If your business isn’t generating new customers daily then it’s not producing at its full potential. Online, it’s difficult to interact with people one on one so it’s important to be able to lead them to the right place through automated systems.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to build a simple online sales funnel that turns browsers into customers. You’ll find out the tools, the pieces of the puzzle, and how to tie everything together.
The pieces of the sales funnel
There are three main pieces of the most effective sales funnels. Each one has a specific job and the mistake many people make is trying to force one piece to do multiple things.
The first part is generating traffic. This can be equated to generating awareness about your brand. For the most part, those people won’t become customers on the first visit. The funnel you’ll learn here will show you where and how to get the right traffic.
The second step is converting those people that learn about your brand into leads. This is applicable whether you’re selling $5,000 software or $5 bracelets. Not everyone will buy on the first interaction or without learning more so there needs to be a way to keep the conversation going in case that happens.
The final step is turning them into customers. There are countless ways to do that. You can offer a discount, take them through an email sequence, develop a long-form sales page, etc. You’ll learn a method in this guide but what you ultimately choose will depend on your products and customers. More on that when the time comes.
Generating traffic
Many people don’t realize that not all traffic is created equally. Some visitors have high buyer intent and they’re likely to purchase your products. Other people are only there to look around and do research – they’re not ready to buy.
These different states of mind are known as the stage of awareness. If you want to successfully convert people to customers then it’s essential that you understand their state of mind so you can give them the right information for them.
How do you know the stage someone is in when they land on your page? That’s determined by what they saw and are expecting before navigating to your page in the first place.
For example, look at these two articles:
In the first article, the focus is on explaining what a webinar is and the second article is about the best webinar platforms. If you were to search for best webinar platforms and landed on the first article, would that be a good answer to your query?
Not at all. You already know what a webinar is and are looking for the best solution for you.
If you were to search for the best webinar platforms and landed on the second article then you’d be satisfied with what you’re seeing and likely to take the next step.
When you’re generating traffic, tailor your pages so they’re in line with whatever the person who’s visiting it saw beforehand. If you’re using social media marketing then make sure the link they click takes them to a page that is in line with the post.
If you’re using ads, make sure the headline and content on the page is similar to what they saw in the ad and what you promised to give them.
It’s seems simple but most people get it wrong which is why their traffic doesn’t convert. What you’ll notice is that over 90% of the people who land on your website aren’t ready to buy anything. What do you do then? Are all your efforts wasted?
No, you just get their contact information so you can stay in touch with them until they’re ready to buy.
Converting visitors
Since most people won’t buy on the first interaction, most of your marketing efforts should be focused on bringing them into the top of your funnel, educating them, and turning them into a lead.
There are many ways to go about this but two are incredibly effective.
The first one is a quiz funnel. A quiz funnel uses an interactive quiz to engage website visitors, turn them into leads, and generate instant revenue.
It does this by asking relevant questions, segmenting contacts, then presenting hyper relevant offers to people who’ve completed the quiz. A large percentage of people will buy and even if they don’t, you have their contact information.
There are three things to consider when building a quiz funnel.
- Your quiz and topic
The quiz topic is the most important part because it’ll determine if people will spend time taking it. It should be something specific that can appeal to a large part of your audience. For example, a quiz about a little black dress can be effective for a segment of your audience but it’ll have narrower appeal than a quiz titled “What Does Your Style Say About You?”
The second quiz uses the topic of style, which everyone has, and promises to reveal a facet of their personality. It has a specific outcome with a broad appeal.
- The different outcomes
The outcomes are important because they’re where you diagnose the problem, share the results, and offer solutions. Think of yourself as a doctor in this situation that’s diagnosing a patient based on the symptoms they’ve presented and told you about.
In this case, those symptoms are the answers to quiz questions. The information you get from the answers will allow you to do two things.
- Segment quiz takers into different groups within your email marketing service
- Give an accurate diagnosis to their problems and lead them towards the solution – which is the offer you’ll present
Note: the outcomes come first then you work backward to create quiz questions and answers that will lead quiz takers to the right outcome.
- The offer you present
The offer can come in two forms. One can be an inexpensive product that solves part of the problem or relieves a symptom immediately. For example, if they take a quiz about their style personality, you can present a small video course or Ebook that goes much deeper into what their results mean and how they can make the most of it.
The second offer doesn’t involve money but it sets you up to sell a larger product down the line. Ask people to sign up for a webinar that tackles their problem in detail. Within the webinar, you’ll be able to present a relevant product that’s more expensive.
The second method is using content upgrades within educational content. Content upgrades are popular and used widely so I won’t go too deep into it.
In a nutshell, it’s a lead magnet that shows them the next step based on the content they’re consuming or it makes it easier to apply those lessons. For example, if someone was reading an article on LinkedIn marketing, you may offer a tracking template as a content upgrade.
You can use a free email marketing service to nurture your new email subscribers until they’re ready to buy. Be sure to incorporate educational content with CTAs so no matter when people are ready to buy, they’ll have a way to do that.
Turning them into customers
If you’ve done everything right up until this point, it’ll be the easiest part. They’re already familiar with your brand, trust the things you have to say, and just need to know you have the right products for them.
There are many ways to go about this and the route you choose is dependent on your product mix and brand. If you’re selling clothes or accessories then you can send people to product pages every now and then.
If you’re selling more expensive products or information then I’d recommend a webinar. This is the other aspect of the quiz funnel.
You’ll ask people to sign up for a webinar so you can better explain and give them tips about their quiz outcome – the diagnosis you presented.
The webinar you present is divided into three parts.
- The introduction
The introduction of your webinar should be designed to give you credibility. This is where you share results of people you’ve worked with in the past, customer testimonials, or your own results. It lets people know you’re the real deal and they’ll be more likely to stick around for the whole presentation and believe what you say.
- The lessons
After the introduction, it’s time to deliver what people came for – the lessons. Now, you’re not going to do much teaching. Yes, it’s counterintuitive but the more you teach, the fewer people buy your offer.
Why is that?
Because they tend to get overwhelmed with what you’re sharing that they don’t see the reason to buy more information. The exception to this rule is when you’re not selling information but the other methods I’ve mentioned may be a better fit.
You want to share three key lessons. But instead of teaching a lot on the topics, focus on the outcomes. For example, if you’re talking about little black dresses and the mistakes people make with them, you’ll talk about what will happen when you correct the mistake. Not necessarily how to make those corrections. Give multiple examples and, if available, testimonials.
- The high ticket offer
Webinars are geared towards high ticket offers because people can see and interact with you. It’s like one-on-one sales at scale.
Note that when I say high ticket offers, it can be anywhere from $299 – $4,999. Any more than that and people want to talk to a human being and any less than that and you’ll have a hard time making the numbers work.
The offer should be closely tied to the topic of the webinar, come with a number of extras, and have strong guarantees. You’re asking people to make an impulse buy so if the offer isn’t solid and there’s no way to get a refund if they’re not happy then people won’t buy.
Once you have the structure of the webinar in order, all that’s left is to design the graphics from the first touchpoint all the way to the last touchpoint. I recommend a tool called Venngage which makes graphic design a breeze.
Conclusion
Your sales funnel is like a sales rep that don’t complain, doesn’t need a salary, and works 24/7 with no vacation time. The only difference is that you have to personally improve it over time.
This guide has outlined the key elements of an online sales funnel so all you have to do now is focus on putting the pieces of the puzzle together and launching it. Once it’s live, test it until it gives you the results you’re looking for.
Let me know how your sales funnel looks in the comments and don’t forget to share.
