them a call. If they inquired about a quote, then this is an essential part of the communication process.

  5. 5
    Mark people who buy your products as "customers" in your database.
    Customers should be given extra content and discounts for loyalty. The desirable end to the funnel is that customers continue to enter the funnel on their own and buy more products as they become available.

  6. 6
    Don't allow your funnel to stagnate.
    Your marketing team should constantly be updating the lead generation points, the offers and the database, in an ongoing pipeline. Unless you have cornered the majority of the market, a successful marketing funnel can continue working in the same fashion for years.
 

mailboxpimp

Rising Star
BGOL Patreon Investor
What is a sales funnel?

This strategy is so named due to the fact that in diagram form, this particular marketing strategy looks just like its name.

The top category is the biggest one and represents the largest number of people -- potential customers. The bottom category represents the smallest number -- committed customers -- which is why it's smaller.

Now, here are the five steps to follow to construct your own simple online sales funnel.

1. Create a great landing page.
Your website's landing page is the first impression potential customers will instantly have of your business. Therefore, take time to make sure that it looks great. A good landing page will also encourage visitors to sign up for some sort of list, or subscribe to the website. This gives you that all-important contact information, which becomes your first line of communication.

2. Present a front-end offer.
The next step is to present potential customers with the opportunity to buy a product or procure your service. "When constructing your main front-end products and associated upsell offers, you should be engineering them with the additional mindset of . . . how will this help create more desire for the next [backend] offer [you're] going to present them with," explains Todd Brown of MarketingFunnelAutomation.com.

In other words, at this step you should be “pre-selling” on the next step in the funnel.

3. Give an upsell offer on the back end.
Offer your customers who just bought or are about to buy a product or service the opportunity to upsize, or upgrade, that service. For example, create an offer that will deliver even more benefit to the customer if he or she upgrades. This strategy is called an upsell.

Consider this the steak dinner to the regular offer’s appetizer. You are offering your customers more substance if they choose to upgrade. Of course, that also means you make more money because an upsell typically involves a larger or more expensive item or service.

Related: 5 Ways to Boost Your Conversion Rates and Supercharge Web Sales

4. Offer a downsize option.
In the same way that you encouraged customers to upgrade services in the upsell step, this element of the funnel calls for you to offer a downgrade option to certain customers.

No, a downsize option doesn't represent a failure and should not be looked upon as the loss of a sale. Instead, consider this a way to keep a customer unable to buy from you due to budget constraints. Keep in mind that those constraints may change. Be considerate and offer cheaper options for these individuals to keep them as potential customers.

5. Keep it going.
The last step in the sales funnel is to keep your momentum going. Follow up with all the new customers you have acquired and ensure they are happy with their product or service. A great way to accomplish this is to offer a membership-based rewards program. This will allow you to remain in contact with customers, giving you the perfect means for telling them about new deals and services.

The steps listed here are geared to a business with an online presence. Of course, this might not describe your particular business. However, every business can benefit from the sales funnel model.

Just remember: Your potential customers category, which represents the greatest amount of people, goes on top of the funnel; and the smallest category, established customers, goes on the bottom. The categories in between may be altered to meet your specific business’s needs and sales goals.
 

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What is a conversion funnel in Marketing?

Before we get into the full definition, we’ll start by defining what a “funnel” is. Let’s look at the most common definition.
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The noun form listed here is a solid visual of the shape you should picture when creating your funnel.
But the verb form is closer to what funnels help you accomplish. When you do a conversion funnel optimization, your funnel should guide your leads towards converting.
So essentially, a conversion funnel is an idea or a way to visualize and comprehend the flow and conversion of potential customers (assuming the visitors are targeted) into paying customers.
And these visitors can be generated through variety of methods such as SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, paid ads, and even cold outreach.

If you can understand and analyze the process, then you can take actions to improve that flow.
Here’s a simple diagram from SaadKamal.com with a simple breakdown of how this process in marketing:

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This is a very simple visualization showing the main four steps in the process:

  • First, your potential customer becomes aware of you or your product.
  • Second, you build interest in your product. (Notice the funnel gets smaller because not everyone who is aware of your product will have interest.)
  • Third, you need to plant the seed of desire for your product or service. (Once again, the funnel gets smaller because you can’t expect everyone who is interested to actually desire your product.)
  • And finally, ask for an action. As an example, the action might be to buy something or sign up for an email list. (This is the smallest part of the funnel because only a small percentage of the original potential customers will take action.)
Now, let’s break it down and look at exactly what’s involved in each of these steps.
Awareness

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To have a conversion funnel you have to pull (not pour) prospects into your funnel. You do this by making people aware of your company.
This part of your marketing strategy includes anything that helps your brand reach a new audience. You have tons of options for making this happen, but there are a few channels that tend to be particularly effective for this stage:

  • PPC campaigns. PPC campaigns let you target your ads to users who are actively searching for a product or service, making them an excellent source of qualified traffic.
  • Organic search. Organic rankings also let you reach users as they search, and often at a lower cost.
  • Social media. Social media users might not be actively looking for new products. But with the right targeting, campaigns on these platforms can be effective for reaching your target audience.
There are many ways to reach users in this stage, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that you want to attract qualified traffic. Keep the focus on quality over quantity.
Unqualified leads are much less likely to make it to the next step in your funnel (let alone to the bottom of your funnel), so targeting your top-of-funnel strategies to the right audience is a much better use of your time and budget.
As you develop new campaigns, always keep your target audience in mind. And if you need to, you can always cast a wider net later.

Interest

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After you pull prospects into your funnel, you need to build their interest in your product or service. Your content and website are the best tools for doing this.
Figure out what users need to know about your industry, services, and products. Determine what questions and needs they have.
Then, craft content that addresses those needs and positions your brand as an authority on the subject. Write blog posts, offer helpful resources, and publish in-depth, informative guides that help your audience get a better understanding of what, exactly, you’re offering.
A good copywriter can be invaluable for this step.
Content that keeps visitors interested and engaged is essential for helping your target audience get to know, like, and trust you.
But how does this move them through your funnel?
The best way is to create content that requires action to access. In most cases, this will be a signup form with a “bait” like a downloadable guide in PDF format.
Crafting a downloadable resource, then asking your visitors to exchange their email information for it, is a great way to move your audience from casual visitors to leads.
Once you have their email address, you can send more helpful content and keep them moving through your funnel. This helps you make sure that qualified leads don’t simply forget about your brand altogether.
This stage is also where potential customers evaluate your product or service to determine if it can match their needs. So in order to move them to the next step, you need to illustrate the value you provide, as well as what sets your company apart from your competitors.

