Sales funnels are one of the most overused phrases, and yet least understood phrases in online marketing today, so it’s no wonder that so many business owners are completely terrified of them – they listen to different gurus explaining sales funnels in the most overly complicated ways, and although sales funnels will change in their complexity as your business grows, there’s no need to worry about complicating them right now, since they are not complicated at all.
A sales funnel is simply a process that leads someone from not knowing anything about you or your business to becoming a customer – preferably a long-term customer.
So, in this post, I’m going to share with you the steps you can take to create your very own simple sales funnel that will allow you to automate your sales process and make money in your business on repeat.
Create a high-value read magnet:
Many people think the sales funnel begins with the lead magnet, and this is understandable since it’s what most gurus are teaching, however, the step before it – the read magnet is more important because to get people to buy from you, they have to love your content that they don’t have to sign up for – otherwise you’re going to find yourself with a large email list full of freebie seekers – and these are every business owners worst nightmare. A high-value read magnet can be a great blog post or even video that offers some serious value, no strings attached and then effortlessly flows into the lead magnet that can be something like a PDF or checklist that will match the blog post and help them implement it.
Create a high-value lead magnet:
Just because something is free, doesn’t mean people will want to give their email address for it. Although some people – the aforementioned freebie seekers, and trust me, you’d rather have no list than have a list of these people because they never have any intention of buying or implementing anything you offer them and will still be in the same place 5 years from now, so don’t waste your time.
Create a high-value email series:
Once you have people who have signed up for your high-value freebie, you now want to build on the relationship by sending them emails that deliver value and build on what you already sent them to help them implement it. The best way to do this is by using something like this email marketing software to create a series of 4-6 emails that you can automate and schedule out over a series of days after someone has joined your list.
Make a no-brainer offer:
Of course, the whole point of the sales funnel is to get customers, so now that you’ve been delivering great value and people have been able to get results from your free content, it’s time to make them a no-brainer offer as the next logical step. Of course, not everyone will take you up on it, but a lot of people will if you’ve been delivering great value.