Creating An Effective Sales Funnel - Part 4

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NOTE TO SELF (FINAL!):

WHAT IS THIS 4 PART POST ALL ABOUT?

HERE'S WHAT - SALES FUNNELS: THE 'WHAT', 'WHERE', 'WHEN', 'HOW', PLUS...SOME EXAMPLE LANDING PAGES, SQUEEZE PAGES, OPT-IN PAGES, AND MORE...

PUBLISHED OVER THE FOUR DAYS, ONE PER DAY, TODAY IS PART 4...

OK WITHOUT FURTHER ADO...

INTRODUCTION

Today is the final segment of our 4 part series on sales funnels. We will wind up the basics and drill down a bit more, then I urge readers to try some funnels themselves, ask for feedback, maybe here, and give them a whirl in your online marketing effort!

It has been proven for a LONG time before the internet was around that having upsells, downsells, and adding increasing levels of value for a prospective client works, because it captures your customer while they are already buying from you.

I used this tactic when selling groceries long ago (LOTS of groceries, like 4 million USD a month of groceries!), and there was no such thing as a dales funnel at that time (there was internet, I am not THAT old!)...

So let's get right into this last bit...

Remember what a sales funnel looks like:

How To Effectively Design/Create The Components of Sales Funnel Pages

I am sure that most of yoy have seen landing pages online, and most contain all of the components I mention below. Today we will see what goes into the process for each, and a few key points that you need to be aware of as you create your own pages that support your funnel...

First of all, sales funnels should be targeted towards premium buyers (the 20% that are really buying) rather than others (the 80% that stop by but do not buy). Let’s say you have 100 prospects that have been driven to your Sales Funnel…Likely only the top 20 of those that have shown interest through subscribing to your list will buy something, the other 80 folks will not.

So from the layout, to the title, the expansion points, perhaps an explainer video, any testimonials, your describing of the problem, then providing the solution (benefits), adding a call to action, and etc., your focus should be on convincing these top 20 buyers to buy.

If you are just providing general information that is not calling for anay action on your page, you are wasting those 20 customer’s time, and you conversion rate will drop. Those other 80 customers you can target in your blogs and posts on social platforms. You have their contact information at that point. So calls for action are key throughout.

With that in mind, look at your copywriting effort, the layout of the page, the design of any graphics and so on, to come up with an effective page that will get the message across effectively to those 20…See what others are doing, how they worded things, placed graphics, etc.

Unless you have a lot of experience in these areas mentioned, I would highly recommend using some off-the-shelf programs or sites that are available at a reasonable cost (and some that are more expensive but good) to do a lot of the work for you…

One area that you may WANT to do a bit of work getting proficient at is video creation and editing. You do not have to become a full on producer to be effective, there are courses you can enroll in and lots of free training on the ‘net available…

I have been working on this simultaneously while working on my affiliate program, and can attest to the fact it is doable! There are lots of help materials out there too that are relatively inexpensive such as intros, outros, explainer videos, buttons, pop ups, etc. that makes putting a video together easy…

More reasons to use the off-the-shelf solutions, as much as possible, while putting together your pages include time and money. You do not have to become an expert in programing or coding to create those great looking pages. You can buy one time pay programs or monthly subscription sites that are relatively inexpensive and will do the job nicely…The time you save and that is available for other things is far more than the cost…Bottom line you will likely be able to make MORE mondey than your expense...

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Here are some considerations even if you use the templates for your pages….Remember also with these you should edit each to fit your strategy and offer…

Copywriting Considerations - Focus on Macro wins with the main headlines – use strong words and phrases that will capture the attention of the 20% premium folks that are the real buyers, then do the same with your sub-points, one after the other.

-You are pointing out that what you are offering is unique, valuable and different than what is to be found anywhere else…

-You are adding in the keywords that such customers were looking for when they came to your page

-You are building on the giveaway that they have already received (adding additional value for them for a price)…

-You are addressing a problem that they are looking for a solution for

- You have it!-You make a compelling case in a succinct manner then add a call to action….

Layout of the Page - If you do not know much about design, here is where the templates that are available from a wide variety of sources or sites will be very helpful. If you have taken action to see what the successful competitors are doing, you already know what you need. Find a similar template, then modify it to emulate closely the page that is successful…

-Things like graphics, where the Headlines and sub points are located, what sort of other supporting material such a testimonials, defining the problem, your unique selling point, the graphics used, etc. you can play with until you have what looks similar…

-If you do not have a sample page to follow, then you may have to go through putting page together you think will convert and test it. If you do, start by changing one thing, and test the two against each other, Use the better performing page and do this again, changing another thing. Note change only one thing at a time when you do this…

-Myself, Time is important, so I always go with the templates and also with what is working for others…Time is money my firends...

A Real Life Abbreviated Case Study

OK Theory is good, talking about sales funnels pages and opt-in pages and Front End Offers and Thank You pages etc. is all good, as we have done...Doing some practice exercises is useful to get an idea, but the real test is putting this into practice...

