Creating An Effective Sales Funnel - Part 3
=====================> PART THREE OF FOUR <========================
NOTE TO SELF:
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 3...
OK WITHOUT FURTHER ADO...
INTRODUCTION
Today we continue on with part 3 of this 4 part series on creating effective sales funnels. In parts 1 & 2 we talked about what sales funnels are, why they are useful for online marketers, to include the affiliate segment, and how ro go about designing them.
Yesterday we also showed you a couple of templates, and provided some ideas on how you can design your own based on what you are trying to accomplish, or are targeting (i,e, leads, sales, who, what, etc.). We then expanded on the steps to take once you have a rough design together, fleshing out the framework of the funnel (the template)...
We stopped off at step 5 of 8 steps , so today we will start by continuing to cover the final 3 steps of the process. We will then move on to look at some examples of different kinds of pages that you will find out in the internet world...
Now that you know more about what is behind these pages, you will begin to appreciate the work that goes into them, and their intended purpose. This is valuable in that you will be able to creat more effective sales funnels yourself, because you know what is involved and how to go about the process...
Just to remind you, an example of a basic sales funnel template looks as follows:
OK YOU HAVE A DESIGN - NOW TO THE NEXT STEPS - (CONTINUED)
Note: Steps 1 through 5 are covered in yesterdays training, found here:
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davidsweney/blog/c...
6. Design or Create Valuable Follow-on One Time Offers (Up-Sells, Down-Sells) and Plan On How You Will Market Them
Find or create more high converting products to offer your subscribers, automatically redirecting the buyer as they may take action using the sales funnel – if they buy the front end product, they get sent to an upsell page, if they decline, they may get sent to a down-sell page, etc.
Remember if you want a good conversions percentage, the entire funnel product line should relate to what you started with - your giveaway. Your prospect came to your site looking for a particular solution to their problem, and if you try to sell them something they are not looking for, you will lose them. This is the reason I say keep all the products and the giveaway related.
This sales funnel strategy can work for both affiliate sales and your own products. If your affiliate niche is real estate investment, you may design a giveaway that is related to how to select properties, an initial front end product that you have developed or are selling as an affiliate, and a follow-on upsell and downsell product, and maybe yet a third product to be sold as an upsell or downsell.
Hint 3 - If you get accepted as an affiliate for a product sold on one of the many affiliate sales sites such as Clickbank, JVZoo, ClikShare, etc. the funnel may be done for you, all you have to do is market it and drive traffic to the sales funnel. Starting out with online marketing, this may be a wise course of action, to see what sales funnels look like, how they are converting, and in general just get familiar with the whole process.
It is more lucrative to create your own products of course, because you realize 100% of the sales, versus a lesser amount as an affiliate. This is a lot of work and requires analytical, organizational, and other skills you may or may not have. Plus, part of the whole process is the sales funnel - or getting your product to market...
The additional work you have to do in creating the sales funnel is something you need to consider if you do want to sell your own products, from a time and money aspect...But remember the beauty of sales funnels is that they make selling your own products much more lucrative from a few different perspectives:
(1) As you go from a simple funnel having only a giveaway and a front end offer (easier, but one and done) to the more complex funnels (layers of products that progressively add more value and further solve the pain the buyer is getting relief from with your products), and you sell to willing buyers who are already buying from you, the opportunity to sell more of your product or others' products increases as well...
(2) Turning this around, if you design a sales funnel with products, and add in the additional step of creating an affiliate sales page. where potential affiliates look at what you are selling, are provided marketiung tools such as banners, infograohics, sales pages, etc., others will see the value you offer and can sign up with you, offering YOUR funnel (and products) to their lead lists, you then tap into LOTS of potential buyers.. Even if you give away 50%, or more to them, you make even more money overall from the higher volumes you will sell.
(3) When you do have affiliates selling for you, they do not get paid until they sell something! This is like having an Army of people working for you for free. Giving them a 50% commission does not seem so bad when looked at from that perspective! Plus you can build a good rapport and authority in your niche, branding comes into play, and so on...
