Sales funnels for people who don’t do sales funnels

If you’re running a business online, you’re likely at some point to come across the term ‘sales funnel’. So what is it? A sales funnel is simply marketing speak for a way for people to move from discovering you; to buying from you. That simple.

There are a tonne of experts out there who will tell you the ‘best’ way to do a funnel, talking about techniques like upsells, downsells, email series, landing pages…. . However, like many aspects of running a business, the ‘best’ way; is always (without a doubt) your way.

And figuring out ‘your way’ does not need to mean learning a new technique or researching your options necessarily, it can be about understanding what you’re already doing that works – and doing MORE of that.

Your sales funnel, for example, can be as simple as:

Instagram  >  Website  >  Book Your Service

Or

Networking Event  >  Business Card  >  Call To Book You

If you want to do some work on developing your own ‘funnel’, I suggest taking a look at the paths your clients and customers use to find you. Map them out on a big sheet of paper (literally – I highlight recommend post-it notes for this!). Dig into each stage of the ‘funnel’ and try and ensure that you are making the very best of each step to maximise the results you want.

You are looking generally for MORE of something, at a HIGHER conversion rate.

For example, with the first funnel example above of Instagram  >  Website  >  Book Your Service:

Instagram is the place people are discovering you. How can you make sure MORE of the RIGHT people (i.e. your ideal customer) find you? You could experiment with using different hashtags, optimise the time of day you post by checking your insights (available with a business account), or engage with people who your followers like to follow too.

Increase Conversion Rate

The next step could be to increase the conversion rate from finding you, to clicking on the website link in your insta bio. Try issuing specific calls to action in the captions of your posts, highlight what people get for clicking through – a discount, bonus or extra info for example, and create teasers; perhaps the opening paragraph to your latest blog post.

Your website is then where these lovely people next land. What do you ideally want a visitor to do, once they get there? Maybe it’s read a blog, decide they like what you offer, then book in to work with you. Is that totally obvious and unmissable? Or are the links to ‘book now’ hidden away in heavy text, too small, or not labelled clearly?

If you want to test that out on fresh eyes, ask someone who fits your target audience bracket to look at your website, then have a chat with them and check:

• What did they look at?
• 
Did they realise they could book?
• 
Could they see how to do that?

It’s the equivalent of proofreading – get your ideal customer to road test your site for you, then feedback so you can improve it.

My final suggestion would be to always measure as much as you can, including your starting point before you do any work on this – if you track what results you’re getting, you can see far more easily how to improve things. Plus its totally motivating to see tangible results from your efforts; like emails getting read by more people, posts with more likes on insta, or web hits growing steadily. Who doesn’t love a before and after?!

If you need help identifying and/or improving your own funnel, and tweaking what you do so that it’s optimised to get the best results, let’s talk. You can book in here for a consultation call to speak further about how 1:1 business coaching with me can support you.