Sales funnels can be a little confusing and scary at first. There are so many steps to keep the customer interested, and moving down the funnel, it can be a little too much. But do these steps make you money, and how do you make money with sales funnels?
The best way to make money with sales funnels is to create an appealing opening offer such as sign-ups, deals or coupons, videos, ads, offers, accounts, or point systems. With a good entrance point, you can bring in more potential customers, leading to more sales.
Below, we’ll go into more details about different sales funnels for various business models. With enough practice, not only will you be able to make your first buck but also much more money off anything you sell.
A Simple Guide to Making Money with Sales Funnels
You don’t turn cold prospects into leads, customers and multi-buyers all at once. A solid conversion funnel anticipates each step necessary to lead the prospect to the conversion.
For almost every type of sales funnel you need six steps which are, in a way, also the raw materials for your sales funnel profit making machine.
No matter what type of sales funnel you have, these six steps are the path your customer takes to making a purchase and becoming a returning customer.
And yes, there are various types of sales funnels, about which you can read more in my article.
1. Advertisements For The First Connection
For smaller businesses, this part can seem to be a little daunting. Advertisements are expensive to make and to sell to companies.
Yet, it isn’t as complicated as it seems. An advertisement for your business can be:
- A social media post
- A shop front
- An app recommendation
- Something that pops up on a search engine
- A video
- A flyer
- Or a little photo or promo for your business.
This isn’t necessarily the first big impression of your business for customers, but it does give your potential customer an idea of what your business has to offer and if the service or product is valuable.
The advertisement is the gateway to your business and the top of the sales funnel. So advertise as best you can to start drawing in customers.
2. A Home Base Conveying Who You Are
Your home base can be a variety of things. It can be the homepage of a website, your social media account, an app home page, or the business itself.
The point is, you have a place that has all the information about your business.
The home base talks about prices, products, your brand, deals, contact information, business information, etc.
It is the place where your customers see what your business is and get their true first impression.
How your home base looks and what it has can lead to more potential customers, especially if you include the story of why you founded your company.
3. Valuables That You Have To Offer
Your valuables are your products and services. What do you have to offer that is different, better, or interesting to your potential customers?
Its value comes from market needs and its uniqueness. For example, there are plenty of major sticker stores and companies.
Yours are handmade and sports-related, so they aren’t like the rest and are thus more valuable.
4. Buying Encouragement To Give A Push
A customer loves your home base and is interested in the product, but how do you finally get them to buy it?
First, they need buying encouragement, which can be a membership, deals, sales, coupons, freebies, and more.
These let the customer feel a bit more comfortable buying your product and give them an extra incentive.
Some companies increase the price of products to make them more expensive than what they need to be to compensate for the losses incurred by coupons and freebies.
Then when you use the coupon, you’re technically buying it at a normal price.
5. The Final Purchase
The final purchase is the process it takes your customer to buy the product. In-person, this is where they check out.
You want to make sure the cashier isn’t too pushy, and they get through the line swiftly. Online you have to have clean pages that help the customer check out.
Your customer shouldn’t get lost in check out and definitely shouldn’t get frustrated because something wasn’t made correctly.
They should feel confident that the purchase went through correctly, it will arrive at the right location, and they haven’t lost any extra money.
6. A Heartfelt Thank You
In my opinion, the ‘thank you’ is the most important part of the sales funnel. This is what draws the customer back in to buy again.
So always say “Thank you” to your customers for buying from your shop, out of hundreds of similar ones.
This lets the customer know that you appreciate their business and you value them as a customer.
If you want to go further, include thank you cards, coupons, or a small freebie with each purchase. These draw the customer back in.
You’re more likely to go there if you have a coupon because it’s cheaper now. They will want to return to your business because they feel valued and excited about the extras.
Different Types of Funnels To Make You Money
If you are going to make money with a sales funnel, you will need more than one. You’ll also need to ensure that your funnel caters to your customers and business.
The wrong type of funnel could lead to angry and lost customers.
There are about five different types of funnels that have been listed below.
Depending on your business, you may use one of these more than once, or even all of them.
We’ll look at each type of funnel, when you should use it, and examples of funnels for each of these types.
If you need more examples, I’ve explored some more in my article: Best Sales Funnels Examples.
1. A Website As A Funnel
Your business needs a website. So many people prefer buying online.
A website makes it possible for customers outside of the town your business is in to buy from your store.
With a website, you can have many potential customers checking out your website. But, if it doesn’t have the right funnels, you won’t get sales.
So, here are some good funnels to put on your website.
A Membership or Subscription
The first one is a membership or subscription. People love to feel like they are part of a VIP group that gets benefits.
So giving your business membership or subscription allows people to sign up to be in that VIP group for your business.
Usually, it just requires an email to sign up with.
That gives you the ability to send weekly emails about products, deals, and information about your business, making the customer want to go back and buy from your website.
Don’t forget to include a thank you after they have signed up.
The Tripwire
Another good funnel for your website is a tripwire funnel.
Have an advertisement for one of your products on the home page along with a deal for that product if they buy soon or immediately.
This deal should be a one-time offer because it forces your customer to make a quick decision about whether they buy it.
