Sales Funnel Stages: Step by Step Guide to Building a Sales Conversion Machine

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Published Date:  23 Apr, 2018 | Updated Date:  05 Mar, 2024

Finally! A step-by-step guide to building a sales funnel into your business model from the ground up. Learn how to attract endless traffic, sales and leads with this proven sales conversion machine (free sales funnel template included).

This article was last updated August 2023. Get a head-start and download the free sales funnel template PDFs, or skip ahead to learn how to maximize your sales funnel with our free marketing funnel manual.

Sales funnels have become a very hot topic in the world of Internet marketing.

Savvy entrepreneurs are tuning in to learn more about the various sales funnel stages in the process of building profitable relationships with their target market because it’s the key to attracting endless traffic, leads and sales.

With the advancement and continual evolution of marketing online there are many marketing experts, software, and tools that help entrepreneurs build sales funnels online.

However, though we see a lot of conversation on the topic of sales funnels, not many are correctly applying what they’ve learned.

Thus, when I look at many landing pages, websites and marketing systems, I invariably come across far too many that have sizable gaps, blockages and leaks in their sales and marketing funnels.

To help, this article takes a deep dive into the sales funnel stages you should be implementing for your business, and links the process to key building-blocks of your marketing funnel (which comes later!).

Sales Funnel Stages: Step by Step Guide to Building a Sales Conversion Machine

By the time you’re finished, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to build stellar sales funnels online that attract more traffic, more leads, more sales AND referrals for your business.

Plus you’ll gain full access to our free, downloadable sales funnel template PDFs, which you can fill out as you construct amazing sales funnels, and return to later down the road as you scale.

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SALES FUNNEL TEMPLATES

Fill-in-the-Blank Sales Funnel Worksheets to Generate More Leads and Sales Absolutely FREE!

What is a sales funnel? | Sales funnel definition

Building a business in the new economy, primarily online, is tougher than it was back in the day of small town brick and mortar businesses.

You see, relational trust is harder to establish with the barrier of the Internet than it was when business owners were selling, face-to-face, to customers.

When passersby walked down the sidewalk and smelled the irresistible draw of meat smoking on the pit, when those cute outfits grabbed your eye and you walked in to browse the racks for the perfect summer dress.

This in-person environment accelerated the progression of the necessary relationship stages yielding trust, intimacy and repeat business–all the stages of a sales funnel.

That’s why today we define a Sales Funnel as the different steps new and returning prospects will take to ultimately become your customer.

As you should know, when you make a sale, the customer is ultimately buying YOU!

Getting to the point of sale is difficult online due to the above reasons but also due to the fact that people have an inherent distrust, skepticism, and apathy regarding your product or service when they first find you.

So how do you build a warm and friendly connection with your target audience that leads to continually growing traffic and sales through a flat screen… and do it while you’re sleeping, out of the office or out of the country for that matter?

The answer – you must understand and install a winning sales funnel into your online business!

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4 Steps to Build a Lucrative Marketing Funnel for Course Creators, Coaches and Spiritual Teachers

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Why do I need a sales funnel for my business?

Did you know that businesses who dedicate time to creating simpler buying processes for customers are 62% more likely to to win a high-quality sale?

When you then take into account the sheer volume of positives that come from building repeatable sales funnels into your business…you’ll never look back!

That’s because understanding each stage of the sales funnel will transform massive numbers of ice cold prospects into blazing hot customers and so-called brand evangelists.

In other words, you will build authentic connections and relationships with your target audience and overcome the inherent distrust, skepticism, and apathy they have when they stumble across your landing page, blog post, social media page, ad, video, or press release…you name it!

Free Sales Funnel Template | Sales Funnel Examples

Before we dig deep into what each stage in your sales funnel entails, let’s identify and briefly define the various high-level stages of your sales pipeline or sales funnel.

In doing so, you’ll more intuitively know the best ways to engage with your target audience at each stage of your funnel hierarchy…a hierarchy that looks something like this:

sales-funnel-stages-Infographic

First clients move from the awareness stage – the ‘getting to know you phase’ – into your entry-point offers, or EPOs. These EPOs encourage engagement through free, targeted offerings that provide education or resources in exchange for leads.

From there, your EPOs should lead into a splinter offer, which is the first point in the funnel when you’ll ask for a sale. Here you’re giving a small portion of your bigger offer at a more accessible price, before moving into the excitement stage, and then the profit maximizer stage.

Once here, you’ll have a chance to upgrade the sale of your content, courses, services, or products into the ‘maximum offering’ you provide to your prospects. If you can fulfill this step of the sales funnel stages, you’ll have created loyal customers who are ready to advocate for your brand!

