Strategic Insight: How to Build an Online Sales Funnel

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the off systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis 0:33
Welcome to another episode of The all systems go podcast where we invite startup founders and digital marketers alike to discuss strategies and software to build automated marketing and sales systems at scale. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder of automation bridge. And in this episode, I want to walk through the one of the most basic things the most rudimentary skills that every digital marketer should have to build. And that’s a sales funnel. And we hear the term thrown out there a lot. I call it a profit pathway for the reason that it’s truly what it is a pathway to profit. And when you start to use the word funnel, you know, depending on what circles you you frequent, it could be cheapened. And the value of this should not, it is, again, foundational and fundamental to all your digital marketing efforts. And it’s the gateway is the gateway to automation, it actually precedes marketing automation, while leveraging it. And I say that because every business should start every business just start with a fundamental path of becoming profitable online, if you want to call it a sales funnel, call it that, I’ll use the word sales funnel, just so you all know what I’m talking about. But my my rhetoric, the the language, the jargon that that I use internally, when I’m training, my courses are named after this is the profit pathway. And when I say it precedes marketing, automation, marketing automation is a subset of digital marketing, all automation specialist marketing automation specialists. And if you’re an automation service provider, certified automation service provider, you’ve all started at Digital Marketing. That’s just strategic. It’s how do I how do I generate, capture, nurture, and close leads, technology doesn’t necessarily have to be involved in that process. It doesn’t, you can do all of what I just said, without technology. However, when you implement technology, when you when you take that marketing strategy, and use technology to execute it, it becomes a sales funnel. That’s That’s what I mean by it pre seeds, marketing automation, but it also leverages automation. But the good thing is, it’s like a very, you know, it’s a basic form of automation, so that you can start to experience both digital marketing and automation at the same time and build upon it. That’s his that’s what makes it foundational. All right, what makes it fundamental is that it’s present in every single company, you who are listening that say, Hey, I’ve never built a sales funnel, my business needs one of those, you have one, it just may not be pretty. But there’s no business that exists without a means of taking somebody who knows nothing about their business to customer. Whether it’s referral, that’s your profit pathway is people spread the word and when they call you, you spend time to close, whatever the case is. But what I want to do on this podcast is give you the three components that every path profit pathway consists of. That’s what I’ll cover today, so that you can start to be intentional with what you’re implementing in your business. Again, you have to have one of these if you plan on doing any form of profit generating efforts online, you’re going to need a profit pathway aka sales funnel. Alright, so before before I get into those three components and really break them down. I want to reflect back to a previous episode this is all systems go episode number 10. And that’s where I discussed the marketing layer. And my students are extremely familiar this was kind of new talk new teaching. My students now are really familiar we’ve we’ve expanded the marketing layer beyond the the use case in that episode, but I want you to go and listen to that episode. If you haven’t episode number 10. And what the marketing layer is essentially a separate website. It’s often a sub domain and is responsible for hosting your, your all of your marketing assets, such as the ones that I’ll be discussing today. Okay. And the intention is to isolate it from your website. Some people get nervous, they’re like, Oh, another website, I put it all on my website, let me tell you the amount of websites that are breaking daily, this number has to be rising. And it’s not because people don’t know what they’re doing. It’s just the nature of web development. Sometimes you need to make a update on your website, and you need to put a coming soon page up, right, sometimes there’s just things that are happening on the main site. And my disposition is, you just can’t afford for your marketing to ever go down. And if it’s on a separate subdomain, though you it allows you to update your website and still generate leads and close and XYZ. Alright, so go listen to that episode, episode number 10. If this is new to you, you’re like, Whoa, what is that? It details it all. Okay, but I am very intentional with isolating marketing and isolating your your website. Alright, so if you want to follow along, while listening, if you actually want to pause and do it or you know, you’re assessing your own work right now you maybe you’re sitting in front of the your computer, while you’re listening to this, I highly recommend was starting with that episode first, if you haven’t, if you haven’t listened to it. Alright, so let’s jump right into it. Um, what are the three components? What makes up a profit pathway, aka sales funnel? What are those, those those components that you need to be aware of? And how do you build them. So the first component is capture, alright, and capture is the process of generating traffic, and grabbing their information capturing their information. And let me say this, there’s an entire course on how