If you've ever visited an IKEA (or even your local grocery store), then you've experienced what's called a “sales funnel.” Basically, a sales funnel is a carefully-controlled environment that's designed to encourage you to fill your shopping cart.
Think about IKEA: you are literally “funneled” through an entire showroom BEFORE you reach the warehouse to pick up your items, thereby exposing you to significantly more products than you were interested in.
Even your local grocery store is carefully crafted to provide more opportunities to make you want more items. Milk, cheese, eggs, and meat are spread out around the perimeter so you have to circumnavigate the entire store to buy the most common staples.
Not to mention how the checkout aisle provides ample last-minute temptations to maximize your checkout value! It's an awful clever trick on their part, but here's the good news... Your business can benefit immensely from such sales funnels too! In fact, they can become the major driver of your marketing efforts online.
The Cornerstone of Attraction Marketing
A sales funnel is THE cornerstone of any attraction marketing system. It’s a step-by-step process that guides a cold market prospect from perfect stranger, to customer, and eventually, to an advocate of your business.
For example, as you walk down the street, you see a guitar in a music shop window.
You happen to be a guitar enthusiast.
You say to yourself, “Oh, interesting.”
And then you walk through the door.
As you enter the store, someone greets you by saying, “Hi, welcome to our store. Can I help you?”
You answer, “Yes, I'm looking to get a guitar. That one in the window caught my eye.”
The person asks you a few questions...
“What do you like to play?”
“What kind of music do you like?”
“How much experience do you have?”
After you answer those questions, the conversation shifts.
The person says, “Well, you know, that guitar is awesome, but for where you're at right now, I'd recommend this guitar over here.”
Eventually, you walk out of that store with a guitar.
And lo and behold, you had such a great experience you tell your friends about your experience! Now you’re an advocate.
And that, right there, is a funnel.
You went through a series of steps that transformed you from someone who wasn't even thinking about buying a guitar into someone who spent hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on a guitar – all in a matter of minutes!
And if you really got value out of the education, recommendations, and experience provided by said store, you'll likely refer all of your guitar-loving friends to that shop, right?
So, to recap what just happened in this particular funnel…
- You were walking down the street.
- Something caught your eye – the guitar in the window. Online, an ad or post on social media that catches your eye works just the same.
- You're interested and walk into the store. Online, when you click on an ad or post – it’s just like walking into the store.
- The minute you walk into the store (or click on an ad), somebody greets you and starts asking questions.
With an online funnel, we make an assumption about what interests you, we give you information, and we provide value—just like the person in the music store.
Adding Value is Critical to the Sales Funnel Process
Here's what I don't want you to miss from this example. Adding value during the sales process is a critical part of an effective funnel.
When that salesperson in the store asks questions, they're asking to make you feel understood, to educate you, and to make sure they serve you in the best way possible.
An online funnel does exactly that. You start by making a few assumptions about what interests the person visiting your site or clicking on your ad. Then you share value and educate them. And if the prospect feels good about the interaction, you'll make a sale.
Ultimately, if they got REAL value out of doing business with you, they’ll recommend you, and go on to spread the word increasing your internet marketing.
Pretty straightforward, right?
A sales funnel is a process that transforms people from strangers, to customers, to advocates. An online funnel starts by offering your visitor something of value in exchange for their contact information.
At this point, you know they're interested in what you have because they’ve given you their information. That makes them a lead. Providing value to that lead warms them up. And once they’re warmed up, they become a prospect.
You’ll share value until you propose an offer. And once they accept your offer, they become a customer. This process can take as little as a few minutes or as long as hours, days, weeks, or even months.
Let Prospects Move at Their Own Pace
The power of funnels are they allow your prospects to move at their own pace. Your job is to keep providing value and keep following up until they become a customer.
But that's not where the funnel ends.
If you want to be really effective – especially in network marketing – your goal is to turn that customer into a recurring customer. There are several ways to do that.
- Offer discounts for continuing to buy from you (like a loyalty program)
- Continue to educate and provide value to them
- Provide such quality service and appreciation that they wouldn’t even think of buying anywhere else
Once they become a recurring customer, they become an advocate—referring business to you because they believe so strongly in what you're doing.
That's what an effective sales funnel does. It works from the front end all the way through the back end – even after they become a customer.
In network marketing, using the principles of attraction marketing, the funnel process works like this…
It starts with a visitor.
