If you’re looking to maximize the sales of your digital product(s), you’re going to need to have a solid sales funnel in place, otherwise, your profit potential could be substantially lower, not to mention all the hard work you put into your product. In today’s post I’ll be discussing the essential components of a successful sales funnel in order to maximize its effectiveness and drive the most profits.
The first of the essential components of a successful sales funnel is a good squeeze page.
A squeeze page is a web page that offers something your potential customer would value called a lead magnet. For example, you could create a valuable report, or beef it up a bit and create your own ebook. Maybe your target market would find a handy checklist useful? Or maybe you go all out and create your very own software product. Whatever you decide to use for your free giveaway…make sure it’s something you’re 100% proud to put your name on!
This freebie aka lead magnet, will probably be the first real point of contact between you and your prospect, so you’d better make it great. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying…
You only get one chance to make a first impression
Truer words were never spoken…If your lead magnet is unprofessional or put together “half arsed’ as my father would say, your potential customer won’t see you as any type of professional…essentially ruining any credibility you may have which will therefore hinder future sales efforts.
If instead, you create a free lead magnet that your prospect believes is such an amazing product, that when presented with your paid offers, can’t help but think…
“if their free product was that amazing…I can’t even imagine the value they’re giving within their paid products?“
So, you’re going to give your incredible lead magnet away for free in return for the requester’s contact information (usually name and email address). The person gets your amazing free gift, while you get his/her contact information to follow up with him/her.
The second of the essential components of a successful sales funnel is email marketing.
You can classify an email marketing campaign as a success when they can pay for themselves
At this point in the customer acquisition cycle you’re probably in the red and have taken a loss. I mean I totally understand…you’ve spent your valuable time creating your product, then creating all the sales materials like ads and sales copy and then promotional materials like written content and graphics for social media sites…not to mention the costs associated with driving traffic to your squeeze page(s)…but it’s not been for nothing…
It’s time to put the second essential components of a successful sales funnel into play.
Enter email marketing.
If done right, following some basic email marketing practices like, offering tips or writing a mix of niche related tutorial articles and honest product reviews, over time, your prospects will come to trust you and your recommendations. By building this rapport with your list, you’re showing them, over time that you’re “THE” person they can trust when it comes to your chosen niche.
Eventually, in your emails, you’re going to then provide links to helpful resources that may solve a problem or may perhaps make their business more efficient or profitable.
Just think for a minute how many times you’ve mentioned a product or service you’ve used that you were happy with.
Maybe you’re hanging with the rest of the husbands at your neighborhood block party, huddled around your new BBQ, listing off the reasons you bought it, or maybe you’re sharing with your bestie, as you’re floating in the pool, about how awesome your new pool floaty chairs are and how they’re able to hold your new insulated drink cup perfectly.
I can tell you right now, I myself have told countless people about how awesome I think an Instant Pot is. Like, seriously, if you don’t own one of these wonders, you need to get one now! They’re a real game changer in the kitchen…and now they have air fryers…anyway, I could easily get off topic here and start rambling on about kitchen stuff, but I’m pretty sure you can relate and have your own favorite products or services that you’ve told someone about.
Just think about the products and services you use to successfully run your business.
Now, imagine for a second, that every time you mentioned that product or service to someone, it eventually leads to that person purchasing that product or service.
Now, imagine that the company which sold the product or service to the person that you referred was so grateful to you for sending them a customer, that as a thank you they decided to give you a percentage of the profits.
That, in a nutshell is affiliate marketing
…and when done correctly is a feasible way for you to get your email marketing campaigns in the black.
Another facet to email marketing as one of the essential components of a successful sales funnel, is that it’s the perfect way to gain trust and build a brand, thus, essentially laying the ground work of trust before you begin selling your own products.
If your emails are crafted properly then at some point in time, your prospect or potential customer will not only click on those affiliate links but will eventually find themselves on your main product’s sales page. Which conveniently brings us to the third of the essential components of a successful sales funnel.
The third of the essential components of a successful sales funnel is your salespage.
Congratulations, you’ve done it! You’ve convinced your email prospect to click on that link…and with that you’ve just received your first visitor to your sales page.
“Now’s when the sales start rolling in, right?
Well, that depends on a whole bunch of factors, one of which is matching the right offer to the right prospect but one of the biggest factors to success is the sales copy on your sales page.
Writing a sales page is definitely something that can be a pretty scary undertaking if you’ve never done it before. Let’s just consider the weight of it’s importance. If your sales letter misses the mark, or you get the messaging wrong, no one’s going to buy your stuff, which simply means no money for you.
Provided your sales letter is convincing enough of the product’s value and usefulness to the prospect, that prospect will order it and become your customer.
The fourth of the essential components of a successful sales funnel is your oto’s.
Love them or hate them, you can’t deny the profit pulling power of implementing a One Time Offer into your sales funnel.
I believe having One Time Offers (aka OTO’s) are definitely one of the essential components of a successful sales funnel, if you’re not offering one…then simply put…you’re leaving a substantial amount of money on the table.
The key to successfully implementing a one time offer is that the product or service must compliments the initial offer. Think of it as an enhancement of the main offer. It’s imperative that the OTO product provides more value or it’s a related offer that will help to provide more value to the main offer.
..Think, would you like fries with that?
If the customer orders it, he/she will gain access to it as well. Either the customer will gain access to the two offers he/she purchased or will be taken to another upsell offer that again increases the value of the original offer. There can be a number of upsells in a quality sales funnel, all of which are to provide increased value to the buyer, while providing increased profits for the seller.
Now, if the prospect decides to reject an upsell, he/she may be presented with a downsell, which is an offer either identical or very similar to the upsell he/she just rejected, but often with one or more components of the corresponding upsell missing and offered at a lower price.
The idea of the downsell is to encourage the customer not to walk away without increasing the value of his/her original purchase, so the downsell is offered as a compromise to the rejected upsell offer. So whether or not you like OTO’s, I hope you see the immense value they can bring and how these OTO’s are essential components of a successful sales funnel.
So let’s wrap this up by summing up the essential components of a successful sales funnel. First you’re going to need to set up your professional looking squeeze page with a rock solid lead magnet. You’re next going to set up your quality email marketing messages, which hopefully convinces your prospects to visit your affiliate partnerships as well as visiting your main product sales page.
Next, you’ll then direct your focus on crafting the perfect sales letter as well as setting up a combination of one or more upsells and downsells to add value to the main product for the buyer and add profits for the seller.
This is how digital business owners pull the most profit from their own digital assets. Just remember, when you first start planning out your essential components of a successful sales funnel, that very few people hit a homerun on the first pitch. Make sure that you’re constantly testing and tweaking everything from the sales copy on your sales page to the message you’re sending out from your email campaign until you’ve reached your goals.