When you have an online business, you’ll hear a lot about funnels. Sales funnels, conversion funnels, lead gen funnels. Let’s take a closer look at sales funnels.
How to Create a Sales Funnel
Critical to the process of creating any funnel online is to actually envision a funnel. Funnels are wider at the top, and narrow at the bottom. The more people you add to the top of your sales funnel, the more sales will come out of the bottom of the funnel.
Most often people enter your sales funnel when they’ve opted in for some type of free training. Registering for a free training you’re offering drops them into the top of the funnel. The free training can be a webinar, a multi-part video series, a challenge or even a live event.
Once you have someone in a sales funnel, you want to continue to send them information to get them more engaged and more interested in what you’re selling. You want them to understand and experience the transformation your product or service will give them so they are ready to whip out their credit cards and buy. You can do this with additional trainings, a sequence of emails, or live interactions and Q&A sessions. With each piece of content from you that they consume, they become more engaged and move further down the funnel.
The bottom of the sales funnel is when you ask for the sale. Any one who purchases from you pops out the bottom of the funnel and is now a customer.
Although there are several ways to create sales funnels, this article focuses on creating a sales funnel using ActiveCampaign and Leadpages that starts with a free training and leads into the purchase of a course.
Building a Sales Funnel
Step 1: Create a landing page on Leadpages to collect their email address and register them for the free training. When they register, they enter the top of the funnel.
Step 2: Integrate the landing page to ActiveCampaign and set up an email to go out automatically that will give them the info they need to attend the free training.
Step 3: Send an email to remind them of the free training.
Step 4: Hold the free training. People who attend the free training move a bit further down into the funnel.
Step 5: At the end of the free training, offer them a way to go deeper with you via a paid course. Send them to a checkout/sales page created on Leadpages. People who buy at the end of the training advance fully thorough the funnel and skip the other steps.
Step 6: Send follow up emails with a link to the checkout/sales page created on Leadpages to those who don’t buy right away.
For each email they open they move down further towards the bottom of the funnel because they are becoming more engaged. The goal is that eventually, they will purchase the course and come out the bottom of the funnel.
Sales Funnel Software
Although you can create a sales funnel manually by using platforms and software you already have, there are some services, such as ClickFunnels which were designed for creating funnels. You can find a comparison article here.
Want help creating a sales funnel for your course or membership? I can set up and integrate your ActiveCampaign + Leadpages accounts, create your first landing page, opt in form, list and thank you page for you! Find out more here.
