A flat website can hardly sell a thing. Digital marketers need to use sales funnels to nurture their audiences and convince them to convert.
There are lots of different ways to do this, and it’s better to show than explain. Here are 10 examples that show how powerful sales funnels can help you capture leads, drive sales, and keep customers:
1. The Best Selling Book Funnel
The Best Selling Book Funnel is one of several core funnels developed for ClickFunnels, a powerful funnel building tool. These funnels have been used time and again by digital marketers in a wide variety of niches. They’re scientifically proven to improve conversions.
The Best Selling Book Funnel is a simple 3-page funnel to help marketers sell a premium product, such as an online course or membership access. In the first step of the funnel you offer a free ebook, all your audience has to do is pay a small fee for shipping:
Why give away an ebook for free but charge for the shipping? The free ebook is how you attract people into your funnel by offering value. And by asking people to pay a small shipping fee, you’re getting them to fill out their payment information.
This is super important, because once they hit “submit,” you can send them to another page that cross-sells your other products or services. Offer a special package deal specific to this funnel to try and convince them to convert. Since they’ve already filled out payment information to get the free ebook, the decision to buy boils down to the push of a button:
After they convert, you can send them on to your thank you page to up/cross-sell even more:
2. The Consultant Application Funnel
If you run an online consulting business, then this Consultant Application Funnel is a powerful tool you can use to get new clients.
It starts with a reverse squeeze page where you sell yourself and present the idea that you’re so busy and popular, you can only work with select pre-approved clients:
When visitors click through on your CTA, they’re taken to a page where they can apply for your consulting program. This is how you capture their contact information.
Then on your thank you page, you remind them to keep an eye on their email inbox for the next steps:
This funnel is really effective because your main focus is not trying to convince visitors why your consulting program is worth their money. Instead you create a sense of scarcity and eliteness about the opportunity, so your leads are happy to give up their contact information in order to learn more.
3. The Product Launch Funnel
Here’s a big rookie mistake in digital marketing:
Launch your product, and then start promoting it to your audience.
If you do this, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to build suspense. Educate your audience about your product and all its benefits before launching. Get them excited about the idea of finally using it so when your product finally does become available, your audience is practically throwing their payment info at you.
That’s what the Product Launch Funnel is designed to do. Here’s how it works:
You create a series of training videos designed to educate your audience about how to use your product. Create a landing page summarizing the value of your free training course, asking visitors to sign up:
Then the following pages of your funnel contain videos that teach people all about the new product before launch:
You can deliver this content slowly over time to build up hype and interest. Then once your leads have consumed all the video content, you can prompt them to purchase the product and convert!
4. The Cancellation Funnel
The Cancellation Funnel is a sales funnel for the back end of your marketing strategy. Someone is trying to cancel your service, get a refund, or return a product they’re unsatisfied with. Of course you should make it as easy as possible for customers to do this, but you should also make some efforts to prevent refund requests and minimize churn.
That’s what the Cancellation Funnel helps with. Oftentimes when people request a refund it’s because they don’t understand something about your product and service. This funnel presents them with a quick quiz to help you learn more about why they might want to cancel. Then the rest of the funnel helps you save the sale.
It starts with a simple question:
Then a follow up:
Then a relevant sales page:
The Cancellation Funnel format helps you learn more about why your customers might want to cancel. At the same time, it helps illustrate to your audience that your product actually is what they are looking for.
5. The Perfect Webinar Funnel
The Perfect Webinar Funnel is great for businesses that sell services or high-dollar products. In order to use this funnel, you’ll of course need to schedule and host a webinar. But just like with a product launch, you want to promote the webinar in advance to build interest and get signups. The first step is to attract traffic to your registration page. Offer secret hints about what they can learn by signing up for the webinar:
Once you’ve gotten your leads to register, your next task is to create more excitement about the webinar so they show up. Do this by promoting relevant video content on your thank you page:
Next you’ll send out a series of emails in the days before the event designed to remind your audience and keep them interested. These will direct them to more landing pages with exclusive video content:
Getting people to sign up for your webinar is actually the easy part. Keeping them interested so they show up takes a targeted sales funnel. And of course once they attend your webinar, you can start hard promotion of your product.
6. The Invisible Funnel
The Invisible Funnel is an amazing strategy to encourage leads to purchase digital content. It works because in the beginning, you essentially give away value for free. Customers only pay for the content if they liked it.
