A sales funnel is an important part of selling most products.

Unless you’re cold calling people, a typical client starts by being vaguely interested in something that you offer.

At that stage, they may just come across one of your web pages or an article you’ve written, a video you’ve created or anything else that draws attention to you as someone who may be able to help them develop their interest further.

Unless you can make the sale immediately, you then to get those interested people into your sales funnel.

Depending on your business and how “warm” the prospect is, this can take one of several forms:

• Getting people to like your Facebook page – they’ll then get your Facebook updates in their feed. If you’re a retail business, this can work well as it’s not perceived as being too “selly”. It can also work for business-to-business leads if you offer a targeted Facebook page with regular industry updates
• Getting people to sign up to your email or direct mail list. This has been the preferred method for marketers for a number of years. Email has taken over from direct mail because it’s cheaper but the principle is the same: offer some kind of incentive such as a free report in exchange for the person’s contact details. Then regularly communicate with them, building their trust and working towards getting the sale.
• Getting people to sign up for SMS texts. This isn’t a traditional sales funnel method but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work! Texts are read almost immediately and you can use them for special offers or invites to events or near enough any other purpose.

However you decide to get people into your funnel, the next thing to decide is what to do with them once they’re on your list.

This can take one of many different forms:

• Soft sell: sending regular information so that the person remembers that you exist and has the option to contact you to buy something you offer. This can work well for products and services that aren’t bought too often.
• Medium sell: an immediate low cost offer – anything from a free report to a test drive – that may or may not lead to a higher priced offer. If you have something that you can create for a relatively low cost, this can work nicely. Free trials still work well so long as your product quality is good.
• Hard sell: this is the sales funnel equivalent of the salesman who won’t let you close the door because their foot is in the way. On the internet, it’s often a combination of a video that automatically plays combined with a “limited time” offer and one or more screens that do their best to show up when you try to leave the page. The extra screens are usually upsells and downsells that do their best to get you to make a decision now because they know that you’re highly unlikely to ever come back if you leave their site.

Every sales funnel is different because every business is different.

You need to measure response along the way and work out which methods are best for you.

Most methods allow you to build in tracking so you can measure your customer acquisition cost according to where you got them from.

One word of caution: don’t rely on just one or two methods of getting people into your funnel.

Things change over time – for instance, fax marketing is no longer used – and you need to be regularly testing and checking response as well as being alert to potential new methods such as retargeting potential people who you’d like to get into your sales funnel.

And remember to keep the messages you send congruent with the original reason people joined your sales funnel.

Contact me if you’d like to organise some internet marketing coaching to help you grow your business.