How To Increase Digital Products Sales Using Sales Funnels

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is a sales funnel and why do you need it

What Constitutes a Sales Funnel?

 Advanced Techniques – Live Video Streaming

 Persuasive Writing and How to Use AIDA in Your Marketing.

 Adding Polish and Mixing it Up – The Bit Everyone Forgets

Introduction

No matter what it is you’re trying to sell on the web, a sales funnel is the number one way to do it. This is the most systematic way to build trust, to build a relationship and to encourage people to want your brand before making a sale – and it is incredibly powerful when done well.

Look around the web and chances are that you’ll have come across many sales funnels without even realizing it. So, what exactly is a sales funnel? How does it work? And how can you tap into its power for yourself?

Those are the questions we’re going to be asking and answering in this post. By the end, you’ll know exactly what a sales funnel is and why it’s so important. Moreover, you’ll be able to build your own sales funnel from scratch and use it to capture leads and convert them into paying customers.

Once you understand the science behind this, you’ll see why it’s the most

effective way to build profits and you’ll be able to turn any product or

service into a massive success

Before we go any further, it would perhaps be useful to explain exactly what a sales funnel is and what you’ll be using it for.

In essence, a sales funnel can be imagined like a funnel for customers.

You start out with a broad opening to capture as many leads as possible and then you gradually narrow those leads down to only the

most engaged and interested customers so that you can sell to them.

All the while, you’ll be building trust, building engagement, and priming them ready to make a sale.

What is a Sales Funnel?

You can also think about this as a ladder, which each rung taking your customers closer to the top where you’ll eventually try to sell to them. In practice, what this means is a series of different marketing strategies, each arranged in such a way as to build more and more targeted leads for your business.

So, you might start with a simple advert, or a blog post and then move on to an email list, then a ‘free report’, then a seminar, then a small product sale, and then a big sale. Each of these marketing stages is a rung on a ladder, it’s a little further down the funnel.

Here is how I became a six figure earner by following this simple method, Selling affiliate done for you products at 85% Commision! Please click here

And each time a customer clicks on the next link or follows you to the next step, they are becoming more and more likely to buy from you. As mentioned, there’s a good chance you’ll have encountered different sales funnels in your travel around the web: and you may even have bought products from others through this method.

You might have come across a blog and signed up to the mailing list for instance and then been told to click on the link therein to see a free seminar. And then maybe the free seminar asked you to sign up for the next seminar which would cost a little money.

And because it’s free, why wouldn’t you click it? Only at this point, you’re becoming more and more involved with his brand and more and more likely to become a paying customer.

When you watch this ‘free’ video, which is on his site or channel, you’ll then be told you can get even more information by signing up for a free report. In fact, this report is key to understanding the video.

And you may have come across it on YouTube too. For example, Tai Lopez is something of an inscrutable business man who is willing to use everything at his disposal to capture new leads and sales – even when that involves a bit of bare-face lying (that’s not his car and not his garage!).

But he still employs a sales funnel very well. If you go on YouTube to watch a video, his ad will very often show up. The guy then goes on to talk about his cars or his massive house and this makes you want to watch – even if only because it annoys you. At the end of the video, he offers to show you how to get his three most important tips for making money.

If you do this, then Tai now has your details and the confirmation that you’re interested in what he has to sell! You’ve gone from a ‘cold lead’ (someone on YouTube, targeted based on your video watching choices), to a ‘warm lead’ (someone who has demonstrated an interest) to eventually a ‘qualified lead’.

Why Sales Funnels? Understanding the 5 Touches

Imagine if someone came up to you in the street and asked you if you’d like to buy a $5,000 watch.

99.9999% of the time, you would say no to that offer.

Why? Well, apart from the fact that you might not want a watch (you are a ‘cold lead’ in that respect), there’s also the small issue of trust, recognition, and authority.

You don’t know who this person is, you’ve been given no reason to trust them and you’re probably not going to want to hand over any cash.

That’s why companies don’t do this. Instead, they give you fliers. Fliers are things you can choose to accept or throw away – but either way, they don’t cost you anything and you won’t feel that you’re being pressured into anything.

Other stores do something different: they give away freebies. Walk past Starbucks and you’ll often find them giving away free samples of their new drinks and cakes for you to try.

Again, you can easily walk away if you’re not interested, and you won’t feel you’re being strong-armed. If you like the free sample though, then you can come in and try whatever else they’re offering.

If you try and sell to people right away on your website though, then you’re the equivalent of someone trying to sell thousand-dollar watches in the street.

And if that’s the only thing you’re offering and the only way that your visitors can engage with you, then they’re just going to say ‘no thanks’ and leave, giving you no way to contact them again and no way to get them back. As you might have guessed, this is a poor strategy!

Try to imagine it from their perspective: they have typed ‘fitness tips’ into Google, found your page essentially by accident and now you’re trying to sell them your training program for $500. People do not make decisions on that basis unless they’re loaded with cash. They’ll see you’re trying to sell them, write you off as spam and then leave.

The Alternative

Now imagine the alternative: the sales funnel technique.

They do the same thing: they type in ‘fitness tips’ and they land on your site where they get some great information right away.