The framework above has been cultivated from proven tools I have used again and again to serve clients–including the customer value journey developed by our partners at the Digital Marketer, and my customer optimization process maps.

Together, these resources will give you the knowledge capital you need to install a winning sales funnel with each stage represented!

So, who’s ready? It’s time to take a close look at sales funnel stages and how to properly structure each phase to maximize the bottom line of your business.

How to Build a Sales Funnel in 7 Steps

1.Awareness

It may sound cliche, but one of the best ways to describe the awareness stage of your sales funnel is to use the metaphor of a romantic relationship.

The first stage of any relationship is awareness. Think about it, the love of your life didn’t always know that you even existed!

How he or she ever got along without you is anybody’s guess, but that’s another topic.

Do you remember the first time you met that special someone? Was it in a bookstore, an ice cream shop or at a summer picnic?

With your online business you want to maximize the opportunities that people have of becoming aware of your existence. In other words, you want to maximize your Internet footprint.

Whether people are searching Google, browsing content on Facebook, or are looking for a good video on YouTube, you want people to stumble upon your helpful, valuable and entertaining content.

Learn About Content Marketing

The content that we recommend you produce, publish and share to build awareness through your sales funnel includes:

  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • Forum comments
  • Social media posts
  • Gifs
  • Memes
  • Product reviews
  • Q & A
  • Press Releases
  • Quizzes
  • Maps
  • Stories
  • Case Studies
  • Curated Content
  • Lists

Note that while we talk about how to build marketing awareness in our marketing funnel manual, there are some key do’s and don’ts when it comes to building awareness with the content you serve up on your website.

This is where businesses often get bad advice from experts they trust. The emphasis on quantity overrides the quality and precision of the awareness generating content.

Instead, your ‘top of the funnel’ awareness content needs to demonstrate your expertise and transmit actual value for your prospects, so they move into the next stage of the relationship.

Think of it this way: any old person can get 1,000 dates, but if the dates are bad, it’s unlikely they will move any of those relationships to marriage.

The goal is therefore to refine your customer avatar and truly understand their desired end goal, so you can ‘bring them flowers’ with your products, and sweeten the deal with valuable reciprocal content.

For more tips on how to create unique content for your website, and how to make sure that content makes you money, we suggest you check out our complete guide to content creation and marketing, The Key Attributes to Drive Sales with Your Content Marketing.

The thing is: when your content starts generating a lot of traffic, you want to be ready to capture potential leads like fireflies.

Unfortunately, most business owners do nothing but hope that these cold web page visitors purchase their products and services. That’s like meeting someone with the expectation that you’ll get married that same day!

Sure, it happens, but rarely. Most marriages take communication and effort to succeed, and the same is true with your business online – you may sell to a small percentage of cold traffic that same day, but more than likely you’ll need a mechanism to convert cold traffic into warm prospects.

That’s where you need an entry-point offer.

2.Entry-Point Offer #1

For a relationship to go from just meeting one another to dating there is usually a slighter deeper engagement experience.

Maybe you spent hours together with a group of friends at the picnic and realized there was
chemistry! That’s how your website visitors will feel when they become aware of you–they feel there’s chemistry and they want to get to know you better.

So what happens when you realize there is value to this relationship? You ask to stay in touch, right?

“SEO plays an integral part in your business sales funnel, but to develop a great relationship, you eventually need to get their phone number or contact information. The same is true for nurturing great relationships with business prospects…you can’t rely on one great interaction to make the sale.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

With Internet business marketing, most people who do a great job of traffic generation totally miss out on generating the leads they need to build the relationship further.

They get cold feet and failed to ask for the phone number, even when all these visitors to their site have apparently shown interest…

… or they lose all their manners by obnoxiously hounding their visitors for their contact information with quadruple pop-ups, auto-play videos, or by dropping a mountain of cookies on them like they were starving.

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The best way we recommend you go about building those lead relationships is to add an entry-point offer (EPO) to your sales funnel after the awareness stage.

EPOs are your best way to capture a prospect’s contact information; namely, their email, first name, phone number, or social media tag. An EPO is therefore when you offer something with more perceived value in return for that contact information.

When you encourage a click with a gift, you build a relationship based on reciprocity: a great first footing for the long-term customer journey you intend to build with your sales funnel stages.

So what sorts of ‘gifts’ or ‘offers’ can you make that will have direct value to your client? We recommend you create (and then offer) the following types of content in exchange for your prospect’s contact info:

  • Checklists
  • Case Studies
  • Roadmaps
  • Recipes
  • Whitepapers
  • Mini-Course
  • Reports
  • Free + Shipping Offers
  • Cheat-Sheets
  • Guides
  • Audio meditation download
  • Email Newsletter

Ideally, site visitors have landed on your site because of the expert resources you’re providing on a certain topic. The most effective EPOs will be naturally appealing to your ideal customer, are ultra-specific, and easily consumable.

