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sales funnels click funnels ad funnels marketing funnels what is this stuff and why do you need it the answer can be quite confusing because people use the word funnel in way too many ways some people use the word funnel to refer to their website or a set of landing pages some people also use the word funnel to describe their strategy to increase things like their email opt-ins and many others don't use the word funnel at all because they don't have one regardless of where you currently sit the marketing industry has completely complicated the use of the term funnel and that is why i'm creating this episode to simplify sales funnels for beginners hi my name is sherman with life marketing a digital marketing agency that helps small businesses grow today i'm going to fully explain what sales funnels are show you a specific sales funnel that converted me and go over all the elements of different types of sales funnels and everything you need to know to begin creating your own sales funnel by the way if you're new to our channel please subscribe to our page so you don't miss out on future episodes that can help your business grow also if this video is valuable to you in any capacity please help me out by smashing that thumbs up button below as a business owner i can tell you if you do not get your sales funnel down to a science you risk the potential growth of your business at our agency we talk to business owners every single day and in most cases the people we talk to are interested in one thing and one thing only sales but interestingly enough most of the people that i talk to don't even have sales funnels in other words they do not have a clearly defined process to increase sales in their business most of the time the people i talk to tell me that they're increasing their business sales through things like word of mouth and referrals hearing things like this makes me happy and scared for the people that i talk to i'm happy because if your business is growing through things like word of mouth and referrals then i already know you have a great product that people truly enjoy i mean if people are advocating for your product then clearly this means that your business has a proof of concept and is a viable business on the other hand i'm incredibly fearful for people who rely solely on these type of things to grow because without a sales funnel in place you are essentially operating your business without any predictable engine to generate more sales in your business in cases like this you just don't know what's in store for tomorrow if you have customers or not or whether or not you will even have work for your employees this presents a significant business risk because without a sales funnel in place selling becomes very challenging and tends to be lucky at best so let's go ahead and mitigate this risk by breaking down sales funnels to its core and giving you the essentials you need in order to get started okay so what are sales funnels a sales funnel is simply the journey a customer takes in order to purchase your products or services the simplest way to understand sales funnels is to look at a funnel no not a sales funnel like an actual physical funnel a funnel is traditionally used to channel liquid-like substances into small openings typically it's very wide at the top and gets narrow at the bottom now if we add cells to the front of the word funnel then this process now refers to channeling consumers into buying customers just replace liquid-like substances with actual people with the end goal being them pulling out their credit card and buying from you now the higher people are in your sales funnel the less likely they are to buy from you these are normally people who are simply aware of your business or interested in a topic that your business is engaging in now the lower people are in your funnel the more likely they are to buy from you these are people who are specifically interested in buying your product or service now fundamentally a funnel is very wide at the top and narrow at the bottom this is true regardless of if you're selling an ecommerce product baking a cake or offering a professional service this funnel feature is important for you to know because what this really means for sales funnels is that only a small percentage of people who enter your funnel will end up actually buying from you i repeat only a small percentage of people who enter your funnel will actually buy your products or services this is why sales funnel or any funnel for that matter is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom therefore in order to increase your sales not only do you need to have a sales funnel in place but you also need to have enough volume of people in your sales funnel in order to start cranking out sales the more people you have inside of your sales funnel the more likely you are to convert new customers many of the people i talk to that are not seeing sales either a do not have a strong sales funnel to begin with or b do not have enough people in their sales funnel to start converting customers so now that you know what sales funnels are let me show you a sales funnel that converted me so a few years ago my wife and my partners co-founded a sister company to life marketing called life accounting which is a full service accounting firm for small businesses ironically as we were just getting started i ran into several facebook ads by a man named andrew argue in his ads he talked about how to offer the most valuable accounting services so i click the ad and then i arrive to his landing page now as you can see in the landing page there is no menu and it appears to be a standalone page there is only one call to action which is to sign up for his free training he does this because i assume he does not want my attention to get diverted to something else which may result in the failure of moving me down his sales funnel obviously i see what's going on here but ultimately i don't care because i truly only want the value he's exclaiming in his facebook ads so i enter my information into his form and it immediately redirects me to his free training as you can see the free training is step one of three in his process of converting me into a buying customer in other words he assumes that people who watch his full training will be more likely to want his program step two of his funnel is for me to enter in my information to apply for his program obviously using words like apply implies that there is some level of scarcity in the program which is a great tactic to motivate people to move them further down his sales funnel and finally step three of his funnel was for me to schedule an appointment as soon as i completed the form i was immediately redirected to schedule a call now he can put his best sales rep on the phone to close me as a customer on that phone call he told me that his programs start at about five thousand dollars and up and at that time i'm kind of thinking like okay this is a little bit more than i'm expecting to spend so i simply tell them thank you for your time and decide to hold off at that specific time but of course he did not stop there because at this point he knows i'm at the bottom of his sales funnel and ever since that appointment i've received hundreds if not thousands of valuable emails and countless retargeting ads to motivate me to purchase his programs and to be honest after two years of endless emails phone calls social media interactions we eventually bought two of his educational programs which turned out to be extremely valuable and well worth it as you can see a well thought out sales funnel works and when you can automate it in this manner you essentially develop a predictable sales engine that can grow your business so now that you know what sales funnels are let's talk about the steps inside of sales funnels there are a few basic steps inside of any sales funnel number one awareness number two engagement number three conversion and number four advocacy in short people must first be aware of your business to even consider buying from your business at any point in their life if they are aware of your business then you're in trouble you can increase your awareness through things like digital marketing activities like seo content marketing digital advertising and so on in the example i just provided andrew uses facebook ads to increase his awareness