The Secret Behind My Success: How To Create Sales Funnels

We all know that blogging is a great way to make money, but the problem is finding ways to monetize. This guide will show you how you can use a digital marketing funnel (sales) to get more money for your blog posts and increase your earnings!

No matter what type of blog post it is (reviews, tutorials, etc.), you can turn it into an online course or sell one-on-one consulting through a digital marketing funnel.

The Secret Behind My Success: How To Create Sales Funnels
The Secret Behind My Success: How To Create Sales Funnels

These messages will allow readers to build a relationship with you and purchase from you over time instead of just once. We’ll walk through step-by-step examples of how anyone can create their own sales funnel in any niche!

Sales funnels are the backbone of any successful marketing campaign. Sales Funnels can be used for anything from selling courses, digital products, or affiliate offers. A good sales funnel will help you convert your offers into sales and make more money!

The best part is that there are many different types of funnels available, so no matter what kind of business you have, there’s one out there for you!

You’ll learn everything from setting up your offer and lead magnet, choosing a sales funnel software best for conversion, and how to build your sales funnel with real examples.

What Is a Sales Funnel?

The sales funnel is a model used in marketing to move people through the process of conversion. It’s an essential part of any business because it can help increase revenue and make more sales.

Marketo shared that approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy — but they may be willing to provide contact information in exchange for valuable content.

A sales funnel should lead the interested contact to a prospective customer who then decides to buy and acts upon that decision. It’s a journey from “attracted” to “converted”.

To sum up, a sales funnel quickly; it’s a series of messages (most often email) that lead someone to make a buying decision. Many sales funnels today include video messages. Sales funnels today can also be sent through SMS text messaging, or chatbots.

The funnel starts with brand awareness and moves people to website visitors, then eventually leads them down the conversion path.

The sales funnel is built around a single product or service.

Steps to Creating a Digital Marketing Funnel

1. Define a problem that you solve

2. Identify the customer’s needs and wants

3. Create a product or service to meet those needs and wants

4. Determine what channels you will use to get your message out there (email, social media, etc.)

5. Collect contact information from interested customers

6. Offer an incentive for them to take the next step to receive their free offer (e-book, video series) (make sure they understand how this is going to help them address their issue)

There are four stages in a sales funnel. AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Purchase.

Depending on the type of product you sell, your messaging will be different in each sales funnel stage.

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You’ll need to create content that’s appropriate for each one based on what your prospects are looking for at that point in their journey with you.

Awareness: This is the first step of a sales funnel because you want to get people’s attention, so they know what your product or service does.

You can do this by creating an intriguing thumbnail for your blog post that will catch their eye while scrolling through social media posts in their feed. I use Canva Pro for my blog images.

To send your sales funnel to a prospective buyer, you will first need awareness of your product or service. Attention is often created through traffic to your blog or website.

There are many ways to get traffic.

Some bloggers attract visitors to the website through paid advertising like Facebook ads, Google Ads, Pinterest Ads, or Twitter.

You can generate traffic to your blog through Youtube, Instagram, Linked In, Podcasts and TikTok.

I create helpful blogs that rank on Google to generate traffic. I do this by building a niche website, creating quality, in-depth, long-form content, and applying best practices in SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

I also create Facebook Groups that help me nurture prospective customers through social media touches and lead magnets that bring them into the sales funnel.

Interest: The second step in a sales funnel is Interest. Interest is where you want to hold their attention and get them excited about your product or service. Share a story that will inspire emotion in the viewer, so they are more likely to click on the post than if you just shared text.

Decision: The third step of a sales funnel is desire. This is when you have created a want for your product or service. You’ve told a story of how this product or service solves a specific problem. They’ve decided that it’s a product they want to have.

Action: The fourth step of a sales funnel is action. Action is where you ask them to take action, such as signing up for your newsletter by filling in a form or buying a product by clicking order now.

The final step in the sales funnel is fulfillment. Fulfillment is when you follow up with your prospects and make sure they got what they were looking for after taking action. You want to show them that their decision was a good one so they will feel confident about buying from you again in the future or referring others to do the same.

Your Lead Magnet

The trigger used to launch a sales funnel is a lead magnet that will generate contacts for your mailing list.

A lead magnet is something that you offer your prospects in return for their contact information.

Your lead magnet could be a guide, checklist, video, calendar, printable, or anything else valuable.

The blog that generates the traffic and your lead magnet should be related to the product you wish to sell through your sales funnel.

Your first message in your sales funnel will contain the item you offered with your lead magnet.

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To Make the Pop-Up or slide-in offer, you can use software like Optinmonster, Elementor Pro, or ConvertKit.

Sales Funnel Software

You’ll need software that will help you automatically send your messages based on a trigger or tag.

ConvertKit is a popular email marketing service that offers automation to create your sales funnel.