Here’s a good example from The Digital Navigator of what we mean when we say entry-point offer:

Our client Jen Gilchrist – owner of Soul Success Unleashed – provides educational content that helps spiritual practitioners deepen their gifts, reach self-acceptance, and be confident in their channeling and healing arts.

Upon arrival to SSU’s main homepage, visitors are encouraged to participate in a free activation masterclass. To receive the on-demand training, visitors enter their email address and receive access to the masterclass to their inbox.

Boiled down, Jen has given visitors free training in exchange for a chance to get to know them better–that’s an entry-point offer.

This type of offer takes the relationship to the next level. It takes the relationship from being cold and cordial to warmer because the free masterclass provides a highly consumable (and exciting) introduction to spiritual learning..and they usually want more!

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SALES FUNNEL TEMPLATES

Fill-in-the-Blank Sales Funnel Worksheets to Generate More Leads and Sales Absolutely FREE!

Entry-Point Offer #2

Now that you have a prospect’s contact information, you’re probably wondering how to turn that relationship into revenue.

But wait!

There is a certain percentage of your target audience that will prove to become ideal customers…who may never purchase a product from you.

These people will consume your content on your website, read your emails, like your posts on Facebook but still never purchase.

The trick with these enigmatic buyers is that, with the proper pruning, you can move that relationship from blog reader or Facebook follower to email subscriber over the long-term, and ultimately into a repeat customer who refers lots of business to you.

So, once you have gained a new email subscriber your job is to continue to pursue, in terms of a relationship, your “marriage.”

Obviously, gaining an email subscriber is good but still not ideal, because this new subscriber still has not bought your product or service.

Pro Tip: Make sure you deliver on your EPO promises! If your prospect signed up to receive a two-page weight loss guide but instead they received a video asking them to buy into your weight loss coaching program this would be called good old-fashioned bait and switch. It would kill the relationship instantly.

So, you must always deliver what you promise to deliver with your entry-point offer or opt-in widget!

Still, with the type of customer who becomes loyal over the long-term, there’s nothing that says you can’t still make an additional offer in addition to delivering your first EPO.

Since they have already shown interest by reading content and then signing up for another piece of gated content, you would be wise to make a low-priced offer to win them as a new customer, which can be a few dollars to thousands of dollars based on your industry.

Going back to Jen Gilchrist’s Soul Success Unleashed, users who enjoy the benefits of her free activation masterclass receive a follow-up offer to their inbox, inviting them to enroll in a low-cost course related to what they learned in the previous lesson.

The paid point of offer is therefore entry-point offer number two.

If you have higher-priced products or services such as coaching programs, consulting services, certification courses, video courses, or other higher-priced products, programs, and/or services, then two-part entry-point offers are a great solution for you.

If your products fit into any of the above, here is a list are common types of assets used to convert warm leads into customers:

  • Webinar
  • Masterclass
  • Demo
  • Facebook Live Event
  • Trial
  • Free Membership
  • One-on-One Consultation
  • Diagnostic
  • Free + two Shipping (i.e. book)
  • Low-Priced Offers (Under $100)
  • Free Event

Again, it’s important that you seek to create high-value content that is highly engaging and easily consumable.

Remember, you want to convert the lead into a customer, so while it’s important to deliver valuable content, you should equally try to sell that content too.

It’s a bit of an art and science to do this effectively, which is why copywriters usually help with creating sales conversion tools such as webinar scripts, stage presentation scripts and long-form sales letters.

The better you are at creating a winning presentation with your entry-point offer part two, the higher your sales conversions should be!

Become an Entry-Point Offers Pro

Splinter Offer

Now that you are well into the relationship building portion of the sales funnel process, you can start to move the relationship forward towards one that puts money into your pocket.

Our recommendation? Use a splinter offer to incentivize warmed prospects at the ‘middle’ portion of your sales funnel.

What is a splinter offer? A splinter offer is when you break off a piece of a bigger offer that you sell, and provide it as a stand-alone product.

This stage of the funnel is really useful in cases where you have a larger program that you want people to buy but you know there will be price resistance. To get your foot in the door, you can splinter the offer and instead sell a section or unit of the larger product at a time.

Let’s say for instance that you have a certification course that you charge $2,000 for. It takes a lot of credibility and market positioning to sell at this price. It’s much easier to fragment your program into four smaller courses that are sold for $495 each.

Even if you’re selling a master course for $1,000 you can pull out one of the most popular modules and turn it into a splinter offer, or standalone class that you sell for $95.

In either case, these products are an easier sell than the full $1,000 course.