and his sales funnel now secondly aware people must engage with your business engagement is necessary in order to establish a true connection with the people who are now aware of your business engagement builds trust credibility and positive emotional triggers that ultimately influence people to buy from your business you can increase your engagement through adding value to your audience which is most commonly done through content creation like videos blogs or anything that helps your audience this value exchange moves them down your funnel and the example i provided andrew uses video and webinars to engage people in his sales funnel next is conversion you can start selling to people who are deeply engaged with your business and chances are you will have a better chance at converting this group of people than complete strangers which is why this funnel works so well in the first place engaged users have higher conversion rates than unaware unengaged audience you can convert your engaged audiences through email marketing retargeting ads and through your website in the example i provided andrew heavily used email marketing and retargeting ads to bring me down this funnel and lastly you have advocacy which is when your products and services delight your customers and they become advocates of your brand ultimately resulting in more word of mouth and awareness of your business in addition your brand advocates will be more likely to convert on upsell opportunities that exist in your company the simple fact that i am referencing andrew without any ties to his business at this point shows you that advocacy really works now there are different types of sales funnels so let's go ahead and discuss what may work best for your business the steps i just gave you are consistent for just about any sales funnel but the specific quantities and methods you use will ultimately depend on your unique business type for example andrew has probably sent me over 500 emails inside of his sales funnel but does this mean that you need to send 500 emails to people inside of your funnel probably not the funnel methods you deploy will depend on your unique business type or industry price of your products and your sales cycle let's start with your business type now there are many business types but to keep this episode very simple i categorize the type of sales funnels into the following e-commerce products professional services and brick-and-mortars for example here's an example of an e-commerce sales funnel used by boom by cindy joseph that resulted in over forty thousand dollars in sales for context they sell beauty products and they use facebook and pinterest ads to create awareness which drove traffic to one of their blog posts the blog post engaged them by providing beauty tips and eventually the post linked to their store and product pages now because their products are relatively inexpensive they can move people down their funnel without requiring email opt-ins to view specific content and without sending 500 emails however this does not mean that email is not needed in your sales funnel email is still very effective and even they still try to encourage people to join their email list through discounts promotions and other tactics though to be honest i doubt they send emails in the same frequency or manner as andrew did in the example i provided ultimately the type of business you have will influence how you customize the specific steps to move people down your funnel now let's talk about how pricing comes into play here when it comes to pricing typically the more inexpensive your products are the less steps you need in order to motivate people to buy your product as a rule of thumb the more your product or service costs the more value you are going to have to create in order to motivate people to buy from you now value can come in high quality or quantity but ultimately it's up to you to determine the appropriate ways to create value to motivate purchases in addition your sales cycle and the time it takes people to buy your products or services is also very important if it takes a long time for people to buy your product then you will likely need to add that time lapse into your sales funnel and plan to communicate with your leads during that time period for example i have a client that i work with that sells trucks to landscape contractors he has trucks that cost tens of thousands of dollars and as a result he knows that it's going to take a ton of time to convert any of his leads into customers so over the last two or three years we've ran google ads social ads and other organic digital marketing activities to increase the leads he receives once he receives a lead from us his team speaks to them but they already know that the deal won't close on the first call so he continues to send several emails over the years to stay in front of them and the best part of it is it's all automated anyway when you craft your sales funnel start with thinking about your customers journey think about what makes them interested in your products or services and what obstacles deter them from buying from you as well as the time it's going to take for them to overcome these buying resistances when you craft your sales funnel with this in mind you increase your odds of success in my opinion it's more psychology than anything you really need to understand what's going on in your customer's mind at every stage of your funnel when understood and implemented successfully then you will have a predictable system to increase your sales okay wow we've covered a lot so far if you're still with me i hope you're enjoying the ride here if this stuff is helping you at all please help me by giving me a thumbs up below and also if you have any questions on what i've said so far drop them in the comments below and someone from our team will get back to you as soon as possible now let me give you what you need in order to start building your sales funnel in order to build your sales funnel you need to start by mapping all this stuff out i personally like to use a free website called funalytics this helps me map out every single step in my sales funnel you can also use good old-fashioned pen and paper the second thing you need to do is to start creating landing pages now there are a ton of landing page tools out there but the most common ones are leadpages click funnels and kartra at this present time our agency currently use leadpages for most of our clients now the third thing you need to do is to start creating content this includes content on your blog landing pages and email campaigns now to be honest this is the hardest part but it's the most important because without great content you will be unsuccessful at moving people down your funnel finally you need traffic to make all of this work use seo social media email marketing and digital advertising to get in front of the right people as i've said earlier most people fail at increasing their sales simply because they do not have enough people inside of their sales funnel build a healthy amount of people in your pipeline and tweak your sales funnel as time goes on to have the best chance at increasing your sales now that you know what to do let's go ahead and summarize this video so you can get right to work in today's episode we defined what is a sales funnel a sales funnel is simply the journey a customer takes in order to purchase your products and services we then went on to define the steps that every sales funnel should take every sales funnel must have a process to make people aware interested and engaged and ultimately convert people into sales if you fail at any one of these things then your sales funnel will not work then we discuss how to customize your sales funnel your sales funnel should ultimately be customized by your customer needs business type price point and sales cycle and finally if you don't take away anything you need to know why a sales funnel is important your sales funnel is important because without it you do not have a predictable way to grow and scale your business all right that's it for today's episode if this video helped you in any way shape or form i do accept tips all you have to do is hit the like button for me below and i'd greatly appreciate it oh and be sure to subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out on any future content that can help your business grow i'll talk to you soon [Music]