(4) If the goal of your sales funnel is to get leads, you can still do the affiliate route and give away 100% of the sales of products to the affiliates. This means that essentially your cost per acquisition of leads goes WAY down, and the email portion of the funnel becomes where you will then monetize the funnel...
(5) There is virtually an unlimited number of ways to design the sales funnel to fit your strategy and goals, you are limited only by your imagination and willingness to actually follow through and create the products and sales pages within the funnel that, when linked together, will accomplish their intended purpose.
7. Create a Thank You Page
OK moving on from the front end and one time offers you will create sales pages for, you also will need a thank you page. This is where you will send your buyers after they have purchased one or more of the various products in your sales funnel, and here they can download the purchases.
On this page, you can add additional calls to action (such as last chance to get the OTO they did not purchase etc.) and any other information pertinent.If you are selling the products through an affiliate network, this may be already loaded up into their system or you may host it yourself. It should not involve a lot of steps, nothing is more aggravating to me than when I am trying to get to my download and keep getting sent from one page to another AFTER I have finished buying something....
I have seen many versions of this thank you and download page, as in sometimes the buyer is provided a PDF download directly from that page, the links are added for all the products, I have also seen where links send the buyer to a download site such as dropbox, etc. It is up to you to determine where you want to have your product hosted. If you are selling through JVZoo or one of the other affiliate sales sites, then the product would be stored on their server…
One last thing on the thank you page...It is an opportunity to give the buyer another chance to purchase an upsell they may have decided not to buy, so a call to action is OK I think, as long as it does not keep them from downloading their purchase...It is just one more opportunity to get the offer in front of the buyer...
8. Write an Initial Welcome Email and Follow Up Mails
OK this is not directly a part of the physical sales funnel creation, but it is a crucial consideration and essential ancillary tasking. This is where your funnel has done its job in getting you the lead to include their name and email. Now you have to plan on how you will use this...
Since this is your first chance to have more contact with your new subscribers, the first email you send needs to be professionally written and designed to immediately start building trust. This is a whole other training in and of iteself, but let' just cover a couple of things here...
There are many considerations but most importantly you should let them know briefly who you are, what your intentions are, what they can expect from you, and include again a link to your thank you page where your subscribers can download their free gift. Also, always include an option to unsubscribe at the very end of your mail. You do not want to aggravate them by making it hard to get off your list.
This builds confidence in you with them I think, and shows that you intend to provide only valuable information, not spam. I like the concept...
This first email can be set up using an autoresponder service such as Get Response, A Weber, or the many others available, and scheduled to be sent out as soon as the lead has confirmed their subscription (using the double opt-in system where they fill out their information on the opt-in page and an email is sent to them asking them to confirm they agree to subscribe to your list)…
EXAMPLES OF PAGES WE MAY WANT TO USE FOR OUR SALES FUNNEL
- Opt-in Pages
- Thank You For Subscribing Pages
- Pre-launch Pages, Front End Offer Pages, One Time Offer Pages, Upsells, Downsells
- Invitation to a Webinar Pages
================> 
<===============
- Thank You Page 2
- Video Sales Letter Pages
As you can see there are many styles of pages that can be designed and used for the pieces of your sales funnel.
If you have skills working with programming, you can design your own. I do not have many such skills, so prefer to use some of the tools out there that have templates that you can easily select from a variety of templates, then quickly edit them to make them yours...
Today I just wanted to give a face to some of the pages we have been discussing. Whether you start from the ground up, or use templates like I do, there are certain skills that you will have to develop or have to make effective pages that grab the attention of the prospect and cause them to take action.
The next section of todays's post covers these, and we will drill down into that in the final day of this training. Once you have the strategy, the funnel design, the giveaway, the product(s) you are selling, the location for the legal pages and product download site determined, then you need to present the package on pages, as you see above...
