Selling online without a sales funnel is like shooting in the dark, you never know
What was hit?
When was it hit?
How many arrows did I use before I hit it?
In the online world, the arrow is your money, and if you keep shooting in the dark it won't be long until you empty your savings and are drowning in debt.
In this article, I will reveal the importance of having a sales funnel for any product or service that you are currently providing to the public.
Why it's slowly becoming a necessity to have a sales funnel.
Read on and avoid gambling with your money!
Sales funnel is an automated sales process or journey that a prospect goes through until they become a customer.
Each block or page of a sales funnel has a goal to provide enough knowledge to persuade a customer to go to the next stage until they have reached your desired outcome.
Typically the first funnel block makes a prospect aware of the product or service being offered.
On this phase, a prospect becomes aware that there is a solution to a problem they had or didn't know they have.
You can either create a sales funnel that targets a prospect who is not aware of the problem or one who is aware of the problem but not aware of the solution.
You have probably seen the first block of a funnel as it the first thing you see when you visit a well-optimized blog. They come in the form of newsletters, ebooks, surveys, online quizzes, webinars and more.
Once a prospect has entered your funnel, you will gain their interest through an email follow up which you can automate through softwares like ConvertKit and GetResponse.
Facebook Messenger is also proving to be a good way to follow up, you can automate the process using ManyChat.
The next stage of the funnel is getting the prospect to make a decision, this should be easier since you would have already gained the customer's interest.
With a bit of testimonial and customers reviews, you can get a prospect to the next stage of the funnel which is taking action.
A lot of people think that the final stage of a funnel is when you close your lead and they have taken your desired action.
Once a prospect has become a paying customer it should be your aim that they stay in your funnel for as long as they are breathing. Till death do us apart!
If you haven't already seen the importance of a sales funnel yet, check out these 13 reasons why you should be using a sales funnel now.
Let's say you are a dentist and you decide to create an ebook called How to eat sweets the right way.
You then give out this ebook for just $5 and 3000 people purchase it?
$15000 made, you celebrate.
But with a sales funnel you can pitch to the same 3000 clients who bought the ebook that you also do dentist checkups for say $200.
Maybe 300 people book an appointment for dentist checkup that's $60000 in your bank account.
As long as you have good offers for your customers your funnel can go on and on.
Thus creating more revenue for you.
Almost all sales funnels I have seen have more than 1 backend offer and the amazing thing is the back-end offers make more money than the front-end over.
Email marketing is so powerful, I wonder why people don't take it seriously.
The trick about making email marketing a powerful tool in your business is by simply emailing you email subscribers often.
You can simply set up a sequence of emails and put them on autopilot using ConvertKit, sit back watch the money rolling in.
The purchase cycle doesn't happen in one day, for some products it can take months, email marketing can be used to nurture your leads until your desired action has been taken.
You can use facebook retargeting for such a purpose but it's not free like email marketing.
The important thing to note also is that you should always segment your emails into groups of people who haven't bought anything yet, people who bought your first offer and people who bought your first and backend offers.
This will make it easier for you to send personalized content to each group.
When you use sales funnels you have the ability to split test each and every part of your funnel test it on your audience until you find a winner.
You can test user experience, perhaps moving a call to action on the top of the funnel can convert better than below.
Or you can also do an A/B test on your design, perhaps a yellow call to action button converts better than the red one.
That's something you will never know until you do an A/B test.
You can run a lot of split tests to make sure you have a well-optimized funnel.
Here are some main A/B testing goals:
Too often the laptop lifestyle is not as sweet as it sounds.
You might find yourself staring at your screen the whole day, letting go of your social life just to make a living.
But it doesn't have to be that way!
Once you find your winning formula through A/B testing which we discussed earlier, all you have to do it put it on autopilot.
With a sales funnel, you can pre-set your marketing campaign and let it run while you are sleeping.
Creating a sales funnel is like creating your best salesman and having him work his butt off while you are on holiday.
We can not even begin to talk about passive income without automation.
Sales funnels are all about numbers, so is sales forecasting.
Once you have created a sales funnel that converts well, you will know the conversion rate of each funnel block and the whole funnel.
Using sales funnels will help you to track your sales, understand your sales process and make better adjustments in the future.
The ability to predict your sales will help you utilize your resources efficiently and reduce costs.
When you can predict your sales revenue and volume, it will enable you to make better decisions on hiring, budgeting, and goal-setting.
