If you have a business, you should build a sales funnel for it.
And if you are still wondering, whether you need one.
Let us share with you why you definitely should build a sales funnel for your business online.
What is a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is a marketing and sales tool that helps businesses understand and visualize the customer journey. It starts from initial awareness of a product or service to the purchase decision.
The typical sales funnel consists of four key stages: awareness, interest, decision, and action.
Awareness
In the awareness stage, potential clients become aware of your business and the services you offer. This stage is all about getting the attention of potential clients and making them aware of what you have to offer.
Interest
In the interest stage, potential clients start to take an interest in your services and what you have to offer. This stage is all about providing information and engaging with potential clients to help them understand why your services are the right choice for them.
Decision
In the decision stage, potential clients make a decision to use your services to buy your product. This stage is all about providing potential clients with the information they need to make an informed decision and helping them overcome any objections they may have.
Action
In the action stage, potential clients actually purchase your product or service. This stage is all about providing a smooth and seamless experience that makes it easy for potential clients to work with you and complete a successful transaction.
By understanding and visualizing the sales funnel for your real estate business, you can identify potential bottlenecks that may be preventing potential clients from using your services.
1. Sales Funnels Are the Most Effective Way To Sell Online
Doing business online is no different from a physical store. Just that your target markets and customers become bigger. You are now serving globally instead of being a local store.
So, now let’s take a step back and look at the customer journey for your existing customers.
Scenario 1:
They are walking into your shop and wandering around to see what you are selling.
They spend some time checking your store and your product. And then, finally left without buying anything.
They might be in a hurry for an appointment or just don’t know what to purchase.
Scenario 2:
They walk into your shop. And is greeted by a salesperson that listens to his request and guides them through the relevant and best-selling products in your store.
Then, your salesperson further persuades him to make the purchase by sharing the hidden benefits of the products for them.
In the end, the salesperson closes the sales by guiding them to the checkout.
Now, which scenario you would like to see in your store?
Scenario 2. And that’s what a sales funnel does to your business.
You see, people buy from businesses or brands they trust. When they came into your store, they might not know you at all.
If you just show them the best-selling product, chances are they will be annoyed and not buy anything. But this is what most online entrepreneurs do. They show ads on their main product to cold traffic and hope that they will buy.
Of course, they will not buy on the first visit.
That’s why you would need a sales funnel for your business, just like your salesperson in your physical store. Just that this salesperson is working 24/7 and doesn’t ask for a raise.
Buying Behaviour Explained
When you want to buy a product or service, you probably will take time to research the product and the company. You might be searching on Google, following their social media or even reading their blog and subscribing to their newsletter.
You won’t be buying from someone you don’t know. Only after you know and trust them, you will be thinking of buying from them. And the first sale is the most important. After someone makes the first purchase, it is more likely that he will continue buying from you in the future.
You break the barrier between both of you.
What Most Online Entrepreneurs Sell
Most online entrepreneurs that are just starting their first business, forget how the sales should be. Instead, they are chasing sales only.
Which of course, not working well. Instead, they should be focusing on lead generation and nurturing leads to get them into paying customers.
This is why creating a sales funnel is important to sell more online.
A sales funnel does exactly this to collect user’s contact detail, build trust and convert them into paying customers.
Four Steps of Sales Funnel
Instead of sending the traffic to a sales page, first of all, you send them to a squeeze page. A squeeze page is designed to offer a freebie in exchange for their email address.
Then, once they are subscribed to your list, now you can send them the onboarding email sequence. Here, you can introduce yourself, explain your business and then promote your product offer at the end of the sequence.
After they go through the squeeze page and your email sequence, now they know about you. When you are pitching them at the end of the sequence, they will be more likely to make purchases from you.
And if they don’t, you can still provide value to them with emails to build a reputation and relationships with them.
2. Traditional Websites are Not Built For Conversion
A website is good to showcase your business and let your customers know more about your product and service.
