For a sales funnel to work, a few key elements must be in place. First, you need to consider the offers you make. These offers should gradually increase in size and ticket price, as you weed out those who aren’t interested in buying your product.

Second, you must decide the ways in which you will keep in touch with your prospects and further qualify them. Through your offers and communications, you should be able to get your prospect list down to only the serious buyers.

By the time you get to the end of your funnel, you should have a list of loyal customers who you can sell to again and again, assuming you nurture that relationship.

There are a variety of different ways to go about making your offers. The most common include:

Opt-In Giveaways

An opt-in giveaway is a freebie usually offered in exchange for the person’s name and email address. This is the entry point to your sales funnel. The potential customer wants the free product, so they ‘opt-in’ by giving you their name and email address. You can then begin marketing directly to them through email.

Front-End Offers

Front-end offers are paid offers that work just like freebies, but can actually be more effective. The key is that even though you charge for your offer, you keep the price very low. Charging for the product helps weed out the folks who just want a freebie and aren’t interested in ever opening up their wallets at all. If they’re willing to spend even just a dollar on a small product, you know that they have the potential to be serious buyers in the future.

Subscription Products

Subscription products are low-priced but more profitable for you because you charge a monthly fee to subscribers. It is much tougher to get people to pay for a subscription though, so the content you’re offering has to be really unique and valuable. But if these clients are willing to pay this monthly fee, they’ll be much more likely to buy your high-ticket items.

One-Time Offers

One-time offers are great because they allude to a level of urgency. These are offers telling the visitor that once they click away, the offer expires. In other words, they have to sign up and/or buy immediately or they will lose their one and only chance.
The way a sales funnel works is that the front-end offers are low-priced (or free) and low commitment. In contrast, your back-end offers gradually increase in price. These pricier back-end offers are what really qualify your prospects and tell you who your serious buyers are.

Keeping in Touch

It’s important to keep in touch with your prospects. They shouldn’t only be hearing from you when you’re trying to sell them something. The follow-up emails you send to subscribers on your list should always offer them helpful content. The purpose of these emails is to stay on their radar and build a relationship with them.
The first step in doing this is the ‘thank you’ page. This is a small detail, but it’s extremely important. After signing up for your list or purchasing the initial front-end product from you, redirect your customers to a page that simply thanks them for signing up and/or making a purchase.
You can use this opportunity to make them another offer or even provide more free content. Present a one-time offer, an upsell, an invitation to a strategy call, registration details for a webinar, etc.. Use any tactic that will help you to further qualify prospects. You know you have a serious buyer if they immediately take you up on that second offer.

Sales Funnels and SEO

Remember the shape of the funnel – wide at the entry-point and gradually narrowing toward the main target purchase. Because you want to cast your net wide, the landing page where you make your initial offer should be search engine optimized in order to direct as much traffic as possible to your website.