That information is unique, interesting and useful but at the bottom, it tells the audience that if they want more great tips – your ‘5 Most Powerful Tips’ – then all they must do is to enter their details to receive your free report.

There’s very little reason for them not to do this: you have demonstrated that you’re able to provide value and you’re offering something for free.

The only price they pay is to allow you to contact them in the future – but as you will point out, they can always just unsubscribe if they don’t want to hear anything more from you.

They get their free report and once again, they find it is good. At the same time though, they’re now getting emails from you – emails with highly engaging and interesting subject lines.

The people who click those emails are now showing very good engagement and you can see that they’re the kinds of people that might be willing to buy from you.

Those people will receive an email on an automated basis that invites them to an exciting free conference where they can here you talk online about fitness. This is a great, rare opportunity and if they like what you’ve done so far, they should definitely get involved.

They do that and because they’ve gone so far out of their way to hear you and they’ve listened to the whole thing, they’ve now made the full transition to fan. They are now engaging with you in a big way and going out of their way to hear more from you. This makes a massive difference because in their own mind it will inform them that you are someone, they’re interested in hearing more from.

This relates to an interesting aspect of psychology called ‘cognitive dissonance.

The brain-like congruence – it likes to see that your actions are consistent with your beliefs.

If you do something for someone that takes a lot of effort then, the brain assumes that you must really like them to have been willing to go to such lengths.

The same thing works here. If someone engages with your brand – if they rush to your seminar and wait for you to come online – they tell themselves that they must be big fans of your work!

At the same time, when someone has put a lot of effort into something, that then creates a strong motivation to ‘get something from it’.

Your audience will want closure and the best way to do that is by buying from you!

After your free seminar, the next stage is to sell to them. This is them taking the next step and transitioning from a visitor or a fan into a paying customer. This is the point where they become willing to buy from you and where you can start making money.

BUT it’s not going to be the ‘big ticket’ item yet. Instead, you’re just going to sell them something very small. This very small thing is going to be something along the lines of an eBook, or a short course. It should cost anywhere from $5 to $50 but what it’s doing is demonstrating that they can buy from you and trust you.

Why Your Small Sale is So Important

This ‘small sale’ is a super important point to include in a sales funnel (and one that not everyone will know to include). The basic idea behind this, is that you’re giving your audience the chance to buy from you without too much risk.

Because, as we saw with our watch salesman, one of the biggest ‘barriers to sale’ is risk. People are naturally risk averse and they hate the idea that they might hand over their cash, only for you to go running off into the sunset laughing at their stupidity. They need to see that they can buy from you and trust you.

And if they don’t know that, then getting them to spend $5,000 is going to be very hard. But now sell them something for $5 and you can get them to say ‘why not’? They’ve seen you can offer value from the other steps in your sales funnel and the risk of losing $5 is not too serious.

So, they take their chance. Only now, they know they can trust you, they know that you’re able to deliver value and their details will already be saved in your payment system.

That means that to make the big purchase, you only must persuade them that your product is worth it and get them to take the plunge with one click. This is MUCH easier than trying to get them to take the plunge when they’ve never dealt with you before.

And finally, it’s off the back of that sale that you’re going to then sell your big-ticket item. They’ve heard all your free content, they’ve read your blog… but if they want to get the very most from you and if they want to see the very best, most powerful tips for their training, then they need to upgrade to your most expensive offer.

Alternatively, you might make multiple sales of products that increase in value gradually over time and that way each increase in cost will seem very small.

This way, you are making ‘incremental’ increases in price and thus people will gradually increase the value that they’re spending with you and become increasingly likely to make the transition to the truly ‘big ticket’ items. See the chapter on pricing and ‘moving the free line’ for more on this.

But in short, that is how you sell a $5,000 product. One more important point is to understand and utilize the power of social influence and membership. This is one more tool you’re going to use to get people to really want to take the next step down your sales funnel – the idea of belonging to something and being a part of something and the idea of being ‘left out’ unless they take that step.

The Alternative

One more important point is to understand and utilize the power of social influence and membership. This is one more tool you’re going to use to get people to really want to take the next step down your sales funnel – the idea of belonging to something and being a part of something and the idea of being ‘left out’ unless they take that step.

So you’re going to point out to your audience that buying your big

ticket item means being a part of your movement, means getting the

full experience and means seeing the VIP content that your ‘regular’

customers don’t get to see. They’ll be part of an elite community and

they’ll get access to top secret information!

Hopefully you now understand how a sales funnel works and why it’s such an important tool for maximizing your sales. At the same time though, it’s worth noting that the steps themselves don’t need to look like this. You might not have a mailing list, you might not have a seminar – but you can still create a funnel.

What’s important, is simply that you have a series of escalating ‘steps’, with

each one increasing engagement and building your fan base further.

So the question now becomes: how many steps constitute a ‘funnel’?

While this varies from case to case, the best answer is five.

That’s because research tells us that it takes five touches to sell to someone. This means they should interact with your business at least five times before you try and shift your big-ticket item.

This is enough to take someone from

being completely unaware of your brand, to being familiar enough with you that they are willing to put their money and their trust in your products.