Sales Funnel Basics: Lesson 5

We have come to the final lesson in the Sales Funnel Basics Crash Course. I sure hope you have enjoyed your lessons and learned a lot about setting up your own profitable cash funnels. In this last lesson we are going to talk about one of the most important parts of a good funnel system and that is getting traffic.

It’s important to realize that there is no free traffic. You’re either paying for traffic with your time or with your money. And the sooner you can pay for it with your money, the better, because then you can begin growing your business at a much faster pace.

Regardless of whether you’re paying by time or by money, there are smart ways and not so smart ways of getting traffic. Initially, it can be very frustrating to try to create traffic streams yourself. For example, starting a blog and trying to get people to the blog so you can get them to your squeeze page is hard work and takes time. It’s worth the investment, but realize it probably won’t pay off for six months or more.

That’s why when you’re first starting out, you want to find traffic streams that are already in place and tap into those.

If you’re buying traffic, spend the money it takes to get good traffic. Cheap traffic is no bargain when it doesn’t convert. Typically, the less you pay for traffic, the lower the quality, but there can be exceptions. Facebook, for example, can be a source of very reasonably priced traffic that converts really well.

For free traffic, Social Media is your #1 venue. Post often and everywhere. Post great content and be helpful. Find fan pages and become a member, then send that traffic to your opt-in page.

If you can, partner up with other people who have lists and work out deals. Offer to pay them to put a banner on their site or to recommend you to their readers. Guest blog, and at the end of your posts offer readers you free gift.

Do ad swaps with other list owners and website owners. Offer to pay a flat rate to large list owners if they’ll offer your free gift to their subscribers. This works especially well in any niche other than the IM niche, since large list owners in other niches aren’t approached with these kinds of offers all that often.

The scope of traffic possibilities is much larger than we have room to cover here, so do some research and find the 2-4 methods that resonate with you and your offer.

And keep in mind, once you have your funnel set up, you can devote nearly all of your time to getting traffic because everything else runs on automatic. This means once you can afford to BUY your traffic, this will become practically a hands off business, and you can invest your time setting up a second and a third funnel, and so forth.

– Emailing Your List

You will of course be programming all of your emails into an autoresponder so that the entire process is totally hands off for you. Once a person joins your list, they begin receiving the emails in your autoresponder at the intervals you’ve set up.

In your first email be sure to include the free gift. You might also write a short note thanking them for subscribing. Don’t make it too formal – let some of your personality start to shine through right from the beginning.

Ask questions – “What do you need help with?” “What’s your view on ___” Write emails like you’re writing to a friend; short, sweet, personable, to the point, etc.

When you send a promotional email, send a second email the next day asking if they got the email. This is an effective way to double the response on your initial email without promoting twice.

When you promote a product, promote it multiple days because this shows that you really believe in the product and aren’t just trying to make a fast cash. Plus, promoting the same product multiple days wears down the sales resistance of your subscribers. Those who are sitting on the fence are much more likely to jump off the fence when they’re reminded multiple times to do so. And if you’re offering a special, limited time discount, it’s even more effective.

Send strictly content emails before a promotion. For example, if you know you’re going to sell a program in 3 days that solves a specific problem, talk about the problem beforehand. This gets them thinking they want a solution. Then in the next day or two when you offer it to them they will all warmed up and ready to buy.

Do your best not barrage your list with constant offers. Give them good content, too. Sometimes providing good content is as easy as recommending a video that fits right in with your topic. It’s not hard. The secret is to find out what works, put that in your autoresponder and let the system do the work for you.

As we close this final lesson I would like to thank you again for joining me for this short course. I sincerely hope that you have learned a lot about how to set up your own profitable cash funnels and even though your lessons have come to an end you can still

feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I’ll be glad to help!

Sales Funnel Basics: Lesson 4

We’re winding down to the end of this short course. But we still need to go over a few things so today we are going to jump right in and talk about your enticing offer and tweaking your funnel for better results.

This has to provide real value to the subscriber. It might relieve a pain, solve a problem, satisfy a burning curiosity, help them to accomplish a goal, etc., but whatever it is, it’s got to be something people WANT. If it’s so good people would PAY for it then you’ve likely got a winner.

Don’t confuse your prospect at this point. If your free gift has 100 different benefits for the subscriber, your offer will be diluted. Instead, focus on the ONE BIG benefit this free gift is going to give them.