$7 offers, $11 offers, $37 offers, $97 offers, $297 offers are all price points used in making high converting splinter offers. These price points usually represent 10 to 15% of the price of the core product offer they are splintered from.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

5.Excitement

A short, fun, yet nevertheless integral stage of the sales funnel is the excitement stage!

You’ve just made a splinter offer, and it is likely that it has made a big positive impression on customers who have opted in.

We recommend you ride the wave of positive emotion and send along a personalized letter to their inbox for an added WOW factor.

In fact, this is a great opportunity to think of small, personalized ways you can build a positive reward loop associated with buying your products online. Anything come to mind? Think of what you can deliver to get that excitement going!

The goal is simply to stand out, and show you truly care. You’re willing to go above and beyond, and just like our relationship metaphor, you’ll be getting your ‘date’ (or customer) thinking about you long after they’ve made a purchase.

6.Profit Maximizer

Congratulations! You have now wooed your cold prospect to the bottom stage of your sales funnel.

Up to now, you have converted your business prospects into customers with high value awareness content, entry-point offers and/or splinter offers which bring in some money but probably just enough to cover your business expenses.

That’s the promise of the profit maximizer stage as the bottom extremity of your sales funnel: in other words, this is where you drop to one knee, pull out the ring, show the sincerity in those bright dreamy eyes of yours, and ask for your customer’s hand in marriage.

At the profit maximizer stage, you’ll be asking customers to invest in you and your expertise by recommending they purchase the rest of your initial splinter offer.

Expert Check-in: Before you go any further, don’t lose sight of your values, continued excitement and making this win-win, otherwise your loving business relationship will end in divorce.

For example, if you have sold a splinter offer that was one fourth of your core offer, here you offer the remaining three modules of your course for the same dollar amount your complete course sells for.

To put that another way, if your course sells for $1,000 and your splinter offer sold for $249, you need to sell your profit maximizer offer for $749.

To sell this, you can invite splinter offer buyers to another free class where you sell them into the $749 program or some other engaging sales mechanism.

At The Digital Navigator we found that for online courses you can get better results by monitoring the progress of your customers. If your system detects they aren’t moving forward, then send them encouragement emails and other means of communication to help them graduate.

As they complete milestones you adapt the messaging of your communication, congratulate them and recommend their next best step. This can be the complete program, a complimentary course, personal coaching, an in-depth service or a membership continuity program.

Of course, this example is geared more toward life coaches selling digital products online, or mentors with publications and other services to purchase–but the same is true for physical products and service offerings, you just have to get a little creative.

Get Better Results from your Sales Funnel

Pro Tip: If you want to boost your profit even more (and who doesn’t?), there’s an extra step you can take at this stage. It’s sort of like a Profit Maximizer PLUS.

You and I both know it’s easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. When someone decides to buy from you, they trust you. In fact, they trust you in that moment possibly more than they ever will.

This is the perfect time to introduce a post-purchase One Click Upsell.

Here’s how it works.

When your customer makes a purchase, instead of seeing the thank you page, you’re going to show them a one time offer they can’t get anywhere else (that’s the selling point!). Not everyone will take you up on this offer but what you’ll find is that your average order value (AOV) will increase.

That means you’re making more on every purchase. And that’s a no brainer.

PS: We use and recommend One-Click Upsells from FunnelKit for WooCommerce!

7.Advocate

Hey sales funneler! All the work you have done this far should be done with absolute excellence.

You’ve aimed to deliver above expected value every step of the way, from the top to the bottom stages of your sales funnel.

Now that you have turned a profit on this new customer, you will have reached the last critical stage of a solid online business-building sales funnel. But before you move into developing a marketing funnel for your newly-built purchase funnel…there’s one more step!

The advocacy stage. This is where you seek to transform your new customers into brand evangelist by leaving positive reviews, giving raving testimonials, case studies and referring friends.

This is the power of tried and true word-of-mouth marketing working at its best.

However, instead of hoping that out of the kindness of their hearts or the excitement in their souls that they refer you and leave reviews online, smart business owners systematically seek out referrals, testimonials and reviews…

…we recommend you systematize this process by, say, sending out an email once your new client has likely consumed your product or service.

If you use a progress tracking system like we previously discussed then you can get perfect timing almost every time.

For example, The Digital Navigator’s client, HospitalityFan, does reputation management services for companies. So, businesses that want Google, Facebook and Yelp reviews from customers use his service.

Customers are funneled into one system where they can leave reviews using his system, whereby the process of creating advocates out of customers, often within hours of a customer’s visit to a restaurant or business has been completely systemized.

Ideally in the advocacy stage, the new customer produces another customer. This ensures that your business continues to grow even without increasing your advertising dollars!

The only difference between the advocacy stages and those that came before is its focus on traffic and retargeting.

