…and why you NEED them for your business
Anyone who owns an online business or would like to generate leads online needs to create a sales funnel.
A sales funnel is needed in order to convert website visitors into paying customers.
If you fail at that, then it will be hard for you to make any money.
Imagine if you were trying to fill up a bottle of water. To make it easier you decide to use your trusty funnel to fill up your bottle of water.
As you start to pour the water into the funnel you notice there are holes punctured in your funnel!
“Oh no!” you exclaim as the water spills everywhere.
Sure, you got some water in your bottle, but in the process you lost a lot of water.
You might ask yourself, “But why would I use a funnel with holes in it?”
What if I told you that this is what it is like if you are driving traffic to your traditional website expecting people to find your sales page, add your product to the cart, add their credit card, and check out.
Sure, you may be getting some sales, but you are also losing a lot of sales in the process.
Your primary goal with a sales funnel is to move your customer from one step to the next until they purchase your product/service.
In this blog post, I will be covering how to create a sales funnel for your business.
What is a Sales Funnel?
Before we get started on how to create a Sales Funnel, it makes sense to define a Sales Funnel.
A Sales Funnel (also known as a Marketing Funnel or Sales Process) is a marketing system. It’s the “ideal” process you intend your customers to experience as they go from prospect to lead to customer to repeat buyer.
It is the process through which companies lead their customers when purchasing products.
Understanding the steps of the Sales Funnel
From the first time your audience hears about you until he buys from you he is moving through different steps of your funnel.
Depending on the type of business you have, your sales funnel may have more steps than I am about to show you.
In general the below steps are the most important steps you need to pay attention to.
Awareness
This is when your prospect learns about the solution, product or service.
There are several steps of awareness when it comes to your prospects.
The first stage is “Unaware”, the second stage is “Problem Aware”, the third stage is “Solution Aware”, the fourth stage is “Product Aware”, and the last stage is “Most Aware”.
You need to be mindful of the fact that your ideal client might land anywhere on the scale of “Unaware to Most Aware” and you must tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.
Someone who is “Unaware” or “Problem Aware” is a cold prospect that needs to be warmed up to the service or product.
This step in your sales funnel is crucial for warming up your cold audience.
This is when your prospect visits your website or blog for the first time, which he may have found from an ad or Google search.
Interest
At this stage of the sales funnel, your prospect is now most likely problem aware and now looking for the solutions for his problems.
They may stumble across your Facebook Ad or search on Google and find your blog and like what you have to offer.
They decide that they want to learn more and follow you on social media and/or subscribe to your email list.
Decision
At this stage in the funnel, your prospect is now both solution aware and product aware.
This is when they are deciding on what products or services they want to take advantage of. They are paying closer attention to what you are offering.
You can move them to the next level of the sales funnel by using sales pages, webinars, videos, calls, etc.
Action
At this stage in the funnel, your prospect is now red hot. They are now hyperaware of your products and services and are taking action by purchasing.
Now, to be clear, your sales funnel does not end here.
You now want this client to purchase again and again and ascend them up your value ladder (we will talk more about the value ladder in a different blog post).
Creating your sales funnel
Now that you understand what a Sales Funnel is and what the most important steps are, you can move on to creating your sales funnel.
Step 1: Research your Customers
Find out your customers needs and frustrations.
And DON’T guess. Ask them.
The internet makes it super easy to create a survey.
In fact, a simple solution is to use Google Forms to create a survey and then drive traffic to the link (whether it be paid traffic or by posting on your social media page).
By surveying and asking your actual clients what their needs and frustrations are you are able to adjust your funnel to address those issues.
This allows you to be more relevant when selling your products as you are addressing their concerns directly.
Step 2: Create Your Avatar (Dream Clients)
You will likely have several Avatar’s that you will be selling to.
You want to ensure you are tailoring your message for each as they are likely going to have different reasons for buying your product or they make decisions differently.
It would be smarter if you had different sales funnels tailored to your Avatar.
Step 3: Decide how you will get leads/get the word out about your product
There are ultimately three different types of traffic.
Traffic You Control: This is paid traffic. It could be anything from Facebook Ads (Find out how to start running Facebook Ads starting at $5/day), Google Adwords, Banners, Affilitates, Solo Ads, etc.
Traffic You Don’t Control: This is organic traffic. It could be SEO, Social Media posts, YouTube Videos, PR, etc.
Traffic You Own: This is your lists you have that you can market for free. It could be your email ist, your fans, your followers, readers, etc.
The ultimate goal of ALL traffic is to convert it into Traffic You Control!
Step 4: Get your prospects to engage
You need to be nurturing and engaging your leads constantly, educating them on topics they are interested in and help move them from Awareness, to Interest, to Decision and finally to Action.
You can get your prospects to engage through the following tactics: blog posts, videos, social media posts, live streams (Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Periscope, etc.), webinars, podcast, vlogs, etc.
Step 5: Close Your Prospect
Sure it would be great if you could push all of your leads through your sales funnel and for them to all convert.
But for the ones that don’t convert on their own there are tactics and strategies you can use to get them over the line.
Some of those are: sales calls, action funnels (email follow up sequences), webinars, sales pages, flash sales, etc.
The idea is to provide them with so much value that you/your company is the only option for your prospect to solve their problems/frustrations.
Is that all?
Don’t think that once your prospect has turned into a customer your work is done.
On the contrary, you will need to continue to tweak your sales funnel to ensure
Your goal is to get your client to become a repeat buyer and ideally a raving fan that becomes a free spokesperson.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions!
Luke Shankula
P.S. If you would like to know how I can help you generate exclusive leads using Facebook Advertising and Sales Funnels schedule a strategy call with me today!