How To Create A Sales Funnel - An Example

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INTRODUCTION

Many people want to use sales funnels but are unsure of the process to create one...

There are some excellent training packages on the whole process available in different areas of the internet (I have some too), much of it free...

I am currently adding a series of training courses, tools, and guides to my online store (IM niche)...

In addition to adding the products in using Woo Commerce as products sales pages, I am creating and adding a separate sales pages where prospective buyers can refer to (from the product page) to get further information is they want/need...

These external pages are set up using a sales funnel, where you start with a lower price item or a giveaway and lead buyers through a series of pages based on their action...

Below see a typical sales funnel and some considerations that go into creating it...

THE PROCESS...

So...As I add items to my e-store, I am also simultaneously these creating sales funnels found outside (external) to the store...

Again, the sales funnels allow me to add more details and examples for the prospective customer....

To help you see how this comes together in real life, I will walk you through a recent funnel I put together...I will explain what all is involved with the mechanics of a sales funnel...

First, we have...

FRONT END

(1) Front End (FE) Basic Package. In this case, I have a bundle of 916 different fresh graphics offered at a very reasonable price. I expand on the product using a typical sales page (see the copywriting section below).

(2) FE Down-sell (DS). If the customer is not sure, and declines the FE offer, I send them to a page where I offer a 7 day trial of the package for $1 with the remainder of the price being paid after that 7 day period.

Knowing that potential clients have already seen the main sales page, I just reinforce a few points to address any points of contention the reader may still have on this sales page.

(3) FE DS 2. The last piece to the front end offer of the sales funnel is where I give away 256 MB of graphics free for the viewer providing their email and name.

This gets my foot in the door with the client and I can advertise future offers via email to them. This is shown to the reader if they leave the DS page as they are ready to click away via a pop up...

If the customer buys the FE (via PayPal), they automatically get sent to a One-Time-Offer (OTO) where I present an Upsell (US)...

UPSELLS

(4) OTO 1 Offer. I have what I call a Platinum Upgrade (US) to the basic graphics package, and this is presented through a sales page prepared especially to highlight the features and how these will benefit the buyer.

If the customer opts out of that package, they are sent to an OTO 1 DS page...If they buy the OTO 1 upgrade, they are sent to yet another sales funnel offer (OTO 2).

(5) OTO 1 DS Offer. On this sales page, I have a smaller version of the main upgrade offer at a cheaper price. I call this the Gold Upgrade package.

Whether they select this package or not, they are sent to the OTO 2 sales page after payment or opting out of this upgrade...the funnel continues...

(6) OTO 2 Offer. Because buyers of such graphics often do not know how to use them effectively, I have a second upgrade offer of detailed training on how to use a free graphics editing tool.

Note how this is a complementary product that fits well with the other products...It is one thing to have a bunch of graphics, but they do not do much good unless you know how to edit them and use them...

If they decline this offer, they are sent to a DS page...

(7) OTO 2 DS Offer. If the main course offered in OTO 2 is too expensive for the buyer and they opt out, they come to this sales page which has a cheaper option for training on yet another free graphics editing tool...

So to tie it all together, here is the outline of this sales funnel:

I. Sales Pages...

(1) FE OFFER - BASIC GRAPHICS PACKAGE

- FE DS 1 - $1 TRIAL OFFER 7 DAYS/REMAINDER PAID THEREAFTER

- FE DS 2 - FREE GRAPHICS FOR EMAIL/NAME

(2) OTO 1 MAIN - "PLATINUM PACKAGE" UPGRADE

(3) OTO 1 DS - "GOLD PACKAGE" UPGRADE

(4) OTO 2 - "MAIN TRAINING PACKAGE" HIGH END

(5) OTO 2 DS - "ALTERNATE TRAINING PACKAGE" LOWER COST OPTION

II. Thank You Pages...

TY PAGE 1 - FE ONLY (also for $1 trial)

TY PAGE 2 - FE + OTO 1 MAIN

TY PAGE 3 - FE + OTO 1 DS

TY PAGE 4 - FE + OTO1 MAIN + OTO 2 MAIN

TY PAGE 5 - FE + OTO 1 DS + OTO 2 MAIN

TY PAGE 6 - FE + OTO 1 MAIN + OTO 2 DS

TY PAGE 7 - FE + OTO 1 DS + OTO 2 DS

TY PAGE 8 - FE + OTO 2 MAIN

TY PAGE 9 - FE + OTO 2 DS

So...You have a total of 15 different pages and one pop up created for this funnel that supports one giveaway and 5 products you are offering...

The sales potential ranges from future sales (giveaway) to about $100 for this funnel...Not bad and the potential motivates you to get all this done and working!

The traffic you drive to the funnel will best be targeted traffic (meaning they have an interest in what you are offering), and by you having so many options for them, your sales total will vary from buyer to buyer but be more than if the products are offered separately.

