In this article I’m going to explain all about sales funnels for beginners and how you can use this incredibly powerful marketing tool 100% for free!

Anyone who’s into selling anything online these days would be hard pushed not to have heard of Clickfunnels, the amazing sales generation software developed by marketing legend Russell Brunson.

Unfortunately, the problem with Clickfunnels, especially if you’re just starting out, is that it can be quite expensive.

Now before I go on, you may well be wondering, “what exactly is a sales funnel?”

Well in a nutshell …

It’s simply a term given to a series of steps that are carefully designed to ‘coax’ a large audience of potential buyers all the way to the point where they become a smaller, serious group of high-value customers who actually buy (… without them ever really being conscious they’re being guided in this way)!

Now the number of these steps can vary but essentially they can be categorised into 3 stages …

• Lead generation
• Lead nurture
• Sale closure

The 3 stages and what’s it got to do with AIDA?!

If you haven’t heard of AIDA before, it’s a highly effective sales model which was developed well over 100 years ago and is still very much taught in marketing to this day.

It stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action and broadly speaking it’s the basis of what prospects go through as they go ever further into the sales funnel.

Think of it like this …

The idea is to get as many potential customers as possible into the widest part of your funnel and then have the most serious – the buyers – ‘delivered’ out the bottom!

The lead generation stage is the widest part of the funnel and where the broadest part of your marketing is focussed.

This is the awareness stage because it’s where your potential customers first get any knowledge about what you’re offering.

Then there’s the lead nurturing stage where you’ve ‘aroused’ them and moved them away from the awareness stage so they’re actively interested in what you’re proposing. This is where you need to communicate with them and develop rapport so you build trust and hopefully turn them into buyers.

Finally there’s the sale closure stage where your prospects have moved further into the funnel and decided they desire your product or service and have made the decision to actually take action and buy.

Why is a funnel important?

By using the various stages of the funnel effecively you’re far less likely to have potential customers drop out due to any slight inattention to detail that would otherwise have led them all the way through to getting out their wallet!

Now sales funnels have been around for years but it’s only relatively recently that the whole process has been set out in such a structured way that software can do all the ‘heavy lifting’ for you …

In fact, with the right funnel in place it’s now easier than ever to invest your time and money in creating the most effective marketing messaging during each stage and convert more prospects into paying customers.

An example of a typical sales funnel

Step #1 – Build a landing page

A landing page is where the most far reaching aspect of your marketing is going to send your prospects to and it’s here where they’ll most likely get their first ‘inkling’ about your product or service!

If they click on an advert for example, or a link from a blog, ebook, video, social media message or any other marketing medium where you’re looking to get mass appeal, this is where they’ll get to.

Once they arrive, your landing page should communicate an exciting message that will make your prospect want to take further action or at least find out more.

Groove.cm is a great example of a landing page that offers a free funnel builder!

Step #2 – Offer a valuable ‘bribe’!

Now your immediate goal may well be to get your potential customer to buy your product or service straight away but it could just as easily be to capture their email address in order to communicate with them further and build ‘trust’ over time.

Very often this will require offering something of real value for free, such as an e-book or video course in exchange for the information (… their email address) but the main thing this page needs to do is seriously tweak their interest!

Step #3 – Keep up the communication

If the landing page has done its job properly and they’ve willingly given you their contact details, it’s then your job to keep in touch and feed them with decent information that points them in the direction to what you’re offering.

Step #4 – Give them a little prod!

As you build trust and rapport, this is where you can start giving them a little nudge towards making the purchasing decision. If they’re comfortable with you enough at this stage, this could obviously be a bold request for the sale but it could also include a product demo or maybe a special ‘personal’ discount for example.

Step #5 – Keep up the contact

Hopefully by now your prospect is ready to become a paying customer but if they haven’t quite made the leap to get out their wallet just yet, you need to keep the communication going so your product or service is regularly on their minds.

Step #6 – Finally thank them and keep them engaged

Once your prospect has finally become a paying customer, it doesn’t mean you should forget about them!

