How To Build A Sales Funnel That Converts Prospects Into Customers

Creating a sales funnel is an essential part of an online business if you want to experience a high conversion of your website visitors into paying customers.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you’re happily having your website nicely created, filling it with super awesome products and expecting it would generate a big and fat paycheck for you…

But when you review back on the sales made and the profits generated from your website for the month, you think “WTF?! Why is it not generating any sales“.

And so you get a little upset, a little nervous and the angry typing ensues.

Have you been there?

Let’s be honest.

Admit it.

I’ve been in that unpleasant situation before as well.

It’s a nerve-racking experience.

I mean, we spent so much time and effort creating the website…

But things weren’t working as what we’ve expected and the hope seems to be far away.

Why It’s Hard To Generate Sales From Website Alone

Here’s the reality.

There are more than 1.5 billion websites available across the world as of today.

For you to convert your web visitors into paying customers on their first glance at your website is super slim chance.

The competition is so “fierce” nowadays. Everyone is trying to grab the web visitors’ attention.

Unlike in the past when the internet was still new and there were very little websites available.

People were super excited when seeing website (even a lousy one) and was way much easier to convert them into paying customers straightaway back then.

However, the good old days have long gone.

Having website alone is quite “dead” nowadays, in the sense that people are already “immune” to it.

For you to see skyrocket conversion rate for turning prospects into your customers, you’ll need to do a much better job, by having a sales funnel on top of your website.

With a proper funnel in place, you’re able to reach back those visitors who left after visited your website without making purchase, increase customer average order value (AOV) and also increase customer lifetime value (LTV).

What Is A Sales Funnel

For simple understanding, it is a journey your website visitors’ are going through before they finally say in their heart “Yes, I’ll buy this” from your product/service.

There is no one one size fits all for sales funnel. It can be different depending on the buying behaviors, niche and the types of products or services you’re offering.

It depends how you want to design the journey path for your visitors to go through.

However, the most common sales funnel that has high converting power are consisting of these 5 stages: Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action and Re-purchase).

Your goal is create a marketing plan to move your visitors from top to bottom of the funnel where the money is in the lowest part.

You’ll notice the top part has the widest area while the lowest part has the narrowest area.

This is simply because those people you’ve reached through awareness are not all going to stay in your funnel.

Some would leak away along the way.

You have to accept this is a real world situation.

You’re dealing with real human, who are emotion-driven, they can choose either to respond or neglect your offer in each of the stage.

Therefore, you should capture a lot of attention at the awareness phase and retain the visitors as much as possible through the funnel.

Ready to learn in depth about each stage of the sales funnel?

Awesome. Let’s jump in…

How To Build Sales Funnel

1) Awareness

At this stage, this is probably the first time your visitors or potential customers become aware of you.

How visitors landed on your website could be from different sources such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), your post on the social media, paid ads or other types of traffic.

Regardless of what is the source, the more important part is going to be what come next.

You must leave a good impression by offering something really attractive to them so that they would enter your sales funnel.

It must be something of value that would solve your visitors’ problem or an irresistible “FREE” offer.

If you’re having digital products business which are informational based (such as training, membership or courses), giving a “FREE” ebook, blueprint or training courses that provides a solution to the problem faced by your visitors would be a good option.

For visitors to get their “welcome gift”, they first need to subscribe to your email mailing list and it will then be sent to their mailbox.

This means they would now be in your sales funnel…

…And you’re able to reach them back in the future through email marketing.

You could use the email marketing software such as Getresponse, Sendlane or Aweber to create email subscription form and send future marketing messages. (all-in-one automated email solution).

If you’re running E-Commerce business, you can offer low-cost physical product to your visitors with “Free + Shipping” model.

It means visitors can get the product for free but just need to pay a small shipping fees for the item to get delivered to them (to help you cover your cost).

This allows them to be in your sales funnel.

Your main goal at this stage should not focus on making profits but to build initial bonding with your visitors.

2) Interest

Now you’re having your visitors as your email subscribers, you should start sending out email sequences that contains more values in addition to the “Welcome Gift” they received from you during awareness stage.

At this stage, you would want to warm up your subscribers to fuel their interest towards you and your brand.

Giving out valuable contents in your email that further educate your prospects on how they can solve their problems or achieve their goals is the best way for them to stay engage with you.

You could send them checklist, report, case studies, additional short video trainings which are relevant for them to utilize.

Another better option is for you to send them over to your blog post you’ve written (if you have one).

This is great to position yourself as someone expert or knowledgeable in the topic your audiences are interested in.

Another good reason is for you to train your subscribers to click on the link in your email…

…Because you want them to get familiar with the process, so that in the future when you send them over to product page through link, they have less resistant to click on it.

3) Decision

Now somewhat you’ve build a certain credibility in your email subscribers’ mind.

At this stage, they’ll decide whether to take advantage of the solution or products you’re offering.

Your goal now is not only want to educate them, but you also want to build up their desire in order for them to take action that would bring in sales for you.

You should recommend good product in your email that would benefits your subscribers and provides link that they can click to make the purchase.

Stating the product features alone is not convincing enough for most potential buyers.

It is paramount for you to include “The Benefits” your subscriber would experience for getting the product.

They are interested to know “What Is It For Them” before they make the commitment to buy.

4) Action

At this stage, your email subscribers who take the action to make purchase would generate sales for you.

Not all your subscribers would turned into paying customers on your first product recommendation.

It could be the product not relevant to them or they may not ready to make purchase yet.

But here’s the good thing.

As long as they remain in as your subscribers, this means they are still in your sales funnel.

This means when you recommend new products in the future, there is still a chance they would end up as your customers.

Want to learn secret hacks to find new similar people who are quality buyers?

Good, then we proceed on.

For your existing paying customers, you can extract their email address into an excel sheet…

…Then upload it to Facebook as custom audience (First need to have Facebook Ads Account) and create lookalike audience.

Facebook would then search for people within its database that matches the interest and behaviour of your existing customers.

You can proceed to run Facebook ads to reach these lookalike audience…

…by directing them to your sales funnel page which I’ve walked you through during the “Awareness” stage previously.

This would lower down your ads cost to find new potential customers and they more likely to convert into sales in the funnel.

5) Re-purchase

This is the last stage of the sales funnel.

You should continue to send valuable contents mixed with good product recommendation to your existing customers through email.

Rinse and repeat the process.

People who has bought something from you before are more likely to buy new products from you again and again…

…when they have nice buying experience from you.

Therefore, sales conversion from existing customers is much more easier than from new customers.

Repeat sales is important for you to increase your customer lifetime value (LTV).

LTV simply means how much total money each customer spend with you in your business lifetime.

What Is Your Current Sales Funnel Look Like? Leave Your Comment Below. I Love To Hear Your Feedback.