So, How Do I Design My Sales Funnel?

Now that you understand what a funnel is, let’s design a sales funnel. Creating a funnel isn’t as hard or scary as some gurus make it out to be. If you’re not a funnels expert, we recommend that you reach out to someone that is. Otherwise, you risk missing certain steps. Regardless, there’s a lot of groundwork that you can do to help convert your newly acquired leads to consistent paying customers.

Start with what you know

Do you know what you’re trying to sell? Gather all the things that you know about your industry and think of ways you can provide value for your audience with things that you know. Start simple with a list, then move to Google Drive, and gathering your other digital assets.

Figure out what you don’t know

After you’ve put together that, it’s time to define what you don’t know. It’s impossible to know everything, after all.  If you’re an expert in marketing and there’s something about your product or industry that you don’t know, there’s a good chance that your potential client doesn’t know it either. This offers you the opportunity to provide some great value to your leads once you fill in the blanks.

Create the content for your sales funnel

Now that you’ve put together all of what you know and fill in for what you don’t, it’s time to actually create the content. When it comes to creating the content for your offer, you have nearly unlimited options. Check out our last series on trip wires to see all the different ways you can create high-quality content. Some of our favorites are assessments and DIY training.

Once you’ve gotten your content created, it’s time to implement it. There is a certain level of expertise needed when it comes to putting all your content pieces together in a way that is consistent and digestible to your audience. Ideally, once it’s implemented, it becomes an automated funnel process that can run without you day or night. As we’ve mentioned, this funnel should lead your newly established client into your core product offering.

Now that you’ve got the engine rolling, it’s time to start directing traffic to it. What good is a great product with an awesome funnel if no one is seeing it? Directing traffic to your business is critical. We’ll go over ways to gain traffic in a later blog post.

Align your sales funnel with your sales process

Now that you’ve got the general gist of what a funnel does and how to design it, it’s time to cover the exact pieces of it and how they all work together to funnel leads into your sales process. Initially, your business would start with a free lead magnet. This is to pique your leads interest, provide some quick upfront value and get them into your sales funnel. Follow up your free tripwire with a series of authority builders in the form of blog posts, emails, videos, or anything that can provide value to this new potential client without you breaking the bank. These are meant to establish you or your company as an industry thought leader, thus building your credibility and increasing the probability of conversion down the road.

After you’ve felt you’ve offered enough value in the form of lead magnets and authority builders, it’s time to introduce your first low-cost offer in a tripwire. The tripwire lets the new client have some skin in the game and primes them for later purchases with getting them to say yes. The important part about the tripwire is getting the customers’ credit card on file. This will make it easier for them to say yes to future offers, specifically your core offer.

After nurturing your lead and offering them your tripwire, if they convert, you can offer them your core product. The core product sale is the whole reason you’ve designed this funnel to begin with. After presenting your core offer, you’re then able to up-sell, down-sell and cross-sell your client into other products and services you provide.

Overwhelmed? Don’t be. We’re here to help.