They have different names – Sales Funnels, Conversion Funnels, Marketing Funnels, Online Processes… but they all usually mean the same thing. Sales funnels are the hype of today and anyone serious in building an online business needs some sort of funnel.
What is a Sales Funnel?
Sales funnel is a process that your customers go through as they move from just finding out about your business through to being a customer. It is a journey you take your prospect on. From being a cold lead to giving you their money and buying your product or service.
Every business has one, maybe without even realising it. When you see a McDonald’s sign, you walk in, you look at the menu, order a cheeseburger, they ask you “Would you like fries with that?”, you say “Sure, why not.” and you pay for your meal – this is a sales funnel.
If you, for example, own an accounting business you may get your customers with the following process. You have an ad in newspaper where your prospects find out about you. They call you, book a free consultation to assess their needs and then sign up, to be a client. The process is different, but it is still a sales funnel.
The funnel is different for each type of business, but in some form it is always there.
Purpose of a sales funnel
The purpose of an ideal sales funnel is to maximise your revenue, ideally by providing people value at every level of your service they can afford.
You drive traffic to your funnel, people enter as prospects and the funnel helps you convert as many as possible into repeat customers by selling them at the front, middle and back end of the funnel.
Sales funnels in an online world
A sales funnel in an online world is a series of simple web pages designed specifically to make a transaction. Be it a sale, signup for a newsletter, join a webinar or purchase your online course.
You drive traffic to your sales funnel from advertising and social networks. Then use the content within your funnel to educate, indoctrinate and persuade prospects to buy your product or service.
It does sound like a simple website with product information, doesn’t it?
The difference between a website and sales funnel
So why not just use a website to sell your product or service? Why use a funnel? Or is a funnel just fancy way to say a website? Well, no.
The difference between a website and a funnel is in the user flow.
On regular website, you have a main menu that leads to various parts of your website. This means, your visitors can go wherever they want and you have no control over the sequence in which they get the information you want to tell them.
This is a big problem because there is a sequence of emotions, which any potential customer has to go through, before making a purchase. The information has to be presented to your prospects in a certain order to maximise your revenue. And if your visitors jump back and forth on your website, they may never actually go through the right process to purchase your product or service.
In sales funnel, on the other hand, you control exactly what information your visitor receives at any certain stage. You control the flow of information and you can optimise, like really optimise, your funnel steps to have the maximum conversion rate possible. It’s easy when you have the best tool for creating sales funnels available to you at very reasonable rate.
Which do I need – a sales funnel or a web site?
You really should have both. A website to present your business online, to get organic traffic and for SEO purposes. And in addition, you should also use sales funnel to get maximum revenue for your services. They are different tools in your toolbox and you can choose which tool to use to get the results you want.
How to start building sales funnels?
Well, it’s simple. Check out the most advanced sales funnel building platform – it’s really easy to use. You get a 14-day free trial of the platform so there is no risk to you while you test it out. The platform also has plenty of templates ready to be used so you can have a functional sales funnel built in one afternoon.
Or, just drop me a line and we can have a conversation to see if there is any way I can help you get started on the right track.
Michal
