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!
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Want the opt-in funnel above for free? Get it HERE!
So if you want to grow your business online then I recommend you get your FREE 14-day trial to ClickFunnels here and you will see that they are so MUCH MORE than just funnels!
Hello there, John,
Thank you for such an informative and concise introduction (for me) to funnels. I have often heard the term used but did not quite get the concept. Your detailed article certainly cleared the air for me – thank you!
Needless to say, I will check out your suggestion and see where that leads me. I am new to the internet world and every opportunity that takes me closer to enhancing my online presence is always appreciated.
Thanks
Michelle
Thanks for you feedback Michelle, glad that I helped you understand the sales funnel process!
Good luck with your online business, I am sure sales funnels will help you 🙂
Hello John great post as always. I have a copy of Russell’s book on click funnels and it really is pretty amazing, still have some way to go in reading the book, did not know about sales funnels until I read your article. Thanks for this wealth of knowledge.
Sales funnels really are the core of Russell’s philosophy of online marketing Norman!
Enjoy his book, it’s a great read!:-)
Hi John, enjoyed reading your article on funnels! It gave me some more insight in developing myself. I liked also how you presented the many types of funnels, was not aware of this until I came to your site! I did not realize you were a Amazon best selling author! Wishing the best, Tim
Thanks Tim! Glad that my article helped explain a few things for you and help you out! 🙂
Hey i never heard of the sales funnel term. But i have to say i got me interested, the principle of advertising you were writing about can be applied literally anywhere it seems to me.
Loved the part about McDonalds, i always fall for that tricks. They won’t get me next time 🙂
Haha! Very sneeky marketers at Maccas Nemanja, that’s for sure 😉
Yes, sales funnels can be implemented in any business online or off and increase profitability!
A very essential marketing strategy for us all!
Thanks for commenting!
I’ve never understood these funnels before reading your article, so thank you so much for that! I would really like to start implementing an email list because I think that would help boost the visitors to my site greatly, especially with this new knowledge of mine!
Thanks for the good read!
xx
Helen
Glad that it helped Helen!
Building an email list should be a huge priority for anyone in online business right from the start!
I use Aweber, which is pretty cost effective, but you can start with a free service like Mailchimp.
Your future self will thank you 🙂
Hiya, John. Thanks for the info above.
Very curious about the up-sells after or during opt-in so may I ask a couple of Qs?
Do you think it’s a good idea to place an up-sell page with 2 offers rather than 2 pages with 1 offer, if ya get what I mean? Save the visitor too much delay before thanking them.
Would it be a good idea to place an up-sell on the thank you page itself or is that kinda sacred territory for customer relationship building?
Hope ya don’t mind me asking as my background is in eStores where everything’s on auto and SEO = the best plugin available.
All the best – Andre
Hi Andre, to be honest, a lot of it is trial and error, but I would generally go with an an offer on each page!
Personally, I wouldn’t sell anything on the thank you page either, but I will have a link to join my Facebook group for free.
As I said, testing is everything, and what works for one offer, may not work for others!
The wonderful world of online marketing!
Thanks for your questions 🙂
Hey John,
Great work on the article my man! As a veteran internet marketer myself, I highly agree with what you’ve stated above about sales funnel. ClickFunnels is in my opinion the BEST funnel builder, I have been using it for my e-commerce businesses for a year and a half now!
$100 per month is definitely “expensive” for a new marketer. But with the right guidance and the correct mindset, that $100 spent per month is really affordable (considering the amount of money they make from the funnel haha)
Anyway, great article John! Thanks for this 🙂 I will bookmark your site and direct this page to my friends.
Regards,
Kenny Wong
Glad that you are doing well with your funnels Kenny, Clickfunnels certainly is an awesome tool!
The funny thing that you mention, is the cost of $100 a month being expensive for a newbie… While I don’t disagree, I really like to look at it as an investment in your business.
Just think how much it costs to start a traditional business?
One or two hundred a month really does’t compare does it?
It’s all about perspective 🙂
Hello John,
Thanks for this article. I am hoping it will assist me in increasing the profit margin as I am an eCommerce business owner. I have seen this method on other websites, just that I wasn’t aware of it. Got a question, does this work for small business or can only be applied if you already established? because to me it sounds like giving a discount and expecting people to spend more for the up sale. What if more don’t take the bait, are you at the verge of loosing?
Hey Sibusiso, this can work for small business, eCommerce, start up, or established… A sales funnel will help any business!
There are businesses that apply it as you say – “to spend more on the upsale” But generally, people will pay for more information at different price points or for different products, you just have to conduct your business ethically.
And yes, if people don’t take your initial offer, of course, you make nothing!
That’s business and marketing 😉
I’ve been blogging for some time now. I’m a research junkie, and see a lot of the gurus promoting sales funnels. Every single successful Internet business has a sales funnel of some type. This is where my blog is lacking. I just started collecting emails and my list is still small, but growing! Do you think that click funnels can help me, even though my list is still so small?
Thanks!
We all have to start somewhere Nicki, one step at a time!
I definitely do think that Clickfunnels can help you however!
You can check out the 14-day trial, but you will also receive some “best in the business” online marketing training that will hep you out!
Check out my Clickfunnels review for more info 🙂