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

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- 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?

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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 : )