Clickfunnels and the Five Sales Funnel Stages: The Ultimate Strategy to Capturing Customers
Hey guys, this post is all about how to grow your business with the sales funnel stages using Clickfunnels.
In this post I’ll be talking about what a sales funnel is, the stages of a funnel, and how to build your sales funnel with Clickfunnels.
I should probably start out by saying, I’m a pretty big fan of Clickfunnels. I’m one of their top affiliates, a 2 Comma Club Winner, and one of their dream car winners.
Now let me assure you growing my online business and my success with Clickfunnels didn’t happen overnight. I had to just start.
After reading this article, your next step is to start your 14 Day Free Trial and join my email list to access your bonuses. I’ll send you all kinds of insights on how to build a sales funnels that can grow your business.
I think a sales funnel is the best tool you can use to grow your business and improve your marketing efforts. And I think that Clickfunnels is the best software you can use to build your sales funnel. Clickfunnels wants to help entrepreneurs turn their vision into reality. It’s about convenience, efficiency, and ultimately helping you convert your prospects into customers and closing the sale.
Sales Funnel Stages: What is a Sales Funnel?
If you’ve been in the digital marketing industry, you’ve at least heard of a sales funnel. It’s one of the core concepts when it comes to online business. But if you’re unsure of what a sales funnel is, think of a funnel in real life.
At the top of a funnel, a substance is poured in and it filters down towards one inevitable destination. In sales, something similar occurs.
A sales funnel is the marketing term for the journey your potential customers go through on their way to a purchase. At the top, lots of visitors arrive, but as the funnel moves along, a smaller part of that group may want to learn more, and then an even smaller part may actually want to buy. Unlike the real-world funnel, not all who enter the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end.
Sales Funnel Stages: How To Grow Your Online Business
The fundamental role of your website is to serve as the ultimate salesperson for your product. You need to design your website around that function. That means when designing your website it is important to consider how to generate leads and customers, and how you will clearly display the benefits of your products and give customers a clear path to purchase it.
Why is this so important? Really, there are only three ways to grow your business:
1. Create new customers
2. Get them to pay more than the average cart price
3. Get those customers to order from you again and again through a repeatable unit (like a subscription) or other products.
The final goal of a sales funnel is not to just make a sale. Instead the goal is to create returning customers with life-time value.
Is your website enabling you to do these things? Or is it a confusing platform hindering your sales?
If you’re selling a product or service online, you may be taking your prospects through this process without even realizing it.
If you’re wanting to grow your online business, you’ve got to start thinking in sales funnels. If there is any intentionality, you can strategically optimize this process and turn it into a high converting machine. Breaking the buyer’s journey down into smaller stages allows you to be more precise about how and when you present offers.
Sales Funnel Stages: Pre-Stage
Before you start your funnel, take inventory of your tier of products and define everything you’ll be offering your customers at each stage as they move through your funnel.
Before digging into each section, look at your overall sales funnel in its entirety. Remember, the end goal is to create returning customers with life-time value. Think about how to link each offer subsequently within your funnel.
Essentially, what you’re doing in this pre-stage is creating a value ladder. A Value Ladder is a sequence that takes your ideal customers on a journey to your most valuable product. This concept was made known by Russell Brunson, the founder of Clickfunnels.
A value ladder is created when you are strategically mapping out your sales funnel in the very early stages even before you start writing copy, assembling assets, targetting your audience, etc.
You need to be strategic about placing your products in your funnel, because if Product B doesn’t build on Product A, then your customers may not have much reason to move further down the funnel.
If someone has experienced great success with Product A, then they’ll want to supercharge their success by purchasing Product B.
Also, remember to use your low-tiered products to hook customers so that they’ll want to purchase the next product or service.
This pre-stage step is vital to success. If you don’t know what you’re offering your customers at different points won’t have the desire to keep going.
Your customers will experience your overall sales funnel in stages, but you need to have a clear intention for how and why they’ll move through it on their way to your most valuable offering.
The Five Sales Funnel Stages
Traffic
Have you ever heard the phrase, “If you build it, they will come.”? Well guess what. That could not be more false! You can have the most savvy product or helpful service out there, but if people don’t know about it, you’re not going to be able to sell it. In order for your prospect to even have a chance to become a customer, they need to become aware of your business. You have to attract traffic and pull prospects into your funnel through advertising.
However, you want to be intentional about who you bring into your funnel. Don’t attract poor quality prospects AKA people who don’t have any interest in your product.
Think about:
- Who your ideal customer is
- Where your high-value prospects spend time online
- What social networks they interact with
Then, optimize your ads, content, and affiliate sources accordingly so you can drive traffic to your funnel.
(If you want more advice on attracting traffic, I would recommend Russell Brunson’s latest book Traffic Secrets.)
Bait
After making prospects aware of your business and pulling them into your funnel, the next step is to cultivate their interest. During the bait stage, you offer a lead magnet either for free or at a very low cost to the prospect, hence the “bait.” Bait may come in the form of free content, webinars, a course delivered as an email sequence, etc.
