When you start a business you get it that your marketing has to be spot on and give you a healthy ROI. And, no business will build with no customers and will lead to failure.
So putting in the time and effort to craft a high-performance selling machine is a good idea and the time is now and the best way to do it is with a branded sales funnel.
Let’s see what I’m talking about….
What is a sales funnel?
Let’s go over the basics of what a sales funnel is and how you can use it in your marketing game plan to make a pile of cash. There are 3 types of people you connect with in a sales funnel marketing process.
- Lead
- Pre-Qualified lead
- A buying customer
A lead is someone who becomes aware of your company or someone who you decide to pursue a sale, even if they don’t know about your company yet. A lead is someone is your list of interested customers but don’t know much about your company and what problem you can solve for them.
Once you convert a lead into a pre-qualified lead is someone who has had some kind of contact with your company and they are still interested. All are leads, but not all leads pre-qualified leads.
After that, you have your first buying customer, and we all know what buying customers can do for your business, grow it. Once this process is down pat then repeat, add more traffic, and rinse. I added in more traffic, because that’s part of the sales cycle, and keeps the sales funnel well oiled and churning out leads in no time.
Now, here are the five steps to follow to construct your own simple online sales funnel.
1. The Landing Page
A great landing page says it all about you and gives your lead a first impression to “Opt-In” your sales funnel. This has to look good, nice bio’s, good pictures and looks great if you want them to engage and signup. Your offering value to get value in exchange for their contact information, once you have that then you can begin to craft a relationship with your lead.
2. Front-End Offer
Next step is creating a front-end offer to your leads that will guide them to purchase or buy your other services or products. This help creates more desire for the next [backend] offer [you’re] going to present them with. In other words, you are Pre-Selling your leads with your own course (like mine) I created. This front-end offer is also branded to me, giving you the creditability.
3. Backend Offer
Any successful sales funnel has the ability to upgrade your front-end customers to “Upsize” them with a back-end product that would interest them. This kind of offer will benefit them.
This an upsell strategy and works like a charm to the right prospect. You see this all the time when you buy a car, for example, you have the option to upgrade to a more expensive add-on’s, like heated leather seats, 20″ custom rims for example.
4. Keep Customers in the Loop
Not all customers will want to upgrade, some will want to downgrade instead, and that’s fine. It’s not a sign of failure or a loss of a potential sale, instead, your customer might have financial difficulties. Be considerate, offer a lower priced product for these prospects and maintain the relationship with them.
These types of customers may also come back at a later point, so keep them in the loop.
5. Build Momentum
Sales are all about building momentum. Always follow up with your new leads or customers and make sure they are happy with what you are offering. What I did for my funnel is made it an affiliate program on JVzoo.
This keeps you in contact with your customers and then you can offer other services and deals down the road. This is the last step to your sale funnel and I feel every business in every niche can benefit from using a sales funnel.
One thing to remember you might have a lot of leads to start with but once you narrow down the list, and your customers represent the smallest group of people.
In my business 10 paying customers is my target every month, and 10 customers times 20K each is quite a bit out of 1000 leads. This meets my initial sales goals and can add more traffic and scale up to get 20,30 or 50+ paying customers a month.
6. Brand Your Sales Funnel
The last thing to add to this post about sales funnels is the branding element. All top earners use a branded funnel, not just an affiliate link. Why? So you stand-out amongst the crowd, and to increase your conversions and click through rates.
Which do you think will get more clicks? The branded one right. Creating your own personal bio in your funnel helps a lot as well, with a nice picture, and testimonials.
7. Add in an Influencer
The last point I’m going to cover is using a power influencer preferably by video into your sales funnel. Once you set the association tone into your leads and customers minds, building a relationship with them and creating sales got much easier. I’ve tested it and an influencer does make a BIG difference in opt-in’s and overall sales.