Digital Sales Funnel…A process comprised of a set of steps from the beginning of getting traffic to a landing page to the end till a part of that traffic makes a purchase…sales funnels differ across different business types…there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to funnels: B2B; Online Education; eCommerce; Subscription business. The key here is becoming the kind of customer or client you would want to attract…personal branding… Consumers & clients want to know who they are doing business with, no matter the niche or industry. They want to find someone who they can trust and value. “By differentiating yourself & positioning yourself as the authority or expert in your industry, you build much more credibility with your target market… Connection is the new currency.”
An economy depends on buying & selling. We need to keep marketing & selling to keep the economy humming. Online marketing can help with that. Many new on-line companies try to execute a cloud of different marketing activities simultaneously without a clear strategy defining how they should flow one to another to produce good results for the business owner.
These are the things you need to grow your business online: A well-structured client acquisition process which runs across multiple platforms (in other words, a digital sales funnel); Metrics to guide the optimization of your funnel so you can hit your business KPIs (revenue and clients).
Attracting the right kind of traffic to the landing page utilizes the common methods of generating traffic…blog posts, collaborations, social media platforms, search engine results, videos-YouTube, pay-per-click ads, email newsletters, etc.
Step 1: Start at the end of the sales funnel
I know this might sound controversial to many people out there but this is how a great funnel is built – by starting at the end i.e. the RESULT. Ask yourself – What is the result that you want to deliver to your customers? And I’m not talking about just delivering the product but the FINAL RESULT. For example, let’s assume you’re selling a course called “get your first 1000 subscribers”, then your result would be getting those 1000 subscribers for your customers and not just delivering the course. You need to figure out what your final result would be and how you’re going to deliver it…After that only you can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Knowing Your Audience
For your sales funnel to be really effective, you need to understand your audience really well. For that, you need to figure out:
- What are their pain points?
- What are their interests and expectations?
- Which social media(s) do they spend their most time on?
- What do they hate about shopping online or paying for a service online.
The list of questions may or may not vary according to the result you want to deliver. But the more you know about your audience the better it will be. Knowing your audience better will help you to understand:
- How to position your brand + product in a unique way
- Where can you find your audience
- How to address their pain points in an effective way
Creating Buyer Personas — We all know that not every customer is the same. Their buying journeys and motivations for buying something may differ from customer to customer. You can further create different and accurate buyer personas based on:
- Why do they want to buy your product?
- How are they going to use your product?
- What motivates them to buy a product?
Looking at the details is what differs a successful marketer from the unsuccessful ones. You can easily personalize and enhance every customer’s experience by grouping them into a relevant user persona.
Step 3: Create a free + shorter version of the product
Once you know your audience and what they actually want, you’ll need something to attract them into your funnel. This is what we call a freebie – a free and shorter version of the product that promises to deliver a part of the final result. Read that again, each and every word…The freebie should be valuable and MUST deliver a part of the final result in order for the sales funnel to be successful. Now it can be anything from a simple ebook to en email course, as long as it provides value and delivers what it promised to deliver. Till now, all the backend parts of the funnel are ready and now we’ll move on to frontend parts.
Step 4: Set up a Landing page
A landing page is a specific page of your website where your target audience will land after clicking on the link that you’ll be promoting for your free product. It is one of the most important parts of your sales funnel and hence you have to make sure that it looks great. Keep these few things in mind while creating your landing page:
- It has a catchy headline
- It describes all the benefits of your free product effectively, especially the main result they’ll be getting
- It must have a clear call-to-action
- The sign-up button should be large and bold enough
- It should be simple yet attractive
- There should not be any sort of distraction on the page
- The sole purpose of the page should be signing up for the free product and all the links should link to that source only
Creating a good landing page takes time + testing stuff and you should not settle for a conversion rate of less than 20%. Means that, if 100 people visit your landing page then at least 20 should sign-up for the free product.
Step 5: Attracting your ideal customers to your landing pages
Since you already know who your target audience is and where they hang out online, you can easily promote your free product to them. There are many ways to do that & they might differ with the niche. One of the best ways is to write a blog post around the topic and include your landing page’s link in it. Then, promote your blog post on social media platforms.
You need to attract the right kind of traffic to the landing page and you need to attract a lot of it to keep your funnel going. Some other common methods of generating traffic are: Blogs; Collaborations; Social media platforms; Search engine results; Videos – Youtube; Pay-per-click ads. Once you start getting a consistent amount of traffic, you’ll notice the movement in your sales funnel and you’ll start making a significant amount of sales.
Keep this in mind…while doing everything mentioned above is kind of easy, but what is really difficult is – writing convincing emails after delivering the free product. If your email copy is not good enough to convince people to click on your link and go to those sales pages then what’s the point of doing all this work? Sales funnels don’t have to be complex. Keeping it simple but effective works well enough. Never forget that you need to keep the momentum of your funnel going. This will not only bring you sales but will also build your email list for your future launches and promotions. Remember that, you have to work in order to make your funnel work. It’s not like “CREATE AND FORGET”. You have to constantly work hard to improve your conversion rates by tweaking one or the other thing.
When designing content for the funnel think:
- Sell transformation…don’t focus on the features… same with the products or course you’re trying to sell…you need to inspire your readers. How is that product going to transform their life for the better? Tell that story, and your sales will skyrocket!
- Show your personality… heard that the “know, like, and trust factor” helps you with sales because people usually don’t want to buy from complete strangers… add some videos or a funny gif or a story that everyone can relate to and make them feel connected to you.
- Match your lead magnet to the paid product…If your lead magnet doesn’t connect strongly enough with the paid product, people probably aren’t ready to buy what you’re offering. The freebie needs to draw them in and give them a taste of what you offer…make sure your lead magnet is connected with your paid product, so when you start pitching, your audience will be ready to buy…My favorite lead magnet is an evergreen webinar (or you can give some other kind of video training). This lets me give tons of value for free to the audience, and at the end, I can pitch my paid product and the audience is ready to buy to get even more value. Plus, being on video allows me to connect more with my audience because they get to see my personality and feel like they know me.
- Revisit & refine your funnel…make sure you’re updating your copy and testing to see if messaging in one funnel resonates more with your audience than another… After you start getting testimonials on your products or programs, you should add them to your funnels to show the transformation your clients and students experienced. The more you test and renew your funnel
- Track your data…You need to be refining your funnels, but these changes should be driven by the data. Evergreen funnels work for any niche, but you need to follow the numbers and don’t make emotional decisions…If you’re testing out different subject lines, are you tracking the opens? If you’re changing the messaging or placement of the link button, are you making sure the click rates of your emails are improving? Do you know how many products you’re selling per lead magnet signup?
For more information about digital sales funnels, view the free video entitled Marketing For Business Owners Session 2.
Copyright ©John Trenary 2020
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