Suppose your sales forecast is showing a 37% increase. You can start recruiting people to meet up with the demand and also calculate the costs of meeting such a demand.
A sales funnel is a well-organized sales strategy on its own.
When done right a sales strategy gives your team a clear focus, like A well-oiled machine you can expect everything to run smoothly.
A well-organized sales strategy gives you an opportunity to create a passive income, you don't need to be always hands on to make sure everything is going according to plan.
Consistency is very important in an organization and to achieve consistent desired results you need a well-organized sales strategy.
It's also easier to locate a problem and fix it as quickly as possible if your sales plan is well organized.
Like I said before the purchase cycle doesn't happen in one day, so while you are at it, it would be beneficial to build long term relationships with your prospects.
As of late buying online has become more personal, people just don't buy from someone they don't know anymore.
A sales funnel improves engagement with your customers by constantly providing valuable content through email marketing.
When you have a good relationship with your customers, they hardly question the quality of your new products, they just buy because they trust you.
Loyal customers who are committed to your brand can also play a vital role indirectly as your brand ambassadors.
If you are not tracking your sales, engagement and click through rate, you will just be shooting in the dark be it you are using sales funnels or not.
Without a tracking system in place, you can't identify your visitor's trends and opportunities that can make your sales funnel really effective.
It's really difficult to grow your online business if you don't know your numbers
You need to know how people are interacting with your funnel, which part of your funnel has a lower click through, traffic sources and so on.
When you have gathered these numbers, that's only when you can analyze them and optimize your sales funnel.
It's nearly impossible to analyze and optimize your sales funnel if you were not tracking it.
On all the metrics that you might track, your sales funnel conversion rate is definitely one of the most important.
A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action (conversion) out of the total number of visitors.
A sales funnel has a higher conversion rate than a website or any other sales channel and techniques that people are using nowadays.
This is because when you have a well-optimized funnel it filters non-buyers out along the funnel.
At the end of the funnel you will only be focusing buyers, collect their emails and retarget them when you have a backend offer or a similar offer.
Improving your conversion rate helps you increase your sales with the same number of visitors.
So we can safely say improving your conversion rate is a cost-effective technique.
Sales funnels are a marketing campaign and sales page in one place.
By aiming to create a long term relationship with customers, a sales funnel cuts unnecessary marketing costs.
Without a sales funnel, you would need a marketing agency to create a marketing campaign for you and a copywriter to write a sales page for you.
If these two departments are not working together it can result in more expenditure for your business.
A well-optimized sales funnel helps you grow your email list very fast and once you have an email list it's easier to pitch your products to your clients without competing with anyone else on the same page.
Unlike SEO where you are all fighting to get on the first page of Google or PPC where you have to bid for the best keyword in your niche.
Always aim to share valuable content with your email list and they will always listen to you more than anyone one else in your niche.
Russell Brunson's book DotCom Secrets has some amazing strategies about how you can keep your email subscribers engaged by creating an attractive character that people are willing to follow.
The customer lifetime value represents the value a business will derive from their relationship with a customer.
If you have been buying $20 worth of Easter eggs at a local gift shop for the past 5 years then you Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to that gift shop is $100.
The lifetime value of a customer must also account for the cost of acquiring that customer, also including the marketing and sales expenses.
When using a sales funnel you get to sell more than one offer to your customers, you can offer a multiple back-end offers resulting in an increase in the lifetime value of your customers.
Generally, the more you get return purchases from your customers the more their CLV increases.
A sales funnel is actually one of the best ways to create a successful business online without having to create a website.
It can be a daunting task to maintain a website and making sure it's a search engine optimized.
It's very easy to create a sales funnel, with landing page builder software like ClickFunnels and Builderall you can build a sales funnel within minutes since its just drag and drop, no coding.
You can also create your sales funnel in such a way that builds your brand and awareness by incorporating your logos, colors, mottos and so on.
Conclusion
Sales funnels are not new anymore, online businesses and even brick and mortar business are now turning to sales funnels to increase revenue while cutting costs.
Whatever you are selling, with a sales funnel you will sell more.
Creating and optimizing your sales funnel is crucial to growing your business.
Knowing how your audience finds you and why they leave is key for retaining customers.
I personally love sales funnels because it's way easier to nurture relationships with my clients, build trust and increase my sales.
That's my story and I am sticking to it.
What was hit?
When was it hit?
How many arrows did I use before I hit it?
In the online world, the arrow is your money, and if you keep shooting in the dark it won't be long until you empty your savings and are drowning in debt.
