How to build a marketing funnel in 3 steps

If you have always wondered how to build a marketing funnel, here you will find a simple 3-step tutorial to do it in the quickest and most effective way.

What is funnel marketing

There is a lot of talk about funnels for selling one's products, but we often get caught up more in the hype of the strategy than in its actual effectiveness and difficulty of implementation.

Thus, funnel marketing refers to a sales strategy based on the path or step you take a visitor through a series of content designed specifically to make them take a certain action.

Funnels can be as simple as they are extremely complicated, and contrary to what many may think, they do not just involve building landing pages (specific pages on which to drive visitor traffic).

The following are also often brought up advertising campaigns, BOTs, live LIVE broadcasts on social media, email sequences, and more.

Some funnels are so complex that they can take weeks to set up and test, especially if several platforms are involved that must work synchronously with each other to exchange data and launch specific features.

Often, when platforms are not set up to talk to each other, applications such as Zapier To glue them to each other.

Before continuing, a glossary quick of the terms used in this tutorial:

• Generic landing page: it is a web page whose sole purpose is to get the visitor to take a specific action, such as leaving their e-mail or buying something. Thus, the concept of a landing page is simple although it requires proper study for it to become a successful landing page.
• Opt-in: is the action a visitor takes when they leave their e-mail on your landing page.
• CTA or CALL TO ACTION: is the call to action, i.e., a clear and explicit message inviting the user to take the action explained on the landing page, for example, the "REGISTER NOW" or "BUY ON SPECIAL OFFER" button.
• CTR or CLICK-THROUGH RATE: is the metric that measures the effectiveness, in percentage, of an ad campaign. It is obtained by dividing the (number of CLICKS / number of VIEWINGS of the ad) x 100. For example, if your ad was clicked 5 times and the ad viewed 100 times, the CRT = 5%.
• Conversions: the number or percentage of results obtained for a specific marketing action. For example, if 100 people signed up for your mailing list, you got 100 conversions. If 100 out of 1000 customers bought a product, you got 10% of conversions.
• Opt-in rate: Is the conversion rate of the OPTIN landing page. If your landing page is effective it means that OPTIN's rate is high.
• Lead: is the contact, the user who is no longer anonymous but has left his e-mail in our e-mail marketing system.

Let us now make a concrete example of funnel marketing, Simple but super easy to understand and apply, explained in 3 steps.

1. Step 1: Set up an advertising campaign to bring traffic (new people) to our pages.
2. Step 2: Create a front page, the one on which we will send web traffic, to capture the e-mail address by offering a bonus, a gift, useful content in return.
3. Step 3: Create a second page where we sell a low-cost product.

Funnel marketing: advertising campaign [step 1]

A Facebook user sees an ad promising something, perhaps a free ebook, and clicks on the ad.

This is the first important action to pay attention to: persuading a stranger to CLICK on an ad to get something to solve a problem or need they have.

Here there are three keys to success:

1. Identify the right audience. It may sound easy, but it really isn't, and shooting into the mix certainly doesn't help. You have to start with a logical investigation and ask yourself a few questions:
2. Who do I turn to?
3. What are these people looking for?
4. What problems do they have?
5. What do I have that can help them concretely?
6. What are their intentions regarding this issue?
7. Create a product to give as a gift that actually makes people gluttonous. I'll tell you more about this in a moment, but the concept is simple: if I give something away, it has to be truly useful. The idea of gifting is not enough to convince someone to enter our marketing funnel.
8. Writing the ad in a compelling way. By leveraging the needs and want of the audience we are targeting, we present an easy, quick and actionable solution to a specific part of on problem. We usually do several tests to figure out which content has the best conversion rate.

Also, do not overlook the landing page title, as it is the first thing the visitor will see, and its loading speed (no one likes to wait).

On AdEspresso blog you can find examples of effective advertising campaigns.

Funnel marketing: effective opt-in landing page [step 2]

As soon as the user clicks on the link in the advertisement, he or she is sent to a first page of OPTIN, which is a page that captures the contact.

They are offered to give up their e-mail in exchange for downloading a product or viewing restricted content.

A classic example is the ebook, a PDF file, which contains the solution to the problem that was promised in the announcement.

A whole world opens up here.

The bribe o lead magnet, i.e., the content as a gift, can also be as much else as attending a webinar, watching a video, enrolling in full online course (e.g., I offer this one) or free counseling.

The simplest and easiest case for anyone to make is definitely the PDF ebook.

Some quick tips on how and what to write in your ebook:

• Don't make the mistake of including so much content, 3 to 5 pages at most.
• Analyze, explain and solve a specific micro problem.
• If possible use a step, step, or progressive method.
• Use a catchy title that already contains the promise of results, e.g., "How to lose 3 kg in 6 days with these 5 tips"

Remember: people have come this far to get something to change their lives in some way, but certainly for the better.

Among the best examples of perfect landing pages is the home page of masterclass.com Is one of my favorites:

Funnel marketing: effective sales landing page [step 3]

As soon as our lead has confirmed his e-mail, he is transported to the second landing page, where this time we propose that he make a purchase. The best thing in these cases is a low-friction, i.e., low-cost, purchase that implements the free content he just downloaded.

Two things are important here:

1. It must be a value content that complements what it already has-not duplicates-and is consistent with the intentions that have led our lead to make this journey so far.
2. The cost must be low - what I call low-friction - because we are talking to a stranger who barely knows us and trust is not yet at the highest level. Usually something in the range of 7 to 10 euros is proposed.

If our landing page is effective we will have a conversion rate into sales good enough to cover the costs of the advertising campaign because, of course, we will never make a good profit selling small €7 products this way.

The usefulness of this type of funnel marketing is explained as follows:

• Daily advertising campaign cost: €10
• Campaign CTA conversion: 20 clicks = 20 visits to the opt-in landing page
• CTA conversion of opt-in landing page: 50% = 10 leads
• Sales landing page CTA conversion: 20% = 2 customers from €7 = €14

Summing up:

I spent €10, acquired 10 contacts in mailing list, made two sales for €14.

I recovered the advertising amount, made a small profit of €4.

In a nutshell, I have created an effective funnel marketing strategy that allows me to feed my mailing list at no cost.

Tip: that small profit margin (€4) reinvest it in advertising, you can then scale up, and you will have:

€14 budget = 28 clicks = 14 leads = about 3 sales

Funnel marketing: useful tools and platforms

A very quick note to point you to the best tools and platforms for working with your funnel. I suggest Kajabi as a solution ad interim thanks to which you have everything from e-mail marketing to landing pages, but you can always use different platforms and link them together.

Find a constantly updated list of the Best funnel marketing tools and to create landing pages effective, on this resource page.

UPDATE JUNE 2, 2020
I have posted a comprehensive tutorial on how your effective landing page, you can find it here in my blog.

In this article I analyze every aspect and feature your landing page should have to drive home the point, starting from the layout out of the page to the CTA, from the headline to the promised transformation.

Thanks to this tutorial you will understand what are the common - and winning - elements you will find in the best landing pages of the most popular online platforms or companies.

In the same article I examine the home page of Valerio.it, and I am sure that after you read it, you will understand many of the motivations that led me to make this particular stylistic choice.

Conclusions

Funnel marketing is certainly a strategy to pursue if you intend to systematically sell your products and automate your sales.

You must always keep in mind the pointers I have given you in this article because I have seen, over the years, too often make the same mistakes, namely to venture into mammoth work while neglecting quality and service toward our potential client.

The secret to a truly effective marketing funnel is in offering our visitor trust and solutions at hand from the outset, because no one buys anything a complete stranger or one who cannot demonstrate authority.