The visitor becomes a lead when they submit their information – on a website, a web form of some kind, or some type of capture mechanism – because they're interested in learning about something, but they're not necessarily ready to buy.
At this point, hold your horses; don’t get too excited. They're not ready to join you…yet.
You give them some value and they get warmed up. They become a prospect only when they raise their hand and say, “Hey, I'm actually pretty serious about doing this, I want to learn some more.”
Visitor, lead, prospect.
You share some information – you direct them to a video or they hop on a webinar, or they are added to your Facebook group to get more specific information. Now they're ready to become a team member.
But that’s not where it ends.
If you want to build a massive organization of people who are raging fans of you, your product, and your company… then, that’s certainly not where it ends!
You're just getting started.
Where Network Marketers Mess Up
A lot of network marketers mess up because they stop there. Many network marketers think just recruiting is enough. That's inaccurate. Recruiting is never enough when marketing on the internet.
What should happen is a process to enroll that team member, so that they are educated enough, and given so much value, they think, “Wow, this is really cool. These people really care about me. Not only that, they're giving me a process and a system so I can become effective at building my business.”
Your funnel now turns that new team member into a fellow business-builder. Now they're actively doing something to build their business. Now they're generating prospects and customers on their own.
But that's still not where the funnel ends, either.
Creating New Leaders By Investing in People
Your funnel now turns that builder into a LEADER, as you continue to provide value and teach them how to build. So now, you educate them about how they can be effective at helping others accomplish what they've just accomplished.
Now they’re also helping OTHERS lead people from the visitor phase to the builder phase. And that's key, because only when you're capable of leading other people and walking them through the process from visitor to builders and all the steps in between, do YOU become a leader.
Investing in people on a leadership level is a higher-level skillset you want to learn.
Building a funnel using the technologies we recommend allows you to not only recruit a lot of people into your business, but it also leads people past the point where they've taken out their wallet and bought.
In network marketing terms, our system helps you turn team members into builders, and eventually into leaders themselves – so that you create true leverage and duplication in your organization.
With the attraction marketing techniques we teach, you can create a perpetual internet marketing machine bringing in recruits and making sales automatically.
You want to create leaders in your organization so you can step away and enjoy true passive income. You know, when you're making money while you sleep.
Marketing with Social Media Behaves Like a Funnel
Social media, if you're using it properly, also behaves like a funnel.
Think about this…
- You publish valuable content.
- Someone likes or starts following you.
- Thus, they've qualified themselves as leads.
- As you publish more valuable information, your followers will engage with your content.
- They feel they know you.
- They begin to trust you.
- They probably even genuinely like you at this point.
And at some point, you will make an offer by providing a link to something to purchase. Your followers will take action because you’ve built so much trust. You have a relationship, a rapport now.
And you'll obviously deliver on what you offered.
In traditional website-based funnels, people transform from visitor to lead where they share their contact information with you. On social media, they transform into leads simply by following you.
And even though you don't own the social media channel, treat it like a funnel. Because that social media funnel might be what leads people into your attraction marketing funnel.
You can also use your Facebook groups as a funnel. Move people from stranger to prospect, and then add them into your group to share more information with them. That might turn those prospects into customers... team members... or even builders and leaders.
Regardless of the technology you're using, we help you leverage both your own social media funnels and the attraction marketing funnels we've created to build your network marketing business.
And you can build your funnel conventionally, by posting on social media, directing visitors to your website, and following the visitor, lead, prospect, customer funnel…ultimately ending when they become a recurring customer and advocate.
Or, you can use your funnel to create team members, builders, and leaders. So whether you're building up your retail base or building your team, you're covered.
The power of the funnels taught in Elite Marketing Pro is vast. Fortunately, we have the tools to shorten the learning process and speed up your learning curve a heck of a lot faster.
So if you'd like to discover exactly how we can help you elevate your digital networking game on social media, then I highly recommend you sign up for my FREE Online Recruiting Bootcamp.
It's a video course where you walk through how to build your business using the latest technology—where prospects come to you on a daily basis—already interested in what you've got!
You can take advantage of these methods starting today—no matter how much online prospecting and recruiting experience you have currently.
This is, by far, the most efficient (and fun!) way to build your business today.
These online attraction marketing methods continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in network marketing.
So if you’re ready to get started, simply click here and I’ll gladly give you access to the 10 Day Online Recruiting Bootcamp.