4 Levels of an Effective Sales Funnel

Building a sales funnel can help you to generate more money in your business; it is a way of working smarter not harder. Using a sales funnel, you set up a series of steps to guide visitors through a process that has the goal of selling them a product or service.

With each step of the funnel, you get closer to selling your highest priced item. For example, the funnel might start off by giving the visitor something to read that has value for them, then offers a lead magnet, then an introductory offer (tripwire), and lastly your main offer.

Creating a Focus for Your Funnel
To create a topic for your funnel, find the biggest pain points of your audience and pick a top one to use. You can find pain points by asking your audience what they are struggling with by emailing your list or by asking in a social media group. You can also search groups for common questions and challenges and poll your audience.

1st Funnel Level –Free Valuable Content
To attract your audience, create a great, detailed blog, video, podcast (or all three) based on the biggest struggle that your audience indicated they have. The blog post types that usually perform the best are “how to”, list posts, and case studies.

Within your blog post and at the end of it, you will have a link to your lead magnet and ask people to opt-in. You can promote the blog post in several ways such as through email, social media, in groups, guest posts, or with ads.

2nd Funnel Level – Lead Magnet
Put together a giveaway that builds on the content you offered at the first level of the funnel and deliver it through email after someone opts-in. The giveaway should solve a problem and be easy for a reader to consume. Some options are checklists, templates, and resource lists.

3rd Funnel Level – Tripwire
The tripwire is a low-cost introductory offer that people see on the thank-you page after opting into your list. It needs to be relevant to the content in the first and second levels of your funnel. Making this offer at this stage is important because the person’s interest is fresh. You might offer the Tripwire at a discount, such as 75% off.

This offer should be more valuable than what you offered in your first two levels. Some examples are a video course or group coaching calls.

On the thank-you page, you can tell people that while they wait to receive their lead magnet, there is another relevant post they can read to find out more. Then, offer them a link that sends them to the blog. Use the blog post to present the introductory offer.

You can capture those who did not take your offer with your email sequence which will ultimately lead to your biggest offer.

4th Funnel Level – Main Offer
Your main offer should provide a lot of value to help someone achieve a certain result. This offer might be a detailed course, boot camp, or live event.

To build your sales funnel, you could start off with your core offer and then think of things to offer related to it to create offers for the first 3 levels of your funnel. You can sell the main offer via a live masterclass or webinar.