This is a day of training (more but we are doing it in a day!) by itself, and the idea is that you will have some rudimentary knowledge of how to put together the components of a page in such a way that you will draw your viewers in and cause them to take the action you are looking for them to take...So...
WHAT IS COMING TOMORROW
- How To Effectively Design/Create The Components of Sales Funnel Pages
X Copywriting Skills
X Psychology Skills
X Design Skills
X Video Creation/Editing Skills
X Programming Skills
X Tools/Sites/Tamplate Sources
- We tie it all together
X Reiterate what we have covered over the course of the last 3 days
X Sources for sales pages
X How to edit funnel pages yourself
X Where to host funnel pages after they are ready
- We end the 4 day course with an ongoing question and answer session using the comment section...
Sound Good?
..........................
.........................
CONCLUSION
Okay, once again this is where we will stop for the day...The points directly above will be covered in the final day of training tomorrow...
I do hope that you arew getitng something of value out of this and suggest that you try your hand at fleshing out your created sales funnel template you worked on yesterday...
It would be interesting if some of you would post your created funnels in the comment section so we could all see what creaticity there is out there!
Remember, this is NOT just an exercise however...Sales funnels are something that can and should be incorporated into your overall online marketing strategy, even if only to build your lead list...
IN CASE YOU MISSED THE OTHER SEGMENTS OF THIS POST...
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... <===
HERE IS A LINK TO PART 4 OF 4 TRAINING
===> https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davesw/blog/creating-an-effective-sales-funnel-part-4 <===
Lastly…
I am sure there are lots of ideas and advice others can add to this basic post, please share them below so we can all learn from your expertise. As with my other posts, this is a post that may change over time as I add more to it that may be of value to members.
Cheers!
Dave : )
Recent Comments
18
Hello Dave:
I just went through this very important blog of yours (By the way, where is the 4th part?).
I am a newbie but not so much as not to be aware that a sales funnel is a fundamental weapon in the arsenal of a I marketer.
The problem for me is that I cannot find a PRACTICAL guide on HOW to make a sales funnel. Not even here at WA there is one.
Many are writing about WHAT a sales funnel is, but none teaches HOW to make it. Mystery!
Can you tell me where I can find a HOW TO guide for the practical construction of a sales funnel? I would be interested in it for use in affiliate marketing.
A need a detailed guide that will let me copy all the steps through.
Thank you
Best/Phil
Hi Phil,
Yes this is another one of those almost mystery subjects...Everyone talks about it, most are "experts" yet they do not share completely how to go about creating, testing, and implementing one!
BTW, I see that I failed to add in the link to Part IV of the tutorial here, I apologize for that and will fix immediately! Our friend above has posted it also, but I need to add it in the post as well.
OK, there are courses out there that will take you through the how to hands on, and after you do one or two or fifty, still each will be individual in nature so require a lot of thought and planning.
I say they are individual because they serve different purposes, so a step by step process is used to develop effective ones. But there are some characteristics that all have.
That may be why most people talk about them, but do not show HOW to make one. Like you say though, this hands on aspect is SO important.
A course on this would be very beneficial for many people I think...
Right now I am putting one together...It is a combination of videos and handouts, but based on your feedback, a real face to face training portion would be very valuable for participants.
I used to teach with three higher education colleges in Germany (for 10 years). This was in the days when fax machines were the big thing (a LONG time ago) and computers were just starting to come into use...
Part of the reason for posting this 4 part series on sales funnels was to generate feedback from a community that really could use such training, I wanted to see what everyone was thinkling. Yours is indeed valuable.
But to be clear, there are sites that will do this (or at least show it iin the form of a case study as a part of their sales pitch or training)...For instance if you go to ClickFunnels, the sales pitch will walk you through a case study of the exact process that developer used to develop his first sales funnel.
Interesting in his case, he recommends looking at other successful sales funnels and emulating these. Not copying, but making your similar.