A genuine thank you page and follow ups with further messaging, information, offers and additional upsells can keep the funnel active for many years to come.

And there’s another advantage too – turning a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’!

Throughout any stage of the funnel there’s alway the chance that your prospect is going to say ‘no’ and go away from your offer for good.

However, it might just be they simply don’t want it yet!

For example, have you ever looked at something online and thought to yourself (… it could even be subconsciously), “yep I can see how this could be good but I can’t take advantage of it right now.”

At this stage many online sellers would simply dump the lead and move on to the next.

But with a funnel you don’t have to lose this potentially highly valuable customer because you can easily still engage with them by building an automated email follow-up campaign that ‘keeps them in the loop’.

You could even cater specifically for this type of ‘hesitant’ prospect by sending them information that deals with their particular objection. In other words, by ‘keeping at it’ over an extended period, you can overcome their buyers anxiety and turn them into happy customers later on.

It’s like covering them in grease!!

Of course the above is a very simple example but many funnels can have multifaceted layers that help guide the prospect all the way through to the customer stage.

Some steps may well include upsells (… or downsells) throughout but the point is, the funnel is deliberately designed to ‘slide’ your prospect all the way through to becoming a long-term, high value customer who trusts you and is happy to buy from you again and again.

It’s all about valuing them and making them feel they’re getting personal treatment as opposed to just being one of the masses being sold to.

By making sure you follow up with the right offer at the right time, everyone benefits … they become happy customers and you can enjoy the best bit – closing the deal!

Two powerful Clickfunnel alternatives

Without doubt Clickfunnels is a great funnel creating programme but there are alternatives out there which are extremely powerful, easy to use and make perfect sense to get cracking with, especially when you’re just starting out.

Two such examples are Systeme.io and Groove.cm.

Systeme.io

Let’s face it, most people have limited funds when starting an online business and it can be complicated and time-consuming because very often you need loads of different tools that you have to spend endless amounts of time searching the internet to find.

Subscriptions to these tools can be expensive and possibly too much of a risk to invest in, certainly in the early stages.

Which is why I love Systeme.io …

Basically it’s a ‘complete business building platform in a box’ which is ridiculously easy to use and has everything you need to launch, grow and scale any online business, easier, faster and all in one place.

The best thing however is, even though their normal pricing plans give you access to everything at a fraction of the cost of their competitors, they also offer a starter pricing plan where you can get it all for FREE … including sales funnels!

It’s brilliant!

It’s not even for a temporary period …

Whether you need landing pages, e-commerce, email marketing campaigns or complete funnels, it does it all with everything working together smoothly and seemlessly to get your business up and running quickly and easily … and at a certain level, it’s all free forever (… but still highly cost effective if you need to scale up)!

Click on the image above for all the details.

Groove.cm

Groove is another platform that’s been designed with simplicity and cost effectiveness built in so as to offer a viable alternative and challenge the likes of Clickfunnels.

As with Systeme.io it’s also a ‘complete business building platform in a box’ offering everything you need to develop a highly successful online business, all in one place.

It also offers a free starter plan.

One of their claims is …

‘GroovePages Drag-and-Drop Site Builder is the Fastest, Easiest Page and Funnel Builder in the World’ and although it’s pretty much impossible to test this statement without trying all the page builder pages in the world, one thing is for sure, the platform in incredibly easy to use.

Click on the image for all the details of Groove.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt about it, whenever you sell anything these days whether it be online in the digital world or even offline in the physical world (… MacDonalds for example with their ‘do you want to make it a large meal?’), using a sales funnel to guide your potential prospects smoothly all the way through to the point where they become long-term loyal customers is the only way!

Yes of course you can be blunt and go directly for a sale without the additional steps of a funnel but if you’re running a ‘hit and hope’ kind of business, chances are, you won’t be around for long!

With highly powerful programmes like Systeme.io and Groove.cm available for free, it’s a no-brainer and getting up and running with a professional system you can be proud of has never been easier.