Desire

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Next, you need to work towards making your leads even more interested in your product or service. Show them why they need what your company is offering.
An email autoresponder series or drip campaign is perfect for this. It continues to build the relationship between your company and your potential customers.
We’ll get into a little more detail on how, exactly, to do that later in this post. But the most important thing to remember about this stage is that people most often desire a solution to a problem.
Highlight the specific problem you solve, and focus on how your solution is different from the solutions other companies are offering.
Make your potential customers desire your company’s solution. Once you accomplish this, getting them to convert will become a much easier process.
Again, a good copywriter can be invaluable for turning interest into desire.
Users at this stage often compare multiple companies to see which offers the best solution for their needs. A copywriter can help you make sure that yours stands out in a memorable way, and doesn’t get lost in the research phase.

Action

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The last — and arguably most important — step to your funnel is action. This is your ultimate goal, the big action you want your prospect to take.
Yes, they may have taken smaller actions already, like downloading a resource and engaging with your email content. But you want a bigger action…
You want them to buy!
It’s important to note that only a small percentage of prospects will make it to this level.
But when you take steps to improve your funnel, you can maximize the number of leads that moves forward from each step.

How to Create a Sales Conversion Funnel

Still, building an effective conversion funnel takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.
But if you want to maximize your sales and revenue, it’s time to start working on your funnel.
The following eight steps will help you turn more of your visitors into leads, and more of your leads into customers.

1. Map out your ideal buying process

This conversion funnel example above isn’t the only visual representation of a conversion funnel. It could be much more complicated, depending on what steps and processes you want to analyze.
You might have more goals in your funnel, but this isn’t a bad thing.
While it may take more time to develop your initial funnel, monitoring these goals will give you more insight into how users move through your site. Then, you can use this information to maximize the amount of prospects that arrive at the “purchase” level of the funnel.
So as you start to develop your conversion funnel, think about how visitors move from their first interaction with your site to becoming a customer.
For example, if you run an ecommerce site, your buying process might look like this:

sample-funnel.jpg

Visitors arrive on your site, check out product pages, add a product to their cart, and complete the checkout process.
Simple, right?
Ideally, yes. But take another look at that visual. Notice how only 2.2% of the original visitors end up making a purchase?
That’s a fairly typical scenario. So as you create your conversion funnel, keep in mind that you’re mapping out an ideal path through your site.
It’s also important to note that not all of your visitors will take the same path through your site. In fact, unless you have an extremely small site with only a handful of visitors, there are several likely paths they’ll take towards conversion.

multiple-paths.png

Try to account for several of these. You likely won’t be able to create separate e-commerce funnels for each of them, but the more you’re aware of, the more accurate an idea you’ll have of how users become customers.

If you attempt to push all of your visitors through the same funnel, you might think that your site is failing when you see that not all of them are moving through your pre-determined steps. But in reality, they may just be taking an alternate path.
Plus, if you only consider one version of your funnel, you could miss optimization opportunities on the pages it doesn’t include.
If you’re not sure what that should look like, you can start by working backwards. What are the most important goals on your site?
For most site owners, the answer to this question is either sales or lead form submissions. Place that action at the bottom of your funnel.
Then, determine which other actions a user needs to take first in order to be ready to complete that step.
Some of these actions will also be conversions, like downloading a resource or signing up for a downloadable guide. These are some of the most important actions a user can take, aside from your main goals.
This means they’re essential for including in your conversion funnel. Plus, much like the major conversions on your site, these are easy to track and measure. So the more you have, the easier it will be to gauge movement through your funnel.
But research shows that it takes 6-8 touches to generate a viable sales lead. So does this mean that you need to create a sales funnel with more than six possible conversions before your main goal?

Nope.
Instead, consider the micro conversions, or the small interactions people make on your site before moving to the next step.
For example, a user’s path through a conversion funnel on a B2B site might look something like this:

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At the top of the funnel, or “TOFU,” the visitor looks for information about this specific company. Then, they provide their email address on a landing page and get an email with an additional offer.
They click, convert again, and get another thank you email with another offer. Finally, they convert and enter the sales cycle.
This is a relatively straightforward path, but before the user took any sort of action, they browsed the site to determine whether they were interested in the company.
Finding the correct page, and spending time reading it, was a “micro conversion” all on its own. After all, if the user hadn’t found that page, it’s unlikely that the rest of their actions would’ve happened at all.
So as you develop your funnel, determine which micro conversions need to happen before the main, or “macro” conversions on your site.
For example, on every single product page, Amazon offers its users several ways to make a micro conversion.
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Visitors can watch product videos, read reviews, look at answers to previously-asked questions, or check out special offers related to the product.
These actions all help them learn more about the product, and if they’re a qualified buyer, get even closer to making a purchase.
Your micro conversions can include any number of actions, depending on your business model and site. Maybe you want users to add a product to their cart, or maybe you want them to share your content on social media.
In some cases, you may simply want them to visit a certain number of pages, or watch a video on one of your pages.
These actions all help visitors learn more about your company and become more engaged with your brand. As a result, they’re essential for conversions — and you need to include them when you create your funnel.