Throughout every sales funnel stage you should be monitoring the traffic you generate with your tracking software and analyzing the engagement of your traffic in each phase.

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How to Create Advocates from ‘Warm’ Business Prospects and Leads

We recommend you set up automation software and triggers that seek to engage traffic that does not convert after a reasonable amount of time.

For example, if you make a special offer that expires 48 hours then you should have an automation set up to re-target these non-responders with a lower-priced offer that re-engages them.

This is often called retargeting, and while paid retargeting strategies can be extremely complex and granular, you can get good results by simply adapting your communication to cold, warm, and hot leads.

You can also segment your email list to send content adapted to each stage of the marketing and sales cycle–a process that should be mirrored throughout the business assets you create.

Say a person is a regular reader of your blog and they’ve downloaded your checklist. Next step is to make a pivot in your message by inviting them to your next masterclass or webinar.

Same goes for ‘warm’ prospects in your network. If a person has bought a ticket to your conference but never showed up then you should offer them a free ticket to your next event to give them another opportunity to consume your information.

The reason you would still push them to consume the information even after they have bought is because without content consumption they will not progress to the next sales funnel stage.

So, a customer who buys your product or service but does not consume it will likely not become an advocate for your business, nor will they become a repeat customer.

What content should I include for my sales funnel stages? | How to Make a Funnel

Feeling excited about your work so far? Building sales funnel stages can be fun work, but getting ahead of yourself is dangerous.

Right now we recommend you take what you have learned here and apply it as you fill out our sales funnel template PDF worksheets. Simply brainstorm what value you can offer that exceeds expectation in each stage of your funnel.

Then, when you have valuable content placed in each stage of your sales funnel then you need to produce the content needed…but what content goes where?

Sales Funnel Content Template for Your Sales Pipeline

Awareness: Highly targeted SEO and niche expertise blog articles and podcasts.You might produce blog posts and podcast episodes once or twice a week.

These blog posts and podcast episodes should share valuable content that your target audience wants to hear. The more actionable the better!

The goal that you have in your content is to become known, liked, and trusted by your target audience.

If these blog posts are SEO optimized and found then you will begin to build traffic. It’s important that you make an entry-point offer in every piece of content you produce.

Entry-Point Offer 1: White papers, case studies, checklists, list of resources.

In order to get people to opt in from your blog posts or podcasts so you can secure their contact information, you might offer a short checklist they can use to achieve a specific goal.

White papers and case studies are, incidentally, optimal for consults and businesses in the B2B space.

Entry-Point Offer 2: Masterclass or webinars, or mini-training series.

Now that you have their contact information you must certainly deliver the piece of content promised to deliver that prompted them to opt in, but you don’t stop there.

Instead, you invite them to ascend to a higher form of content that is more involved – your webinar training, video training series, Facebook live event or another conversion tool.

Splinter Offer: Initial consultation on a specific topic, or productized programs.

At your masterclass or webinar you need to make an offer. Some coaches, content producers and consultants have productized programs that sell for price points that are easily affordable.

If you have a productized program that is priced under $200 then you can sell people into this program fairly easily.

If your program is priced at $2,000 or more you should consider splintering your offer so it may fall into the easily affordable price and under that $200, threshold for your sales to be optimal. Remember that the exact price points vary by industry.

Profit Maximiser: Project engagement (legal case, membership for industry updates, group coaching, personal coaching, certification program, sales system build-out, retreat).

For coaches and consultants, once you perform the initial strategy, diagnostic or tactical plan you can present a couple of options for working which includes different levels of effort.

At the Digital Navigator we do detailed plans that clients can deploy themselves with their teams while having a discussion of how we can help them get results faster and easier.

When using this approach be careful to deliver an incomplete solution as your splinter offer, since it should deliver value that exceeds their expectations to generate that excitement.

Advocate: Reviews, affiliate referral programs, testimonials and case studies.

Asking for video and written testimonials should come naturally after one of your clients shares a big victory with you. It’s better not to wait as they will be able to provide more details about their experience and the measurable results they achieved in working with you.

When selling online, most platforms allow you to create an affiliate program which will automatically track referrals.

Providing a financial incentive as either a percentage or a fixed amount gives that extra motivation for your business to stay top of mind. The affiliate commission cuts down on your marketing expenses which should preserve your profit margins.

You can also set up your own sales funnel using affiliate products.

Downloadable Sales Funnel Template PDF

Small Sales Funnel Template for New Businesses and Revenue Streams

We often find ourselves working closely with clients who have already surpassed the $100K per year mark, but if you haven’t quite gotten there yet–or if you’re looking to branch off into a new revenue stream, here is a basic sales funnel template plus expert tips to quickly build a small sales funnel you can expand on later.

