How To Turn Your Blog Into a Sales Funnel

Let's talk about trust.

In your blog sales funnel

(In selling stuff online)…

It’s probably the one thing your blog needs more of, and yet you’re probably doing everything you can to avoid it.

Bet you are. You’re not putting your name on stuff. You’re not putting your face on stuff. You’re not providing real value. Selling shady products. 

How do you build trust in your sales process? 

The line above should give the clue: people trust people who care about them. 

It’s simple stuff really… 

People want to trust you, they want to buy from you, they want to read your stuff, never make the mistake of thinking they’re too dumb to sniff out your nonsense. 

So how can you build more trust in the funnel?

You need to speak directly to people, confront their problems and solve them, show you are one of them, show that you are a real person (not an SEO article spinner bot hailing from the digital vortex of Fiverr), give them your story, build relationships (UGH!)… haha I know! Relationships?! With People?! 

Only put your name on products you trust.

Yes. 

People are followers, they will follow where you lead if you have the charisma and guts to be a leader (and not a scam artist or just a sales(wo)man.)

This brings me to “The Relationship Funnel.”

What is it?

It's the entry funnel for Bastian Ernst's core products at wildaudience.com.

It’s kinda like meeting someone totally new for a coffee date and, as they’re telling you their story, they keep asking you simple little questions, and you keep nodding and saying yes to every little thing, until eventually you feel completely at east with this person because their story seems so much like yours, and before you know it you’re agreeing to another date. 

[Related: 7 Reasons New Bloggers Fail (And How To Avoid The Blogger Graveyard]

You've heard the phrase, "date before marriage" when it comes to sales, right? It means build rapport before going after the sale.

Micro-conversions. And that’s the secret. Every little “yes” pushes you deeper, builds rapport, and eventually you’re hooked.

I don’t know if this is solely the brain child of Bastian Ernst, or if he got it from some where else (it closely mirrors many of the selling processes revealed in Expert Secrets such as the Epiphany Bridge).

This funnel will help you presell every offer you give your audience down the road. 

***Caveat here is this funnel is best for solo-entrepreneurs (bloggers, solo businesses, etc.) at least on the front-end, but literally any company or product can use this in some adapted way to increase buying pressure through the funnel.***

At the core this funnel is designed to get people on your email list and then build trust with them in an automated way BEFORE you start selling ’em everything under the sun, you can then send them to a million and one other funnels, what I’m saying is it’s the ENTRY POINT…

Instead of a pop up saying “Subscribe To My List”, you’re saying “Subscribe To My Transformational Story”… 

Everyone wants to transform themselves, it’s why it works.

[You can go funnel hack this funnel right here at www.wildaudience.com ]

So Let's Break Down The Blog Sales Funnel Step By Step

Who is Bastian Ernst?

I dunno. Dude once was part of startup, then created his own company teaching people the Relationship Funnel. It’s courses and stuff. 

He’s an info marketer. 

Hey! I’m sucked into this because of the funnel, don't judge, I don't know much about the guy or his brand. 

I like ze funnels and I love blog funnels, especially because most people get them wrong. 

Bastian seems cool, though. Check his stuff out. Here’s the main entry point into the funnel, happens to be the home page, too.

Many marketers (myself included) will tell you not to turn a home page into a landing page, well truth is there’s many occasions where this can work great, and many occasions where it will kill sales. 

What’s happening on this page and why is it so powerful?

1. Value proposition clarifies quickly what this dude and his team does (no confusion).
2. Trustworthy images, lots of white space, minimal design all lull you into the funnel and doesn’t put your guard up. It’s so simple that it’s almost deceptive.
3. Opening copy attempts to immediately connect with and qualify potential prospects and customers.
4. Everything leads new visitors into one action: the first micro-conversion, clicking on the “Continue” button. Saying “YES” for the first time. Once you start saying yes, you start to become invested in the process, the next yes becomes much easer. Did you go and click it? 😉

(It’s important to note at this stage that because this is a homepage, it does have multiple actions possible (unlike a typical lander that focuses on one action), obviously many people will come back to this page and may be further along in the funnel, and ready to enter the “Growth Accelerator”, so this page DOES serve multiple audiences.)

So Click The Big Green Button With Me And Let’s Go Deeper Down The Relationship Funnel Rabbit Hole

The next page which is called “Greener” is basically a wall of sales copy and story telling. 

It’s all designed to get you to start empathizing with his story and build curiousity and to essentially get you to qualify yourself by relating to Bastian. 

