What kind of funnels are there?

And what's a better gift than knowledge?

I've decided to share with you small, digestible pieces of my marketing and funnel knowledge I've collected over the last 10 years.

I've set a task to do this every Thursday, so this is when you can expect a short and useful email from me.

I'm not asking for anything in return. There will be no call to action or anything required from your side at the end of these emails.

However, if you don't want to receive this free and useful info I'll share with you, please unsubscribe. I don't want you receiving emails from us you don't want to read or you don't find useful. There will be no hard feelings :)

So, let's start - from the beginning! :)

What is a funnel?

A funnel is all the steps that lead someone from hearing about you for the first time to becoming a lead, getting interested in your products or services and buying. Then buying again and again.

What kinds of funnels are there?

There are five funnels that I use on a regular basis and I’m going to talk you through them and how to know which one you should use. These funnels are:

Tripwire funnel for selling info products

Webinar funnel for setting appointments for services sales

Webinar funnel for selling online courses

Sales funnel for services

Free trial funnel for SaaS businesses

There are a whole lot of other funnels out there (e.g. Ask Funnel, FBA review funnel, FB messenger, Free + Shipping) and there are tons of variations of all these funnels, but these are the ones I find to be the most common.

How they work and when you should use them

Tripwire funnel for selling info products

Tripwire is one of the simplest funnels, but it’s unbelievably underused. Anybody selling an info product should have a tripwire funnel set up.

You’re selling an info product and you have a lot of traffic coming to your website. You have lead magnets available and people are signing up for them.

Just after someone has signed up for a lead magnet, they’re at this stage where they’ve had a problem in their lives and have been motivated enough to go and search the Google. They’ve gone through different listings, and then they’ve found your website. Excellent work!

Now some percentage of those people (usually between 1-5%) actually want their problem solved more thoroughly right now and are willing to pay money to get that solved immediately. So that’s why you should make something available for sale at that stage. You should give them a Tripwire offer. This should be a very good, no brainer offer - something simple but very useful that’s not very expensive so they don’t have to think a lot whether they should buy it or not.

Webinar funnel for setting appointments for services sales

Ok – so another funnel that you might use is the free strategy call webinar funnel.

You’ve got a website with some traffic and you’ve got an email newsletter. Your emails point people to an optin. A while later, the webinar happens. At the end of the webinar, you hope that people become clients. There are many steps you should take to make sure people show up and book the call in the end. This will be a topic for another email.

Webinar funnel for selling online courses

If you’re selling online courses, this is the ideal marketing funnel for you to set up. There’s quite a lot of steps in this funnel that most people don’t realize should be included, but they can make a really big difference. This will be a topic for a separate email.

Free trial funnel for SaaS businesses

Another type of funnel is the SaaS free trial funnel. If you’re a SaaS business owner, this funnel could make quite a difference in terms of your conversion rates from free trials to customers.

So, naturally, you have a product and you have a website. You’re driving people to your website through guest blog posts, Google search and Facebook ads. You also have people sign up to your mailing list through a popup on your website.

Some people will go to your free trial page but won’t opt in. You will want to follow up with them with an email sequence that will eventually take them to the order page. You will also use Facebook retargeting ads to get them to the order page.

Some of these people will opt in for the free trial, but they won’t buy. You will again use Facebook retargeting to get them back on track and take them to the order page. If they reach the order page but don’t checkout – you know what’s next – more Facebook retargeting!

Sales funnel for services

If you’re selling services, you should be able to implement this sales funnel to turn more of your leads into sales.

So, if you’re selling services, you most probably offer a 1-on-1 free strategy session to your prospects. Your prospects come to the page where they can book an appointment with you through various sources – email, website, blog, Facebook ads, etc. However, not all of your prospects would be good leads, so you need to filter them out.

As soon as they book a call with you, they will be prompted to a survey page where you will want to learn more about them and their business.

Once they’ve booked a call, they will receive a welcome email and will be shown a summary video about the call where you want to explain to them what they can expect on the call and how to better prepare.

Ideally, after the discovery call, they will sign up for your services and then you’ll have a chance to offer them an upsell. You will also want to ask them for referrals at this stage.
If they don’t buy, you want to follow up with them via email. If they are not a good fit for your services and company, maybe they know someone who is, so make sure to ask for referrals in this case as well.

I will share more details about sales funnel for services in one of the next emails.

Hopefully, this gives you an overview of what funnels are and which one you should use in your business in order to make more money from it.

If you need any help with planning, setting up or automating your funnel, just get in touch.