Do you understand the importance of a sales funnel for your online business?  Don’t just nod your head and agree with me.  You have truly understand that in this day and digital age, when everything moves so fast and people pay less and less attention to content, people are not paying attention to one step sales attempts.  You have to have a sales funnel in order to convert a cold lead {someone that doesn’t know you at all} to a warm lead {someone familiar with your content} ready to purchase.

Elements of a Sales Funnel

When I first started trying to figure out sales funnels for my businesses, I thought my head was going to explode.  There seemed to be so many moving pieces and I constantly felt like there was a new piece of software that I needed to upgrade to to get it to all work.  Once I finally went back to my roots of focusing on providing my audience with quality content, rather than worrying about how everything would be delivered, I finally saw the outlines of a sales funnel.  Focus on the content and it will happen for you too.

The illustration below shows how simple a sales funnel truly needs to be.  The most important part is that you need to understand what paid services or product you are going to offer because you want all of your free quality content to be inline with your paid product or service.  In order to reap the benefits of your sales funnel, be sure to download my Product Launch Guide so that you can put it into effect.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is simply a one page freebie that you offer to your audience in exchange for their email address.  People often refer to the lead magnet as a freebie.  It can be anything from a checklist to a conversion chart to downloadable printable that your audience can use to track something in their life or business.  No matter what the freebie is, you want it to make sense for your content.  So if you primarily focus on parenting on your site and have an ebook on parenting strategies that work for toddlers, then your freebie should not a downloadable grocery shopping list.  That is not inline with your product.  You always want your lead magnets to be in line with your product.  This way you create a very targeted audience who is interested in whatever your paid product or service might be.

Challenge

One of my absolute favorite parts of the sales funnel is the challenge because I get to teach.  As a former teacher this is my bread and butter because I understand how to deliver a mini lesson and then have “homework” that reinforces the lesson taught.  In my Challenge Builder I teach you exactly how to create a challenge for your potential product.  I break down exactly how to determine the type of challenge that you’ll run and how to make it as effective as possible for you and your audience.

Tripwire

Most people think of their product as the tripwire and then they stop in their funnel, which is just crazy to do.  You are leaving so much money on the table.  Perry Marshall in his book 80/20 Sales and Marketing states, “80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your clients”, which means that if you stop at the tripwire then you’re leaving a vast amount of money on the table.  A tripwire is a paid product usually under $20 so if you stop here then you’re missing out on the true results of a sales funnel.  The tripwire makes a warm audience member a customer and once someone purchases from you once it is much easier for them to purchase from you again.

Sales

This area of the funnel is the goal of the funnel.  It is the purchase made of a product that is usually priced 50 dollars or higher and is usually under $500.  A product that falls into this area of the funnel is usually a physical product, an ecourse or one on one services like consulting or coaching.  Up until recently this is where I thought a sales funnel stopped.  Not until I read Perry Marshall’s book did I realize that there was more to it then that.

VIP

A VIP is someone that has most likely gone all the way through your funnel and is now willing to pay a price above $500 to work with you.  This often looks like an ecourse or very specific consulting services.  A VIP will often result in 80% of your income, but in order to get there you need to have the entire sales funnel in place so that you can gain the trust of that person.  They need to see the value in your content, but more importantly they need to see the value in you.

Now that you understand the elements of a sales funnel, let’s get you diving into your potential product with our Product Launch Guide.