This leads you to micro-conversion #2 which takes you to this page…

“Change.”

The name of the page belies it’s intent. 

Here’s where Bastian shows you the Transformation. 

And the proof (lots of testimonials and results). 

This is the essential New Way Vs. Old Way offer.

What’s a NWOW? (I just made that up.) 

Think about it like this… 

You’ve been doing things one way forever, and maybe it’s working, but it also is fraught with issues (cost, time, tech, whatever). 

So I come along and say, “no dude, check it, now we’re doing it this way with A.I. and Blockchain, you can save money, get rid of waste in your infrastructure, and basically ditch your old crappy process that you hate, and here’s proof.”

You’re Gonna Take The New Way Vs The Old Way.

If you get people to self reflect on how crappy the old way they’ve done something forever really is, and then you show them the “Reveal” which is new, amazing, and promises to 10X you’re whatever, you’re gonna do that thing.

Let’s move on (I digress). 

Moving through this page takes you to your next micro-conversion, yes another big green button, which then leads you to your first MACRO CONVERSION… 

3 micros have brought you to this point… at this point you’re invested, “OK," you say, "I guess I’ll go through this survey, because damn it I want to see what’s on the other side."

(If you’re wondering what the hell any of this has to do with blog funnels, hold on, I got you, I'm getting to that in a bit.)

At this point maybe you’re wondering about micro-conversions vs. macro-conversions in the funnel and why they're important. 

Every small action leads to big actions, the small actions are the micro-conversions, the big ones are the macros.

Follow on FB (micro).

Click a button leading to sales page (micro).

Read a specific article that leads into the funnel (micro).

Convert into an email lead (macro or micro, depends on you).

Click the buy button, but don’t buy (micro). 

Buy the product (Macro). 

Micro conversions matter because every time someone takes a tiny action that you want them to take (leading into your funnel), they’re becoming more invested in you, your products, your ideas, and going deeper into your sphere of influence.

The Relationship Funnel takes full advantage of this psychology to create willing partners and relationships with leads long before they ever see sales pages. That’s the power. 

Ya better believe completing this quiz leads to a Macro conversion: 

Do You See What’s Going On Here Yet? RF Is A Giant Sales Letter That Stretches Across Multiple Pages And Expertly Weaves In Micro & Macro Conversions To Suck You Deeper In

Once you make it past this stage and hand over your email address the funnel becomes more dynamic, weaving in emails and funnel bots and letting you self select what you want from him. 

It’s a choose your own adventure funnel at this point. 

What you should be taking away from this is the concept of building relationships with your audience using story telling and a well thought out funnel. 

How Does The Relationship Funnel Relate To Blogging Funnels? Finally!

If you think about a blog it’s nothing more than a giant, sprawling, disorganized relationship funnel. 

Articles, social outposts, newsletter sign ups, about pages, resource pages…

All these things are built with the idea of getting people to engage deeper with your brand and content so they’ll eventually… do something. 

Buy coaching, click an affiliate link, whatever. 

By the way, If you're not building an email list and making money from your blog, this should be a priority for you, make it your blogs new years resolution (here's 23 more blogger resolutions for 2019).

Why not organize the top level of your blog and brand to guide people directly through this process from the get-go?

You can then show them all your best content at strategic times in the funnel. 

You’re building trust with them in a strategic way, showing them your products will become much easier. 

By simply setting out with the intention to create strong relationships with your readers and giving them the path to follow, you're going to be miles ahead of the pack... most blogs are just giant ant-hills.

There's so much going on under the surface but you never see it. 

Show them the path in your blog funnel, take their hand, gently direct them towards whatever you want to show them.

Before you ask, yes, I’m building a variation of this funnel into this website.

It's not done yet.

The beauty of this funnel is it’s adaptable for many scenarios…

In fact, this can be much more than a funnel… it can be a strategy for a web presence and brand, and it's absolutely perfect for bloggers.

Why?

It elegantly accomplishes many of the things bloggers are constantly trying to do, does it better, and automates most of it:

Build a list, build trust, force feed the best content to engaged readers, get sales, build relationships, WOW people, get them to believe in you so they keep coming back.

Instead of relying on scattered content everywhere that may or may not reach the right people, you simply walk them hand-in-hand down the path together. 

Enter the dungeon?

Wondering how you can create a Relationship Funnel for your blog EASY? ClickFunnels makes sales funnels super easy, check it here and get a 14 day free trial with my link (plus all these awesome bonuses: