sales funnels click funnels ad funnels
marketing funnels what is this stuff and
why do you need it the answer can be
quite confusing because people use the
word funnel
in way too many ways some people use the
word funnel to refer to their website or
a set of landing pages some people also
use the word funnel to describe their
strategy
to increase things like their email
opt-ins and many others don't use the
word funnel at all
because they don't have one regardless
of where you currently sit
the marketing industry has completely
complicated the use of the term
funnel and that is why i'm creating this
episode to simplify
sales funnels for beginners
hi my name is sherman with life
marketing a digital marketing agency
that
helps small businesses grow today i'm
going to fully explain
what sales funnels are show you a
specific sales funnel that converted me
and go over all the elements of
different types of sales funnels
and everything you need to know to begin
creating your own
sales funnel by the way if you're new to
our channel please subscribe to our page
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don't miss out on future episodes that
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please help me out by smashing that
thumbs up button below as a business
owner
i can tell you if you do not get your
sales funnel down to a science
you risk the potential growth of your
business at our agency
we talk to business owners every single
day and in most cases
the people we talk to are interested in
one thing
and one thing only sales but
interestingly enough
most of the people that i talk to don't
even have sales
funnels in other words they do not have
a clearly defined process
to increase sales in their business most
of the time the people
i talk to tell me that they're
increasing their business sales
through things like word of mouth and
referrals
hearing things like this makes me happy
and scared
for the people that i talk to i'm happy
because if your business is growing
through things like word of mouth and
referrals then i already know you have a
great product
that people truly enjoy i mean if people
are advocating for your product
then clearly this means that your
business has a proof of concept
and is a viable business on the other
hand i'm incredibly fearful
for people who rely solely on these type
of things to grow
because without a sales funnel in place
you are essentially
operating your business without any
predictable
engine to generate more sales in your
business in cases like this
you just don't know what's in store for
tomorrow if you have customers or not
or whether or not you will even have
work for your employees
this presents a significant business
risk because without a sales funnel in
place
selling becomes very challenging and
tends to be
lucky at best so let's go ahead and
mitigate this risk
by breaking down sales funnels to its
core and giving you the essentials you
need
in order to get started okay so what are
sales funnels
a sales funnel is simply the journey a
customer takes
in order to purchase your products or
services
the simplest way to understand sales
funnels is to look
at a funnel no not a sales funnel like
an
actual physical funnel a funnel is
traditionally used to channel
liquid-like substances
into small openings typically it's very
wide at the top and
gets narrow at the bottom now if we add
cells
to the front of the word funnel then
this process now refers
to channeling consumers into buying
customers
just replace liquid-like substances with
actual people
with the end goal being them pulling out
their credit card
and buying from you now the higher
people are
in your sales funnel the less likely
they are to buy from you these are
normally people who are simply aware
of your business or interested in a
topic that your business is engaging in
now the lower people are in your funnel
the more likely they are to buy from you
these are people who are specifically
interested in buying your product or
service now fundamentally
a funnel is very wide at the top and
narrow at the bottom
this is true regardless of if you're
selling an ecommerce product
baking a cake or offering a professional
service
this funnel feature is important for you
to know because what this really means
for sales funnels
is that only a small percentage of
people who enter your funnel
will end up actually buying from you i
repeat
only a small percentage of people who
enter your funnel
will actually buy your products or
services
this is why sales funnel or any funnel
for that matter
is wide at the top and narrow at the
bottom therefore
in order to increase your sales not only
do you need to have a sales funnel in
place
but you also need to have enough volume
of people
in your sales funnel in order to start
cranking out sales
the more people you have inside of your
sales funnel
the more likely you are to convert new
customers
many of the people i talk to that are
not seeing sales either
a do not have a strong sales funnel to
begin with
or b do not have enough people in their
sales funnel
to start converting customers so now
that you know what sales funnels are
let me show you a sales funnel that
converted me
so a few years ago my wife and my
partners co-founded a sister company to
life marketing
called life accounting which is a full
service accounting firm
for small businesses ironically as we
were just getting started
i ran into several facebook ads by a man
named
andrew argue in his ads he talked about
how to
offer the most valuable accounting
services
so i click the ad and then i arrive to
his landing page
now as you can see in the landing page
