With this post, I will be explaining what a sales funnel is as well as why I feel that websites don’t work anymore. I will discuss websites first and then I will explain what a sales funnel is as well as why I feel that they work so well.
Why don’t websites work anymore?
A website works best when you have people who are ready to buy. The problem is that most people are not ready to buy immediately.
People need to be sold as to why your product/offer is the best and why they need to purchase now. I heard in a webinar that most people need 5–10 “touches” or contacts regarding the product before they are ready to buy.
5 Reasons Why Websites Don’t Work Anymore.
The website may take thousands of dollars and quite a bit of time to build.
You will need to have a domain name, design, WordPress plugins as well as know about SEO and ranking your website with Google and other search engines.
If you don’t know how to do this then you are paying someone or a team of people quite a bit of money to do all of this for you.
The biggest problem with most websites is that they are not designed to make sales.
They do not usually take people through a sales process. So now you have just spent thousands of dollars and you have spent months waiting for your website to be ready and you are not making any sales.
What do you do? You need a sales funnel.
What is a sales funnel?
Sales funnels are designed to take people through the sales process. Entrepreneur magazine has a very indepth article on this: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/296526
The first page of the sales funnel is something called a “Lead Capture Page”. This is where you are offering something for free (lead magnet) in trade for an email address.
So whatever you offer for free needs to have enough value in order for the customer to be willing to give up their email address in order to get it. So, now that you have the email address you provide them with the free gift and follow up with them.
After your customer has entered their email address the sales funnel takes them to the sales page. This is where the customer learns about the product, what makes it special, why they “need” to have this product now. The sales page can either be written or a video.
Your choice of this will depend on what you are selling. Now because you offer so much value on your sales page your customer is ready to buy. Make sure your message is clear. A confused mind never buys. Now because your sales page is so awesome you are converting visitors to buyers. Now a lot of people would stop there.
At this point, you may just be breaking even or even losing a little bit of money after you take out advertising costs. Many people will quit now and think that their sales funnel isn’t working.
But hold on…
The best time to sell is when someone is already in the process of buying. Now you can add something to the product that will make it even better. If your product is consumable you may want to add in the opportunity to purchase more of it or some other item that will compliment your product.
A small percentage of the customers will upgrade and when they do your offer is now in profit. Now you have made a profit and you have a customer that you can follow up with since you got their email address at the beginning of the process.
Once someone buys from you, they are more likely to purchase again. Now follow up with email and provide value. The initial sale is to break even on your advertising costs. Anything else that the customer purchases from you in the future is all profit.
Many people make the mistake of trying to get all of their money back and make a profit with the first sale and when this doesn’t happen they quit and think that the sales funnel didn’t work. When in reality they just didn’t take it far enough or didn’t know how this process works. So…the goal is to generate as many customers as you can for “free” on the front end and then make your profit on the back end.
Now you have happy customers. What do you do? Well, they were so happy with your product and you provided so much value that you offer them the product on a subscription basis. A percentage of the people will take you up on that offer. Now you are developing a recurring income that will grow every month as the number of your customers increases.
The sales funnel has been around for a long time. McDonalds uses it when you go in for a burger and come out with a full meal deal. Or, your dentist uses it when you go in for a cleaning and leave with an appointment for teeth whitening, and the next appointment for cleaning is all set up.
The sales funnel is straightforward and has a very clear purpose. The purpose of each step is to get you to the next step in the process. It does not matter what kind of business you are in, you could even have a brick and mortar business… if you are not using a sales funnel then you are leaving money on the table.
If you would like to learn more about these universal business principles and get your business to the next level then Click Here.