2. Set up your conversion goals in Google Analytics

After you’ve determined what you want your funnel to look like, you need to have a way to measure how users are actually moving through your site.
The best way to do this is by setting up conversion goals in Google Analytics.
Analytics is one of the best ways to measure your site’s performance, and the information you provide on what you’re trying to accomplish, the more helpful it will be in giving you an idea of your success.
If you already have a few goals set up in Analytics, this is a great start. But in order to get an accurate idea of how your conversion funnel is performing, you’ll need to set up goals at each stage of the funnel.
It’s up to you to decide how many you want to add, but at the very least, you should set up at least one goal for each stage. You should also set up goals for all major conversions, like purchases, form submissions, email list signups, and resource downloads.
Fortunately, adding conversion goals is a relatively easy process.
First, log into Google Analytics and navigate to your Admin settings. Select the View you want to work with, then click “Goals.”
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Click “New Goal” in the upper left.
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From here, you have a few different options for setting up your goals. At the top of the page, you’ll see templated options to choose from.
These templates include common goals, like online registration, account creation, inquiries, and social engagement.
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If any of these match the conversions you want to measure, the templates make it easy to set up those goals.
For conversions that don’t match these types, you’ll need to set up custom goals. Google Analytics offers four options for this:

  • Destination: A user visits a specific URL
  • Duration: A user spends a certain amount of time on your site
  • Pages/screens per session: A user visits a pre-set number of pages
  • Event: A user takes action on an element tracked with JavaScript
These are all helpful options that can help you measure different types of actions on your site. But for most high-level conversions, the easiest option is to set up a Destination goal.
This is because after a user takes action on your site, you likely send them to a “thank you” page. If you’re not already doing this, I recommend that you start as soon as possible.
You can use thank you pages to direct users to additional content that may be relevant based on the action they just took. This can encourage visitors to stay on your site and learn even more about your services.
Beyond that, adding thank you pages makes tracking conversions a simple process.
Some site owners make the mistake of setting destination goals for contact pages, thinking that getting users to click the “Contact Us” button in their navigation bar is an effective goal.
And while this certainly indicates interest, many of those users may not actually complete the form.
To start tracking this type of conversion, select “Destination,” then give your goal a name. Be specific enough that if you create additional goals in the future, you’ll still know what it represents.
For example, if you’re creating a goal for a contact form submission, and you have multiple forms on your site, you could include the location of that form in its goal name.
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Next, select “Destination” and enter the URL of your target “thank you” page.
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With each new goal, you also have the option to add a funnel. This lets you add a list of pages that users typically visit before completing the goal, which will later allow you to monitor how effective those pages are at generating conversions.
This is an optional step, and all of your goals completions will be recorded whether you add a funnel or not.
But Analytics’ funnel reports can be a great way to analyze your conversion funnel’s effectiveness and identify areas that need improvement — so I recommend adding them, at least for your most important goals.
Plus, if you’ve already spent time developing your funnel, you likely know which pages you want users to visit on their path to converting.
Setting up your marketing conversion funnel is as easy as adding those URLs as steps.
You can also set up different funnels for different goals on your site. For example, if you’re tracking contact form submissions for a specific service, you might start with the URL of your general service page, then the URL of that service’s specific page, then the contact form for that service.
funnel-setup.png

If you’re tracking online purchases, on the other hand, you might include a product page, a shopping cart page, and a checkout page.
Once you’ve added your URLs, determine whether you want to track entries into your funnel that happen after the first page.
For example, if a user skips directly to a service page on your site, without visiting your general services page, do you still want to include them in your funnel report?
In most cases, the answer to this question is yes. You can make sure that this is the case for your goal funnel by leaving the “Required?” option unchecked next to your first step. This allows Analytics to collect entries into your funnel after that page.
It’s also important to note that a user doesn’t need to visit your middle pages in order for you to track their movement through your funnel. So if you’re hesitant to add less-common steps to your funnel, they won’t harm your ability to measure your results.
A user’s movements don’t need to occur in order, either — so even if they complete step three before step one, both of these pageviews will be included in your funnel report.
Once you’ve finished adding goals to your site, give your site some time to accumulate user data. Then, you’ll be able to use your results to improve your funnel.

3. Build interest with content

Your site content is essential for driving leads from one step in your conversion funnel to the next.
In order to turn your visitors into leads, you need help them learn about your industry, address their needs, and show them what sets your company apart from your competitors.
Site content is the only way to make this happen.
And as you come up with topic ideas and create new content for your site, make sure that you’re developing content content for each stage.

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Each type of content serves a different purpose in your funnel.
Top-of-funnel content, like blog posts, tip sheets, and articles, should provide helpful information that’s relevant to your audience’s needs and goals. It shouldn’t be overly “salesy,” and should focus primarily on education.
This type of content has the most room for creativity, because it’s not focused on immediately converting visitors into leads.
For example, content like infographics and checklists are unlikely to produce immediate sales. But when optimized and promoted well, they can be a great way to bring new, qualified visitors to your site.
This level can also include “lead magnets,” or content designed with the goal of getting users into your sales funnel. For example, you could create a downloadable guide on a topic that’s particularly important to your target audience.
Then, you’d “gate” that content by requiring that users enter an email address in order to access it. This way, the user gets a valuable resource for free — and you get to add them to your email list, so you can stay in touch even after they leave your site.
Middle-of-funnel content, like customer testimonials and case studies, should show your audience what sets your company apart from your competitors.
In this stage, you’ll want to start including clear information about your products and services. And unlike your first tier of content, it’s okay to be a bit more directly promotional.
Users who are reading this content are likely already familiar with your product, and they’ve made it to these pages because they want to learn more about your company and whether you’re the right fit for their needs.
Finally, bottom-of-funnel content, like pricing pages and demos, should give your visitors the final encouragement they need to take action.

4. Identify leaks in your website conversion funnel

Let’s take a second to go back to how we visualize a sales funnel. In a way, this process isn’t actually a funnel.
While it should guide your visitors towards converting, it it isn’t as effective as a physical funnel in guiding all of your visitors towards a desired action.
Think about it: What happens when you take a real funnel and pour liquid into it?
All of the liquid — 100% of it — will be forced through the small hole in the bottom of the funnel. It has to go somewhere.
Now, think of how your potential customers move through your site’s funnel. What happens when your advertising campaigns and strategies on other channels “pour” new potential customers into that funnel?
In most cases, only a handful of the customers who enter your funnel come out the bottom. In fact, the average conversion rate for lead submission forms for various industries ranges from 2.8% to 6%.
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So: Where do all of these potential customers go? Why aren’t they all pushed through to the bottom of the funnel?
The truth is that your funnel has holes at each level.
Think of each step as filter. Each level of the funnel will filter out users who aren’t interested, and only the ones who qualify make it to the next level. The rest leave your funnel through the side.
Some marketers refer to these exits as “leaks” in your conversion funnel.

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So, what are you supposed to do about this? Just let all of those leads go?
Of course not.
While some of these users may have left your funnel because they weren’t qualified leads, that’s likely not the case for all of them. Sometimes, your site simply doesn’t do an effective job of moving them to the next step.
Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you identify where your “leaks” are and take steps to minimize them.
If you’ve added funnels to your goals in Analytics, one of the best ways to identify funnel issues is by using the Funnel Visualization report.
Select “Conversions” from your Analytics menu, then click “Funnel Visualization.”
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Here, you’ll see a visual representation of how users move through the funnel you created.

