[PRIMER] Ascending the Sales Funnel

!IMPORTANT: You need to understand that there's basically a sliding scale of traffic from the coldest to the hottest. Every potential customer/lead is somewhere along that scale. And your job is to "warm them up" so they can ascend your sales funnel.

"Hang on, ascend my what??"

"Your sales funnel."

"Do I have one of those?"

"Yup, you do."

Your's may not look "exactly" the same as others, but most sales funnels follow the same general pattern...

..and you may not realise it but you've already seen lots of sales funnels.

Sales funnels are simple, and everyone doing business online for money or leads has some form of sales funnel.

You can think of a sales funnel as a series of steps each customer goes through...

Every customer starts at the bottom step, and moves up (ascends) your funnel one step at a time.

Your constant goal is to help your traffic ASCEND to the next step.

Think of anything you have ever bought online, you've gone through some sort of sales funnel.

A typical set of steps would be:

- 1. You consume some online content: maybe you saw an ad, or found something on Google search, or a friend shared a link with you).

This is usually the FIRST step. And almost always FREE.

- 2. You give your email for something: to download a case study, or a swipe file or cheat sheet, or to signup for a newsletter or register for webinar, or some other lead magnet.

This step has a price - your email. And you are now a Lead!

- 3. You buy something low cost: remember your first order on Amazon.com?

This costs money. Real dinhiero. And is the moment you become a Customer.

- 4. You buy something else: Amazon said "Hey, people who bought you item also but this... !!" (Same as in McDonalds when the cashier asks "Do you want fries with that?")

More money. This is often an upsell immediately after the last step.

- 5. You buy more!!: before you know it you have BOXES arriving from {insert name of your favorite online store}!!

More money. You are now a valued Repeat Customer.

So, when it comes to sales funnels, there are really just THREE things you need to remember:

At each step up the funnel the value and the price increase.
To ascend the next step, your traffic has to be HOT! (so you're always warming up your traffic at each step.)
This cycle repeats at each step up the funnel.

Thats it! Everything you need to know about the sales funnel.

KEY POINT: Traffic must be ready to ascend. You do this by systematically moving your traffic from WARM to HOT at each step up the funnel.

Traffic must be ready to ascend. Do this by moving your traffic from WARM to HOT at each step.

P.S. Depending on your role, your own funnel might finish early. Eg if you are an agency focused on getting leads for your clients, your funnel might complete with an email captured.

This post is part of a series of posts on using “in-page” Facebook Pixel actions and Buyer Intent behaviour to laser focus your remarketing to your MOST Engaged Traffic, and get more bang for your PPC buck. You can read the main post here.

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