How to Create a Sales Funnel

John newman

7 years ago

How to Create a Sales Funnel

Sales funnels are all the rage in online business these days!

Maybe you have heard of the latest software Clickfunnels or you have been hearing from all the online gurus that you need to implement a funnel into your business?

The trouble is you may have a million questions about this subject, right?

Like, what are sales funnels?

What different types are there?

How do I create a sales funnel?

How do I implement them into my business?

Why do I even need one?

Read on, and in this article, I will attempt to shed a light on this new exciting world of funnels?

What is a sales funnel?

Have you ever been to McDonald’s?

I know the food’s crap, but most of us have been there!

Ever ordered a big Mac and heard “do you want fries with that?”

That’s the first upsell in McDonald’s “sales funnel”.

You see when MacDonald’s sells you a burger for $2.09, they spend a $1.91 in advertising just to get you through the drive-through, which leaves them with a profit of just $0.18 cents!

BUT… when they offer an upsell of fries and coke for an extra $1.77, their profit increases to $1.32.

8 times the profit of the original sale!

This is the basic premise of a sales funnel in action!

Most online businesses have a website and just sell stand alone products and struggle to remain profitable with rising AD costs and competition.

But when you add a sales funnel into your business, upsells and down sells, then you can actually afford to spend more money in advertising and make a greater profit in the process.

Russell Brunson the CEO of the leading sales funnel software Clickfunnels says “The person that can afford to spend the most money wins”

Or, if you can afford to spend more money than the competition and STILL be profitable… you win!

Different types of funnels

When you first start an online business you will most probably hear that you need to build an email list… “The money is in the list”, have you ever heard this?

So if you have already started collecting email addresses, then you have probably got a basic opt-in funnel already in place.

Now it may just be an opt-in form on your website at this stage, but a basic opt-in funnel would look like this:

You send visitors to a landing page (a stand alone opt-in page) where people will give you their email address in exchange for a free eBook, a cheat sheet, mega guide, video or something similar.

Then after they opt-in they are sent to a thank you page. (see example below)

On the thank-you page, you have a lot of options.

Most online marketers will just say thank you, ask you to check your email and give information on your download… and this is where they are leaving a lot of money on the table.

Adding an upsell

Someone has just opted into your email list, you already have their attention, so this is the perfect time to make an offer!

So in between the landing page and thank you page, you add a sales page!

There are a variety of options you can add in here, but generally, on the sales page, you would add a one time offer (OTO) that asks your new subscriber to take action now and make a purchase.

Personally, I have two options that I use as my OTO.

A Tripwire offer…

And a self-liquidating offer…

Tripwires

A tripwire is just very low-cost offer that allows you to identify your buyers and start building up a buyer list.

It will generally be priced below $20.

I offer eBooks for $7 or an eBook package for $17 for my tripwire offers.

The idea is to offer a lot of value for a very low price so that it becomes a bit of a no-brainer for anyone interested in your particular niche or market.

Self-liquidating offers

The idea of a self-liquidating offer is to offer a product priced around $37-$47 that basically covers all of your advertising costs, so that your cost of acquiring a customer is pretty much zero!

After that, any further offers are pure profit!

This also comes back to the importance of building and nurturing an email list.

By providing follow-up emails with valuable, helpful content for your subscribers, mixed in with some promotional emails, is a massive factor in the success of your funnels and your business.

But what if you could actually make money right at the start of your customer opting in?

What if you made money on every customer that subscribed to your email list?

Awesome right?

Let’s have a look at a more complicated funnel from the best in the business!

The Expert Secrets Book Funnel

The more complex your funnels become, the more money you can potentially make at the point of opt-in.

Once you add upsells and down sells into the mix, the profit margins become much higher.

Recently, Internet entrepreneur Russell Brunson launched his new book and put together a sales funnel to go with it!

As you can see, Russell actually gave away his book for free with a “free plus shipping” offer on the landing page, followed by an “order bump” for his OTO, followed by an upsell, and a down sell, and finally to the thank you page where he had another upsell.

All up, even though he gave away his book for free, his potential cart value was over $1000!

I took part as an affiliate, and for every book I gave away, I could make over $400 myself! (Not bad for sending some traffic to someone else’s funnel)

After the initial opt-in, Russell then sends a follow-up email campaign offering more free training as well as offers to maximise profit on every book given away for free!

Other funnels

As you can see, the number of steps and options you want to add to your funnel is really only left up to your imagination, but what other funnels could you create?

Here are a few options:

A book funnel
A webinar funnel
A product launch funnel
A supplement funnel
An eCommerce funnel
A network marketing funnel
An affiliate marketing funnel
A coaching or consultant funnel
And much, much more…

As you can see, you can create a sales funnel for any product, in any market, for any business that you can think of.

How to create a sales funnel?

You may be thinking that this is awesome, but you don’t know how to build a funnel, or you think that it must be difficult and technical?

Several years ago, this was definitely the case, and it took a lot of time and money to either build a funnel or have someone create it for you, but these days it is much different.

Today there are funnel builders that are literally, drag and drop, and fill in the blanks.

Yes, there is a learning process, but if you can send an email and operate Facebook, then you can build a sales funnel!

Personally, I use and love Clickfunnels for my funnels.

They are the easiest to use, with the best support, training and community.

At around $100 a month, a lot of people say they are expensive, but I like to think of it as an investment in your business that will pay off big time in the future.

You can also promote them and their other quality products as an affiliate and liquidize the cost rather quickly!

I have used other, cheaper options such as Optimizepress, and you can even get plugins for your WordPress website, but there is no comparison to Clickfunnels in my opinion.

But whatever tool you decide to go with, I hope you can see the advantage of implementing a sales funnel into your business today!

If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below.

To your freedom,

John W. Newman

Financial Freedom Warrior!

Helping you create TIME AND FINANCIAL FREEDOM by building a PROFITABLE Business Online!

Dream It… Believe It… Then Achieve It!