In this article, I will reveal the importance of having a sales funnel for any product or service that you are currently providing to the public.
Why it's slowly becoming a necessity to have a sales funnel.
Read on and avoid gambling with your money!
What exactly is a sales funnel
Sales funnel is an automated sales process or journey that a prospect goes through until they become a customer.
Each block or page of a sales funnel has a goal to provide enough knowledge to persuade a customer to go to the next stage until they have reached your desired outcome.
Typically the first funnel block makes a prospect aware of the product or service being offered.
On this phase, a prospect becomes aware that there is a solution to a problem they had or didn't know they have.
You can either create a sales funnel that targets a prospect who is not aware of the problem or one who is aware of the problem but not aware of the solution.
You have probably seen the first block of a funnel as it the first thing you see when you visit a well-optimized blog. They come in the form of newsletters, ebooks, surveys, online quizzes, webinars and more.
Once a prospect has entered your funnel, you will gain their interest through an email follow up which you can automate through softwares like ConvertKit and GetResponse.
Facebook Messenger is also proving to be a good way to follow up, you can automate the process using ManyChat.
The next stage of the funnel is getting the prospect to make a decision, this should be easier since you would have already gained the customer's interest.
With a bit of testimonial and customers reviews, you can get a prospect to the next stage of the funnel which is taking action.
A lot of people think that the final stage of a funnel is when you close your lead and they have taken your desired action.
Once a prospect has become a paying customer it should be your aim that they stay in your funnel for as long as they are breathing. Till death do us apart!
If you haven't already seen the importance of a sales funnel yet, check out these 13 reasons why you should be using a sales funnel now.
Increase your sales revenue
Let's say you are a dentist and you decide to create an ebook called How to eat sweets the right way.
You then give out this ebook for just $5 and 3000 people purchase it?
$15000 made, you celebrate.
But with a sales funnel you can pitch to the same 3000 clients who bought the ebook that you also do dentist checkups for say $200.
Maybe 300 people book an appointment for dentist checkup that's $60000 in your bank account.
As long as you have good offers for your customers your funnel can go on and on.
Thus creating more revenue for you.
Almost all sales funnels I have seen have more than 1 backend offer and the amazing thing is the back-end offers make more money than the front-end over.
Email Marketing empowered
Email marketing is so powerful, I wonder why people don't take it seriously.
The trick about making email marketing a powerful tool in your business is by simply emailing you email subscribers often.
You can simply set up a sequence of emails and put them on autopilot using ConvertKit, sit back watch the money rolling in.
The purchase cycle doesn't happen in one day, for some products it can take months, email marketing can be used to nurture your leads until your desired action has been taken.
You can use facebook retargeting for such a purpose but it's not free like email marketing.
The important thing to note also is that you should always segment your emails into groups of people who haven't bought anything yet, people who bought your first offer and people who bought your first and backend offers.
This will make it easier for you to send personalized content to each group.
A/B testing
When you use sales funnels you have the ability to split test each and every part of your funnel test it on your audience until you find a winner.
You can test user experience, perhaps moving a call to action on the top of the funnel can convert better than below.
Or you can also do an A/B test on your design, perhaps a yellow call to action button converts better than the red one.
That's something you will never know until you do an A/B test.
You can run a lot of split tests to make sure you have a well-optimized funnel.
Here are some main A/B testing goals:
- Higher conversion rate
- Increased funnel visitors
- Lower cart Abandonment
- Lower bounce rate
Automate your best salesman
Too often the laptop lifestyle is not as sweet as it sounds.
You might find yourself staring at your screen the whole day, letting go of your social life just to make a living.
But it doesn't have to be that way!
Once you find your winning formula through A/B testing which we discussed earlier, all you have to do it put it on autopilot.
With a sales funnel, you can pre-set your marketing campaign and let it run while you are sleeping.
Creating a sales funnel is like creating your best salesman and having him work his butt off while you are on holiday.
We can not even begin to talk about passive income without automation.
Predict sales revenue and volume
Sales funnels are all about numbers, so is sales forecasting.
Once you have created a sales funnel that converts well, you will know the conversion rate of each funnel block and the whole funnel.
Using sales funnels will help you to track your sales, understand your sales process and make better adjustments in the future.
The ability to predict your sales will help you utilize your resources efficiently and reduce costs.
When you can predict your sales revenue and volume, it will enable you to make better decisions on hiring, budgeting, and goal-setting.
