Sales Funnels

Sales funnels have been around since the 1990s. They were just not called that way.

Many digital marketers at the very beginning of the internet started by offering a free product and then products in increasing value as they worked to increase the trust of their customers.

Recently though the internet has been taken by storm by the funnel business. This multi-million dollar niche marketed very successfully that anyone who wants to succeed in online marketing needed a funnel and many people paid big dollars for monthly funnel services.

Here is the great news: you do not need to pay big dollars to get your own funnels. Actually, you can create them for free!

Click on the image below to get instant access to your free funnel builder for life.

What is a funnel?

A funnel is just a series of webpages linked together in a marketing purpose.

You can build a sales funnel in one afternoon if you want to. Funnel sellers like to make it seem like rocket science so they can charge monthly fees as high as 297$!

You can decide to build your funnel inside your WordPress site or use a free funnel builder like GrooveFunnels. 

Let’s be honest here and address why GrooveFunnels is giving away free funnels and templates. Their business model is very simple. They are giving you the free basic version of Groovefunnels in the hope that you will be tempted to upgrade to their full platform which offers an email marketing service, webinar service, blog, video hosting, shopping cart, affiliate marketplace, etc! 

Guess what, I upgraded less than one hour after getting the free version of Groovefunnels as this was too good to pass!

Let’s build  a simple funnel for fun. Your funnel will have three elements. Once you are familiar with building a funnel, you will be able to add elements like upsales, downsales, sidesales, one-time-offers, etc

So your funnel will have three simple elements:

1. An opt-in page or lead generation.
2. A one-time offer
3. A check-out page with maybe a pop sale
4. A thank you/download page.

That’s it!

For the opt-in page, you need an opt-in form, an image or video of what you are offering and a little piece of text explaining what your offer is. Nowadays, most opt-in forms offer freebies as it is hard to start selling to people who do not know you.

Your landing/ lead generation/ squeeze page/ opt-in should only serve one purpose: to get your customer’s info so resist the temptation to post anything but the opt-in form and the info about your freebie. No ads, nothing they could click on. 

The second page on your funnel will be your one-time offer. This offer is usually for a low price product as you just gave a freebie to your potential customers and you don’t want to shock them with a high-ticket price.

There will be plenty of time to upsell your customer once they know, like and trust you.

The third page would be the check-out page if you added a product for sale.

If you did not offer an upsell to your freebie your next page is the thank you/download page where they can get their freebie. Since your freebie is most probably a digital product, your thank you page is a download page.

The beauty of using a free funnel builder like GrooveDigital is that they have free templates so you do not start with a blank page, which you can actually do if you choose the blank page template. Are you still with me?!

One thing we love about designing webpages is BRANDING! You see in the name of branding, your webpages should have the same colors and look. This means that when you are creating the second page in your funnel, you can clone the first one and then edit it while keeping the colors, headers, fonts. etc. 

Your customers need to recognize your look from one page to the other. Imagine if you were driving on the highway and you were hungry and looking for a McDonalds® and saw a huge green M letter. You would not stop!

The same goes for your website and funnel. Your look has to be consistent throughout which means you can clone your first page and then modify it to serve the purpose you need.

So you are creating the second page of your funnel which is a product you are selling. As we were saying, your offer should be for a product that is with a low price tag. Your customer just got attracted to your funnel with a free offer. They have not taken their credit card out yet so you do not want to scare them away. Since you are offering a product, this page should be like a salespages with benefits, bullet lists, guarantees, testimonials, etc

You decide if you want to include scarcity in your salesletter but that can be a turn-off if it is fake scarcity. You should not sacrifice your customer’s trust to make a quick sale. 

 

 

 

 

 

If your customer took your offer, they are directed to your check-out page. Some savvy marketers will include a small offer right there in the check out page which many people will take just like at the check-out of your big box store those low ticket impulse items that sell like crazy.

The last page of your funnel will be your thank you/ download page where they get a link to download their products. If you are selling physical product offering an immediate digital version to download will offer tremendous value to your new customer.

Since you have captured your customer’s e-mail address on the first page of your funnel, you have to go to your email service and set-up the first e-mail in your auto-responder sequence. Your first e-mail should welcome your new customer and repeat where they can download their freebie as this will save you so much time answering people who lost their download links or left the download page and could not find it anymore.

 

So great you have all the pages for your funnel. What next? 

You need to link your pages together of else they will nto form a funnel but rather just loose webpages.

The way to link your pages together is not complicated or magic like some marketers selling you their funnel services want you to think. The linking is set on the pages per se. So you opt-in page links to your one-time offer or download page if you do not have a one-time offer.

Then, your offer goes to either your check out page or the download page for your freebies. 

Let’s take your first page, the opt-in page. The way to link to yoru second page is by editing the submit button. Your software will ask you where you want to link your submit button to. This is where you will input your second page’s URL. 

Of course people who want to charge you monthly fees want to make it sound very complicated but it is not.

We have a free mini-course to help you build your free funnel now. Click on the image below to get instant access to your free funnel building course. 



You can decide to build your funnel on your website or use such services as GrooveFunnels  . You can start with the free version and then decide if you want to upgrade to the lifetime access either to just Groovefunnels or the entire Groove platform.

There are still companies who thrive and do not use funnel marketing at all like Amazon® and Youtube® for instance. So, you do not absolutely need a funnel to succeed in digital marketing. A funnel could be useful if you are doing a joint venture with another marketer and want to build your list while offering a free product. 

By using your funnel, you are capturing their email address and adding them to your list and then can market to them.

A funnel can also be useful if you are doing ads and want people to sign-up with you.

Many marketers are now asking for their visitor’s phone number on top of their e-mail address. They want to have their prospect’s phone number so they can message market to them (there are bots that do that automatically). While very lucrative, it is a two-bladed sword meaning that you may lose some customers as many people are reluctant to give their phone number.

 

If you like the images, they were all free and took a minute to create. You can download the images on Pixabay.com. They are all free. Then, you go to Paint 3D and just mix them together to create your unique image.

Here is your call to action

1. Decide if you want to build a simple funnel. If you do, start with a simple free offer and opt-in page. Get your free funnel builder by clicking the image below:
   
   

Even though you do not need to have a funnel, having one is a great thing in case you run into another marketer who is doing a promotion and needs freebies to add to his offer. Such partnership can be beneficial for both of you.

      2. Take one day to create your funnel offer. This will also include setting-up your email autoresponder. If youa re a beginner, using a free funnel template will save you a lot of time. 

        3. Study other funnels and even make a folder of the ones you like best. Notice their opt-in, one-time offer, downsells and upsells and notice what you like and dislike.

 

See you on the next square!

Nathalie