Effective Sales Funnels Do A Good Job Pre-Qualifying And Filtering Their Traffic
You probably have seen sales funnels before. You probably have gone through a sales funnel, and didn’t even know it. The truth is effective sales funnels work in an undercover way. They don’t look like sales funnels.
It doesn’t seem like they behave like sales funnels, but believe me, once you whip out your credit card, and enter your credit card information into an online form and make a purchase, you have just been through an effective one.
That’s how awesome sales funnels are. If they were well-put together, they can help you make money from online traffic. The best part is your customers don’t mind. In fact, they would eagerly hand you their money because they can see as they go through your sales funnel, but you are delivering the value that they came for.
Please understand that if you put your marketing materials in front of the right eyeballs, people would be eager to do business with you. How come? They are looking for a solution to their problems. You make it obvious that you have that solution, and that your solution compares so much better than all the other options on the market.
Since they can see the superiority of your offer, they make the move. It’s a win-win situation. They get to solve their issue, you get to make money. What’s not to love? That really is the essence of effective sales funnels.
But you and I know that it isn’t that simple. It’s not simple precisely because a lot of marketers do not pre-qualify their traffic. You have to understand that just because somebody is somewhat, somehow interested in what you have to say, doesn’t necessarily mean that that person is ready, willing, and eager to buy right here, right now.
You have to filter people
If a person is thinking of maybe buying next year, then that person has to be filtered by your system. You can’t let that person go all the way to the sales page because they’re not going to do you any favors. They’re just going to bounce out. You wasted all that time, effort, and energy creating this system attracting the wrong eyeballs.
An effective sales funnel pre-qualifies people early on. Either they’re interested in your product category, or they’re not. Either they’re interested in a particular line of solutions, or they’re not. Either they’re interested in a particular product, or they’re not. Either they’re interested in buying that particular product from you, or they’re not.
Those are the steps in an effective sales funnel, and these messages have to be strung together the right way. Otherwise, a lot is going to get lost in translation. Also, a lot is going to fall between the cracks. What makes effective sales funnels effective is precisely because they have been optimized over an extended period of time.
This is where a lot of marketers fail. They think that they just need to slap together a nice-looking sales funnel and call it a day. No, that’s actually just the beginning of your journey. So do yourself a big favor.
Be Transparent
People hate getting tricked. When was the last time somebody pulled a bait-and-switch trick on you? It didn’t feel good right? It wasn’t exactly a happy experience. And the more these tricks are pulled, the more jaded consumers become.
They are always thinking to themselves, “Well, that’s too good to be true. What is that other person getting out of it? How come this seems so smooth and quick?” These are natural questions to ask, because if you’ve been tricked, defrauded, scammed, or otherwise mistreated by online sales pages in the past, you too would develop this kind of attitude.
It is an all too human and all-natural response. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” This is why it is imperative for any responsible marketer who is truly interested in becoming successful, to be as transparent, sincere and authentic as possible.
Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of sales funnels on the internet. In fact, a lot of people would say that I’ve seen too much. And I can guarantee you that a lot of the failing sales funnels have one thing in common. They produce an incomplete picture.
This doesn’t mean that you cannot position your product so it looks superior even to a product that is known as the category killer in your industry. This doesn’t mean that you can’t position the product that you’re selling in such a way that it is under the best light possible. That’s different from misrepresentation or lying.
Be Clear
An effective sales funnel must provide a clear picture, and it has to be complete. So you can’t just show your product in a way where the only thing people could see is one dimension of the product. Because once people buy your stuff, and they can see that they actually got taken in because they didn’t see all the other dimensions of your product, how do you think they would feel?
Let’s put it this way, how would you feel if somebody did that to you? So what’s important here is to give the control back to the consumer. When they see a complete picture of the product, and I’m talking about descriptions and reviews that basically point to all the dimensions of the product, both good and bad, they can see that you are a straight shooter. They can see that you are not hiding the ball.
This way, you give them the control, because now, they can still choose your product because they have all these information. Of course, there’s got to be a lot of positioning here. You can’t just say, “Well I have this computer, and it’s kind of in the slow side, here, please buy it for me.” That’s pathetic.
Provide Value
People won’t buy from you because you just said it’s slow. You just have to lay out the numbers, and you have to let them connect the dots. Of course, you can’t do this passively because you also have to position the computer that your selling based on its strength.
Maybe the computer has one of the best screens on the market. Highlight that, then just say that this is the speed. Now if they did the research, they would know that speed is kind of on the middle of the road or on the slow end, but that’s on them, you did your part. You share the information, you’re not hiding the ball.
Compare this with somebody who’s basically saying that this is the best screen, and that’s all that person said. He didn’t mention the speed. He didn’t mention all the other elements of the computer. That’s going to lead to higher refunds, and a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction.
So do yourself a big favor, set up an effective sales funnel that maximizes transparency, sincerity, and authenticity.
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