Do you feel like you’ve done everything right but yet the money is nowhere to be seen?
Are you starting to lose faith in the whole idea of a sales funnel because you’ve got one set up, but it’s like a leaky raft that can’t seem to keep afloat because your leads keep dropping out of the funnel?
Whether you’ve got yourself a brick-&-mortar business or a purely web-based e-commerce business, you’re probably well aware that you need a sales funnel. And not just any ol’ funnel… it’s got to be one that really works; one that brings in the money to make it all worth your while.
So how should you go about building a sales funnel that really works?
What’s the right way to build a sales funnel fast?
The Wrong Way: Starting From The Top
Many people start from the top of the funnel by asking themselves: “Who do I want to acquire as leads?” or “Who are my clients?”
A private midwifery practice might answer that with: “All women between the ages of 21 and 40 who are in their child-bearing years within metropolitan Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.” So they go ahead and put out a Facebook advertisement that targets the audience of that particular demographic.
Now, what’s next?
“Let’s link that ad to our homepage so they can find out about us!”
Again, what’s next?
Sometimes that’s just where the funnel ends. Sometimes it keeps going on and on until someone decides: “I think that’s good enough.”
But that’s like wandering through the woods without knowing where you’re actually going.
This scenario may or may not sound familiar to you, but I can assure you that it is incredibly common. These are often the businesses that have massive potential but fail to deliver because their sales funnel wasn’t set up the right way.
The Right Way: Start At The End
The first question you should be asking yourself when building a sales funnel is this instead:
“What do I want my business to achieve?”
Then get as specific as possible. Don’t forget, you can have more than one sales funnel, all targeting a different business goal, so don’t be afraid to whittle it down to the bone.
So going back to the private midwifery practice example, one of their business goals could be to provide home-birth services to women experienced mothers (not first-time mums).
Great! Now we’re getting really specific and this would be what you want your sales funnel to achieve at the very end.
Peer back up through the funnel
The next question to ask yourself is, “What’s the last thing my clients will see before they sign up or buy our products?”
If you’re a consultant and the last thing they need to see is you, then this could be a live webinar, an in-person group workshop, a personal video-call, or something that puts you in front of them so they can establish a sense of trust and relationship with you.
Your private midwifery practice might conduct a home-birthing workshop for second-time mums where your potential clients can learn more about home-birthing and get to meet the midwifery team face-to-face before they make their final decision.
If you’re selling a physical product, the last thing your potential customers might want to see could be strong social proof of some kind – video testimonials from satisfied customers, beautiful images of your product being used, etc.
Take one more step back
As you take another step back, your pool of potential leads should get bigger.
Ask yourself, “What can I do to get them to engage with my brand?” or “What can I do to show them that they can trust me and my brand?”
Two words: RELEVANT VALUE.
What can you give these potential clients that are both relevant to them, and full of value? So much relevant value that they would willingly exchange their name and email address for?
Your private midwifery practice can create a comprehensive home-birthing checklist (“Everything You Could Possibly Need To Prepare For A Home Birth”) that potential clients can download for free if they opt-in with their name and email address. They get something that is valuable to them, and you get them added to your email list where you can continue to nurture them along the way and lead them further down the funnel. Win-win!
For an e-commerce business, you might offer a 10% discount off their next order to those who subscribe to your mailing list or give them a sneak peek at a really awesome new product launching soon so they get an exclusive chance to sign up to get early bird pre-launch notifications.
Finally: Top of the funnel
At last, we get to the top of the funnel.
Here is where we want to turn strangers into prospects. It’s where you want to think about where your clients are, how you can reach them, and through what channels you can attract them.
You would be looking at traffic sources such as:
- Pay-per-click advertising such as Google Adwords or Facebook ads
- Web search results (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc)
- Social media (Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook)
- Public relations and press releases (web publications, print publications, new media outlets, etc)
Here’s where your content marketing strategy comes into play. You can have regular blog posts on relevant topics and search keywords, regular posts on social media, sponsored posts with relevant media outlets, etc. This will increase your chances of being seen and heard by your target audience and establish your authority in the space you operate in.
Mastering your traffic sources is ongoing and always evolving. There’s always a new algorithm in play, always something new you can learn about and implement. But because you started out knowing very clearly where this traffic needs to end up, you’re going to be ahead of the pack already!
To summarise:
- Start at the end: Get super specific about your business goal
- Peer back up through the funnel: What’s the last thing your client needs to see before taking the plunge?
- Take one more step back: Engage potential clients with relevant value
- Top of the funnel: Go to where your potential clients are and lure them in with compelling content via relevant traffic sources
Using what we’ve laid out in this post, here’s what your private midwifery practice’s sales funnel might look like:
What do you think?
Have you got a really awesome tip for building a high conversion sales funnel that you’d like to share with the rest of us?
Are you stuck on building your own sales funnel and could use a bit of a guiding hand?
Let us know!
Sales funnels are our jam and there’s nothing else we love more than to design and build new automated sales funnels all day long!