– Thank you page

This is where you make a special offer that they will see only once. It’s a super limited time, one time only, get it now or lose it forever kind of deal. The value should be through the roof and it’s got to be worth far, far more than the asking price. As an example, this is a great place to offer a bestselling $97 product for $9.99.

An alternative is to offer a $1 trial into a hot membership. If you can also offer a lower monthly rate on a high priced membership, or if the membership is in the $7-$20 a month category, you should do great.

Remember, you want to promote something on the Thank You Page because this is where you want to break even. That is, if you’re buying advertising, you want the profits from your Thank You Page to PAY for your advertising, so everything else you make in your funnels is pure profit.

– Split testing

Split test your Squeeze Page and your Thank You Page. Split test the offers, the headlines, the text, etc. Test everything and don’t just test small – test big, too. Try an entirely different headline, and entirely different offer, etc. Test small as well. Test different colors, different calls to actions and so forth.

The more people you have opting in and the more people you have buying from your Thank You Page, the more money you will make and the more money you can invest in advertising.

– Products to Promote

Obviously you only want to promote high quality, evergreen products that will help your customers. Choose products that solve problems or give how-to instruction. And if possible, promote products with recurring payments because these will pay you month after month.

Your funnel is no place to promote flash-in-the-pan products because you want products that are available for months and even years to come. This way you don’t have to continually update your autoresponder copy to replace products that are no longer valid.

– Creating and sourcing content

Make sure that all of your content is directly related to the reason why they signed up in the first place. Share tips that will help them solve their problem or help them move their passion forward. The more helpful you are with your information, the longer they’ll read your emails and buy your products.

Sourcing content is simply finding content online that’s terrific and sharing it with your readers. Remember to give credit for the content. And write your own thoughts and intro for the content.

Of course you don’t only want to use sourced content, you also want to create your own. You can do this by writing it yourself, by hiring someone to write it or by purchasing the rights to content.

Just make sure that everything you share with your readers provides immense value and helps them to reach their goals, and they will stay subscribed.

I hope today’s lesson was helpful to you. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for my next email. There will be some great stuff in the last lesson.

Sales Funnel Basics: Lesson 3

It’s the third lesson in the Sales Funnel Basics Crash Course. In today’s lesson we are going to talk about choosing the right market to target and setting up your lead generation page.

There are 3 types of markets you can target: Passion, Pain or a Combination of the two.

A passion market is something that people passionately pursue and spend money on, like hobbies. The more expensive the passion, the better. A pain market is one that solves a problem, like weight loss. And a combination market is a mix of the two. For example, it could be the dating niche where people are desperate to meet someone, but once they do, they have a passion to make the relationship work.

When dealing with a pain market, the bigger the pain the greater the urgency to solve the pain, and the easier it will be to convert. People who want to solve a problem right now are ready to buy right now. But when it comes to passion markets, it’s best to create a greater sense of urgency by having sales that expire.

Pick a market that is big enough that you don’t run out of prospects or advertising options, and small enough that you can solve specific problems for them. Also, choose something evergreen. Obviously gardening or Christmas décor is very seasonal, while Internet marketing changes so fast your funnel will be outdated in six months. Instead, pick something that people need year around that doesn’t change greatly from one year to the next, such as dating, weight loss, parenting and so forth.

– Creating your lead generation page

As you know, the purpose of your lead generation page (squeeze page) is to sell people on giving you their email address in exchange for your free gift. But a good squeeze page does more than this, it also prequalifies the prospect, ensuring that you are only attracting the specific group of people who will be interested in your particular niche and the products you promote.

So if your target market is guys who recently ended a long term relationship and are looking to get back into dating, your squeeze page is going to speak directly to them, not to guys who have been single and playing the field for years or to guys in a relationship. And if your target market is people who take luxury vacations, your page will speak directly to that market and completely exclude vacationers on a budget.

And because your entire list is being built from one squeeze page, it’s very easy to tweak and test that page to maximize your conversions.

As you know, your headline is the most important thing on the page. It’s got to be so compelling, they would stay to read the rest of the copy and fill out the form even if they were late to receive their lottery check or if their dinner was on fire.

The sub-headline clarifies the headline and tells the person what to do next. It also adds urgency. If this sounds like a lot, it is. Getting the copy just right on your squeeze page makes the difference between 20% conversions and 50% conversions, so invest time getting this right.

The sole purpose of the button copy is to get the click. That’s it. Here’s button copy you should test against whatever else you want to try, “Click Here to Download.” It’s been proven to work really well and beat most controls, so give it a try. Also, make your button stand out from everything else on the page, so the viewer cannot possibly miss it.