It all sounds not so easy reading through to this point, and of course there are some additional intracacies/considerations involved to make this or any funnel work...

But - do not get alarmed!

if you use a process and a checklist, you can get through putting a sales funnel together that will work for you without going crazy!

NOTES/CONSIDERATIONS:

(1) Pricing Structure of the Sales Funnel. The FE and OTO offers are priced low to high as you go through the funnel - higher priced offers often sell better when a buyer already has their credit card out (warm buyer)...

(2) Thank You pages. In addition to these sales pages, you also have to set up Thank You pages for the products, where they will have links to the downloads they have purchased depending on what they have access to.

(3) Thank You pages in this scenario. In the example above, I have 9 Thank You pages set up...Depending on the offers the buyer selected they will be presented the Thank You page with download links (and possibly more offers as a cross-sell)...

MORE CONSIDERATIONS:

(4) Storage & Downloads of products. The actual downloads have to be stored somewhere that you can set-up downloads for as buyers complete their purchases. I use Drop-Box (low-cost)and AWS S3 buckets (low cost) for this (I also use these cloud storage tools for more things too, i.e. images, website pages, etc)...

(5) Building Sales and Thank You pages. To create and link the pages together, you can use a free tool like Kompozer (website page tool) where you can build the pages and links (I also have other paid page creation tools where I can build the sales pages and Thank You pages/Video Sales Letters, etc.)...Using this kind of tool, you can quickly link the pages in the order you want the customer to be taken through in the funnels...

(6) Payment Buttons. Another consideration in creating your funnel is setting up a button for collecting payment for the variuous offers - one for each offer page in the funnel. I use PayPal standard (free) to do this, and when the customer's purchase is complete, they are automatically sent to the next step/page in the sales funnel or the appropriate Thank You page..

(7) Storage of Sales and Thank You pages. To store the sales and thank you pages, and to be able to have them found on the internet, you have to store them somewhere. I set up a folder on my domain, load the entire working and linked sales funnel using a free tool like FileZilla. There is training posts here that will show you how to work with that tool...

(8) Content for your pages. This is a big area and your success hinges on how you phrase the headlines, expand on the problems your product solves for the potential buyer, add in the unique benefits, add social proof, etc.

Most of what you have seen in this post is in relation to setting sales funnels up, or in other words, the mechanics...Good copywriting and page design is equally as important, and it would be good to take some training on this aspect of sales funnels if you are not familiar with copywriting.

Practice makes perfect...Emulating effective pages you come across can help shorten the creation process (but do not copy exactly, that is plagiarism)...I often will use a screen or page capture tool to add to pages I like...This swipe file can help you get ideas...

(9) Check, Check, Check. Once everything is uploaded in the different places as indicated, you need to check and make sure that the sales funnel works, to include payment buttons...PayPal has this neat little feature called sandbox where you can test the payment buttons, and of course, you can test the rest by going through the funnel yourself...

(10) Test, Test, Test. Another consideration when you set up and use sales funnels is that you will want to track how each piece of the funnel is working, as in getting results for you. There are many tracking methods out there, i.e. using a Facebook pixel, etc. and that is going a little deep for this post. You will want to test and make adjustments based on results. This is likely one ofthe MOST important aspects of a sales funnel...

OPTIONS TO MARKET/SELL YOUR PRODUCTS/USE YOUR SALES FUNNEL

(1) Affiliate Networks. if you want to sell the product using an affiliate network (there are many depending on what it is you are selling). then you would need to go through and load the various sales pages using their platform and rules.

(2) Advantages. The advantage to using such a network is that you can have a lot of people selling your product for you. You have additional costs such as handling fees and commissions, but on the other hand, if you are selling 3-4x as much, it may be worth it...

(3) Social Platform Selling. One other way to sell your product over an online store (website) and an affiliate network is through creating a store on Facebook and market the products through organic traffic and maybe paid traffic...

(4) Website store. As I mentioned I have an online store (relatively new and a work in progress) using a WooCommerce friendly theme and plugin plus add on plugins to present offers to customers.

(5) Your Blog. You are doing affiliate marketing likely on your blog roll and website, so why not review your own product and add links to your store and sales funnel as a part of that blog roll? The two dovetail nicely...

(6) Email Marketing. Do not underestimate the power of email marketing. It is still the number one method that sales are achieved over social platforms or other means...Setting up an email series to promote and market your sales funnel just makes sense!

TRACKING YOUR PRODUCTS AND PRODUCT INFORMATION

You can see how unless you are organized you will lose track very quickly of all the data found in just one sales funnel. Imagine how confusing this would get of you had 10 sales funnels, or 15 or 50?

Here is what I have done to help in this regard: I have a folder for each category of product I am selling, and all information for each product or sales funnel (or both in some cases) is added...That file can get quite large quickly, so adding by category helps (you end up with more folders, but they are manageable)...

Here are some shots of ONE sales funnel (not all pages, but some)...The sensitive information has been blocked out, but you can see what I am talking about...

