For an online business owner, a sales funnel is probably the most important marketing tool you have. And yet many entrepreneurs – both new and established – have no clear understanding of what a funnel is or how it works.
As you can imagine, failing to fully understand this critical part of your business means fewer sales, lower profits, and ultimately, an unstable business.
Sales funnel is the way you move the client from a lead to a paid client and then to an even higher paid or VIP client. At the very least your funnel should exist of the following pages
Sales Page or Lead Capture Page
The first page might be called an opt-in or squeeze page It serves one purpose—to get the reader to take action. Whether that’s to buy a product or offer up their email address in exchange for a free gift, this is the gateway into your funnel. It is therefore very important that this page consists of the following.
- Ensure that both the pain points and benefits are clear
- Remember to include a clear call to action. Tell the visitor exactly what you want them to do. “Buy Now” or “Get This”
- Let this action be the only thing they can do on this page, eliminate all other distractions refrain from adding other links or menu bars.
Confirmation Page
The second page is in some cases not compulsory, but depending on your legislation and the Autoresponder provider you use, you might have to let the client confirm their email address.
It will normally be a simple page referring them to check their eMail.
For a sales funnel, this confirmation page might actually be your checkout page. It’s where they enter their payment details.
If you’re setting up a free funnel, this page has great power—and you don’t want to waste it!
Here is where you can offer an upset, remind people to follow you on social media, and give them a peak at your other products and services.
Remember, though, that they will only see this page once, so don’t put anything here that they will need to refer back to. That’s what the thank you page is for.
Thank You Page
The final page in the Lead capture funnel is the Thank you page. This is the page where they actually collect their download or the message that they will receive the course in the email or Post.
Like the confirmation page, this is valuable real estate, so you want to be sure you use it wisely. In addition to the downloadable item your customer just purchased (or opted in for) you also want to showcase your other offers—especially those at a slightly higher price point. Here’s why: the person looking at this page is a hot prospect. He or she is in a buying mood. You want to be sure to take advantage of that by putting your most relevant offers on this page. To encourage buying, consider including:
A limited time offer—scarcity sells, so if you can legitimately limit sales to a few hours/days or number of units, then this is the place to do so.
You can create a simple sales funnel to start off with and grow and automate it as your business expands and your product offerings increase. You can add upsells and downsells at anytime, but for now, this simple setup is really all you need.