In that regard, it can be helpful to learn about a real life example too of a campaign...How it fits in to your overall program, what comes before, during, and after...You then have a good feeling how the sales funnel can really work for you...

I am going to do just that here, adding my own experience. Obviously I cannot promote my own products, but I can, in a generic manner, show you how I put sales funnels into use for my own online marketing program...

The example I am going to show you is a training sales funnel for creating and marketing training...What you are seeing here is an excerpt of the written content for one such course, the full on course contains video training as well...

By the way this basic set up can be applied again and again as part of a larger set of training courses I am adding to on a regular basis. They are evergreen in nature. This means they are always relevant - there is a base set of skills that every marketer needs, and once you have training courses supporting these in place, they can sell and sell and sell, month after month,

Affiliate markerters can use this kind of training as well...

Here is the process I used:

(1) Created a strategy for my education program.

- Who is the target audience,

- What do they need to learn,

- Where should the classes be hosted,

- How should the courses be set up and should they be content basis (hard copy) or video, or a combination of both,

- What is an acceptable price point/cost I should charge...

(2) Created a basic funnel that applies to every course

- I use a lead-in article, that has an explainer video that can rank quickly

- Created a simple double opt-in page ((email sent to subscriber they they have to respond to using an autoresponder service

- Created a landing page for the particular course

- Created upsell pages where buyers can get special offers (i.e. 3 for 2 - pay for two course, get three)

- Created a thank you page

- Created a set of emails to support the funnel and courses

(3) Created the training and giveaway for each course

(4) Secured a site to host the training materials, the system to track subscribers

(5) Planned for marketing campaigns to include banners, coupons, Twitter and Facebook posts

There is more drill down, but in brief this is how you incorporate the sales funnel into your program. It can help get prospects to buy more than they intended (i.e. 3 for 2 pricing), and can generate further business through using the emails and contacts to build more business over a longer period of time...

Let's Tie It All Together

OK, we started the course out by talking about what a sales funnel is, showed some examples of what one looks like, discussed how to come up with your own, then talked about the components of the funnel overall, then lastly looked at pages in the funnel and how to put then together…

I have read Wealthy Affiliate members speak of a few different sources, but rather than try to mention them all, my recommendation is to do a google search and start checking out all the options out there.

Drill down with the ones that at face value meet your needs, and do this for several. Then if they have a trial period, try them. Once you have found a site that you feel comfortable with sign up…

There are several free programs that allow you to edit the pages if your template site does not have this or if you have a funnel page that you just want to do some small edits on without buying a program…

This is an entire class in and of itself as are some other things we have touched on, but suffice it to say there is plenty of free courses you can find on YouTube that will help you out…

Once you have the sales funnel with all its components together, you need to host it somewhere. Depending on the amount of traffic you expect, a cheap solution is to do it all from your website.

Make the different landing pages unavailable for the public (private) and you have it all there…An example would be if you have a simple lead list funnel, there are only a couple of pieces to the funnel, and not much space is required…

Once you do decide to scale up then you can look at hosting the pages with the service where you created then at, i.e. autoresponder sites will do this. I personally use a landing page site that helps not only with the page, it hosts the page and even automatically adds in the giveaway (also hosted on their server)…Easy peasy...

There are many places to add your products and funnel to so you can tap into affiliates that may want to sell them and receive a commission. Some include JVZoo, Zaaxa, Clickbank, etc. Each has their own procedure so I would rather discuss this in the comment section for each particular affiliate network.

OK, once again, use sales funnels to increase your leads, immediate product sales, and to enable you to tap into the email marketing potential you will have as a deliverable of the sales funnel you create and implement! Watch your leads, sales and satisfaction go up. up, and up!

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CONCLUSION

This is it! We have quickly covered what is involved with planning for a sales funnel, what steps are involved, provided some examples of pages that could be in a sales funnel, and gone over what components could be included on a page...

Now it is up to you to practice and actually create these funnels and pages. What I suggest is that, as we do with posts here, we ask one another for some feedback...Together we can accomplish more than each alone....

This page or any other place within WA is where we can have an ongoing dialogue and share our experiences...I can and am willing to moderate, but basically this is something that can be ongoing and self-perpetuating, meaning I do not have to be in the mix at all for it to happen...

What I said in one of other conclusions is worth repeating: Remember, this is NOT just an exercise...Sales funnels are something that can and should be incorporated into your overall online marketing strategy, even if only to build your lead list...They will help leverage your work and result in more leads and conversions immediately and long term...

IN CASE YOU MISSED THE OTHER SEGMENTS OF THIS POST...

CLICK BELOW LINK FOR PART 3 OF 4

===>https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davidsweney/blog/c...<===

CLICK BELOW LINK FOR PART 2 OF 4

===> https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davidsweney/blog/c... <===

CLICK BELOW LINK FOR PART 1 OF 4

===> https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davidsweney/blog/c... <===

Lastly…

As I have said at the end of each segment of this training, I am sure there are lots of ideas and advice others can add to this basic post, so PLEASE share them with us below

Cheers!

Dave : )