Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this sales funnel quick start guide, you're going to learn everything you need
to know to get up and running with your first sales funnel, in one day, with a hundred percent
free software.
Timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful links that I
will constantly be referencing throughout this video.
So, you can take a deeper dive into each one of these steps.
So before we dive into the three steps to getting your funnel set up, walking through
a live demo, and then talking about driving traffic, let's talk about what the heck a
sales funnel is.
And then the different components, which ones we need to set up now, and which ones are
actually going to be a waste of time for the time being.
So, all the sales funnel is, is a strategic process of taking a prospect, someone who
could get value in your service and transforming them into a customer.
That's it, it's a transformation process.
It's a relationship building.
That's all it is.
So, take a look at this diagram and it will break down each step of this relationship
building.
Some other people like to call it the customer journey.
So first everyone starts out as a prospect.
These are people who could find your content helpful, or these are ideal potential ideal
customers.
So, this doesn't mean everyone in the world, right?
And what we want to do, is use content and ads to transform prospects into audience members.
And these are people who are actually following and subscribing to your content on a regular
basis.
And once we have that attention and we're starting to build that rapport, we want to
use something called a lead magnet to transform them into a lead.
And all this is, is a special page called a landing page where they enter their contact
information in exchange for some value, I'll go through what these pages look like and
how to build them later in this tutorial video.
And of course, once we have them as a lead, we send them a bunch of value emails, and
we introduce them to our sales messages and hopefully they purchase our product and ultimately
become a customer.
And that's it.
That's how we take a stranger, who's a prospect all the way to a customer.
So now let's take a look at the pages that we actually need to put together and all of
the different cogs in this machine that transforms someone from a prospect into a customer.
So first we have our traffic sources.
Then our traffic drives them to a landing page where they enter their contact information
and we give them something of value.
This is can be an opt-in offer or lead magnet.
I'll talk about how to put together this PDF relatively quickly, later in this tutorial
video.
Then once they've gotten that we're going to send a couple of follow up emails, using
a free piece of software.
And all these emails are designed to do, is to deliver them more value and then introduce
them to whatever your paid offer is.
And you'll drive those email subscribers to a sales page, and this can be a video, or
it could just be text, talking about your product or service and why they should purchase
it and how it's going to make their lives that much better as a result of purchasing
it.
Hopefully they say, “Yeah, I think this is a great product or service.
Let me go ahead and purchase it”.
They enter their payment information onto a checkout, and then they received their product/service
membership fill in the blank, whatever.
And so that's a quick overview of the entire sales funnel process.
And the very first step in creating this for yourself, is figuring out who your ideal customer
is.
So if you remember very at the top, our prospects, we need to identify who is our ideal customer,
so we can work backwards to figure out what type of people we should be targeting at the
very top of our funnel.
Now this could be a video in and of itself.
So, there's a link in the description to a data-driven method for crafting your ideal
customer avatar.
Now, for our purposes here, we're going to skip to the last two questions on this list.
And that is what results are they after?
And what are the roadblocks that are in their way to achieving this result?
So even if you don't have an ideal customer avatar right now, you could still go through
this tutorial and build your funnel, just come back and make sure you actually build
out a complete profile.
But these are the two key questions that's going to drive the success or failure of your
entire funnel.
So for this video, I'm going to use the example of someone who's trying to grow a YouTube
channel.
So what results are they after?
They probably want to grow their channel, make money and quit their day job.
We don't have to get super complicated here when we're just starting out.
So what's getting in the way of their growing their channel?
So they can make more money so they could quit their day job.
Well, they probably need more views.
They need more subscribers.
And in order to get that, they need to rank their videos and probably improve their video
quality.
Now, this list doesn't need to be super long.
As long as you have three to four big results and ideally five to six roadblocks, you'll
have enough building blocks to work with, when we get into creating the rest of our
funnel.
For example, purposes, I'm keeping it short and sweet.
So definitely take 15 to 20 minutes to come up with some results and roadblocks that you
think your ideal customer is experiencing or wants to achieve.
Now, the next step in the process is actually coming up with a solution.
So, we've gone through and figured out who our ideal customer is.
We've answered the question as to what are the problems that they have, how can we potentially
add value to them.
And now it's time to come up with a solution.
And so before we get into the solution, let's take a deeper dive into what the heck a landing
page actually is.
So a landing page is a special page on your site that where all it does, is collect contact
information.
Name, email you could add other fields like company size, address, and first name and
last name.
But the more you add, the more fields you use, the less likely someone is to enter their
information into the page.
So typically, you want to start with just an email and a name at most and then if you
find out that you need more information from your prospects, then you can add more.
Just know that typically when you add more questions on your landing page, the less people
you're actually going to get into your email sequence.
And the way we get people to enter their contact information is, using something called a lead
magnet.
And in this particular instance, our lead magnet is just going to be a quick PDF guide.
There are lots of other types of lead magnets we can make, but for getting up and running
as quickly as possible, let's just make a PDF guide.
There's a link in the description to how to use Canva to put this together.
And when we go through the demo, I'll actually show you a live example of a lead magnet that
was put together inside of Canva.