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The screenshot above shows what the last few stages in the conversion funnel might look like for an ecommerce store. Users move from their cart page to a billing and shipping page, then a payment page and a review of their purchase before completing the transaction.
In this case, less than 43% of users even made it from their cart page to the checkout process.
As you can see, this makes it easy to tell where you’re losing your visitors. You can see exactly which steps they aren’t taking — and what they’re doing instead.
The column on the right shows where visitors are actually going when they don’t take the next step in your funnel.
Some of these “exits” are harmless, like the users in the above screenshot that visit a sign-in page. This simply indicates that they already have an account on the site, and will likely return to the checkout process after they log in.
But in some cases, these exits represent distractions from your goal. If you notice that a large chunk of visitors are leaving the high-converting pages for less important content on your site, this signals that you have some work to do.
And if you see that a certain page in your funnel is particularly effective in driving users to the next step, you can think of that page as a leak in your funnel. This is a great place to focus your conversion rate optimization efforts — which we’ll get to in the next step.
Before we get there, though, it’s also important to consider another cause for poor funnel performance. What if you didn’t design your funnel to be an accurate representation of how users actually move through your site?
Your funnel might not be leaking. It might just be the wrong funnel altogether.
You can determine whether this is the case by looking at your Reverse Goal Path report. Instead of showing you how effectively users move through your idea of a funnel, it shows how they actually arrived at the conversion.
For example, an ecommerce store’s reverse goal path report could to look like this:

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You can sort this report by goal completions to see the most common paths a user takes to each conversion on your site. This will show you the three pages they visited prior to making a conversion.
Then, you can use this insight to create more accurate funnels for your site. If you find that these reports are drastically different from the funnels you created with your goals, you have some adjustments to make.
First, you’ll want to edit your goal funnel to reflect the most common paths for each one. Then, you can optimize those pages to be even more effective at converting visitors into leads and sales.
You can also use the User Flow report to gain similar insight.

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This report provides a visual representation of common paths through your site, but instead of focusing on the last actions your users take before converting, it starts at the beginning.
Analyzing this report can help you learn more about how your visitors behave, right from the start. And if their actions aren’t in line with your conversion funnel, it can help you determine where you need to make changes.

5. Optimize for conversions

After you’ve identified where you have issues in your conversion funnel, it’s time to take action to fix them.
If you’re familiar with conversion rate optimization, you know that there are tons of changes you can test on your site with the goal of increasing conversions.
These changes range from different button colors to new calls to action to updated forms to virtually anything else you might think of altering.
If you name it, a site owner somewhere has likely tried it to increase their conversions.
That’s why there are also many blog posts and articles on the subject that recommend different “best practices” for site optimization.
And while these can serve as a great source of ideas, it’s important to remember that those results are based on other site owners’ audiences — not yours. So instead of letting them shape your site, it’s best to optimize based on insight from your target audience.
You can start by focusing your efforts on pages that you’ve identified as leaks in your funnel. In many cases, these will be key conversion pages.
For example, the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.23%. That means if your site performs as well as most, for every 10 people who add products to their carts on your site, only three will end up purchasing those products.

So if you notice that a lot of your visitors are making it to their cart page, but not completing their purchases, this is a prime area to focus your conversion rate efforts.
But what should you change?
Unfortunately, fixing optimization issues isn’t usually as easy as identifying them. In fact, in one survey, users reported ten different reasons they abandon their carts.

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So how can you tell which one is to blame for your low conversion rate?
One of the best ways is by utilizing user testing tools, like heatmaps.
Before running any tests, try to learn as much as you can about the people who took action on your site and those who didn’t.
What differences were there? What stopped non-converting users from taking action? What objections did they have, and how can you eliminate those?
The more confident you are in your answers to those questions, the more effective you’ll be in your optimization efforts.
And heatmaps can help you find those answers.
If you’re unfamiliar with heatmaps, they provide a visual representation of where your users focus their attention on your site — and where they don’t.
For example, in this heatmap, you can see a few glowing areas on the navigation bars, and one that’s particularly bright over the email opt-in form.

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This shows that the majority of the clicks on the page are going to those areas, and that the signup field receives more clicks than any other element.
In this case, the heatmap shows that the page is effective in driving that conversion. So if that’s the most important goal for the page, it’s performing extremely well.
But what if it wasn’t?
What if the page was supposed to be driving clicks to a different page, or even on the button in the lower right corner?
In that case, this heatmap would show why users weren’t taking those actions. It would highlight the distractions that were taking users away from them — and make a clear case for eliminating or moving those distracting elements.
But what if you don’t see any clear distractions on your heatmaps? If your clicks aren’t really concentrated in any one place?
Let’s say your heatmap looks like this example:

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Here, the clicks aren’t focused in any one area, other than the navigation menu. This signifies that the page isn’t giving users clear direction about what to do.
If any of the main pages in your conversion funnel look like this, you have an issue.
Your goal with each of these pages should be to guide the majority of your visitors to a specific action, so they should have clear glowing spots on the elements that represent those actions.
Even with low traffic numbers, your conversion-focused elements should stand out.
For example, on this page, it’s clear that a large percentage of clicks go to the signup button:
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Your goal should be to create a page with similar results. But how you can do that?
Let’s take a look at this example from North Face:

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These are heatmaps of their checkout page, before and after optimization.
In the version on the left, the small, circled red cluster is the checkout button. The fact that it’s glowing red is a solid start — but it’s clearly not receiving nearly as much attention as the large red cluster above it.
That red cluster was a promotional banner with information related to a sale. On some pages, like their homepage or an informational page, this would be great. After all, it indicates that users are thinking about pricing information, and possibly making a purchase.
But on this particular page, it was distracting from a much more important action: A purchase.
Not good.
Using this insight, they moved the checkout button to a more prominent location than the banner.
As a result, they saw a 21% increase in clicks on that button.
If you’re not sure why your visitors aren’t converting, running heatmap tests is an easy way to gain insight into what they’re doing instead.
Then, you can be confident that you’re making changes that are tailored to how your actual users interact with your site.
Beyond that, another great way to learn about your users is perhaps the most obvious: Asking them.
Of course, I’m not suggesting you personally call or email each of your site’s non-converting visitors.
That would be a bit invasive, not to mention extremely time-consuming.
Instead, you can use surveys to gain insight into what your customers want.
Although heatmaps can show you which actions your visitors take, surveys let them tell you why they take those actions. This is one of the best ways to get information, because it doesn’t requiring any guessing on your part.
For example, when Canva wanted to improve their activation rates for their poster feature, one of their first steps was to send an email survey to users who hadn’t yet engaged with it.

