Tuesday 28 May 2013

Why You Need A Sales Funnel For Your Online Business

By James Kupe


You've probably spent a lot of time and/or money building your website and sales pages, and generating visitor traffic to your site. Sales might be coming in and you feel like you're doing OK. The thing is, you may still feel like you might be leaving money on the table. And you'd be right. One of the most important things you should be doing is building a list of the people who visit your site, so you can start to have a conversation with them.

The fastest and easiest way to sell anything is to ask a group of people what they want, and then sell it to them. If you don't have a list of prospects you can get in touch with to ask them, you can't do that. That's the reason taking the time to build a list is one of the most profitable strategies you can use.

On web pages you have visited, you've most likely seen an area on the site where you can get a free gift or tips for signing up to a mailing list. This list is the start of that website's sales funnel. You can also start to gather the contact information of those who are interested in your business onto an email list, and then convert them into buyers.

This process is called a 'sales funnel' because it lets you take a large group of random website visitors, and sort them into prospects, customers, and ultimately repeat customers. You'll find you have a lot less repeat customers than prospects, but that's to be expected. The goal of the funnel is to automate this sorting process for you, so you don't have to try to do it manually, or worse still, not at all.

There are three common mistakes online business owners generally make with their mailing lists.

Mistake #1: Only messaging clients when there is a product or service to sell. Clients will immediately unsubscribe if all you are doing is trying to sell them something.

Mistake #2: Advertising another company often. You may have heard of solo ads, which is the act of having someone with a huge mailing list advertise a service. Try to avoid advertising someone else's business, as clients generally view this as a waste of an email.

Mistake #3: Not responding to subscribers. If a person has a question about your product or wants more information on the tips you provided them, you should answer back as soon as possible. If you signed up to a mailing list, asked a question, and never got a response back then you would probably do what most people would do, unsubscribe and never purchase of that company again.

Building a sales funnel can take time and effort to set up, but it will certainly pay for itself by increasing your sales. To get started, create and give away a free PDF report explaining how you can help your readers solve a problem they are having. Then offer to do it for them at a special subscriber-only price or rate so they don't have to go through the bother of doing it themselves.

A free product trial, how-to video training, discount coupons, free reports, helpful tips, and surveys that ask what your reader's what their needs are can always be great content to send by email. Staying in touch like this will show your readers that you are thinking about them, and make them more likely to buy from you when you make them an offer in the future.




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