Sales Funnels – The Ultimate Guide (Everything You Need To Know)

A sales funnel is a series of steps that pass prospects through your marketing and sales process until they become customers. 

It starts with acquiring leads, who are then nurtured by the business to make a purchase.

Sales funnels (also known as the sales pipeline or purchasing journey) have been used for decades in traditional brick-and-mortar businesses to increase customer conversions, but they have recently gained popularity as digital marketers use them to track and improve online conversions.

With a sales funnel you can:

Why Is The Sales Funnel So Important For Your Sales Process?

The sales funnel is one of the most important tools in a business owner's arsenal to improve sales efforts.

A well-designed sales funnel, when properly executed, can help you identify what you need to do to increase profitability and provide more clarity on how best to allocate resources.

It helps reduce both churn rates and acquisition costs (new customer acquisition can be 5x more expensive then keeping existing customers) one by creating an easy path from signup to purchase; this allows businesses to focus on driving more profitable conversions rather than spending too much effort on prospects who would never turn into paying customers.

It can also help you identify which marketing channels are generating leads and helping to generate interest in your business, and which ones aren't.

Sales Funnel Examples

Sales funnels can take many different forms.

They can be campaign specific for an offer or promotion, pre-designed with specific pages and sales flow, or even used metaphorically to describe the general sales process a typical customer takes with your brand before transacting.

They can be as simple as a two-step process of first building an email list and then offering to sell the subscriber something in exchange for their contact information or something complicated like a six-step sales funnel process that starts by offering the viewer a free trial and ends with an upsell to turn it into a paid subscription.

Here are a few common sales funnel example for your reference:

How To Create A Effective Sales Funnel For Your Business

You're ready to get started now, right?

You want to create a sales funnel for your business, but where do you even start?

Start with these three steps:

Step 1: Research

The first step is to research your target audience and buyer personas. Who are they? What do they like and dislike? How old are they? Where do you find them online (forums?) These questions will help you figure out who your customers are, which in turn will shape how you sell to them.

The more time spent here researching and learning about these people the better chance of making a sale!

Next up is knowing your competition.

Keep tabs on their offers so that when someone goes looking for something similar it's easy for them to find YOU instead! This can also give you a better idea of what prices or offers to offer.

Lastly, have an understanding of where your target audience is going for information on the topic that you're offering (this could be other blogs, YouTube channels, their favorite influencer's Instagram account).

This will give you insight into how you can get in front of them and start building your marketing strategy.

Step 2: Your Offer

The first step in creating an offer is to figure out the value of what you’re offering.

You should be able to answer this question by explaining what your product or service does and why it's valuable for people to buy from you. It should be clear and easy for your sales team and sales rep's to communicate.

It’s also important to know the value of what you offer in comparison with your competitors.

This will help give you a better idea of how much to charge for your product or service and where to promote them - if they're priced too low, people might be less likely to buy from you because there's no perceived benefit in paying more.

And on the other hand, if the price is higher than what customers are willing to pay for and compare with their current alternatives, then they'll just go elsewhere and find something else that costs less.

Structure your best offer in a way that speaks to the customer’s desires and needs, in order to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Step 3: Build Your Funnel

Next, it's time to build your funnel.

Here are some important tools and tactics you can use when building an effective sales funnel for your business:

Landing Pages

Landing pages are the first thing people see when they visit your website.

They’re also the most important part of your marketing strategy, so why not make them as easy and effective as possible?

That’s where tools like ClickFunnels, Kartra, and HighLevel comes in.

With ClickFunnels, for example, you can build high-converting marketing pages without any technical knowledge or skills.

With ClickFunnels, building a landing page and capturing leads is super easy. You can easily drag and drop elements from their library onto your canvas to create beautiful designs for your website visitors in minutes.

And if you want to get really creative, there are tons of templates available for purchase on their marketplace that will help you stand out from everyone else online. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with MailChimp and other email providers so you can automatically send new subscribers directly into one of your pre-built campaigns.

All this means less time designing and more time growing your business!

Lead Nurturing With Email + SMS and CRM

Lead nurturing is a powerful way to increase sales in your funnel.

With email marketing and SMS, it's easy to stay top-of-mind with your prospects and help guide them through your funnel.

"Nurturing" is a sales term that means to help guide and inform your prospects using content, social proof, and sales tactics.

With tools like GoHighLevel and ActiveCampaign, you can create personalized emails and send them out at scale, or use SMS messages to reach prospects on their mobile devices.

You can also set up automated campaigns with their easy-to-use interface so you never have to worry about forgetting a customer again.

Don’t spend time manually sending out emails or texts when it takes just seconds with marketing automation tools.