Say you have a webinar, video course, or other type of digital content. The first page of your funnel allows visitors to sign up for it without paying anything:
They do need to enter their payment information. But you won’t charge them until after they consume the content. On the next page you share some video content promoting another feature/product they can add to their order:
This is an opportunity to increase the value of their order, still without charging them anything. Then the last page of the funnel is the thank you page. Here you can also suggest more products your audience might like:
This funnel doesn’t charge any money to your audience, it just collects their credit card information and gives them access to the content. If the consumer liked your free content then they’re told to do nothing, and their card will automatically be billed after 2 days. If they didn’t like the content, they can contact you and won’t be billed at all.
A few people will ask not to be charged no matter how great your content is. But most will simply allow the charge to go through knowing they’ve just consumed a valuable product. It’s the principle of the idea that you won’t charge them anything in the beginning that encourages much more people to sign up and convert.
7. The Fishbowl Funnel
The Fishbowl Funnel is a classic lead generation funnel that can work for just about any kind of business. The name comes from the fishbowl sweepstakes you see at reception desks. Just put in your business card and enter to win a prize.
With the digital version, people offer up their name and email to enter to win:
After getting their contact information, you direct visitors to a new page promoting a special deal on your product/service:
The special discount is only available within this funnel, so it encourages your audience to act now and convert. And even if they don’t convert now, you can still market to them through email down the road.
8. The Physical Product “Real Stuff” Funnel
The Physical Product Funnel is designed for businesses selling products that need to be shipped to people. It’s based on the idea that the best way to maximize the value of your ecommerce customers is through upselling — promoting related products to your audience after they decide to buy.
With this sales funnel, you start by attracting your audience with a free (or seriously discounted) product. Here’s the landing page template:
It includes a countdown timer to instill a sense of urgency in your audience to act now!
Even if you’re giving away this product for free, your audience needs to pay for shipping and handling. This requires them to fill out their payment information on the next page:
On the next page you show them another promotional offer. This is the upsell:
Upsell a product that relates to the initial product in your funnel. Since your lead has already filled out their payment information to get the free product, all they have to do to buy the upsell product is click a button. Like the Best Selling Book funnel, this funnel eliminates barriers to purchase and encourages people to make an impulse buy when presented with extra value.
9. The Network Marketing Bridge Funnel
The Network Marketing Bridge Funnel is a great funnel choice for affiliate marketers or any business that wants to capture leads’ contact information and nurture them into long-term customers.
Say you’re an affiliate marketer recommending a new product to your audience. You could just provide your trackable link, sending people on to your affiliate site to convert. Or you could send them to a lead capture page first so you can continue to market to them through email down the road.
You do this by first presenting them with a lead magnet — a free resource they get in exchange for their contact information:
Next they’re taken to a bridge page where they can collect and consume the content they signed up for. Here you’ll also have a call-to-action asking them to sign up for your affiliate product:
They can then click through and convert. And even if they don’t, you already have their contact information so you can continue to nurture them through email.
10. The Multi-Step Tripwire Funnel
The Multi-Step Tripwire Funnel takes on the same free + shipping lead capture model used in some of the other funnels mentioned in this post. This funnel is just a little more complex and offers more opportunities for your leads to convert into paying customers.
You start by offering an irresistible low-ticket item. Something of value that you offer for free or extremely cheap:
After you capture their shipping and billing information, on the next page you show a one-time special offer:
This is an upsell opportunity to get your leads to buy something they didn’t originally plan on when entering your funnel. Since you already have their payment information, it’s easy for them to make a quick choice to buy.
If your lead clicks “No thanks” then they’ll be directed to your downsell page. Here you offer the same product at a 20% discount:
Now they know they can never get this same product at this price any other way. They either have to convert now or miss the opportunity altogether.
Whether they choose to purchase or not, they’ll next be sent to your offer wall page. This is a thank you page summarizing their order and confirming that it’s being processed.
Even if your lead passes up on your upsell and downsell offers, the offer wall page will suggest other products they might like as well.
If there’s a way to convince your leads to convert, the multi-step tripwire funnel will help you take advantage of it.
Wrapping Up
All the examples in this post come from ClickFunnels, a powerful tool to help you build, manage, and optimize your own sales funnels. It doesn’t matter your business niche or what kind of product/service you’re selling, there’s always a sales funnel out there that can help you grow your online business. Check out the ClickFunnels Marketplace to see the wide variety of funnel options available for yourself.