They offer software that integrates with WordPress and allow you to add tags or triggers so your messages can be automatically triggered after a period of time has passed since someone visited your blog post.

ConvertKit works with many landing page platforms as well, such as Elementor. And, it works “out-of-the-box” with little configuration outside of field mapping.

ConvertKit can also help you make offers for your lead magnets throughout your website.

MailerLite is an easy email autoresponder software that allows you to build simple automation funnels, Mailerlite might be for you. It’s inexpensive and pretty easy to use.

Create the automation with the email messages you want to send. Add delays to space out the messages in your funnel.

Trigger the sales funnel with a form, group, or when someone clicks a link.

ClickFunnels is one of the most popular funnel builders, with an outstanding amount of features, is ClickFunnels.

It’s probably more powerful than most bloggers need, but if you are a “bells and whistles” kind of marketer, ClickFunnels might be right for you.

From the opt-in page to eCommerce checkout and payment integration, you can create your entire funnel with ease.

It also integrates with all the email autoresponder platforms mentioned above without any hassle.

One of the best features of ClickFunnels is the ability to offer sales bumps and upsells at the conversion phase.

Another significant feature is the ease of use.

You can build your funnel without any coding knowledge and understand how it works with just one click.

SamCart is a shopping cart platform that is powerful and versatile, with integrations for all the major payment gateways, including PayPal. The design side of this program is intuitive and user-friendly.

SamCart is more of an e-commerce platform than a funnels builder specifically but specializes in micro-funnels and single-page conversion funnels.

KEAP, formally known as Infusionsoft, has a fantastic drip campaign feature that allows you to email and text your contact list. Build a sales funnel with advanced “If this, then that” features.

For example, you could set up a sales funnel that moves someone from one funnel to another based on which links in the email they click.

You can read performance at each phase and adjust messages in your funnel accordingly.

Choose the best days and times to send your funnel messages, and automate the entire process.

Karta allows you to build multi-page funnels. Use email to automate powerful relationship messages that build to the sale.

A drag and drop builder allows you to create your flows easily. Segment your list with tagging created through actions the visitor takes on your funnel.

Like KEAP, Kartra also offers “if this, then that” options.

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Example Sales Funnel

Lori has a digital course about Pinterest. She wants to lead prospective customers into her Pinterest sales funnel.

[Awareness Phase]

She creates a blog post called “7 Pinterest Strategies You Wish You Knew as a Beginner”.

She creates images on Canva to post on Pinterest, which drive traffic to her blog. She also ranks on the search engines for keywords related to Pinterest.

Lori also made a great video that shows people step by step how to use Pinterest. She links back to her blog post.

Lori shares her post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networks.

[Interest]

When visitors land on her blog post web page, they see an offer for a lead magnet. Lori uses Elementor Pro, which allows her to embed the subscriber form in the side column, footers, and content itself.

Lori created a lead magnet using Canva Pro. It’s the 7 Strategies Checklist. The visitor fills out the offer form and is now ready to receive their free product.

The contact is now automatically entered into ConvertKit, where the sales funnel is launched.

The first message delivers the lead magnet.

After that, Lori begins a storytelling process through a series of emails designed to build a relationship.

The first batch of emails are not direct sales messages.

These emails create trust over time before attempting to make a sale.

Lori shares stories of how she tried something and failed but then discovered a top strategy. She shares this top strategy in a value-focused message. While related to her product, this is a free tip and not a sales pitch.

After the value-focused messages are sent, Lori will send a PAS message. PAS stands for Problem-Agitate-Solution. It’s a valuable framework for creating new marketing copy ideas. Lori uses conversion.ai to create the framework. It’s an AI writing assistant that helps in creating content.

Address the user’s problem, aggravate it by discussing what hassle the problem causes, and then provide the solution.

In this case, Lori talks about the goal of generating traffic through Pinterest. She talks about the problem of not getting enough impressions and clicks from pins. This problem leaves the creator with no traffic to their blogs, a lack of leads, and little to no sales.

With her Pinterest Course, she offers to help the creator solve the problem step-by-step.

[Decision]

She then influences the visitor to make a buying decision and sends them to her checkout page on Teachable, where her course is offered.

[Action]

The sales page on Teachable offers a video, description, and itemized list of her bundled course with a call-to-action to enroll now.

She offers a limited-time coupon to these specific customers (through a secret code) that creates urgency.

The user then enrolls and checks out right there on the Teachable Platform.

Fulfillment takes place by providing automatic access to the course.

The customer is then moved to a follow-up or maintenance funnel.

Conclusion

Build your sales funnel with a compelling call-to-action and lead magnet that will help you build trust, credibility, and authority with prospects.

Attract the right type of prospect by choosing appropriate content for each stage in the process. Take the customer on a journey to eventually decide to make a purchase, and take action on your checkout.

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