there is no menu
and it appears to be a standalone page
there is only one call to action which
is to sign up
for his free training he does this
because i assume
he does not want my attention to get
diverted to something else
which may result in the failure of
moving me down
his sales funnel obviously i see what's
going on here but ultimately i don't
care
because i truly only want the value
he's exclaiming in his facebook ads so i
enter my information into his form
and it immediately redirects me to his
free training as you can see the free
training is step
one of three in his process of
converting me
into a buying customer in other words he
assumes that people who watch his full
training
will be more likely to want his program
step two of his funnel is for me
to enter in my information to apply for
his program
obviously using words like apply implies
that there is some level of scarcity in
the program
which is a great tactic to motivate
people to move them further
down his sales funnel and finally step
three of his funnel was for me to
schedule an appointment
as soon as i completed the form i was
immediately redirected to schedule a
call
now he can put his best sales rep on the
phone to close me as a customer
on that phone call he told me that his
programs start at about
five thousand dollars and up and at that
time i'm kind of thinking like okay
this is a little bit more than i'm
expecting to spend so
i simply tell them thank you for your
time and decide to hold off
at that specific time but of course he
did not stop there
because at this point he knows i'm at
the bottom of his sales funnel and ever
since that appointment
i've received hundreds if not thousands
of
valuable emails and countless
retargeting ads
to motivate me to purchase his programs
and to be honest
after two years of endless emails phone
calls
social media interactions we eventually
bought two
of his educational programs which turned
out to be
extremely valuable and well worth it as
you can see
a well thought out sales funnel works
and when you can
automate it in this manner you
essentially develop a
predictable sales engine that can grow
your business
so now that you know what sales funnels
are
let's talk about the steps inside of
sales funnels
there are a few basic steps inside of
any
sales funnel number one awareness number
two
engagement number three conversion and
number four
advocacy in short people must first be
aware
of your business to even consider buying
from your business at any point
in their life if they are aware of your
business then you're in trouble
you can increase your awareness through
things like digital marketing activities
like seo content marketing digital
advertising and so on
in the example i just provided andrew
uses facebook ads to increase his
awareness and his sales funnel now
secondly
aware people must engage with your
business
engagement is necessary in order to
establish a true connection
with the people who are now aware of
your business engagement builds
trust credibility and positive emotional
triggers
that ultimately influence people to buy
from your business
you can increase your engagement through
adding value
to your audience which is most commonly
done through content creation like
videos
blogs or anything that helps your
audience
this value exchange moves them down your
funnel and the example i
provided andrew uses video and webinars
to engage people in his sales funnel
next is conversion you can start
selling to people who are deeply engaged
with your business
and chances are you will have a better
chance at converting
this group of people than complete
strangers which is why this
funnel works so well in the first place
engaged users
have higher conversion rates than
unaware
unengaged audience you can convert your
engaged audiences through email
marketing
retargeting ads and through your website
in the example i provided andrew heavily
used email marketing
and retargeting ads to bring me down
this funnel and lastly you have advocacy
which is when your products and services
delight your customers
and they become advocates of your brand
ultimately resulting in more word of
mouth
and awareness of your business in
addition your brand advocates will be
more likely to convert
on upsell opportunities that exist in
your company the simple fact that i am
referencing andrew
without any ties to his business at this
point shows you
that advocacy really works now there are
different
types of sales funnels so let's go ahead
and discuss
what may work best for your business the
steps i just gave you are consistent for
just about
any sales funnel but the specific
quantities
and methods you use will ultimately
depend on your
unique business type for example andrew
has probably sent me over 500 emails
inside of his sales funnel but does this
mean that you
need to send 500 emails to people inside
of your funnel
probably not the funnel methods you
deploy
will depend on your unique business type
or industry
price of your products and your sales
cycle let's start with your business
type now
there are many business types but to
keep this episode
very simple i categorize the type of
sales funnels into the following
e-commerce products professional
services and brick-and-mortars for
example
here's an example of an e-commerce sales
funnel
used by boom by cindy joseph that
resulted in over forty thousand dollars
in sales for context
they sell beauty products and they use
facebook and pinterest ads
to create awareness which drove traffic
to one of their blog posts
the blog post engaged them by providing
beauty tips
and eventually the post linked to their
