If you’ve been looking into building your business online, then you’ve probably heard about online sales funnels. When I first started my business on the internet, I was rather confused as to what an online sales funnel is. But I soon found out how to master the art of building an effective online sales funnel for my business. So just in case you’re new to sales funnels and wondering how they work and help you to bring in more sales, then this article is for you. I’ll explain what an online sales funnel is and how to create a simple and effective sales funnel in as little as 3 days!

What Is A Sales Funnel?

So what is a sales funnel from an online marketing perspective? A sales funnel is a process whereby you are guiding your potential customer or existing customer towards a decision to make a purchase.

Although in the past, you might have come across articles and videos talking about just how technical and complicated building a sales funnel can be, the truth is that with the correct tools and knowledge, building an effective sales funnel for your business is very easy!

Why Do You Need A Sales Funnel?

Whether you have a local business, eCommerce store, blog, YouTube channel, coaching, consultancy or online training centre, it’s very important to have an effective online sales funnel for your business because it will help you to collect an endless flow of new leads for your business!

With new leads coming to your business every day, you’ll be able to have consistent income for your business. This will ensure that your business continues to make money so that you can expand and sustain your business.

And by having a sales funnel online, you’ll be able to automate the process of attracting and collecting new leads for your business even while you’re on holiday, enjoying the weekend or sleeping!

Top Things You’ll Need To Create an Effective Sales Funnel

There are three main tools that you’ll need to build a sales funnel.

Below are the tools you’ll need to have to create your sales funnel:

• A ‘bait’ that will attract your potential customers to opt-in to your email list

• A sales funnel building software

• An email autoresponder software

Create Your Sales Funnel In Just 3 Days!

If you’re a beginner in online marketing and sales funnels, your best bet is to keep your sales funnel as simple as possible. Remember, your main mission is to collect as many quality leads as you can into your email list so that you can follow-up to potentially turn these contacts into paying customers in the future.

Below is my 3-day plan to build a simple sales funnel that is suitable for beginners:

Day 1: Create Your ‘Bait’ To Attract Leads

As the goal of your sales funnel is to get as many quality leads as possible, you’ll want to create a ‘bait’ or incentive to attract people to opt-in to your email list.

When you provide a ‘bait’ or incentive to people, they will be motivated to give you their email addresses to get the ‘bait’ or incentive that you are offering to them.

To make sure you attract the right people to opt-in to your list, you’ll need to offer a ‘bait’ that solves a burning problem or answers a question that your ideal customers are having.

A quick ‘bait’ you can create for your sales funnel within a day is a free PDF containing a cheat sheet, checklist, swipe file, resource list or worksheet.

To learn more about the quick freebies that you can create, read my article on – 5 Quick Freebies You Can Create For Lead Generation.

Day 2: Create Your Opt-In Page

An opt-in page is a landing page that presents the freebie offer to your potential customers and prompts them to take action by completing and submitting the contact form to get the freebie.

When somebody opts-in to your form, that person will be automatically added to your email list. A safe and secure way for you to add and store your lead’s contact detail is by linking your contact form to a reliable email autoresponder software.

A reliable email autoresponder software that I’m using is ConvertKit. You can register for your free ConvertKit account here.

And after that person opts-in to your email list, you’ll want to redirect that person to a Thank You page to thank that person for opting-in. The Thank You page should provide that person instructions on how to download the freebie that he or she has requested.

An easy way to create a landing page is by using a sales funnel building software. The good thing about using a sales funnel building software is that the software will have ready-built landing page templates that are already converting well. So you won’t waste precious time designing landing pages from scratch that won’t convert!

Day 3: Create Your Welcome Email Sequence

After somebody opts-in to your email list, you’ll want to send that person a welcome email sequence.

A welcome email sequence is a series of at least 3-5 emails that is sent to a new subscriber to introduce yourself, provide valuable information as well as an introduction to an initial product or service that you are confident will be suitable for that subscriber. The first welcome email should provide a link to the freebie that you’ve offered to your subscriber.

The beauty of having an email autoresponder is that you can create your welcome email sequence and store it in your autoresponder so that when somebody opts-in to your list, you can have the email sequence sent to that person automatically according to the timing that you have set.

I enjoy using ConvertKit as my email autoresponder because I’m able to streamline my subscriber according to the actions that that person has taken. So supposing that person clicks on a certain link that indicates that he or she is interested in a particular topic, I can add a tag that will indicate his or her interest. So with this information, I can send future emails that are related to that topic.

So after sending the email sequence, I can continue to follow-up and build my relationship with my subscribers easily by offering information on topics that they are interested in and recommend more products and services to encourage more sales.

If you’re interested at learning how this works, you can register your free ConvertKit account to check it out by clicking here.

Need Help With Your Sales Funnel Copy?

Want to make your sales funnel creation even easier? Let me write your sales funnel copy for you. I help coaches, consultants and trainers with copy that converts. Find out more about my sales funnel copywriting services here.

Found this article helpful? If you did, I’d love to hear in the comments section below.

Reference:
https://laurenlambie.com/2019/01/27/how-to-set-up-your-first-basic-sales-funnel-in-just-3-days/