What the Heck is a Sales Funnel, Anyway?
For an online business owner, a sales funnel is probably the most important marketing tool you have. And yet many entrepreneurs – both new and established – have no clear understanding of what a funnel is or how it works.
As you can imagine, failing to fully understand and use this critical part of your business means you won’t be making any money.
Let me say that again.
WITHOUT A SALES FUNNEL, YOU WON’T MAKE ANY MONEY.
A Simple Sales Funnel
At its most basic, a sales funnel consists of 4 parts:
- Free offer with an email opt-in
- Low Cost Product
- Medium Cost Product
- High Cost Product
At the top of the funnel is all your free content, which typically requires nothing of your readers. Blog posts, YouTube videos, Facebook content, and other information readers can access at no cost is where you gain your readers interest.
Next, you’ll have an attractive offer that requires a very small “payment” of sorts – typically an email address. You’ve seen this type of offer on websites all over the internet, and probably even signed up for some.
This is the free ebook or guide, video series, checklist, workbook, or other valuable content that is available in exchange for “opting in” to an email list.
You might not have thought of using Canva to create your checklists or reports – I wouldn’t have, until now.
I found Stacey Myers – Canva Tutorial – it comes with templates for checklists and reports, plus shows you how to customize them to suit your brand and audience. Full disclosure – the link is my affiliate link, but if you’re in the process of creating a free opt-in, this is a fast and easy way to do it.
Once on your mailing list, you’ll then present your readers with a series of low-cost offers. Perhaps you have a low-priced ebook or a trial membership.
Customers who purchase your low-priced product move further down the funnel, and are presented with more, medium priced products.
As they continue to buy, they move closer and closer to your high cost offer, which makes up the bottom of your funnel.
How Your Funnel Works
If you imagine your funnel as looking like, well, a funnel, it’s easy to see that your free content—at the top—is consumed by the largest number of readers.
Below that, your extreme low-cost item (available only for the cost of an email address) attracts a smaller subset of the true freebie seekers.
Next, your low-priced products bring in yet a smaller group.
Finally, as you near the tip of the funnel, only the loyalest of fans and customers will purchase your highest priced offers.
Your job, as the business owner, is to ensure that your funnel leads buyers naturally from the top, free offers all the way to the bottom. The more buyers you can keep in your funnel, the more money you will make.
Most new—and even established—business owners can easily envision the top of the funnel, but if you truly want your business to grow, you must master the entire process, and that starts with understanding what a funnel really is and how it works.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Cindy Bidar, the funnel guru. She has a membership called 6 Figure Systems that teaches you everything you need to know about funnels. It recently started and I’m a member. I can’t say enough about how she’s got funnels and their monetization NAILED. If you’d like to check it out, here’s the aff. link:
6 Figure Systems
I’ve recently started using an amazing all-in-one marketing platform called KARTRA, that I just LOVE. It is helping to create funnels and segment customers according to their interests/purchases, as well as operating as a total email system. For me, it’s replaced my former marketing platform, my former email system, and my former delivery system.
If you think it might be what you’re looking for, check it out here: KARTRA. Yep, that’s my affiliate link. There’s even a 14 day trial for just $1.
Don’t forget to check out the Canva Tutorial to see if it’s a good fit to speed up your free opt-in offers.