However, a website is not created for sales. It is not optimized for conversion.
A website usually has a homepage with a navigation bar, links buttons and pages to visit. When someone visits your website, they are like a customer going to your shop without a salesperson guiding him.
They will explore your websites, by clicking on the navigation bar and the links. And then, browsing around your websites. Soon, they will get lost in your website and finally, close it without buying anything.
Meanwhile, a sales funnel is designed to guide the potential customer towards the sale, one step at a time. Taking one simple action in each step.
In every step, you are presenting them with a simple yes or no decision. And you are guiding them step by step from accepting your free offer to being your lead. Then, buy the low-ticket product, high-ticket product and then your subscription program.
On each page, you only include elements like Headline, subheadline, sales copy, image, video, contact form, checkout form and the Call To Action button.
That’s all.
There is no other page like the about us, contact us, blog page or navigation bar which confused your potential customers.
If you are still not convinced, let’s run a split test for the website and the sales funnel and see which works better.
You can do it by building a sales funnel for your business and testing it against your current website. Run 50% of traffic to each page and see which converts better.
And of course, keep the winner.
3. Building Long-Term Business With Sales Funnel
When you send traffic directly to your sales page, most of it doesn’t convert into sales. Even if your conversion rate is excellent, you most probably convert less than 10% on the first attempt.
Instead, when you are sending your traffic to the squeeze page, it is more likely for them to take the free offer. It’s free anyway, as long as your freebie is able to provide huge value to them in your freebie, they will definitely claim the freebie.
Selling a free item is more important than a paid item.
So, by offering them the freebie, you are going to get their contact details which you can convert into potential customers, buyers and recurring customers via email marketing.
When you are starting out, you might just have 5 or 10 email subscribers. It seems like nothing for your business. But when you are working on it for a year, five years or even 10 years.
What if you are able to build an email list with 100,000+ subscribers?
Can you imagine how powerful is your email?
If you are launching a new product, you can just promote it to your list with an email sequence.
And then, for a $100 product, you just need a 10% conversion rate to get $1,000,000 with just a single email.
This is the power of building a huge email list.
Not everyone is ready to buy in the first pitch, but going down the road, they might and will buy when the time is ready.
And what you need to do is just send regular emails to stay on their radar and provide value to them. When they are looking for a solution to their problem, they will realize that you are there for them.
What Is the Value Ladder Sales Funnel?
To implement the sales funnel above, Russell taught about the concept called Value Ladder Sales Funnel.
Why do we call this a value ladder?
When your prospect is moving across the different sales funnel stages, we will offer a higher-value product with a higher price point.
And in the front and middle stages, you can test for your market, to add downsells, upsells and cross-sells to maximize your revenue in your business.
And ideally, at the end of the funnel, after offering your most expensive or premium product/service, you can offer a continuity program. A continuity program is a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.
The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it follows the buying emotion. By understanding human buying behaviour, it does:
- Start the relationship by offering free value. – Give before you sell
- Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via a follow-up email. – follow up and trust
- Build trust by providing more paid value progressively. – Build subscriber
Depending on your sales funnel goal, you can add or remove some steps in the sales funnel to suit your business.
It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
To understand more about sales funnel in-depth, may check out the best-selling book by Russell Brunson, the co-founder of ClickFunnels and the creator of the value ladder sales funnel concept, about how to use sales funnel to grow and scale your online business.
Free Expert Secrets Book – all you need to do is to cover the shipping!
Need Step By Step Guide From The Expert To Build Your First Sales Funnel?
Now, if you are a first-timer in building a sales funnel, it can be a nightmare to build from scratch. In fact, even professionals are using templates to start.
Now, the co-founder of ClickFunnels, Russell Brunson created this FREE 5-Day Challenge and he will walk you through the process step by step.
You will learn how to:
- Generate unlimited leads.
- Create your first lead magnet
- Build your first sales funnel.
- Create a simple 6-email follow-up sequence.
- And launch your funnel.
…in just five days.