I think its a great idea to offer a free trial of your service or product in this step. Free is a very strong word in the English language, and will without a doubt peak interest in your product. If you give something away for free now, the recipient is going to start building a relationship with your brand and will therefore be primed to purchase a high-tier product when you offer it to them.
Having people sign up for a free trial is also a great way to measure the interest you’re receiving as you’re able to gather email addresses and other information. You’ll be able to funnel out those who don’t take you up on your bait offer. After all, those who aren’t interested in your low-risk offers won’t be looking to purchase your high ticket item.
Front End Offer
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the funnel gets smaller throughout the process. This symbolizes the challenge of getting prospects to take action.
At this point, prospects have been pre-qualified by your bait offer, so they should be interested at this point in the premium product or service you have for them. Once your prospect has taken you up on your bait offer, you’ll want to send them directly to a landing page or squeeze page showcasing your premium offer. Some of you may be wondering what a squeeze page is. Have you ever visited a webpage that immediately displayed a pop-up or a splash page offering you a gift of some sort for sharing your email address? That’s a squeeze page, and with Clickfunnels, you can build an amazing squeeze page or landing page that will entice your prospect to keep moving down the funnel.
Also, now that you have email addresses for your prospects, you can and should drip offers into their inbox. An autoresponder series is also perfect for dripping discounts into their inbox—personally seeking them out to give them an offer they can’t refuse. Having your offer being accessible in multiple places by prospects is known as funnel stacking.
Middle Offer
Before or immediately after they confirm their front-end order, provide an upsell offer that will increase the value of their initial order and enhance their overall experience with your brand. An upsell is an offer that costs more than your front end offer.
The idea is to take full advantage of the opportunity at hand — while providing the exact value your prospective customers are looking for at the present moment.
Typically, upsell offers come in the form of:
•Sale prices on bulk orders
•Customized version or a variation of the initial product or service
•An offer to increase subscription length at a discounted price
•Supplemental products (cross-sells)
If they don’t end up taking the upsell, consider sending them a lower-risk offer that meets them where they are.
Examples of downsells include:
•A payment plan
•An inexpensive version of the upsell offer
•A limited trial period for the upsell offer
You can create upsell and downsell with ease in Clickfunnels using their intuitive software. (Click here to learn more.)
In either case, the idea is to take full advantage of the opportunity at hand — while providing the exact value your prospective customers are looking for at the present moment.
Ultimately, the goal of the middle offer is to provide more value and intensive solution that helps customers solve a more deep-seated problem and better prepares them for your highest-price point product or service.
Back End Offer and Retention
The vast majority of your audience won’t be ready to engage with your highest-value offer until they’ve gotten a taste via your lead magnet and lower-tiered products.
At this point, you could push your most valuable offer to them.
However, there’s no guarantee that your customers will simply move onto the next value level once they’ve experienced all you have to offer at their current stage.
So, instead just keep them engaged with your brand.
Basically, this involves doing whatever you can to continue providing value to them after they’ve purchased a given product or service.
If you can show that you genuinely care about the customer and their bleeding neck pain, even after they’ve purchased something from you, they’ll be much more likely to trust you, and purchase your most costly offering.
You can show your customer you care by:
•Providing personalized content. Create an email drip campaign using Clickfunnels to keep delivering value over and over straight to their inbox.
•Delivering high-quality customer service.
•Providing a Facebook group where they can ask questions.
Ultimately, you need to show customers you care so you can keep them on board with your brand.
Retention
At this point, someone has already purchased your product or service, but retention focuses on keeping customers happy to then make them repeat customers and brand advocates. Your best customers are repeat customers.
To retain customers, they need to stay engaged with your product. You need to help them with all aspects and problems related to what they bought from you.
If you are not selling something repeatable, consider other product funnels you could move prospects into, like a product that continues to compliment what they’ve already purchased.
Sales Funnel Stages Conclusion
Chance are, your prospects will not take action the first time they go through your funnel. If they jump out of your funnel, find another approach to appeal to them. Continue to tempt them with different stories and offers through email automation.You also need to take time to compare and contrast those who took action and those who didn’t.
I think a sales funnel is the best tool you can use to grow your business and improve your marketing efforts. And I think that Clickfunnels is the best software you can use to build your sales funnel. Clickfunnels wants to help entrepreneurs turn their vision into reality. It’s about convenience, efficiency, and ultimately helping you convert your prospects into customers and closing the sale.
After reading this article, your next step is to start your 14 Day Free Trial and join my email list to access your bonuses. I’ll send you all kinds of insights on how to build a sales funnels that can grow your business.
Sales Funnel Stages Bonuses
You can sign up for a 14 day free trial with Clickfunnels today using my affiliate link. And when you do, I offer a ton of bonuses to get you going and point you in the right direction.
If you’re looking to get more predictable closings and change your real estate marketing game with Clickfunnels, I’m defintiely here to help. When you sign up for your 14-day Free Trial with Clickfunnels with me, I provide a ton of bonuses for you teaching you the best practices of Clickfunnels. We all know that you can’t beat FREE…and you can certainly experience free with their 14-Day Trial here. Disclaimer: At no extra charge to you, I get paid a commission when you sign up. As a “Thank You” I provide you with bonuses–LOTS OF THEM!
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