Hey everyone, Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
Now you've probably seen a lot of complex and overly convoluted diagrams of what a sales
funnel is and how it's supposed to work and all the different AB split testing and different
sequences and triggers.
And we're just going to cut through all that fluff today and go straight to what a sales
funnel actually is.
And more importantly, what a sales funnel is not.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the software you should be using, or how specifically
to put one together, click by click, I'll link up to other tutorials and playlists in
the description.
Now this diagram is as complex as a sales funnel should be, all a sales funnel is, is
taking someone who has no idea who you are all the way through the relationship development
process of transforming them into a customer.
And that is it.
There's no extra complexities here.
We're simply building a relationship with a potential customer and hopefully they become
a customer, no pushy sales process needed.
So your sales funnel process is defined by where someone is in the relationship with
you and your business.
And so everyone starts off as a prospect.
Now prospects don't represent everyone in the world, right?
Prospects represent that small group of people who could potentially be your ideal customers.
And that's it.
That's all a prospect is.
And the way we pull our prospects out of everybody else in the digital sphere is by producing
content and ads that speak directly to them.
And once they like follow or engage on a consistent basis, they go from a prospect to an audience
member.
So an audience member is someone who has half raised their hand and said, you know what?
I kind of like your content and your ads are kind of cool.
So I'll follow what you have to say.
And through content marketing and advertising, you eventually transform these audience members
into leads and a lead is someone who's given you their contact information and that's it.
That's all a lead is, so we can have one lead, and cold leads and hot leads, but we are going
to get into all that.
All that a lead is for our purposes here, defining what a sales funnel is, is someone
who's gone from.
I like your content.
And I think you have a cool business, to I've given you my contact information.
And then once they're a lead, you're going to send them a series of emails and other
content pieces in order to start building rapport and a relationship and Goodwill with
them.
So when someone enters their name and email, that doesn't immediately make them a customer,
right?
And we use something called a landing page and a lead magnet in order to get them to
enter that information.
And we'll get to more on that in a little bit here, but once they're on your email list
or you have their phone number and you have that sales call with them, the whole rapport
building process ramps up a whole another level.
And so the whole point of transforming a lead into a customer is of course, well, you make
a sale, right?
But also building up that relationship to the point where that lead likes and trusts
you enough in order to hand over their credit card information.
And that's all a sales funnel is, it's these simple steps that transforms a prospect into
a customer.
So now let's take a little bit of a deeper dive into each one of these components.
So of course it starts with traffic, right?
And whether you're doing paid advertising or you're doing a content marketing strategy,
some combination of both what's most important is you've chosen a platform.
You know who your ideal customer looks like, link the description to a data-driven method
to figure out what traffic source and who your ideal customer is.
And then once you know that, you'll produce ads, you'll produce content.
And all of these are going to drive people to eventually to something called a landing
page.
And a landing page is that part of the process where we go from an audience member into a
lead.
And so all the landing page needs to do is offer something of value in exchange for their
contact information, because most people aren't going to be interested and just say, oh yeah,
I'll give you my email.
So you can send me a bunch of marketing and sales messages because I have nothing better
to do, right?
Nobody does that on a landing page.
So they're going to give you their contact information in exchange for something of value.
So it's very important that we provide value and that value is what's going to help start
building that relationship of rapport and trust and likeability, where a lead will eventually
do business with you.
And of course, that's something called a lead magnet.
I'll link up in the description to a full video that goes through how to put together
a lead magnet and different types.
But essentially all this does is deliver value.
It helps them with something that they're struggling with and positions you as an authority,
of course, building rapport and Goodwill.
And once they've gone through that lead magnet, and you've given them a couple of emails,
you drive them to whatever your sales process is.
So this can be a webinar, a video series, or an actual sales call.
This is where you try and close people who are on your email list.
Of course, you're not going to send prospects and audience members to your sales page, because
that's kind of like trying to get married on the first date.
You really want to warm things up here.
So the people who are seeing your sales message have gone through this entire sales funnel
process of warming them up, building rapport, building your credibility and likeability.
And hopefully they like what you have to offer.
And you've built enough rapport where they go, you know what?
Yeah, I think this person or this company can really help me.
They'll hopefully enter the checkout page and then of course have access to your product
or service.
And that is all a sales funnel is, it's really simple.
As you can see here, it's barely three or four pages.
You just have to set up a landing page, a sales page, a checkout, and then some sort
of confirmation for them to actually get the product or service or whatever the next step
is, for webpages and you're done it.
It doesn't have to be super complicated.
You don't need super software, that's going to segment people into lists, ABCD, XYZ.
It's very simple.
It's just four webpages, a couple of emails.
And that's all your sales funnel needs to be, especially when you're just getting started.
So if you want to learn more about how to put together your sales funnel or the different
types of sales funnels, if you'd like to get more complex, links in the description to
full blown tutorials on how to build a sales funnel from scratch using a paid software,
or if you want to use WordPress and something like thrive themes, also a lot of review videos
as well to help you figure out which software to go with, because you really only need one
or two pieces of software.
You don't need a bunch.
You don't have to spend thousands of dollars a month in order to make this work.
So thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video.
And most importantly, you have a much clearer picture on what a sales funnel actually is.
So comment below with your sales funnel questions, hit that like button, subscribe for more marketing
tutorials and strategy videos, just like this one.
And until the next, keep building the business you love.