store
and product pages now because their
products are relatively
inexpensive they can move people down
their funnel
without requiring email opt-ins to view
specific content and without sending 500
emails
however this does not mean that email is
not
needed in your sales funnel email is
still very effective
and even they still try to encourage
people to join their email list
through discounts promotions and other
tactics though to be honest
i doubt they send emails in the same
frequency or manner
as andrew did in the example i provided
ultimately the type of business you have
will influence how you customize the
specific steps to move people
down your funnel now let's talk about
how pricing comes into play here
when it comes to pricing typically the
more inexpensive your products are
the less steps you need in order to
motivate people
to buy your product as a rule of thumb
the more your
product or service costs the more value
you are going to have to create
in order to motivate people to buy from
you now value can come in high quality
or quantity but ultimately it's up to
you
to determine the appropriate ways to
create
value to motivate purchases in addition
your sales cycle and the time it takes
people to buy your products or services
is also very important if it takes a
long time for people to buy your product
then you will likely need to
add that time lapse into your sales
funnel and plan to communicate with your
leads
during that time period for example i
have a client that i work with that
sells
trucks to landscape contractors he has
trucks that cost
tens of thousands of dollars and as a
result he knows that it's going to take
a ton of time
to convert any of his leads into
customers
so over the last two or three years
we've ran google ads
social ads and other organic digital
marketing activities to
increase the leads he receives once he
receives a lead from us
his team speaks to them but they already
know that the deal won't close
on the first call so he continues to
send several
emails over the years to stay in front
of them and the best part of it is
it's all automated anyway when you craft
your sales funnel
start with thinking about your customers
journey think about what makes them
interested in your products or services
and
what obstacles deter them from buying
from you
as well as the time it's going to take
for them to overcome
these buying resistances when you craft
your sales funnel with this in mind
you increase your odds of success in my
opinion
it's more psychology than anything you
really need to understand what's going
on
in your customer's mind at every stage
of your funnel
when understood and implemented
successfully
then you will have a predictable system
to increase
your sales okay wow we've covered a lot
so far
if you're still with me i hope you're
enjoying the ride here
if this stuff is helping you at all
please help me by giving me a thumbs up
below
and also if you have any questions on
what i've said so far
drop them in the comments below and
someone from our team will get back to
you as soon as possible
now let me give you what you need in
order to start
building your sales funnel in order to
build your sales funnel
you need to start by mapping all this
stuff out i personally like to use a
free website called
funalytics this helps me map out every
single step
in my sales funnel you can also use good
old-fashioned
pen and paper the second thing you need
to do is to start creating landing pages
now there are a ton of landing page
tools out there
but the most common ones are leadpages
click funnels and kartra at this present
time
our agency currently use leadpages for
most of our clients
now the third thing you need to do is to
start creating content this includes
content on your blog
landing pages and email campaigns now to
be honest this is the hardest part
but it's the most important because
without great content
you will be unsuccessful at moving
people down your funnel
finally you need traffic to make all of
this work use seo
social media email marketing and digital
advertising
to get in front of the right people as
i've said earlier
most people fail at increasing their
sales
simply because they do not have enough
people inside of their sales funnel
build a healthy amount of people in your
pipeline and tweak your sales funnel as
time
goes on to have the best chance at
increasing your sales
now that you know what to do let's go
ahead and summarize this video
so you can get right to work in today's
episode we defined
what is a sales funnel a sales funnel is
simply the journey
a customer takes in order to purchase
your products and services we then went
on to define
the steps that every sales funnel should
take every sales funnel
must have a process to make people aware
interested
and engaged and ultimately convert
people into sales
if you fail at any one of these things
then your sales funnel will not
work then we discuss how to customize
your sales funnel your
sales funnel should ultimately be
customized by your customer needs
business type price point and sales
cycle
and finally if you don't take away
anything you need to know why a sales
funnel is important
your sales funnel is important because
without it you do not have a predictable
way
to grow and scale your business all
right that's it for today's episode
if this video helped you in any way
shape or form i do accept tips
all you have to do is hit the like
button for me below and i'd greatly
appreciate it oh
and be sure to subscribe to our channel
so you don't miss out
on any future content that can help your
business grow
i'll talk to you soon
[Music]