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The great thing is that you have a one stop document for EVERYTHING pertaining to that product. You can find anything you need, because locations of each piece are there for you at your fingertips...

This sounds like a lot of extra work, I know...But believe me you will be happy that you did the work on the front end 6 months later and you need to do some tweaking of the sales funnel or update things...

So now let's step back a minute - you likely are asking yourself...

WHY USE SALES FUNNELS?

Sales funnels are much maligned in some circles, and overuse of too many offers in one funnel can be irritating, but they do work. That is backed up by statistics, and such funnels are used in many market niches (think fast food joints) where they are able to take a basic sale and add on extras that go right to profts column of operations...

It goes to the psychology of selling...It is much easier to convince a buyer to buy something more at a higher cost when they already have opened their wallet to buy the first product or service from you...

We call this a "warm buyer" in that they have shown enough confidence in what your are offering to pay, so immediately showing them another offer can easier result in another sale...

Part of the psychology of the sales funnel also involves going from cheaper to more expensive as buyers proceed through the funnel. It is easier to sell a cheap product at the start, and then offer complementary products at a higher sell price.

At the end of the purchase cycle, you will have some people that will buy everything you offer, but will have others that purchase only some of the items. Your overall sales will be higher, and your spend for marketing less. This translates into more bang for your buck, or more profits in layman's terms...

BOTTOM LINE...

Hope this helps, I know it all sounds complicated, but it is just a step by step thing...Once you get used to the process, it can get done pretty quickly.

The good thing is that often such products are evergreen in nature, in that there is always a demand for whatever it is you are selling...

So you do the work once, and keep making sales and money!

Cheers!

Dave : )

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Recent Comments

18

I really enjoyed reading this...At the moment I am studying copywriting for sales funnels.

I want to ramp my traffic and conversions up. Understanding email sequences aka Magistudio's Live Events on Email, really helped me get to grips with autoresponders and email follow-up sequences.

As a result, I understand optin forms better now. I will progress to create sales funnels.

Thanks for sharing this...More grease to your elbows!

I wonder if this sales-funnel will work well with a WA referral website? I offer a "bait" free offer to a report, to capture email address. Then the OTO DS 1 to a 7-day mini course for $1.00, then to my upsell to join WA premium. If declined then to DS 2 to join WA for free.

I am all for this sales funnel once I get all the packages together. Should I have my other blog post direct them to this sales funnel, or by SM or paid advertising?

Thank you, Dave, for a great explanation of how this sales-funnel works.
Ken

Sorry for this late reply, Dave. I'm on holidays in South Korea at the moment but kept your training for when time permitted.
Great blog and have tucked away to go over more comprehensively when I get home.
Cheers, Jeff.

No probs M8! Cheers! : )

This is a good blog Dave. Doing for myself is fine but what if someone wants to offer sales funnel services and get paid in return. I have seen people offering these services but getting the customers is real thing.

Thanks, Bilal...

Creating sales funnels for clients is a good source of some extra income if you have the drive and passion for webdesign and programming...The best ones out there charge massive amounts of money (as do copywriters)...

Driving traffic to the sales pages is a whole other matter, and there are people, organizations, and PPC services through Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Solo Ads, etc. that are willing to do that for money...

It really is a collection of parts that all work together well to have success I think. Each element is important in its own way. It is to a degree a science, but where the art comes in is how you phrase your sales pages, how you design them, etc.

Of course the preamble to the whole thing is having something that people need and want to buy. If there is no demand, then you are dead in the water.

Lots of research required to see how to puth the pieces together best, then some work to do so and checking to make sure everything is working, maybe even some testing prior to going live to get feedback, then follow-up to make tweaks as indicated...

It does all sound quite complicated once I start writing all this hehe, but in any business, there is generally a lot more than what you see up front behind whatever it is you are selling, at least that is my experience...

Thanks for stopping by and adding your input and thoughts!

Cheers!
Dave : )

That is great explanation Dave. I totally understood your point and it is of great value. I am gaining a lot from your blog on Sales Funnels.

Keep up the good work and all the best.

Regards.

Thanks much Bilal.....Have a great weekend, here in Dubai it has started....: )

Impressive step-by-step sales funnel! Thanks!

Hehe, no problem at all, I hope it helps a bit - kind of a lot of information and showing is better than telling, but with a couple of read-throughs, I think this can be understood (I am looking at editing changes as I reread what I wrote hehe - I'll likely change this a bit tomorrow to make it flow better)...Cheers! Dave : )

Understood! Looking forward to seeing the changes, too. ~ t

great! : )

Thanks for sharing!

No problem Keith...This is kind of a jerky post, in that it may be a bit hard to follow, but really once you have developed a system that you are comfortable with, you can create such funnels fairly quickly that will help you make more sales....Cheers! Dave : )

Now we're talking ... step-by-step process ... LOVE this! Many thanks!

You are more than welcome Cathy! : )

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