This was a prime audience for the survey, because it let them connect with users who’d initially shown interest, but never taken action. So they were likely qualified leads, but simply hadn’t been persuaded to actually use the tool.
After analyzing the results of their survey, Canva discovered that their new users had extremely different goals from one another. Some wanted to create posters for events, while others wanted to promote organizations, like their churches.
These users understandably have different needs — and Canva’s onboarding process didn’t make it clear that the tool was equipped to meet all of them.
In order to address this issue, they decided to launch a new welcome message with options for a variety of posters.
This pop-up included templates for their users’ most common needs, as indicated by the survey’s results.
This way, when a user launched the poster tool, they likely wouldn’t need to scroll through dozens of template options to see if there was one that matched what they were trying to accomplish. Instead, they’d simply select it from a menu of six.
canva-appcues-onboarding.png

As a result, they saw a 10% increase in activation for this feature.

Most businesses would stop here. But Canva decided to double down on their success and take the experiment even further by examining the clicks within this menu.
They tried switching in different templates for the ones that were getting the fewest clicks, and continued doing this until they found a combination that generated the best possible results.
This additional testing increased their activation rates even more, bringing it up to 12%.
For a site of Canva’s size, this meant an additional ten thousand users per month using the feature, which would bring in hundreds of thousands of revenue for the business.
After seeing these results, they rolled out a similar feature for other tools on their site.
canva-for-work.jpg

Each of these new onboarding sequences created a similar lift in activation as the original test. So the insight that they gained from that original survey paid off a in major way for the company.
If you’ve never run customer development surveys, tools like Typeform make it easy to get started.
You can choose from their pre-made survey template options, then customize them to meet your needs.

typeform.png

Since these templates are designed with customer development in mind, they already contain questions that can help you learn important details about your audience, like what kinds of problems they have, and what’s preventing them from using your product as a solution.
These answers can help you figure out which information you should be highlighting on your conversion-focused pages.
For example, if you learn that your target audience is looking for a product that’s compatible with another product they’re already using, make sure to include information about compatibility on your inquiry form pages.
The more effective you are at addressing your audience’s concerns, and showing that your product meets all of their needs, the more effective you’ll be at generating conversions.
But as with every other part of your marketing strategy, you never want to guess how effective your changes are.
That’s why with every change you make, you should run A/B tests.
If you’re unfamiliar with A/B testing, it’s the process of creating two variations of a page (Variation A and Variation B), then testing both of them on users to see which generates the most conversions.
For example, if you wanted to test an orange call to action on your homepage against a green one, your test might look something like this:

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Running an A/B test requires using a testing platform that divides your traffic between your variations, so that you can collect data for both simultaneously.
Then, at the end of your test, you can determine which generated the most conversions. If one variation performed significantly better than the other, you can implement it permanently on your site.
Of course, this is a simplified explanation of the process, and there’s a lot more that goes into planning and carrying out an effective A/B test. You can learn more about that process in this guide to getting started with A/B testing.

As you identify possible changes for your site, you should always test them before implementing them permanently.
Even data-backed guesses as to why your visitors behave a certain way are still guesses — and without testing, you have know way of knowing the impact they’ll make on your conversions.
As you study your audience, identify issues, and run tests, it’s also important not to lose sight of the micro conversions in your funnel.
Although optimizing for major conversions, like sales and form submissions, will have the clearest impact on your revenue, remember that those actions likely won’t happen unless your audience takes smaller actions first.
After all, when you focus solely on major conversions, you’re only making improvements at the bottom of your funnel.
When you increase the percentage of users who make it past the awareness stage by engaging with your content and learning about your business, you move more of those early visitors on to the next step.
So even though the actions you drive them to take might be as simple as watching a video about your company, that’s an action that can keep them in your funnel.
And the more users you move through each stage of your funnel, the more of them will ultimately become your customers.

6. Consider creating additional offers to your sales conversion funnel

As I mentioned above, a sales funnel has holes at every level. This is unavoidable and in some cases, will filter out unqualified leads.
But while some of these visitors may simply not be qualified buyers, and some might be persuaded with a better-optimized page or call to action, others might be more interested in a different offer altogether.
Even if they’re not qualified for your main offer or service, they might be the perfect customer for one of your other products or services.
For example, think of what happens when you’re in a car dealership. The salesman may initially show you one of the most expensive vehicles they have. After all, high-cost sales have the biggest impact on their revenue, and might be their main business goal.
But if you explain that it’s out of your price range, they certainly won’t just tell you to leave. Instead, they’ll show you a less expensive option that’s better-suited to your needs.
Think about what your conversion funnel does with visitors who aren’t interested in your main offer.
What if a user visits multiple pages on your site, makes a conversion like signing up for your email list, then realizes your core product isn’t in their budget? Is there another option?
Or is their only choice to leave your digital equivalent of a showroom?
If your answer is the latter, and you offer multiple products or services, you have some work to do.
Although generating sales of your highest-value offer might be your main priority, a smaller sale is better than no sales at all.
One of the most popular ways to re-engage users who aren’t sold on your offer is launching an exit-intent popup. As the name implies, these popups are designed to appear when a user indicates that they’re about to leave your site without converting.
They’re usually triggered by a user moving their mouse to the upper corner of their screen — indicating that they’re about to hit the “back” button, type a new URL, or close their browser altogether.
If a user does this, you can safely assume that they’re not about to take you up on your main offer. This is the perfect opportunity to make another offer that might be better-suited to their needs.
One of the most popular exit-intent popup elements is a discount code.
Your visitor might not want to make a purchase at the full price — but they might be more inclined to complete the checkout process if they get 10% off, like the Natural Fertility Shop offers its shoppers.

fertility-shop.jpg

If you don’t want to offer discounts, or if they don’t make sense for your business model, another popular exit-intent offer is a free download.
For example, this Optimonk pop-up offers visitors a free downloadable guide related to the blog post it appears on.

optimonk.png

Asking your visitors to complete a smaller conversion keeps them engaged with your brand. Plus, in most cases, these types of conversions require an email address — enabling you to remain in contact with that user even after they leave your site.
This is a great goal for any site, and you can do it even if you don’t yet have resources to offer as an incentive. In this example from Guilty Soles, the offer is an entry into a raffle for a free pair of shoes.

guilty-soles.jpg

As long as your offer is relevant to your target audience, it can be effective for keeping them in your conversion funnel. So even if a visitor isn’t ready to convert immediately, you won’t lose them altogether.