to build this out that I’ve created. It comes with templates and all, I’ll tell you about it later. But I want to preface it by saying how I’m explaining it to you the order of these components is not the order that you implement. The order that you implement is actually in the program. And it’s, it’s the reason why we go in a specific order. So if you’ve already been in that program, or if you know, you’re one of my students listening to this, you’re like, Wait, you’re starting with Capture, Chris, whoa, you know, for education for public educational purposes. Okay, I’m starting at the beginning and going through all of all of the people who are familiar with my training and teaching know that we build it totally different we but we build it opposite to this. So anyways, capture is traffic, generating traffic and capturing that traffic now, this is where landing pages come in play. Alright, so for these three components, I want to talk about what they’re made of in the technological requirements for it. So you’re going to need a landing page. Traffic could be anything traffic could be you sending people to the page in person you posting on social media, paid advertising, whatever the case is, the the most important piece is that you have a landing page. And if you haven’t, if you haven’t gone through, if landing page, let me put it like this if landing pages are a bit overwhelming to you. And it’s just like, is that just a regular page, really quick landing pages are single page websites, single page websites dedicated to collecting leads, or or let me say, dedicated for a specific purpose. Okay, and one purpose only, once that purpose has been satisfied. Once that purpose has been satisfied, then the page has no use. Okay. And if you want more insight, you can go listen to all systems go episode number 11, I believe that talks about the state of landing page software and I go through all of the considerations that you should make, that you should be aware of when choosing when selecting landing page software. And when I say a single use, and then it’s no good. This is what I mean, you have an e book, you want to get the e book in people’s hands, you put it on a landing page, when they land on that page, the only thing that they can focus on is the e book. That’s it, there’s nothing else, once they grab the e book, they have no use for that page again. That’s it, it just serves one purpose. You don’t want people to continually visited it actually doing that in the opting in takes takes down your conversion rate. So this landing page is critical because it’s presenting a derivative of your offer to somebody and it’s saying if you like this offer, if this offer resonates with you, then you’re going to like the product that I have. Okay. That’s that’s the premise. That’s the thinking. That’s the

Chris Davis 10:00
That’s the logic behind it. I’ve got a whole teaching around this called the sliced bread system. Okay, again, the for people in the pay community, you have access to that if you want to get access to that, and all of my other resources, the link will be provided at the end of the end of this podcast. But the important piece is on this landing page, you have your offer, doesn’t have to be an ebook. It could be your time, you could give away a consultation. It could be a quiz, it could be a cheat sheet, it could be a, it could be really a lot of things. But the most important piece is that you’re collecting information, what information do you want to collect that a minimum email? What information will be nice name? What information will be next level for your digital marketing, a qualifier? Some question that you can ask to differentiate their path in the beginning and really personalize your marketing. Alright, so that’s your landing page, the page that they see after they opt in, by the way, do not ever in your life, you hear me ever, if this is for generating leads, especially paid traffic, oh, my goodness, don’t ever just put a message saying, Hey, we got information received, check your email, always send them to a page, we call these a thank you page. The Thank You page is another form of a landing page. Because the only purpose it has is to say thank you. That’s it, once you thank them, they don’t need to come back visiting this page again. It’s also an opportunity for optimization and getting people to get to your product quicker. But I don’t I don’t want to belabor that point. I want to stay on these three components. All right. So you’ve got traffic going to a landing page, once you capture their information. Why did I say the most critical is the email? Because that now gives you a means of following up. Now this is the basic everybody. Some of you are in industries, real estate, a real estate market, or crypto or something else, where you don’t necessarily rely on email as much as texting, right? Hey, look, guys, here’s the here’s the link to join our Discord group. Right? You want to text that tune, because you know your people on the move, they can click that link, they already have discord or whatever application you’re using, because that’s what that industry uses. Click a link and now they’re right in it. They’re on their phone. And they’re they’ve they’ve connected somehow, well, however, you got to set up real estate folks, you you all love text, as a person looking to buy real estate or sell my house at times, yes, it’s much easier to text me than email me. So I’m saying email for the sake of foundational, over 90% of businesses are still going to rely on email in some capacity and is probably even higher, I just made that number up. It’s probably higher than 90%. Okay, so you have to have the basics, and then you build upon it, SMS, or messenger and all of that. But the reason we collect the email is so that we can follow up with them.

