The Truth about Marketing and Sales Funnels

Funnels, funnels and more funnels! It’s the time of year for festivals and funnel cake, but that’s not the funnels I’m talking about here. Nor am I talking about those funnels in that sky that NOBODY ever wants to see!

You may know them by sales funnels or marketing funnels, and that’s what I’m talking about!

What are funnels exactly?

Think of marketing and sales funnels as the journey someone takes from the time they first become of aware of who you are, all the way to the purchase stage and beyond.

In other words, they’ve just learned about you and are ready to learn about/try/hear about your product or service.

Let’s lay out the funnel:

1. Someone has become of aware of you and they go to your website or land on your landing page where you’re offering something of value that they want – for free. This is your lead magnet. Click here to learn more about lead magnets. This could be a short ebook, an infographic, a video – something that can be consumed in a short amount of time.
2. Said prospect fills out the form on your website and they’re now entered into your email marketing system like Infusionsoft. They automatically get an email with the link to the lead magnet they requested. After they’ve filled out the form, they’re taken to another page (the thank you page) where you offer them a product or service they can purchase.
3. You send this new person a series of emails that educates the person about who you are, provides further value and also gives them information on your products and services with an opportunity buy those products and services.

Simple, right? Ah, now you’re thinking how you would organize all that?!

Follow these steps to organize your marketing and sales funnels:

• Take an inventory of your existing assets. Get a pad of sticky notes. Write the name of each of your assets on the sticky notes. One asset per note. For this exercise, these are your free offers.
• On sticky notes, write your products and services and the cost of each of those items. One product or service per sticky note.
• Organize the sticky notes into four columns on your wall.
  • Free offers
  • Tripwire offers (Products/services under $25)
  • Core offers (Products/services around $300)
  • Profit maximizers (Your big ticket product/service that’s $1,000 and up)
• Organize your sticky notes horizontally – free offers, tripwire offers, core offers and profit maximizers that make sense together in a flow. Example: If your free offer is 10 Tips for Summer Horseback Riding, then you wouldn’t want your tripwire, core offer or profit maximizer to be something related to fast food dining.

Now you’ve created the foundation of your funnel. The next step is to make it available for people and write copy to sell it!

To make it available, you want to include your tripwire offer on the thank you page of your lead magnet. If someone buys the tripwire, you want your core offer available on the thank you page of your tripwire offer. Likewise, if someone buys the core offer, have your profit maximizer available on the thank you page of your core offer.

Now you want your email follow up to fall into place accordingly. For example, if someone buys the tripwire, you don’t want to be emailing them about the tripwire, but rather, you want to talk about your core offer. If they bought your core offer, you talk about your profit maximizer.

If you’re struggling to put all these pieces in place, I’d be glad to get on the phone and help talk you through it at no cost and no obligation. Click here to schedule a call.