  1. Start blogging or posting on Facebook, or create a quick podcast episode, and quickly ramp up the frequency of your publishing efforts, scheduling content in advance where possible.
  2. Focus directly on one or two sales channels. It’s better to dominate one medium than to dilute your efforts across multiple platforms.
  3. Go straight for the sale with an entry-point offer such as a masterclass, where you then directly sell people into your coaching program or course through email marketing or a new sales landing page.
  4. (Optional) Invite visitors to a free or paid strategy session or ‘discovery’ call. If you want to do these for free, you will want to have a strong qualification/ intake process to avoid wasting your time. Charging a small fee for these does seem to increase close rates, however!

While many coaches, consultants, course creators, and digital product marketers start off like this, larger businesses will use this format to expand into new markets while limiting their capital risk.

It’s a sure-fire way to hone your awareness and entry-point offer skills, and add revenue streams to your offerings that rake in high five-figure revenues.

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Low-Converting Landing Pages Waste Time, Money, and Energy.

HIGH-CONVERTING LANDING PAGE CHECKLIST!

How to Write Content for Your Sales Funnel Stages

For a full break-down of how to write amazing content for landing pages and other content, read How to Create Unique Content for Your Website.

Your Awareness Stage and Entry-Point Stage content must be engaging to make more sales. Here are some tips to better improve your initial content offerings and motivate users to continue down the sales funnel!

How to Write Content to Build Customer Awareness

To write high quality, long-form articles or regular blogs with targeted SEO, determine the niche marketing for your revenue stream, carve out the avatar profile of your target customer, and document the path they’ll take from prospect to buyer.

Then, once you have a crystal clear image of the biggest challenges and the desired end goals of your ideal customer, you can begin the research process.

First, put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and make a long list of all the search queries they might use.

According to your budget, at this stage you can use a tool such as the Google Keyword Planner (free), ahrefs or SEMrush, or hire a consultant to provide you with an in-depth report of the most profitable search traffic keywords.

The goal is not to go for the keywords with the highest search volume–instead you want to assess the volume, click-through rate and difficulty of beating your competitors for a coveted spot at the top of the search ranking ladder.

The Digital Navigator can help you sift through this data by placing our combined analytical CPA expertise and marketing know-how at your disposal, reach out to us to schedule a consultation or click the chat bubble in the bottom right corner of your screen.

Your next step is to actually WRITE those long form articles and blog posts. We recommend creating a few pillar posts with 4,500+ words, which will serve as authoritative resources.

Don’t worry, by including a table of content you will make your content accessible to readers that want to take a birds-eye view of their SEO efforts.

These establish your expertise, are highly shareable and build a home base for your organic search ranking. Start with one or two, then build your way up to six pillar posts.

Next, surround these longer content pieces by smaller 1,500+ word articles. These will link back to your goliath work of penmanship, while making it easier to publish on a frequent basis!

How to Write Entry-Point Offers

Entry-Point Offer #1

As you build out awareness building content, you’ll be driving sales with free or low-cost entry-point offers like checklists, cheat sheets, case studies, white papers, guided audio, or slide show files.

The best part is, your awareness content will actually guide the creation of your entry-point assets. To begin, start by designing one or two of these downloadable resources behind a widget that collects email information from your leads.

For low-budget email marketing, try native tools included in auto-responder software like ActiveCampaign, Aweber, Mailchimp, or Drip. Higher budget businesses can try professional lead capture software that connects into your auto-responder like ThriveLeads, ConvertPro or OptinMonster.

Remember to keep gated resources useful and easy to consume. Most of all, ensure they demonstrate your expertise, and that they are a natural extension of your content. Then, make the entry-point offer available throughout your articles and blog entries.

Entry-Point Offer #2

Your second entry-point offer is, remember, something like a webinar or masterclass that sell

people straight into your core offer.

The key thing here is to make sure your core offer is profitable for you, since this is going to be your bread-and-butter deliverable for this revenue stream…and will even leak into your profit maximizer.

First, we recommend advertising your masterclasses directly through your blog or article entries, and don’t be afraid to showcase both EPOs in the same article–particularly if the article is long-form.

That means weaving their value and benefits into the meat of your content as a selling point, or creating separate opt-in opportunities using the same software as your first entry-point offer.

Do the same for your email content marketing as well, where you can reach people who are already interested in what you have to offer, and are receptive to what you have to share.

You’ll be sure to get higher attendance and sign-up rates for sure!

What Sales Funnel Software Should I Use?

While there are hundreds of digital marketing tools you can use to build sales and marketing funnels, I wanted to compile a short list of sales funnel software options that will cover the essentials: integration, lead capture, analytics, and ads.

