Creating A Sales Funnel

by Steven Lucas Webmaster, Marketer, Author, Tech,

You know that if you want to be able to market to your customers consistently and regularly that you need to get them on an email list. The gurus constantly tell you that 'the money is in the list'. The other thing they often tell you is 'sell until they won't buy any more'. This selling method is known as a marketing funnel and it is used all over the place. If you're a regular visitor to anyone's sales pitch, you will probably encounter it in one form or another.

The first thing your funnel always needs is the free offer or ethical bribe to get them to sign up to your list. Obviously this bribe, usually in the form of an ebook, a video or an audio download, must be related to the topic they are interested in, otherwise known as 'the niche' (pronounced 'neesh' if you're British or 'nitch' if you're American. Other nationalities please take your pick).

The sign up form, so often seen at the top or on the right of the screen (because that's where people look), links back to a program or a website called an autoresponder which can then send out a pre-loaded stack of emails telling more about other offers or offering advice, tips and other meaningful information. All based in the same niche, of course. Well known autoresponder companies are Aweber and GetResponse. There are many others, including programs you can run from your own site, but there are huge advantages to using the main companies - mostly to do with email company acceptance (they trust the well known autoreponders) and delivery rates (how many emails get through, are opened and read).

Other funnel systems, that may or may not actually capture emails, are basically a chain of interlinked web pages offering increasing or decreasing priced items, depending on what you bought or passed on before. The chain is linked through the sales button which gives a return web page different to the one it was sent from.

There is a warning here though with this sort of chain. Although it is proven that once someone is in a buying mood and has their wallet out they are likely to buy more, there also comes a point where the customer is fed up of seeing 'buy this as well' pages and you end up with buyer blindness. This is probably why it is better to make one or two small sales at the point of initial contact, build a relationship through the email system and then make a higher price point offer.

There is a lot more to take in when it comes to building and using a sales funnel and you can find out more by looking at the free ebook that is available HERE.