How to create an online sales funnel

Want to create an online sales funnel for your business? Keep on reading as you’ll find out what a sales funnel is, why they are so popular and how you can create one for yourself.

 

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WHAT IS AN ONLINE SALES FUNNEL?

A sales funnels maps out the journey an individual must take to make a purchase. In an online sales funnel all of the journey will happen online. The purpose of an online sales funnel is to turn website visitors into paying customers.

 

WHY ARE ONLINE SALES FUNNELS SO POPULAR?

If you are reading this article I’m guessing it is because you’ve heard a lot about online sales funnels and think now is the time to make one for yourself. You’ll have probably been recommended to get one set up by another business owner or entrepreneur.

Online sales funnels are popular for a number of reasons:

• They help companies to make more money
• In some cases, an online sales funnel will enable a company to make money passively i.e. with no human interaction.

 

HOW TO GET STARTED

Before you even start to worry about how to technically build a funnel I would urge to you focus on mapping out the journey you would like your future customers to take.

A traditional funnel will have work on 4 stages

AWARENESS
INTEREST
DESIRE
ACTION

 

 

BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND

Before you start building your funnel you need to know what you are ultimately trying to sell and who to. Hopefully, you know the answer to those two things. If not, do not go any further until you know the answers.

When you know what you are trying to sell you can work backwards and think what information potential customers would need from you in order to make a purchase. Knowing who you want to buy from you will also enable you to ensure your marketing is saying the right thing and is using the right channels.

Once you have mapped out your funnel it is time to start building.

 

WHAT SOFTWARE CAN I USE TO BUILD MY ONLINE SALES FUNNEL?

When it comes to creating funnels you have a number of options

• Use your website and email service provider – If you already have a website and email service provider then you can usually make a funnel by combining the two. A common combination is using WordPress or Squarespace with an email service provider such as Mailchimp or Convertkit.
• Use a landing page provider – With the rise of online funnels a number of landing page providers came into the marketing. These providers are focused solely on helping you capture leads and make sales. A very common choice is Leadpages.
• Use a software designed specifically for funnels like ClickFunnels – ClickFunnels has been designed with the sole purpose of creating online sales funnels.

 

 

WHAT DO I DO AFTER MY FUNNEL IS BUILT?

When you finish setting up your sales funnel you might feel like you’ve achieved a lot. However, creating your sales funnel is just the beginning. The next thing you need to do is drive traffic to the top of your sales funnel. This can be done through organic marketing activity such as social media, press, search or guest blogging or paid activity such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads.

Once people are going through your funnel you’ll then need to monitor your conversion rate. As people move down your online sales funnel the number of people reaching each stage will decrease. You should be paying attention to these numbers. Your overall conversion rate is calculated as follows: the number of purchases divided by the number of people who entered your funnel.

Once you have the overall conversion rate for the whole funnel you can start looking at each stage and calculate the conversion rate of that stage. This is very helpful because you might notice that one stage has an awful drop off rate. This means you can then focus your efforts on trying to make the conversion rate at that stage better.

Pro Tip: Whilst it can be tempting to focus on driving more and more people into your funnel it actually makes better business sense to keep on improving the conversion of your funnel and then drive more people through it.

 

LEARN FROM THE PROFESSIONAL

If you are serious about setting up an online sales funnels then you should definitely consider joining the One Funnel Away Challenge by Russell Brunson.

When it comes to sales funnels Russell Brunson is the king. He’s the founder of ClickFunnels, which is designed specifically to help business owners create funnels. He’s obsessed about helping people around the world build life-changing funnels and runs the One Funnel Away Challenge so people can get a funnel live within 30 days.

You do not need to buy Clickfunnels in order to take part in the challenge and whilst Russel uses ClickFunnels in demonstrations the lessons from the challenge can be applied to whatever tech setup you decide to go with.

If you would like to find out a bit more about the One Funnel Away Challenge you can check out my review here.

 

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Prefer some 1:1 support? I know that getting personalised support is important, which is why I run Power Hour sessions. In a Power Hour we can map out the whole customer journey and if you need help choosing the right tech to use I can help with that too.

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