7. Determine your best sources of qualified leads analyzing conversion funnel metrics

So far, we’ve focused primarily on optimizing your funnel for users in the middle and bottom stages. That’s because those parts of your funnel have the clearest impact on your conversions and revenue.
But it’s important to remember that the users who make it to those steps are only there because they were originally brought in at the awareness stage.
And although optimizing your site can help you minimize “leaks” in your funnel, you can also improve your results by bringing in visitors who are more likely to be qualified leads right from the start.
When you use broad targeting in your initial ad campaigns, you’re essentially casting a wide net and hoping that some of the traffic you bring in turns out to be interested in your product or service.
The wider your net, the larger the percentage of your traffic will not be qualified — and will leave your funnel before even making it to the second stage.
But the better you become at attracting high quality traffic, the more of your visitors will ultimately become customers. This will help you focus all of your marketing efforts on your most qualified leads.
So how can you determine where your best traffic is coming from?
The answer lies in your referral sources reports.
The first place to go for referral data, much like any other website data, is Google Analytics.
Navigate to your Acquisitions Overview, and you’ll see a report like this one:

acquisition-overview.png

In the left column, you can see which channels are bringing in the most traffic for your site. In this screenshot, it’s organic search. In the middle section, you’ll see user behavior data, like bounce rate, pages per session, and average session duration, for each channel.
Finally, in the right column, you can see which channels drive the most conversions for your site. For many site owners, these channels differ drastically from the ones driving the most traffic overall — and they certainly do in the above screenshot.
But this data is only sorted by general channel type.
So while it can tell you that you’re generating lots of traffic from organic search and lots of conversions from referrals, you’ll need to do a bit more digging to determine what those search engines are, which sites are sending you traffic — and what’s included in your “(Other)” sources.
You can start digging by opening your “All Traffic” report. This report presents similar data, but broken down by source and medium.

all-traffic-report.png

So instead of just seeing broad channel categories, you can get a better idea of the sources within those categories that are driving qualified traffic to your site.
Then, if you use UTM parameters to track your campaigns, you can also break your traffic down based on those parameters in the “(Other)” report.
This category is essentially a catch-all for referral sources that don’t fit within Analytics’ pre-set mediums, including custom campaigns.

other-acquisitions.png

Looking at the conversion rates for each of these campaigns will show you which are bringing qualified traffic to your site — and which aren’t.
If you notice that any of your ad campaigns are bringing in traffic that converts at a high rate, investing more into that campaign could be a great way to maximize the percentage of visitors that make it all the way through your funnel.
Beyond conversions, you can also learn more about how users from different referral sources behave on your site with tools like Crazy Egg’s Confetti report.

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Much like a heatmap, this report will show where users are clicking on each of your pages. But it takes things a step further by letting you include user data in the visual representation.
Instead of using different colors to represent click concentration, this report uses them to represent information about the user made each click.
In the screenshot above, for example, red dots indicate a click from a user who arrived on the page from another pages on the same site. Green dots, however, represent clicks from users who arrived from a Google search.
You can sort these reports by many different conversion funnel metrics, but some of the most helpful for determining sources of qualified traffic are your custom campaign parameters.
For example, if you notice that traffic from one ad set tends to produce lots of clicks on your email signup form, but another generates more clicks on your main call to action button, you can use this information to adjust your investment in each accordingly.

8. Use automation to keep leads in your funnel

I’ve mentioned a few different strategies for getting your visitors’ emails on this page.
That’s because email is an extremely effective channel for keeping leads in your funnel and moving them closer to conversion.
Most of your visitors won’t be ready to make a large conversion on your site. In fact, 48% of businesses say most of their leads require a complex sales cycle.

sales-cycle-chart.png

So no matter how well you’ve set up and optimized your conversion funnel, it’s unlikely that your visitors will make it all the way through after one visit.
If you don’t have any way of contacting them, it’s up to them to remember to come back and learn more about your business. Some of your most interested visitors might do this.
But they likely only represent a fraction of your total audience.
For the rest of your visitors, their odds of returning to your site drastically increase if you reach them directly in their inboxes with content that’s relevant to their needs and interests.
This is where drip campaigns and autoresponder emails become extremely valuable.
Most companies who use email marketing begin with standard monthly or weekly newsletters. They send the same content to their entire list of subscribers, with helpful tips, updates, and company-specific information.
That’s a great start.
But these newsletters don’t take a user’s stage in the conversion process into a account. So the content is rarely ever relevant to all of their subscribers.
After all, a user who just recently heard of your brand for the first time has very different needs from one who’s been using your product for years.
With automated emails, you can take these differences into account and make sure you’re sending relevant content to each of your subscribers.
There are a few ways to make this happen.
One of the most popular is a drip campaign, or a series of automated, time-based emails.
If you’ve ever subscribed to an email list, you’ve likely gotten an email that looked something like this one from Groove within an hour or so of signing up.

