What you are about to learn is going to make business fun and easy. That’s what happened when I started implementing a sales funnel in my business. Before I had a sales funnel, I was constantly working on my marketing. I would go to networking events and speaking events each week. I was constantly emailing people, messaging people on LinkedIn, calling people and trying to get people to sign up to talk to me to learn about my coaching programs.
It was very time consuming! But, when I learned that I was going to be a mom and a business owner, I knew I needed to start setting up some automatic systems so that potential clients could come to me.
Let’s start with an example. Tweak my model and make it work for you!
How to Create Your First Sales Funnel
1. Attract Fans to Your Business Facebook Page
No, not your personal page. It’s important that you start treating your dream like a real business! Set up a Facebook page so that you can do step 2 and advertise too. You can’t do that with your personal profile. Your options are limited. Then start inviting friends and people you know who would like the content of your page. A couple of things that will help are an engaging profile and cover photo and a great about section. Also, make sure you also have some photos and engaging articles so they see that you are actively maintaining your page and they know what to expect.
2. Offer Your Free Lead Magnet in a Facebook Ad
A lead magnet is something free that you give away in your sales funnel. It’s your best stuff! It could be an ebook, cheat sheet, video, PDF, webinar, toolkit, etc. My suggestion is to just find something you already have if you have been blogging for awhile. You can also turn a blog post into a simple PDF or create a resource guide of the tools you use in your business. What is your market asking you for repeatedly? What are the needs of your market and how can you answer them?
Then, post it on Facebook and see what gets the most engagement. Then, take that post and turn it into a Facebook ad. All you need is $5 per day to get started with Facebook ads and it gives you SO MUCH information about what works and what doesn’t and where your market is hiding out. Using Facebook ads is like a little mini-MBA because you’ll quickly figure out the images and copy that makes your market take action and that is GOLD.
The reason I love Facebook marketing ads (and Instagram ads) is that once we find an ad that works, we can scale it and put more money in without me actually having to put in more hours of work. Win, win!
[RELATED: Facebook Ads Strategies to Attract More Clients]
3. Send People To Your Optin Page
An optin page is a simple page that provides more information about what they would be getting if they put in their email and name. There’s a lot of testing that goes into this page but this page shouldn’t be your homepage with a million things for them to click on it. This should be a page dedicated to only your optin and include only an option to sign-up for your list. My recommendation for setting up your optin page is Leadpages. This is my affiliate link, but I only recommend products and services that I use myself and I have used Leadpages for over 2 years now and will continue!
(Note: I also have my menu bar available for people to check our site out in case they aren’t ready to sign-up. It’s not recommended but sometimes I don’t even follow my own advice. Takeaway: Do you own thing! Don’t follow any mentor or coach exactly!)
4. Get Their Email Address
Now, you’ll need to get your email list system set up so that you can start capturing emails from people who want to know more about what you offer and how you can help them. If you take one thing away from this article it is START YOUR EMAIL LIST TODAY!! This is one of the best things my mentor told me after a year of blogging. I wish I would have started it one year earlier but the important thing is that I started it and I still have people on my email list from 5 years ago!
5. Follow-up Autoresponder Series
Email is still the most powerful way to communicate online especially inside of your sales funnel. Every day, people check their inboxes multiple times per day. Don’t you? People sit in front of a screen refreshing until they get that gratification of knowing someone else in the world cares about them.
You’ll want to implement an autoresponder next in your email system. (If you need help figuring out what email system to start with, read this article). This is a sequence of email marketing messages that gets sent to subscribers in the order and frequency that you decide.
In my Corporate Rescue Plan course, I share “Anna’s Awesome Autoresponders”! Anna’s Awesome Autoresponder Series is a simple nurture and follow-up sequence, which includes 5-7 emails spread out through 2-3 weeks. At the end you are going to ask your prospect to open their wallet.
Before your start drafting your autoresponder series, think about what you want them to do at the end of the nurture sequence. You want to be sure you are leading them down the path into the action you want them to make.
When people are just 1-2 weeks new to your list, they are most engaged and most interested in what you have to offer. On average it takes seven interactions for someone to fully buy into you and your brand. So tell your story over the course of this nurture sequence leading them to your action.
6. Offer Your Product, Program or Service
Why do you need a signature program or product? It allows you to leverage your time and impact WAY more people than you ever could do individually. You’ll also have a lower priced offer that people can get comfortable with you with and it’s repeatable. You do the hard work up front!
The big thing here is that did you notice we didn’t just offer our product on step 1? We went through a very simple formula to help your future clients get to know you better. It’s so important that they know, like and trust you and it just feels better as a business owner when you don’t have to be salesy.
Good luck building your sales funnel!
Questions? Leave them in the comments below!