So, to ensure that our landing page actually works, we need some compelling copy to get
people to enter their name and email for that sweet lead magnet that we're going to be putting
together.
Now, there are two quick formulas you can use for not only your headlines, but also
your bullet points.
And these are the exact same lines we're going to use in our demo later in this tutorial.
So here we have how to result without hard part and how to result even if roadblock.
So I'll just read a couple of these.
You can always pause the video to read all of them.
So, if you see the first one here is how to grow your channel, which is a result that
they want, without getting lots of views, which is a roadblock that is in their way,
skipping down a few.
We can look at and see how to rank videos and then even if you have a small channel,
so we're letting them know in both instances that whatever roadblock is getting in their
way of the result that they want, they can overcome it as a result of getting the lead
magnet that we have for them, of course, it’s very important that the lead magnet actually
does offer the value and actually does help them.
Because if they enter their name and email on the lead magnet, actually isn't all that
helpful well, you're probably not going to make a lot of sales.
So ideally you want to come up to 10 to 15 versions of this sentence.
Of course, you're not going to make 10 to 15 different landing pages because these are
headlines, but I'll show you how you can transform these into bullet points for something called
split testing.
And so once you have your 10 to 15, you want to choose two of them that you're going to
use for something called a split test.
Now, as you can see here in this diagram, our lead magnet can actually take many different
forms.
It could be an auto recording, a diagram, a video tutorial, a webinar, but in this particular
instance, just keeping it simple.
We want to start with a PDF guide.
And the reason that we want to start with a PDF guide is we want to get this up and
running as fast as possible, because we need to get your minimum viable sales funnel up
and running so that you can test your results and your roadblocks.
You see the success of your funnel is entirely dependent upon your ability to figure out
what results matter most and what roadblocks matter most.
And so the landing page is going to allow us to test our assumptions, to figure out
which results we should talk about through their sales process and which roadblocks we
should be focused on solving for them before they purchase our product or service or the
roadblocks we need to specifically talk about when we're trying to market our product or
service.
And so you're actually going to create two different landing pages.
They're going to be the exact same.
The only difference is you're going to change the headline and whichever landing page gets
more opt-ins or more leads that will tell you that that headline matters more than the
other headline.
And you'll eventually be able to figure out which results and which roadblocks matter
the most.
And to put together your minimum viable funnel, you actually only need one free piece of software,
and that is MailChimp.
So let's jump into my screen now and walk you through exactly how to set up your landing
page in MailChimp, using everything we've just put together.
So here is a quick example of the landing page that we're going to put together.
MailChimp is a hundred percent free software.
You can use it up to 2000 subscribers and while they're landing page builder, as you
can see is quite basic.
This is as complex as we need in order to test what's most important.
This headline up here.
So let's go ahead and jump into my MailChimp account.
So, once you're inside of MailChimp, you can set up an account for free.
They don't even ask for your credit card information.
You just come up to the top right here and click on create, and then you'll click on
landing page.
You'll go ahead and give your landing page a name, and then you'll select your email
list.
So you inside of MailChimp, you can have as pretty much as many lists as you want.
And so all this is saying is, hey, when someone enters their name and email, which email sequence
should they go into, that's what this is.
And so, once you've done that, you'll be taken to a page that looks like this, where you
can select your templates.
Now what's very important here, your landing page building should not take more than an
hour.
If you take more than an hour, you're being way too much of a perfectionist.
So here I suggest clicking on, grow your list as the template, and I'll walk you through
how to put together this template right here.
So all your landing page needs is headline, an image of the PDF that they're going to
receive and three to five bullet points, max, and that's it.
That's all that's needed for the landing page.
Anything else is going to be a distraction.
So you can click up here.
You can see it's very easy to edit.
The text shows up on the side and you can go ahead and just enter any text you want,
highlight it.
And of course change the size and formatting to whatever you think looks best.
And the preview mode allows you to see what it's going to look like on a desktop and mobile.
Now, something I do want to point out here, saving close, is what I'm using for this center
element is the image plus caption.
So you can click and drag where you want things.
And then when you come over to settings, you'll be able to change the alignment you actually
want the alignment to be right.
And then under captioned position, you want to change it to the right.
And then once that shows up, you'll be able to change the width and you're going to want
it two thirds.
And so when I click on edit again, I'll just go back to content, browse you'll be able
to upload whatever image you want.
You see my image here and I'll click on insert it.
Now, where did I get this image?
Great question.
I made a separate tutorial video link in the description using a free tool called Canva.
And so inside of Canva, these are just a couple of examples you can see where I quickly put
together a cover image for the PDF that they get.
And you can actually use Canva to create the entire PDF if you want.
And all I did was simply used a template inside of Canva, changed it out for my own copy.
And added this YouTube icon and that was it.
Literally took me five minutes to put this together.
And you can, you just come up here to download and you'll be able to download it as a PNG.
And so inside of the MailChimp landing page builder, you'll actually want to click on
edit and you'll be able to change the size of the image.
So, whether you're doing a webinar, a video preview, or you're doing a PDF preview, like
I'm doing, it's going to be way too big when you first import it.
