How to Build an Easy & Profitable Sales Funnel for Your Blog

Blogging is a long journey. And each one of us aim to make six figure passive income from our blog.

We try adsense, affiliate, service, ebooks and what not – to make that “make money in bed” dream into a reality. Where exactly this sales funnel fit in? It certainly looks heavy, technical and too complicated as we hear.

Sales funnel makes this whole journey easier, faster and put everything into an automated system.

What Exactly is a Sales Funnel?

In simplest words, Sales funnel is a buying process where the prospect goes through a series of well-planned actions such as give-aways, videos etc. in order to get to the final conversion or sell.

Do bloggers really need a sales funnel?

Isn’t sales funnel a business thing?
Who said blogging isn’t a business?

Everyone who wants to make money, needs a sales funnel.

• A simple and good sales funnel makes selling and upselling easy for the seller as well as buyer.
• It makes the buying more convincing for the prospect.
• It helps you retain the buyers.
• It makes readers keep coming to your blog

One marketing survey revealed that a whopping 79% of marketing leads are never converted into sales because the leads never go through the complete buying and conversion process of sales funnel.

How to make a simple sales funnel for a blog?

[Note: This sales funnel works equally great for any business, brand, an organization with minor or no tweaks at all]

Stages of a perfect yet simple sales funnel

Step 1 – Awareness & Attention Stage

Lead Generation – Drive visitors to the blog/landing page

This step involves marketing your blog and advertising your content using social media, guest blogging or influencer marketing. There are over 15 ways to drive traffic to your blog. The awareness step gets the attention of your targeted audience and lead them to the second step of your blog sales funnel.

Tips to master awareness stage in sales funnel

1. Make sure you write a powerful and simple copy that gives people a reason to click and know more
2. Use unusually catchy and beautiful visuals
3. Experiment with using adjectives, stats, numbers, and outcomes in the description.

A sales funnel is required after your advertising campaigns because getting traffic to your website or landing page isn’t enough. 96% of the first time visitors are not ready to buy anything yet.

Step 2 – Education & Trust Building Stage

Turn the Lead into Prospect with a Lead Magnet

This step involves an irresistible giveaway or an offer or a tangible product ready for your interested leads. These people liked your content and now mentally ready to subscribe if your give-away is equally powerful.

Great lead magnets ideas

• eBooks
• Free checklists and useful guides and pdfs
• Free tools
• Free session/one-to-one consult
• Free access to a premium group or community for certain duration
• Free email or video course

I receive tons of subscribers from this quiz about blogging readiness which skips step 1 and drives people directly to my email newsletter.

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Tips to create a great lead magnet

Build the giveaway around a popular and in-demand subject/need
Make it easy to access and use
Ensure to highlight all great things your give-away has on subscription pitch
Test a well-designed subscription box
Ask for minimum details. Best is to ask for only email. Second best is email and name only.
Place the lead magnet at prominent places on your blog such as top of sidebar, in-between the blogpost content, end of the blog post, as a Hello bar, Exit pop-up, Entry pop-up (ensure pop-up after 8 seconds of user’s arrival)
Test contrasting colors and minimal text

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Some of the examples of the good lead magnets

Find 17 more best examples of lead magnets at this post by OutGrow

Step 3 – Commitment Stage

Send Value-rich eMail Newsletters – Send Low Priced Offerings or Recommendations

This stage involves building trust, credibility and a relationship with your subscribers and audience over time so they start feeling committed to your blog for its outstanding value. For a blog, this stage keeps giving you a regular income if you’re sending useful content on emails along with affiliate recommendations.

If you’re a service provider or an organization, you can offer a low-priced service. Anything under $10 sells like charm.

See how Ted McGrath sends useful email people can use.

 

Trust building stage in sales funnel is crucial for increased revenues because nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.

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Tips to master trust-building stage in sales funnel

Try to sell an offering under $10 or any recommendations under $25
Send regular emails consistently. You can choose to send once a week, twice a month or twice a week. If you choose to send daily emails, make sure these have outstanding content people can practically use.
Avoid designer flashy emails. Text-only emails perform 65% better than emails that contain graphics and several links.
Think about creating 30 emails set that you can automate. It will save your time and effort.

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Step 4 – Conversion & Referral Stage

High-end Conversion – Referral Game Begins

This is the stage where you have developed some rapport with your subscribers or followers. It is the time to show your highest-value-high-price offering or premium recommendations.

This stage has created a set of people who will even bring more subscribers, readers and half-converted audience to your blog or brand because they trust you now.

See how CiCi sends email offering her reasonably priced offers along with amazingly practical free tips along. Her emails not only have offer and free tips but also a promising outcome to assure the readers about results.

 

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Tips to master Referral Stage in sales Funnel

Keep sending free gifts to your best referral partners
Surprise them by featuring on your active social networks and blogposts
Invite them to your webinars and podcasts as guests
Make sure that your emails or social media content is truly solving your audience’s problem. because when people come via referrals, they already have high expectations. Make sure you live up to their expectations with your content.

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Sales Funnel Templates for Bloggers

Template 1

Preparation:
Select 2 best and closely related blogposts and one free or low priced offer

Advertise 1st Best Blogpost to a targeted audience on your chosen social media network
Advertise 2nd best blogpost to the audience who views or clicked on the 1st post
Advertise your offer/giveaway to your filtered audience that clicked on both blogposts
Send automated emails
Send recommendations

Template 2

Preparation:
Record 2 best and closely related short videos and one free or low priced offer

Advertise 1st Best video to a targeted audience on your chosen social media network
Advertise 2nd best video to the audience who viewed at least 25% of the 1st video
Advertise your offer/giveaway to your filtered audience that viewed 25% of the 2nd video
Send automated emails
Send recommendations

Note: Template 2 works well for coaches, consultants and solo entrepreneurs with blogs

Template 3

Preparation:
Record a great video and select one related outstanding blogposts and prepare one free give away or low-priced offer

Advertise 1st Best Blogpost to a targeted audience on your chosen social media network
Advertise the video along with the offer or give-away to the audience who clicked on the 1st post
Send automated emails
Send recommendations

Build your blog sales funnel today

Now that you know how to create an easy sales funnel for your blog, what you need to build this blog sales funnel and how to potential buyers into the funnel, it is the time you create yours.

A simple sales funnel takes 2 blogposts, 2 videos, minimum 5 email newsletters, a brilliant giveaway and a low to medium priced offering.

If you get this ready within 30 days, you can get ready to make a decent regular income every month with a blog or a website landing page.

The cost of creating a sales funnel is zero if you’re doing it yourself. It costs your time and effort.

You can choose to hire a writer and outsource most of the work that may cost you a maximum $200 as a one-off cost. You can use Fiverr, Upwork etc. to find right people.

Once you get started, you can automate the entire process.

All the best for your sales funnel. Remember, am here to answer any questions you may have. Just shoot in comments.