More likely than not, they are going to buy it.
A Webinar
There are plenty of other great sales funnels for websites, but I will talk about one more that I think is amazing! This funnel is a webinar or a video sale.
You can do a live video or create one in your free time about a specific product or group of products.
For example, if you sell cups and have a winter-themed set coming out, make a video about your products coming out soon.
If it is a live video, you can do direct questions and answers about the products coming out.
If you are pre-recording your webinar or video sales letter, make sure to answer common questions about your products.
Then, at the end of the video, offer a one-time offer.
This informs them about the product so they know why they should buy it and a deal to give them that final push to buy it.
2. The Social Media Funnel
Social media is also very important because it acts like a blog dedicated to your business. It is also free advertising that you create catered to your business.
You can do so many little funnels with each post and depending on what social media you use. You do not need to have an account on all forms of social media.
Having at least one is good, but the more you have, the more people you can reach.
Also, you can connect your Instagram and Facebook, so if you make a post on one, it will show up on the other.
Below, I’ll go through some of the main social media pages and funnels you can use.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms and has many funnels for you to use. However, it all depends on what you post and who sees it.
Posting videos, images, and your story will need the right hashtags to get people to your page and website.
On Facebook, hashtags don’t matter as much, and posting doesn’t necessarily get you on someone else’s page.
For Facebook, you need to join or make groups to create that funnel of advertisement to get people to your page and your website.
For example, if you sell sketchbooks, get on artists’ pages and post about your sketchbooks and what you’re doing with them.
Whichever social media platform you use, post as much as you can about your business.
This can be things like putting orders together, creating the item, showing off your products, etc.
3. Using Apps As Funnels
It is a great investment if you have the money and the staff to create an app for your business.
Apps are a good way to create deals and promos for those in your VIP group for your business.
It is a very similar funnel to the membership or subscription but in a different format. Many popular restaurants use a point system as their main funnel.
The point system lets customers gain points for free based on their purchases. The more they buy, the closer they are to a freebie.
This is the main funnel for the app, and it encourages customers to purchase more than they need for the sake of one small freebie.
For example, say a fast food restaurant called XYZ gives you 10 points for every dollar spent. To get the 200 point cookie, you need to spend at least $20.
The cookie is worth $20 in points but costs $1.50. So they made an extra $18.50 for that one cookie. This is one of the best funnels to make money with.
4. In-Person Funnels
In-Person funnels are based on how your business looks.
Your flyers, business cards, samples, storefronts, and the inside of your store will be the difference between a returning customer and a never-coming-back customer.
In terms of funnels, these are mostly our advertisements. If the sample is good, the customer will return for the product.
If the flyer or business card looks good, they will want to check out your business.
If your shop looks good, interesting, different, or exciting, people are more likely to walk in and buy things.
5. Having A Funnel To Sell Funnels
Yes! Providing funnel design services can make you lots of money.
True, there is a learning curve involved, but once you get the hang of it, you can quickly pump out effective and awesome-looking funnels.
And guess what? There are several courses to help you out!
They guide you right from funnel designing basics to client acquisition, so you don’t need to guess what to do next and aren’t left feeling stranded.
So, if you are creating funnels for yourself and love the process, why not help others and make some money while doing it?
What People Forget While Trying To Make Money With Sales Funnels?
Sales funnels are vital to your business, but they have a definite objective.
They are not magic pills that will automate every aspect of your business or work without frequent checks.
Their main purpose is to turn a potential customer into a returning customer.
Without a sales funnel, you could still get customers, but they may be one-time visitors or may just look around your business without ever buying anything.
A good sales funnel that works as it should, dramatically improves conversion rates and retention rates.
If done well and properly maintained, a sales funnel can lead to a one-time customer becoming a returning, committed customer.
I’ve discussed in-depth the working mechanism of a sales funnel in my article.
1. Proper Identification
Making money with sales funnels is not rocket science. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs make them unnecessarily complex and thus go down hard.
Thousands of sales funnels are built every month. Most fail due to bad implementation and never make money.
Without identifying your sales funnels or implementing them properly, you’re going to lose a lot of money and potential customers.
Additionally, sales funnels help you to take your customer through a ‘journey’ of sorts. On this journey, they will learn, grow, and buy more and more products from you.
Thus identify what sales funnel will be the best one for your situation.
2. Gradual Implementation
Also, instead of trying to create the most beautiful funnel, focus on proper implementation and maintenance to maximize the chances of making any profits.
When you have a funnel that earns you $5 per day, it is not hard to scale it into one that makes $500 per day.
But getting that first dollar is the hardest, which you should focus on.
Build a basic one in place and then tweak it as you go so that you don’t waste time over trivial things and only put in efforts where you are bound to get results.
There is no such thing as the perfect funnel that will never need to be adjusted.
Sales Funnels aren’t Complicated
It is easy to make money by using a sales funnel if you use them to your advantage. Sales funnels will draw people to your business and influence them to buy products.
You can learn more of this skill through my article: How to Attract People to Your Sales Funnel?
Ads and Social Media funnels are especially persuasive, and you should use them often.
The more customers that buy your products or services, the more money you will make.