“Some marketers and content creators will tell you to test out all-in-one systems like ClickFunnels, but we prefer to integrate the best tools for each job for maximum efficiency and even cost-savings!”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

So what are the best digital software products to build great sales funnel stages for your business?

First and foremost, we recommend WordPress as the best possible software product to help sell digital products online.

Why?

Because WordPress gives you ownership over your sales funnels, instead of just leasing space with other platforms like ClickFunnels, Kartra, and Kajabi (for example).

By choosing WordPress as your main software hub, you will have an easier time integrating the tools we describe below. Plus, with WordPress you get a ton of flexibility, since you can pick and choose your needs instead of opting for an all-in-one solution that doesn’t cover every base.

After WordPress, here are the best tools to add-on to help manage your sales funnel streams:

Integration:

Zapier is an excellent tool that you can use to integrate different software alerts between platforms, whereas ActiveCampaign users might want to check into ActiveMember360 (which is what we use). It’s a membership plugin that syncs to WordPress, our checkout site, training courses, and membership sites! WP Fusion is another great option for connecting all your systems which also provides membership and page locking functionality.

Lead Capture:

Tools like Thrive Leads, ConvertPro and OptinMonster enable you to create unique opt-in forms.

They also give you additional functions to capture more leads, such as a pop up that appears when a person leaves, mobile specific forms, forms with a yes/no option and evolving offers to returning visitors.

Analytics:

Google Analytics is a great free tool to help you collect data about visitor interactions with your website. You’ll learn who your visitors are, where they are visiting from, and what actions they take.

Even if you don’t interpret this information yet, it’s a good idea to start collecting data, especially if you team up with a marketing or website management team later down the line.

We should mention here that this option is great if you don’t have a big budget, but that it also comes at a risk. As technologies develop and see more regulation in the industry, you’ll find that Google Analytics isn’t as accurate, since people block it and because it can sometimes create privacy regulatory issues.

What’s an Alternative to Google Analytics?

PS: We build private analytics into the websites we design for our client sales funnels, and as far as security and protecting your customers goes, it’s the best option to avoid fines from GDPR (Europe), CCPA (California) and the new privacy regulation rolling out throughout several states.

Ads:

We recommend deploying Facebook Pixel and other advertising pixels if you plan to run paid advertising campaigns for your company.

In doing so, you’ll have more control over what metrics you collect on paid campaigns for maximum optimization!

You’ll also be able to reduce ad costs since you’ll be able to quickly retarget engaged customers and drive traffic at different sales funnel stages with custom audience segments.

Keep in mind that any worthwhile advertising platform that you pay for will provide you with a code to enable different functionalities. Just be cautious of how that code is implemented. You want to ensure it stays compliant with privacy legislation in your area. (We actually do this automatically on certain managed website plans!).

Integrated Checkout:

If you want to amp up your user experience during product purchase, we recommend opting to use WooCommerce for a positive check-out experience.

We go into great detail about all the reasons why you should choose WooCommerce for your coaching or content business online in another article, but for now know that it is a direct way to regulate sales funnel tracking so you know exactly where customers came from!

Why You Need WooCommerce for Your Site

How to Promote Your Sales Funnel with a Marketing Funnel

When you create a great sales funnel, you still have to get the word out there and generate leads who will follow your funnels to the very end.

The best way to do that is to incorporate a top funnel marketing solution into your sales funnel stages. Certainly, we believe the two go hand in hand!

Just look at how Lori Williams was able to make over $150K by implementing a successful sales funnel, and following our steps to product launch.

Lori Made $155,355 in Revenue through Successful Facebook Launch

success-story-lori-made-revenue

Success Story

So while you are enjoying these Free Downloadable Online Sales Funnel Template PDFs, make sure you go over the ‘short’ funnel to build out the stages of your marketing funnel along the way.

How to start using the Sales Funnel Stages Template + Marketing Funnel Template

  • Download the pack and work with the PDF that is most relevant to your business project.
  • If you have an existing Small Funnel or more complex sales system, then start by filling in the marketing template with your assets. Then identify the weakest link and document or create an asset to plug that hole.
  • If you don’t have an existing funnel, then start filling out the Sales Funnel PDFs from the top down.

To increase your lifetime customer value with your existing clients, you can create a small funnel that will further solve additional challenges they are facing or provide faster results.

Just remember to review the stages of your sales pipeline when you can to narrow your focus on the customers to whom you can deliver the most value quickly.

Then you’ll want to ensure that people gain immediate access to your newly developed sales funnel with a complementary marketing funnel to promo your latest creations.

We do have a great article to help you build amazing marketing funnels (template included), but we recommend you start by watching our free 40-minute webinar on how to create a great marketing funnel for course and webinar content.