So you're going to want to change the height between 200 and 300.
I'll let you play with it, but start with 300 and then go down from there.
That's just a quick tip.
It's been really frustrating to try and get it right inside of MailChimp, but it's really
nice, you actually do have a tremendous amount of options in terms of editing.
Typically, it's going to be way more than needed, but definitely changing your dimension
so that the height is 300 or less is going to ensure that this image isn't too big.
And then you can see over here, I can go ahead and start entering in all of my text.
And of course I can turn it into a bullet point.
And actually what I do, is I do a bullet point every other line.
So, I'll do a bullet point here.
Then, I will delete and add some text here.
And then I'll come back to this one and remove the bullet point and change the size down.
And this is just quick hack to, help with the spacing.
Otherwise the bullet points are going to be right on top of each other and it's not going
to look very good.
And so that's really all there is to it to putting this together.
And then at the bottom, you want to make sure that you have any terms of service or disclaimer
links that whatever traffic you're driving using to whatever platform you're using to
drive traffic to requires.
And then a quick link saying, “Hey, we're not--” A quick little tidbit saying, “Hey,
we're not going to share your information”.
Now you may be wondering where did I get that background image?
Great question.
So, there is a free site called Unsplash dot com.
And all I did was I went to Unsplash and I just typed in computer.
And I literally scroll down here and looked for a very plain image that didn't have any
people in it, that I could possibly use for a background.
So scrolling up here, you can see that I ultimately use this one, so I just downloaded it.
And then inside of MailChimp, make sure you deselect all of your elements.
You can come up here to design, and click on page, and then you can change the background
image.
And once you hit save and publish, you're good to go.
Now, when it comes to your bullet points, you'll notice here that these bullet points
are actually the, some of the same headlines we came up earlier with in this tutorial,
all I did was remove the how to at the beginning.
So, you don't have to use another formula to come up with all your bullet points.
You can choose the two or three headlines that you think are going to be the most impactful
or the best.
And the other ones, all you have to do is remove how to, and just start the bullet point
with a verb.
And you're good to go.
So, you can see here, grow your YouTube channel even if you think your video quality stinks,
rank your videos even if you have a small channel and get more views, you can see each
one of them starts with an action.
They're going to be able to take or a result that they're going to be able to achieve as
a result of going through the PDF guide.
Of course, if they're not going to be able to do it, let's not say that they're going
to be able to do it on the landing page.
And so you can see here, that's it, that's all there is to it.
So what we would do now is we'd actually duplicate this landing page and do the exact same format,
just changing that headline.
And then when we run traffic, we'll create a campaign for landing page one and a campaign
for landing page two, because MailChimp doesn't currently have split testing on the free plan.
And as soon as your landing page is complete and you have two different versions, you're
ready to start running traffic.
So, if you're doing any sort of organic content strategy on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube,
then you can go ahead and just start including your landing page link on some of your pieces
of content.
Now, I highly recommend that you use ads to drive traffic to your landing page, in order
to quickly figure out which headlines working and which headlines don't.
And so there's a link in the description to a full playlist on how to use YouTube ads
to drive traffic to your site, and a full 54 minute video on how to use Google ads,
to drive traffic to your site, as well as a playlist that walks you through how to drive
traffic to a landing page using Facebook ads.
So the link in the description has you covered on all three of those platforms.
Now, the last thing I want to talk about is, how you can actually start collecting payments
bonus round here with using free software.
So, if we take a look at this diagram, you can see that for MailChimp, we're able to
send emails and we're able to create our landing page, Canva allows us to put together our
free PDF lead magnet, and we can actually use Google sites, if you want to create a
sales page.
Now, when it comes to accepting payments, PayPal actually does allow you for free to
accept payments and have a PayPal link.
Although a much easier way, is using something called wave accounting.
So you can go to just search, wave accounting in Google or whatever, and you'll be able
to use something called checkouts inside of wave accounting.
It's hundred percent free, but this is the page where you simply just say what your product
is, how much it costs, and then a thank you or welcome message.
And what's really cool is using a free, the free version of something called Zapier, you'll
actually be able to automatically add people who use this checkout to MailChimp.
And so here's a quick preview of what the checkout form looks like.
And what's cool is, you can drive traffic directly from your email list to this page,
or you can create a sales page using Google sites, and then go ahead and drive traffic
here.
So any way you slice it, you're going to be able to create your landing page, send all
of your followup emails, create your sales page and get paid and deliver your product
or service using a hundred percent free software.
If you're interested in taking a deeper dive into how to directly integrate all these,
there's a link in the description to a video called the duct tape sales funnel.
And it actually walks you click by click building out all of these extra pieces of the funnel,
but really that landing page and lead magnet is the core to your success.
So, thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video and it sparks some ideas and really
shows you that it's not rocket science putting together a functioning sales funnel.
And most importantly, you don't need to buy any expensive software to get up and running.
I definitely recommend upgrading to sales model software, once you do have some sales
though, because there are tremendous amount of advantages, but we'll save that for another
video.
And until the next one hit that like button, subscribe for more sales funnel tactics and
strategies, just like the ones covered in this video and keep building the business
you love.