A Quick And Easy Way To Plan Your Funnel


Sales funnel diagramOne of the fastest ways to increase your income is to build a sales funnel and send people down it as fast as they are willing to go.

For this to work you have to realise it is much easier to sell products to your existing customers than it is to sell to someone new. The moment after buying one of your products, your customer is the most interested they are ever going to be in what you have to offer. Which means that then is the absolute best time to sell them something else. But how do you decide what to sell them next? How do you set about planning your funnel?

Your aim should be to help people achieve some kind of goal. Whatever niche you’re selling products in, it’s your job to help people further their abilities or solve their problems. Your funnel should be built with this process in mind. Each successive product helps them with the next step of their journey. You have to decide what stage your customer is at and create a product to help them get to the next stage. Then sell them the next step, and the next, and so on.

Your first product has to achieve two things. It has to meet their need to improve or solve a problem while convincing them you are an expert who can help them go further. When they buy this product they are in a buying mindset and people love to spend their money on things they want. Offer them an enhancement or upgrade. This should be designed to make things easier, better, faster and/or cheaper for them. As they progress down your funnel keep selling them something else that helps them further along on their journey.

For example, if you are in the podcasting niche you could offer a free report as a lead magnet. The free report would teach the basic steps in producing a podcast and getting it online. Next you could offer a course that teaches the steps laid out in the report in more detail. Follow that with another course that teaches the process for ranking podcasts higher in Google. Another product could teach how to script podcasts so they include tactics that result in higher conversions, enabling the podcaster to act as an affiliate for products or even sell their own. The next step would be a course that explains how to improve the quality of podcasts and have guests that would help spread the appeal and reach of the podcasts.

Thinking of your funnel as a progressive journey also helps you decide how to offer a downsell. For example you may offer information on getting online traffic via Adwords and Facebook ads. If a potential customer cannot afford both you could offer just one of the methods as a downsell. It would help them progress with the remainder of your funnel still relevant to them.

You can also use this approach to plan your email sequence content. After they purchase send them emails helping them use the product, then start promoting whatever follows the product they have just purchased.

So if you don’t already have a funnel in place get to work on a sheet of paper or a whiteboard and break down your customer’s journey from where they are now to where they want to be. Regard each step as an opportunity to create a product that helps them along their journey and your funnel will start to fall into place.


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