This IS a short cut, because they have gone through the process of developing the process, the pages, the copywriting, use of graphics, what to offer when, and at what price point that best converts.
I have takedn a similar route in the past, and now have purchased successful sales funnel templates that I can use as a start for some of the ones I am putting together for a project.
Mine will each be completely original in regards to the contents, the pages, and what I am selling, yet in general it will follow a proven strategy and formula that has shown to be effective in getting leads, sales and profits...
There are a lot of skills in play when you create a sales funnel. There is page design, effective use of video sales letters, sales letters, giveaways, squeeze and landing page creation, etc.
Thanks for your feedback, and please start by checking out that ClickBank sales pitch, it will be good info to get yet more of a picture. Also stay tuned, because I will be offering such training as well, and likely based on your feedback, we will include a hands on and live segment. Makes too much sense!
Cheers!
Dave : )
Great Dave:
Than you much for the feedback. I will check this Clickfunnels and Clickbank you mention BUT, while I keep working on my education here, I am ENTHUSIASTICALLY waiting for YOUR course here in WA, I feel this will be extremely successful and a fundamental training for us all.
Ciao/Phil
Hi Phil,
I will let you know when it is finished...Your other feedback has created a whole new subset of training we will add...I have seen eBooks, and video and white papers on the subject, but I have not seen a full blown webinar based portion that includes handouts, worksheets, and real hands on based learning...
This kind of is like going back to my days teaching at three higher education schools I worked at as an adjunct instructor. Fancy name for they hire you as they need you for one class or another, my focus at that time was business & management, logistics, human resource education, and even culinary (yes I was a chef at one time many moons ago)...
In that environment I used a combination of tools to teach. People learn different ways and you have to address all the ways so you make sure that everyone gets what you are teaching. I loved that world, unfortunately the pay is not so great for most folks, although at that time it paid for vacations and extra things for the kids!
Cheers!
Dave : )
You've put a tremendous amount of time, effort and energy into this, Dave. Thank you, sir ... thank you!
Hi Cathy,
Thanks for your thoughts and feedback... Yes I have invested some hours, research and gathering information took longer than writing, and the vids also required more time...
I wanted to prove to myself that such a course is possible to put together and would be useful information for online marketers. I noticed that it's a subject that has been covered, but there is an aura of mystery about it...
Once you dig down though it really is just another process that you go through... There are certain requisite elements, but it is not something that only experienced marketers can use... We all can...
Cheers!
Dave :)
Hi Jude,
How are you doing? Thanks for stopping by and I really do hope that all is well with you and the family...That is paramount...
What you have here is a semi-training course, in that it contains some of the basics for the subject of building sales funnels...It is actually a part of something bigget that I am building as a project, and will be a full fledged product at the end stage...
Sales funnels is a concept I think can be useful to the affiliate marketer as well as for other online marketing segments...The idea is to have a mechanism to get good leads, ones that are actually interested in what you have to offer...
The sales fuunnel allows you to capture these leads, sell them one or more things while they are in the funnel, and follow up using email to (1) Build a relationship with them, (2) Have them trust you to the point they will buy products or services from you...
So thanks for stopping by!!
Cheers!
Dave : )
I'm good thanks although my daughter is still in hospital. It is a huge help to see information laid out so clearly so thanks again for that :)
Hi Gerald, Still editing lol! I am doing some revamping to make it more effective...Appreciate your stopping by, stay tuned!! Cheers! Dave : )
See more comments
Hey Phil, Here is the URL for Pt. 4 Creating An Effective Sales Funnel - Part 4
Thanks for covering on this M8! Not sure why that link is not here, but will add now...I DID include the links to the earlier training, and it is right here on the right (all of them), but it makes sense to keep the person on the page and send right there to the nest step of the tutorial! Cheers! Dave : )
Thank you much. Appreciated.
Ciao/Phil
Bitteschoen Phil, and thanks to you once again - keep me straight! Cheers! Dave : )