Suppose your sales forecast is showing a 37% increase. You can start recruiting people to meet up with the demand and also calculate the costs of meeting such a demand.
Well organized sales strategy
A sales funnel is a well-organized sales strategy on its own.
When done right a sales strategy gives your team a clear focus, like A well-oiled machine you can expect everything to run smoothly.
A well-organized sales strategy gives you an opportunity to create a passive income, you don't need to be always hands on to make sure everything is going according to plan.
Consistency is very important in an organization and to achieve consistent desired results you need a well-organized sales strategy.
It's also easier to locate a problem and fix it as quickly as possible if your sales plan is well organized.
Maintain long term relationships
Like I said before the purchase cycle doesn't happen in one day, so while you are at it, it would be beneficial to build long term relationships with your prospects.
As of late buying online has become more personal, people just don't buy from someone they don't know anymore.
A sales funnel improves engagement with your customers by constantly providing valuable content through email marketing.
When you have a good relationship with your customers, they hardly question the quality of your new products, they just buy because they trust you.
Loyal customers who are committed to your brand can also play a vital role indirectly as your brand ambassadors.
Track everything
If you are not tracking your sales, engagement and click through rate, you will just be shooting in the dark be it you are using sales funnels or not.
Without a tracking system in place, you can't identify your visitor's trends and opportunities that can make your sales funnel really effective.
It's really difficult to grow your online business if you don't know your numbers
You need to know how people are interacting with your funnel, which part of your funnel has a lower click through, traffic sources and so on.
When you have gathered these numbers, that's only when you can analyze them and optimize your sales funnel.
It's nearly impossible to analyze and optimize your sales funnel if you were not tracking it.
Increase your conversion rate
On all the metrics that you might track, your sales funnel conversion rate is definitely one of the most important.
A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action (conversion) out of the total number of visitors.
A sales funnel has a higher conversion rate than a website or any other sales channel and techniques that people are using nowadays.
This is because when you have a well-optimized funnel it filters non-buyers out along the funnel.
At the end of the funnel you will only be focusing buyers, collect their emails and retarget them when you have a backend offer or a similar offer.
Improving your conversion rate helps you increase your sales with the same number of visitors.
So we can safely say improving your conversion rate is a cost-effective technique.
Better co-operation between marketing and sales
Sales funnels are a marketing campaign and sales page in one place.
By aiming to create a long term relationship with customers, a sales funnel cuts unnecessary marketing costs.
Without a sales funnel, you would need a marketing agency to create a marketing campaign for you and a copywriter to write a sales page for you.
If these two departments are not working together it can result in more expenditure for your business.
Avoid competition
A well-optimized sales funnel helps you grow your email list very fast and once you have an email list it's easier to pitch your products to your clients without competing with anyone else on the same page.
Unlike SEO where you are all fighting to get on the first page of Google or PPC where you have to bid for the best keyword in your niche.
Always aim to share valuable content with your email list and they will always listen to you more than anyone one else in your niche.
Russell Brunson's book DotCom Secrets has some amazing strategies about how you can keep your email subscribers engaged by creating an attractive character that people are willing to follow.
Increase the lifetime value of a customer
The customer lifetime value represents the value a business will derive from their relationship with a customer.
If you have been buying $20 worth of Easter eggs at a local gift shop for the past 5 years then you Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to that gift shop is $100.
The lifetime value of a customer must also account for the cost of acquiring that customer, also including the marketing and sales expenses.
When using a sales funnel you get to sell more than one offer to your customers, you can offer a multiple back-end offers resulting in an increase in the lifetime value of your customers.
Generally, the more you get return purchases from your customers the more their CLV increases.
Make money without a website
A sales funnel is actually one of the best ways to create a successful business online without having to create a website.
It can be a daunting task to maintain a website and making sure it's a search engine optimized.
It's very easy to create a sales funnel, with landing page builder software like ClickFunnels and Builderall you can build a sales funnel within minutes since its just drag and drop, no coding.
You can also create your sales funnel in such a way that builds your brand and awareness by incorporating your logos, colors, mottos and so on.
Conclusion
Sales funnels are not new anymore, online businesses and even brick and mortar business are now turning to sales funnels to increase revenue while cutting costs.
Whatever you are selling, with a sales funnel you will sell more.
Creating and optimizing your sales funnel is crucial to growing your business.
Knowing how your audience finds you and why they leave is key for retaining customers.
I personally love sales funnels because it's way easier to nurture relationships with my clients, build trust and increase my sales.
That's my story and I am sticking to it.