That’s it for today’s lesson. In your next lesson we will be talking about your enticing offer and tweaking your funnel for better results.

Sales Funnel Basics: Lesson 2

It’s time for your second lesson in the Sales Funnel Basics Crash Course. In this lesson we will be talking about setting up and tracking your sales funnel system.

We’ll start with a quick example of how a good funnel system works:

You’ll use various methods to send visitors to your lead capture page, website or blog. These methods might include paid advertising, social media marketing, media buys, link swaps and so on.

When they get there you entice them with a free offer of some kind in exchange for them giving you their email address.

That new subscriber automatically receives the free offer, and this part is important: They are redirected to a special offer. This offer is usually something that is steeply discounted and extremely limited time-wise.

If the new subscriber purchases, they’re placed on the customer list. Otherwise they stay on the lead list. Either way, they continue to receive content and promotions from you every day or two, automatically via the autoresponder.

– Tracking

This could be one of the biggest reasons new marketers don’t create affiliate funnels – they don’t know how to fine tune those funnels to make the most money. But the money is in the tracking, because by tracking you know what’s working, what’s not and what needs improving.

You can track everything in your business, and by tracking, you turn your funnel from guesswork into a scientific process that tells you exactly what to do to maximize your profits.

Imagine you’ve got two different versions of your offer and you test both. Version A is making half the sales of version B, so what do you do? You eliminate Version A, send all your traffic to Version B and begin testing to improve Version B even further. Using this method your business is guaranteed to improve over time – It’s that simple.

If you don’t track and test, then every sale you get will be from sheer luck. In addition, you will be leaving more money on the table than you can even guess. Not only do you lose all the profit you would have made from the increased conversions, but you also lose all the profit you could have made by reinvesting the extra profit into more traffic.

That’s it for today’s lesson. In your next lesson we will be talking about choosing the right market to target and setting up your lead generation page.

Sales Funnel Basics: Lesson 1

Welcome to the first lesson in the Sales Funnel Basics Crash Course. Over the next few posts, you will learn several lessons that will help teach you the ins and outs of setting up simple sales funnels that will help you pull in more profits for your business.

The lessons in this short course are going to show you how to set up a simple system that collects email addresses of interested consumers and then markets to them automatically for a consistent flow of cash.

Once you learn how to set up your sales funnel you will be able to control the flow of income your business receives just like turning on your kitchen faucet.

A good funnel can be set up in as little as a few hours, in almost any niche, so stop wondering if it will work for your business and start focusing on how you can set one up. I guarantee it doesn’t take any special skills, you don’t need your own products, you don’t even have to use your own content. That’s the beauty of it!

You just need to set up the funnel and put it to work. Sounds simple enough right? Yet many business owners/marketers don’t do it. Why? Maybe because they think it isn’t necessary, not important, it’s too confusing or simply because they don’t know how.

Whatever the reason you haven’t set you your first funnel yet, this course will show you how and you’ll quickly discover that you have everything you need to get started right away. So let’s get busy!

It’s important to understand that a good funnel system will build solid relationships with your subscribers so that they will actually open and read your emails. And best of all, it will allow you to make money on demand, simply by sending out an email.

There are two types of funnel systems you can build; lead driven and sales driven.

A lead driven system adds consumers into your funnel and starts them on the road to making a purchase. This happens when they enter their email address to subscribe to your newsletter, receive information or collect a free offer from you.

A sales driven system is made up of buyers. These are people who have actually bought something from you, and you then collected their email addresses so you could follow up with them after the sale.

For this course we’re going to concentrate mostly on the lead driven system, because you don’t need to have your own products. You can promote affiliate products and let someone else do the hard work like setting up sales pages, delivering products and customer service.

Eventually you might want to add your own line of products, but for immediate results it’s much faster and easier to let other people handle the product creation while you focus your efforts on getting leads into your funnel.

Now you may be wondering, why not just send traffic straight to the affiliate offer? Why do I need a funnel system? The answer is that with your own sales system, you get to keep the leads and follow up with them with other products and offers.

If you’re simply sending traffic through an affiliate link using free or paid advertising, sure you may make some quick commissions, but you’re losing the opportunity to follow up with your visitors which means they’re pretty much lost to you forever.

We have a lot to go over in the next few days if you want to learn how to set up simple funnels that pull in profits, so make sure you look for your next lesson soon. We will be talking about setting up and tracking your first funnel system