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Your sales funnel exists whether you know it or not – the key is to understand your sales funnel and use it to improve your conversion rate.

A sales funnel in its simplest form is the path customers follow when they are buying from you. A sales funnel can be as simple as listing your products/services on your website and having people purchase from you however, that is definitely not taking advantage of all the opportunities you have to influence and nurture your audience.  In fact, if you think you have a simple sales funnel like this I almost guarantee you are doing more than you think you are.

 

How to have a successful Sales Funnel

The first step to a successful sales funnel is understanding your funnel and seeing where the holes are or where you can make improvements to better influence how people move through your funnel (this is called marketing!)

An example of a sales funnel you are probably used to for a service based business is a lead comes into your website, they sign up for the free opt-in you have on your site, they are put on your mail list and get your first welcome email, in this email you encourage them to set up a call with you to learn how you can work together,  you have a sales call, you make the sale!

The crucial part before building your website is understanding your funnel to ensure that your potential clients are able to flow through the process in the way you intended. For example in the above example if my opt-in was not visible right away on my website and they missed it the rest of the funnel doesn’t happen.

When you are planning out your sales funnel keep these 4 elements in mind as a roadmap:

Awareness – this is how your “lead” or potential client finds your website (maybe this is through SEO, promoting yourself in different groups, etc… – you are building awareness about your product/service)

Interest – creating interest! This could be your potential client downloading your opt-in or engaging with a post etc…

Decision – your client books a sales call to hear the ways they can work with you and they make a decision to purchase

Action – They work with you and you follow up by offering “add-ons” to their package. This is about nurturing your clients so they will be repeat clients.

Using your website to set up your sales funnel:

When thinking of how to set up your sales funnel on your website consider these elements:

• Understand how you want to drive people to your site
• Understand how you are going to capture your audience’s attention
• Know how you are offering your product (i.e. how they can purchase from you)
• Have an action in mind for how you want to continue to nurture your leads (additional promotions, add-ons, upper level packages)

There are lots of great tools to help you build and track a successful sales funnel.

Email Marketing Platforms – these are extremely beneficial because it allows you to target your warm leads whenever you would like because they are on your email list. Many people will use a free opt-in on their site offering something of value in exchange for someone’s email. You should have an email marketing list! My favorite resource is CovertKit.

Leadpages or Clickfunnels – this is a great way to separate out a sales funnel from your core website or to draw people to your website. These platforms allow you to build sales pages (typically without menus or options for people to move to different pages) the idea is they are on one page and are motivated to buy or give you their information. These platforms allow for great tracking options to see how successful pages and campaigns are.

Linktree – You can use this tool as part of your sales funnel if you have a lot of your leads on Instagram. This allows you to add a link to your bio where people can click and see multiple options for where you want them to go – you could lead them to a sales page, free-opt in, services pages, etc…

What’s Next?

You now have your sales funnel planned out and you’re ready to start building a simple 5 page website layout!