You’ve heard of a sales funnel. But do you know the different stages?
In this post, I’m going to break down the 5 stages of an effective sales funnel.
I’m going to explain each step and how it will help you build a successful business online.
A business that is scalable and sustainable.
Now you can run ads and send people to a sales page or a website all day long. You might even make a few sales.
But you’d be ignoring one vital fact – people need multiple “touches” before they buy.
The secret to building any business online is learning how to lead your prospects down a particular path.
A path that ultimately leads to an offer and gives your prospects an opportunity to buy from you not only right now but down the road as well.
And at the same time bringing you more and more new prospects every single day.
Now before we dive into each stage of a sales funnel, you’re probably wondering why bother setting one up for your business in the first place, right?
Well here’s just a small taste of the power of an online sales funnel. You’ll be able to…
- Position yourself as an authority in your niche.
- Get leads for your business 24/7.
- Build relationships with only qualified leads, on autopilot.
- Turn those leads into customers without picking up a telephone. (unless you want)
Sound good so far? O.K., here’s how it works…
The first thing we’re going to do is to start building an audience of potential prospects for our business.
Then, once we have an audience of potential prospects we’re going to narrow that audience down to only qualified leads.
Next, we’re going to start building (lasting) relationships with our new leads and finally, present our offer – in a “cool” way.
And turn some of our leads into customers, and repeat customers.
And simply continue to nurture our list.
So Let’s look at an example of how to start building an audience from scratch.
On Facebook, you might show a video to a large and broad audience related to your product or service – but not promoting it. Why? Because we only want to see who watches it at this point.
Because on Facebook, you can build an audience of people that watch more than 50% of a video for instance. (If they watch more than 50% of a video, we know they are pretty interested in what we have to say.)
Next, you can run a video ad to that same audience and drive people directly to on opt-in page of your sales funnel. Notice I did not say sales page, yet.
An opt-in page is a web page with only one purpose: to collect email addresses.
Which brings us to stage 1 of a sales funnel…
Stage 1 Of A Sales Funnel Is Offering Value.
This is how narrow your new large and broad audience so your left with only qualified leads.
As I mentioned above, the purpose of an opt-in page is to collect email addresses. Here’s how it works.
You create a free giveaway like an informational video, a webinar, or a PDF related to your product or service. You then create a capture page giving it away.
Here’s an example of a capture page.
So if someone wants ‘FACEBOOK PAID MARKETING SECRETS’ they just need to click the orange download now button, type in their name and email, and they get to download it for free.
That person who just entered their name and email to get the PDF will now become your qualified lead.
This step is huge because it’s the beginning of the relationship building process. It’s like you opening your front door and letting a vacuum cleaner salesperson into your home.
But first is stage 2.
Stage 2 Of A Sales Funnel Is Delivering What You Promised.
This stage is simple. You deliver exactly what you promised on the capture page.
So after someone enters their email address on your capture page you re-direct them to what is called a “thank you” page.
A thank you page is a web page that basically says “thank you for requesting ‘FACEBOOK PAID MARKETING SECRETS'” for example, and tells the lead what steps to do next to actually get the product.
Or a thank you page can have the free product download on the page itself and include an up-sale. An up-sale is where you can offer a second product to your new lead.
Stage 3 Of A Sales Funnel Is Building A Relationship With Your List.
Now the whole point of the capture page was to get a potential customer to give you their email address so you can add them to your email list and begin the relationship building process – or follow-up.
The goal here is for you to begin to position yourself as an authority in your niche.
For example, if you created the Facebook paid marketing secrets PDF, you would begin to send out emails to your list that have to do with growing a business using Facebook marketing. At this point, you’re not trying to sell anything to your list. (sending these kinds of emails 2 times a week is a good rule of thumb)
All your doing is your trying to position yourself as the person who they know, like, and trust – and feel can help them get what they want.
Of course, what you’re really doing is setting your list up for the next phase.
The next phase is promoting your product or service. Which, by now, should seem like “the natural thing to do” because you’ve taken the time and effort to build a solid relationship with your list.
Stage 4 Of A Sales Funnel Is Turing Your Leads Into Customers (and repeat customers)
Now that your list thinks of you as the person who can help them get what they want – it’s time for you help them get what they want.
Now it’s time to send people to your sales page…
And you do that by “recommending” products or services. (doing this once a week is pretty normal. You don’t just want to blast your list in a new promotion every day)
These could be your own products or it could be affiliate courses or marketing tools.
The magic happens when you make your first sale. Because you have now turned a lead into a customer.
Side Note:
Also, this is where retargeting comes so important.
You can retarget the non-buyers on your page. You just add a piece of code from Facebook, for example, then run an ad directly to people that landed on these pages but didn’t actually buy.
So retargeting at different stages of your funnel is useful.
Step 5 Of A Sales Funnel Is Customer Retention.
Customer retention is all about how to keep your new customers from having a case of buyers remorse – and how to make sure past customers keep coming back to you to buy more stuff.
Let’s say you sold a Facebook marketing course, for example.
You could create a bonus “getting started” training webinar. You could even set up a private buyers-only Facebook group that offers easily accessible and ongoing support.
Here’s what a typical sales funnel looks like.
So there are the five stages of a sales funnel.
As you can see the setup can be a little complicated and very time consuming to set up.
You need software to create each step of the sales funnel, email autoresponder software, and membership site software.
You can click here to see the online tools I use for my business.
Now take a look at the image above. You’ll notice the sales funnel begins with the capture page the critical step where the relationship building process and funnel begins)
Now as your prospect moves through your sales funnel something HUGE happens…
…Your prospect’s commitment (to you) gets bigger and bigger at each step along the way. In the form of time and money invested in you.
We start by giving our prospect something for free. (tiny time commitment and zero money commitment)
But, by the time your prospect reaches the end of your funnel – he or she will have incrementally invested more time (watching your videos & reading your emails) and money (low dollar initial sale to high dollar final sale) with you.
And if all goes as planned it will be a life-long commitment to you, because…
..we’ve also put a life-long follow-up mechanism in place, via email.
So there you have it, the 5 stages of a sales funnel.