groove-signup-email.png

Right from the start, this email does an excellent job of establishing the brand’s personality. Alex comes across as friendly and accessible — which are both great traits for encouraging new subscribers to reach out.
He also mentions that in the coming days, he’ll be sending “some highlights with our best content to help you get started.”
This is a clear indicator of a drip campaign.
All the resources that come after this email are likely extremely helpful for someone who’s early in Groove’s conversion funnel. And they’re all scheduled to send the second a user opts into their list.
So what might this look like for your business?
Maybe after a user first signs up for you list, you send them an automated confirmation within a few minutes. This email could contain a quick “thank you” for signing up, as well as links to additional resources on your site.
Then, five days later, you could send a second email encouraging them to read a blog post or informational article that addresses questions your audience typically has early in the conversion process.
A few days after that, you could follow up with company-specific information about one of your products.
Finally, two weeks after their initial signup, you could send an email encouraging them to request a free quote or schedule a call with someone from your team.
Of course, this is a fairly generic, simplified overview of the process. But the general idea is that with drip campaigns, you send a series of emails that move users gradually towards conversion.
Instead of sending a sales pitch immediately, you use your first few emails to establish trust with your subscribers. This way, you provide value before asking for anything in return.
And this strategy works, too.
Targeting users with content relevant to their stage in the buying process yields 72% higher conversion rates than a standard email strategy.
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Beyond that, you can take things a step further by altering your campaigns based on how users respond to them.
For example, in this hypothetical campaign, Pardot determines which content to send next based on how a subscriber responded to the previous email.

what-is-drip-campaign.png

For example, if a user shows interest in the whitepaper in the original email, this is a sign that it was the right content for their needs. As a result, they’d follow up with another written resource.
But if a user doesn’t show interest in that resource, they’d follow up with an informational video. After all, different users have different preferences — and taking them into account can boost engagement rates.
The possibilities are virtually endless with this type of sequence. Beyond the ways that a user interacts with your email content, you can also tailor your campaigns based on the actions they take on your site.
Some of the most common examples of this are shopping cart abandonment emails. As I mentioned above, cart abandonment is a huge problem for many ecommerce retailers.
If you run an ecommerce store and notice that users are abandoning their carts at high rates, you might think that your only option is to use insight from users who don’t complete their purchases to improve your funnel.
This is a great start.
But if you’re collecting email addresses, you can also email those non-converting users with reminders to return and buy. For example, check out this email from Altitude Sports:

altitude-sports-example.png

Instead of providing generic information about a new product or upcoming promotion, the email includes a reminder of a specific product that the user already showed interest in by adding to their cart.
It also includes a direct link to the user’s cart, with the product in it — ready to purchase.
Of course, this strategy isn’t unique to Altitude Sports. If you’ve ever shopped online, you’ve likely received similar emails from your favorite retailers.
Some retailers also take things a step further by including an additional offer in their cart abandonment emails. For example, this email from NOMAD includes a code for a 15% discount.

NOMAD.png

If price is what stopped this user from making a purchase, a discount code count be exactly what they need to return and convert.
Plus, mentioning that the discount is only available “for the next 48 hours” creates a sense of urgency — which is almost never a bad thing for driving sales.
Finally, it’s also worth noting that this type of behavioral-based email isn’t only an option for ecommerce retailers.
For example, a few days after browsing Airbnb rentals in Havana, Cuba, I received this email with links to specific properties:
airbnb-havana.png

Although I hadn’t been ready to book on that first visit, this email reminded me that I still had yet to make any reservations. Plus, the links took me straight to homes that met the filter criteria I’d been using to search.
This meant that they were still extremely relevant to my needs.
But even if you don’t have a ton of specific product pages to use for behavioral targeting, you can still send highly-targeted emails to your subscribers.
The best way to do this is with segementation.
First, you can segment your list based on signup location. For example, let’s say your company is an energy provider.
A user who signs up on a page about your residential services likely has very different needs from a user who signs up on a page about your commercial services.
You can add these users to separate segments, then send emails that are more customized to their needs. And the more effective you are at tailoring your email content to your subscribers, the more successful you’ll be in bringing them back to your site.
In fact, 51% of email marketers say segmentation is one of the most effective ways to nurture leads with email.

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This ranks ahead of behavior-triggered emails, and even individualized email messaging.
When you tailor your email content to each lead’s stage in your conversion funnel, you’ll be much more effective in bringing them back to your site.
Just like you wouldn’t expect a first-time visitor to your site to make a high-value sale, you can’t expect an email subscriber to be interested in a sales-focused email right off the bat.
Start by establishing your brand as a helpful resource and trustworthy provider of information, then get to the information that will encourage them to become a customer.

9. Earn repeat customers

What do you do after a user makes it to the bottom of your conversion funnel?
For example, let’s say a user spends three months engaging with your email content, visiting your site about once a week, and learning more about your company.
Finally, they make a purchase.
Success!
But now what? Do you let them drop out of your funnel altogether?
Of course not. Especially not when you consider that it costs 6-7x as much to earn a new customer than retain an existing one.

Plus, while the probability of selling to a new user hovers around 5-20%, the probability of selling to an existing customer jumps up to 60-70%.
When you think about all of the steps that lead up to a conversion, this makes sense. The majority of the early steps involve a customer learning about their options for a specific problem, then learning how your company can help them solve it.
Now, that they already know this information, the process of a second sale will go much more quickly. Plus, they already trust your brand and know the value of your services — so there’s much less convincing involved.
Your main priority, then, should be to keep them engaged with with your brand. This is another scenario where automated email campaigns can be extremely helpful.
If you offer products with a relatively short sales cycle, you can even get your customers thinking about their next purchase immediately after the first.
For example, this GoDaddy thank you email includes a discount code for the user’s next purchase.

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Right off the bat, the wording here assumes that the user will be making another purchase. Even if they hadn’t yet been considering one, this email could be exactly what it takes to get that thought process started.
Plus, assuming they have a positive experience with the the product, there’s now no reason they wouldn’t return to GoDaddy for their needs in the future. They can buy from a brand they trust, and at a discounted rate.
Of course, in this case, the company is offering a product that users often purchase multiple times.
So what can you do if your products tend to be one-time purchases, or you offer ongoing services?
Your best bet is to look for opportunities to upsell your customers with additional offers that complement the purchase they’ve already made.
For example, this email from Sambag highlights products that match a user’s recent purchases on their ecommerce store.

sambag.png

Even if the user isn’t interested in those exact products, this email could pique their interest and get them to return to the store.
But for service-based businesses, it can be a bit more challenging.
If you already offer multiple plans, email is an excellent way to remind users of their options and encourage them to upgrade to a higher tier.
For example, this CloudApp email highlights the benefits of upgrading to their Pro plan:

cloudapp.png

It provides a clear comparison of what the Pro plan offers to what the user currently has — and presents in a way that makes the choice sound like an easy one.
Even if the user hadn’t previously considered upgrading, this email could make them start seriously considering it as an option.
But what should you do if you don’t have a clear plan in place for upgrades or additional services?
In this case, generating repeat sales is a bit more complicated.
But if you’re looking for ways to create an additional offer, identify the reason a client hired you in the first place. What were they looking to accomplish? Are there any other ways you can help them reach that goal?
Once you identify the answers to these questions, you can present your new offer to your best clients as upgrade options.
And if those clients go for it, you may just find yourself adding a new conversion funnel to your site.

