Sales Funnels: Why You Need Them (+ Where to Start!)

Sales Funnels for Beginners

If you own a business of any kind, you’ve likely considered creating sales funnels.

In a day and age in which everyone is moving some portion of their business online, sales funnels are a powerful tool.

Promoting your business may seem to involve a lot of sending out mailings and knocking on doors, without seeing a lot of response for all of the effort that you’re putting in.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation, it may be time to consider working with a funnel consultant to automate your business.

Funnel consultants can help take your marketing online, automating your sales process so that the prospects come to you, ready to make a purchase.

Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

Well, introducing this type of automation can help streamline your marketing, saving you both time and money while having a direct impact on your sales.

Does an automated process continually bringing you qualified leads sound interesting?

Of course, it does!

Let’s talk about what sales funnels are and how they can help your business.

What is a Sales Funnel?

Your sales funnels are steps that help draw your prospective customer closer to taking action and purchasing your service.

These steps include things like:

• Helper videos
• Responsive copy
• Automated email sequences
• Call to Action

All of these tools are meant to help you attract and convince your prospective buyer of the value of your product or service.

A sales funnel is a crucial component of any small business marketing plan.

Building Sales Funnels: A Brief Overview

To begin with, anyone can build a funnel. You just need some technical knowledge.

That said, there are thousands of sales funnel consultants who can build your funnel.

I’ve tried it, and let me tell you it’s not an easy job.

It typically begins with understanding your customer, their needs, and wants.

Once your customer is defined, you or the consultant will have to use funnel software. Some of the more common include ClickFunnels, ConvertKit (now Kit), Hubspot, and Leadpages. (affiliate links)

These various pieces of software provide a landing page, as well as the email automation necessary to nudge the prospective customer through your funnel.

With the software in hand, you’ll need to develop the copy that is meant to appeal to your prospective customer.

The copy will typically walk potential customers through the following steps:

1. Develop Awareness of Your Brand

In this step, the customer is introduced to your brand.

This may be through an online ad, a video, a television ad, or free content that they read online.

The goal of this content, whatever it is, is to build awareness of your brand and to attract customers’ attention.

If they decide to make a purchase from this content alone, that’s a bonus, but that’s not the goal at this step of the funnel.

2. Create Curiosity and Interest

At this stage, the customer is interested in your brand and what you have to offer.

They may have begun doing their own research, or they may be paying more attention to you as an industry leader.

They’re evaluating what you sell and considering making a purchase while learning more about you and your service.

3. Entice Your Customer to Buy

At this stage of the funnel, the customer has made a decision to buy.

They may be waiting for a paycheck or have some other challenge preventing them from actually pulling the trigger.

Either way, the objective is to convince them to buy and continue pursuing the sale until they agree.

4. Take Action (Buy!)

This final step is the one in which the customer takes the bait (so to speak).

They have worked their way through the funnel steps and are now ready to take action.

You might sell them a product, convince them to book a call, or invest in something else.

How Do Sales Funnels Automate Business?

As you can see from the steps above, it takes a lot of work to move a customer from the “unaware” to the “buy”.

Converting sales requires building relationships with your customers, even if these relationships are solely online.

Think about how many types of sales funnels you are involved in on a daily basis.

Restaurants offering “Weekly specials”, try to upsell drinks or give out special desserts on their birthdays. They promote their food and service, create interest and then entice you to visit their establishment. You’re in their funnel.

Grocery stores offer sales on specific products to get you in the door. Once they’ve got you there, they strategically place other higher-priced products that you’ll likely need right at the checkout.

When you introduce an online sales funnel, it works in a very similar manner.

Potential customers see a landing page that displays a product or service they’re interested in.

They read through the marketing copy to understand what’s being offered.

Perhaps it’s an ebook, a short report, or a video course about the service that they’re considering, or how to know if they actually need to purchase it.

Providing their email signs them up for your automated email sequences that can further nurture them towards a sale, or even up-sell them to another product.

Over time, as prospective customers learn more about your product or services, they begin to see you as someone to be trusted.

All this without ever having to speak to someone directly.

Can you see the benefits?

What is Sales Funnel Consulting?

Funnel consultants are experts that work with your service-based business to set you up with an expertly designed marketing funnel to guide potential customers through your sales process.

You don’t have to worry about building online content, producing videos, setting up landing pages, or doing the work to establish yourself as an online expert in your field.

Instead, these skilled professionals handle the marketing funnel setup for you, then gently guide potential customers through it.

Their goal is to improve your conversion rate (prospect to customer) and drive higher sales.

How Can Sales Funnels Help Your Business?

Your reputation is everything.

For generations, businesses have done sold based on word of mouth, and a handshake has been as good as a contract.

Unfortunately, this type of approach limits your ability to scale.

Connecting with customers one by one, although valuable, is slow.

By creating high-quality informational content, building a sales funnel, and helping prospective customers, you can build rapport with customers.

A sales funnel consultant will spend time speaking with you about your business and the value you offer.

Then, they will help create an entire sales funnel that will guide potential customers to you.

This content will help establish you online as an expert in your field and will include a variety of content types.

They’ll likely work with you to create one or more websites, numerous informational content pieces, email marketing funnels, videos, and more.

Each promotion will be geared towards improving your conversion rate and guiding customers to your products or services.

As you can see, a sales funnel can help grow your business like almost nothing else.

It allows customers to truly see the years of experience and knowledge that you have to offer.

So if you’re ready to automate the marketing for your business, it may be time to consider developing your own sales funnel.

Start by checking out funnels of other similar organizations to determine what’s most appealing.

Once you do this you’ll be well on your way to building your sales funnel automation machine!

© Shawn Casemore 2024. All Rights Reserved.