Whatever your digital product, these marketing tactics are sure to boost your reach to the right target audience:

Free On-Demand Masterclass

4 Steps to Build a Lucrative Marketing Funnel for Course Creators, Coaches and Spiritual Teachers

A Girl Sit front of computer and filling a multi step form

This is especially helpful when you start to get more feedback about customer buying behavior, and how they interact with your website. This is all information that’s going to help you sell more…

…but most importantly it’s going to let you build a money-making machine that you don’t have to tend to so often.

Instead you’ll be left with tons of time to learn more skills and share them with your audience. You’ll also have the freedom to create more products, and more funnels for even more revenue!

We truly hope this article was useful to you, and that you find value in building an effective sales funnel that promotes your expertise at every stage.

Still, we understand that you may want a little more peace of mind around your sales and marketing funnels, which is why we’re so dedicated to making the process as pain-free as possible…almost like an SAAS sales funnel!

If you’re looking for some help with your sales funnel, you can always reach out to us for a free website audit of your existing funnels, or you can schedule a free consultation with our experts to get your sales funnel questions answered!

Until we hear from you next, all the best in your incredible journey to more leads and sales with a fully optimized website–complete with expert sales and marketing funnels!

Schedule Free Consultation

 

FAQ

What is a sales funnel?
We define a Sales Funnel as the different steps new and returning prospects will take to ultimately become your customer.
Why do I need a sales funnel?
Did you know that businesses who dedicate time to creating simpler buying processes for customers are 62% more likely to to win a high-quality sale? A good sales funnel will transform massive numbers of ice cold prospects into blazing hot customers and so-called brand evangelists.

In other words, you will build authentic connections and relationships with your target audience and overcome the inherent distrust, skepticism, and apathy they have when they stumble across your landing page, blog post, social media page, ad, video, or press release…you name it!

What are the different sales funnel stages?

First clients move from the awareness stage - the ‘getting to know you phase’ - into your entry-point offers, or EPOs. These EPOs encourage engagement through free, targeted offerings that provide education or resources in exchange for leads.

From there, your EPOs should lead into a splinter offer, which is the first point in the funnel when you’ll ask for a sale. Here you’re giving a small portion of your bigger offer at a more accessible price, before moving into the excitement stage, and then the profit maximizer stage.

Once here, you’ll have a chance to upgrade the sale of your content, courses, services, or products into the ‘maximum offering’ you provide to your prospects. If you can fulfill this step of the stage, you’ll have created loyal customers who are ready to advocate for your brand!

What is a splinter offer?
A splinter offer is when you break off a piece of a bigger offer that you sell, and provide it as a stand-alone product.
What kind of content helps me build product awareness?
You can create:

  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • Forum comments
  • Social media posts
  • Gifs
  • Memes
  • Product reviews
  • Q & A
  • Press Releases
  • Quizzes
  • Maps
  • Stories
  • Case Studies
  • Curated Content
  • or Lists
What’s the best way to generate leads with my sales funnel?

The best way we recommend you go about building those lead relationships is to add an entry-point offer (EPO) to your sales funnel after the awareness stage. EPOs are your best way to capture a prospect’s contact information; namely, their email, first name, phone number, or social media tag. An EPO is therefore when you offer something with more perceived value in return for that contact information.

What is a ‘one-click upsell’?

When your customer makes a purchase, instead of seeing the thank you page, you’re going to show them a one time offer they can’t get anywhere else (that’s the selling point!). Not everyone will take you up on this offer but what you’ll find is that your average order value (AOV) will increase. PS: We use and recommend One-Click Upsells from FunnelKit for WooCommerce!

4 Comments

  1. Marlon Cole

    Great article! I wish that someone can explain to do this with chatbots. I know that chatbots bs emails have their upside like privacy. I also like to know how I can do a great sales funnel with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter?

    Reply
    • Pol Cousineau

      Hi Marlon, the fundamentals are the same regardless of the medium used for the sales funnel, whether that is Facebook, YouTube, Email or ChatBots. Obviously there are some nuances and we’ve had great results using Facebook Ads that leverage Comment to Messenger ChatBots. We’ll be releasing an updated Infographic on Marketing Funnel Stages that shows you where you may want to use some of these tools in your marketing strategy. If you have an existing business with a product or service that has generated sales I recommend that you get in touch for a consultation. We’ll be able to go in more depth about your business and see if our strategies align to help you grow.

      I’ve also taken note of these topics and may release a follow-up article on sales funnels within the context of Facebook and ChatBots.

      Reply
  2. Carie

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    • jessica@thedigitalnavigator.com

      You’re very welcome Carie! Thanks for reading.

      Reply

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4 Steps to Build a Lucrative Marketing Funnel for Course Creators, Coaches and Spiritual Teachers

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