Conclusion

Developing a conversion funnel optimization can be challenging.
But when you take the time to understand your audience and learn what they need in order to become customers, you can optimize your funnel to maximize the number of visitors that ultimately become customers.

How are you using your conversion funnel to analyze and improve your marketing efforts?

 

mailboxpimp

Rising Star
BGOL Patreon Investor
https://www.udemy.com/create-a-internet-marketing-sales-funnel-in-only-1-day/

Create a Internet Marketing Sales Funnel in ONLY 1 Day
Create High Converting Lead and Follow-Up Pages in ONE day!
4.1 (10 ratings)

310 students enrolled

What you'll learn
  • Create a Lead, Optin Page with no technical skills
  • Create a marketing sales page with wordpress no technical skills required
  • How to customize and create any new pages for your sales funnel
  • How to structure a successful internet marketing sales funnel

Requirements
  • Pen a paper to take notes
  • Access to computer with internet access

Description
How To Create A Sales Funnel Internet Marketing Website In 1 Day

Follow My Exact System, Use My High Converting Templates & Cheatsheet Blueprint

You Will Learn:

1. How to set-up a nicely designed sales funnel site so you will save thousands of $$$ on hiring a designer.

2. How to add high converting functionality to your website so you will save even more $$$ on not having to hire a developer.

3. How to quickly and easily update and manage your own website without having to hire someone to do it for you.

4. How you can start earning money tomorrow by setting up websites for others. And lots more!

Have you ever wanted to create your own website but don't know how to code?

Good news, you're in the right place!

This course is designed to walk you step-by-step through setting up your own website without any experience or coding required.

Specific action steps are included to walk you through setting up your website so by the end of this course you will have launched your very own internet marketing sales funnel website!

As an internet marketer and web designer for over 15 years, I'm here to help you get your website online. I'm here to show you exactly how everything works, and show you my exact tricks I use to build websites like this daily for clients. No fancy terminology or complex methods used here.

Just exactly what you need to know to set-up a fully functioning internet marketing sales funnel website.

Who this course is for:
  • web professionals
  • internet marketers
  • entrepreneurs
  • web designer
 

mailboxpimp

Rising Star
BGOL Patreon Investor
Here's how to go about creating a sales funnel to drive sales for your business:

Step 1: Identify Your Prospects
The first step in the sales process is identifying prospects. The goal is to drive interested parties into the wide end of your sales funnel so that you can qualify them as good prospects or identify them as "unwanted residue."

First, begin by defining your ideal customer. It helps if you draw a sketch.

Create a questionnaire for yourself that identifies the problems your ideal customer has. For instance, if you run a flower shop, you may have a questionnaire that looks something like this:

  1. Do they know someone who is getting married?
  2. Did someone they know recently pass away?
  3. Are they romantically involved with anyone at this time?
  4. Are they allergic to certain types of flowers?
You'll have to come up with your own list of qualifying questions. You're not going to share this questionnaire with anyone; it's merely for your planning benefit. The goal here is to figure out your ideal customer's needs and desires. Some people buy flowers for weddings, so you may want to identify people who are getting married or know someone who is getting married.

Chances are, your business has several different types of ideal customers, or prospects. You'll need to identify them all.



FREE Market Research Worksheet from Business Know-How
Figure out who your customers are and where you can find them with this free, fillable Market Research Worksheet.





Step 2: Qualify Your Prospects
Just because a person fits into your ideal customer demographic doesn't mean that they are necessarily an ideal customer. Maybe Bob and Jane are planning a marriage but don't care about flower arrangements. They certainly wouldn't be in your prospect range if that is the case.

Therefore, you'll need a way to qualify your prospects after you've identified them, and after you've driven them into your sales funnel.

Qualifying prospects is not difficult. You can take surveys or conduct polls, you can start conversations and get people to talking so that they reveal their needs and desires, or you can create a product that appeals to your ideal customer then promote it to the right audience. Those who qualify will bite while those who don't, won't.

Step 3: Apply Sales Funnel Fundamentals
Your sales funnel consists of the means you use to drive prospects and potential customers to your business and close the sale. Online, you might have a blog that you write to every day. You promote your blog on social media to draw attention to your business. After you get prospects to your blog, you entice them with an offer in order to get their e-mail addresses. You then send out periodic e-mail messages to get those prospects interested in a product you want them to buy.

RELATED: Learn How New Customers Find Your Business

Some marketers go so far as to segment their prospects. They can then market specific products to those segments.

Another way to do this is to sell something that is easily affordable, say a $10 or $20 product. Then you have a list of confirmed buyers. You then offer a higher-priced product or service and send out a notice to your confirmed buyers to see who nibbles on that offer. You are driving your prospects deeper into your funnel.

Step 4: Establish Your Sales Funnel
The best way to set your sales funnel is to plan it backwards. If you have a $100 product, for instance, you have to find the people willing to shell out that kind of money for the benefits you're offering. But very few people are going to part with that kind of money unless they know they can trust you. So you have to slowly build up some trust.

That means you need to offer a lower-priced product. You'll need to create that product, but what needs to happen before you do that?

Walk yourself through the sales process backward. At each step in the process, ask yourself, "What is my prospect likely to do before they trust me enough to take this action?" Then ask yourself, "What do I need to do to drive my prospect to that decision?"

A typical backward plan for a sales process looks like this:

  1. Flagship product
  2. Mid-range product
  3. Intro product
  4. Free informational piece (teaser)
  5. E-mail opt-in campaign
  6. Blog conversation
  7. Social media interaction
Offline, it might look more like this:

  1. Premium product purchase
  2. Discount offer or one-item purchase
  3. First time in store/window shopper
  4. Receives monthly brochure
  5. Gets on mailing list
  6. Checks out website
  7. Meet at networking event
The key is to understand what your customer wants and what you have to do to deliver those benefits. To get to the initial stage in your sales process, you have to think backward from the point you want your customer to end up. That's how you create your sales funnel.
 
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