Online Funnels – How Does it Work?
Both terms are pretty much interchangeable, have basically the same meaning. However, no matter how the name, a business funnel and an online funnel really do the exact same thing. Online funnels help guide your website traffic to take two simple actions. They get your existing traffic, called prospects or potential clients, to take one important action.
That action is to purchase from you. As with any online sales funnel, the key is to drive traffic and create leads. If you don’t get enough leads, you won’t make any money with your online funnel program.
How do you get leads? The answer is simple. You create your own lead capture pages, or autoresponder landing pages as they are sometimes called, and then collect email addresses from your list. It’s important that the people on your list have an interest in your products or services. An example of an online sales funnel are ultimate sales funnel templates.
When you set up your business funnel online, you’re going to need something that will capture the names and email addresses of your leads. That’s where social networking comes in. With a blog, Facebook, or some other form of social network, you can create funnels that build leads for you. Facebook is particularly powerful because it allows you to actually build funnels around your Facebook page. In fact, you can set up a Facebook fan page where anyone who likes your page can join in and “like” your page.
You can also use Facebook and other networks to retarget your current leads. For example, if your squeeze page leads people who already have an interest in what you offer, you can send them special offers designed to interest them even more. A well-designed retargeting funnel can bring people back to your website multiple times just to learn more about what you’re offering. Retargeting can cost money, but you should be able to recoup most of your money through the sales of product offered.
Once you have a list of leads ready to be converted into sales, you’ll need to automate your follow-up. Most online funnel systems include a follow-up module, which can be used to schedule emails or calls with prospects. Auto responders allow you to set up messages with specific information, which will be automatically sent out to your prospects. These are similar to auto responder modules used by offline businesses, only the contacts are automatically targeted to your unique niche. There are many different auto responders and follow-up systems available, and I highly recommend you investigate them before deciding on one.
The last part of your online funnel is to actually create that lead magnet. Your lead magnet simply contains information that interests your prospects. This could be a free gift, free report, video tutorial, free e-book, or any number of things. Once you have built your funnel, it’s important to constantly add new and interesting information to your websites and send out emails to your prospects with each one.
Online sales funneling can be very profitable if you follow-up regularly. Once your website and autoresponder are ready, you can start working on generating targeted leads on autopilot. If you aren’t using an auto responder or an auto-responder system, you will need to build a lead magnet landing page where you can display your autoresponder address and allow your prospects to follow-up by entering their name and email address. Your follow-up messages should contain information about your products or services and encourage your leads to opt-in to your list. You can learn more about building your own sales funnel in the “Online Funnel” course I recently created.