Chris Davis 12:53
Why am I following up because I don’t want to assume the sale, that that gets you in trouble. I know that there’s a lot of sales teaching out there that says assume the sale talk to your prospect as if it’s already done, help them see that they already have what you’re selling, and you’ll never have to ask to sell it to them. I get it, trust me, I understand it. But you don’t want to assume to sell them when you’re building your marketing funnel your marketing sales funnel, because when they don’t, you’re not in front of them, right? The page is your representative the landing pages are representative. So it doesn’t always communicate as well as it could if you were in person. So you need reinforcement is great. If they go from landing page, the thank you page, the checkout page and give you money. That’s perfect. That’s not ideal. So you need some way to follow up. And what most people get wrong is that you only think about follow up with respect to the lead magnet or the free offer that you give away on your landing page. And the truth be told, follow up looks different and plays a different role depending on the system that is connected to so follow up goes across all systems. So we back up. All systems go episode number four is where I talk about the significant six, there’s five foundational systems in follow up is the sixth that is present through all of the five. And its role changes in every system. So you don’t just deliver a lead, magnet and checkbox and say, Hey, I’m following up with my leads. No, you’re not. You have to go through each system and identify how are you following up as leads progress through now. This is more advanced training. This is now we’re getting into my automation service provider program where we map these things out map your segments, map the messaging for the segments so we know what messaging to turn on and turn off. But I just for now I just need you to know that there are systems in your business five of them that there are six total but the sixth one is the follow up that spans across all of them. If this is new goal, isn’t it It all systems go episode number four, because you need to learn what the significant six are. And you need to understand how to follow up accurately once you’ve captured their information from a landing page. Alright, so now you’re following up you sending messaging, where are you sending that messaging? Well, you’re sending it to your close page. So that’s your third component. Let me make sure I call these out. First is capture. Second is Follow, follow up. Third is close CFC capture follow up close. Okay, keep it really basic. And some people call the close the delivery. And they’ve got all kinds of acronyms out there. So you’re close takes place on a sales page on a sales call in some way. Okay, but everything leading up to this delivers these qualified leads to your closing mechanism, let’s just call it that, whether it’s you another person or technology. Okay, so what technology you’re using here is probably something like zoom. If it’s zoom or Google meet, right, if it’s a call. Let me go back. I’m sorry, let me pause. Let me go back to the autoresponder and talk about what technology you should use there, I highly recommend using a technology that’s CRM based. So some of the more prevalent ones that are being used at the time of this recording. Keep by Infusionsoft Active Campaign, Ontraport. High level is one that’s really gaining some traction. And there’s some WordPress solutions out there, everybody that are really starting to develop, and be on par with some of these standalone CRMs. But the idea is this, you capture information, you can store that information as long along with more information, and send emails based on the ongoing information you’re capturing, you have to be able to do that only a CRM allows you to do that. So those are some of the software’s to think about. When you’re trying to figure out how to follow up, yes, some people are like, Oh, we just use MailChimp, oh, we just use ConvertKit good for you. Without a proper means of managing your contacts. Depending on your business, at some point, you’re going to realize that that’s hurting you more than it’s helping you. Alright, so let me go back. Now let’s fast forward, I went back, let’s fast forward to close, we’re talking about the software, right, you can use Zoom or Google meets if it’s in person, by the way, your closing efforts will always increase on video. If you’re jumping on a zoom call, don’t have your avatar, just the black box with nothing in it and your name actually be on video engage, especially in the day of COVID, where people have been social distancing. For so long, any form of safe human interaction is welcome. Okay. So that’s if it’s in person, and we can’t, I won’t bypass just a regular call, sometimes it’s just literally a regular phone call that you use Calendly or acuity or some online scheduling, to schedule and then you just call the number from wherever you’re at and close the deal. That’s possible. Other technology may involve sales pages. Now the same technology you use to build your landing pages you can use to build your sales page, you see how we get some reuse out of this here, right. But you also need payment processing. Regardless if it’s online or not, you need payment processing. So you need a means of somebody entering their information or you capturing it. And that payment being processed and the monies deposited into your account. And it looks different for service based businesses and E commerce, e commerce, you’re looking at a shopping cart, where people could buy multiple products, service service based, you’re looking at single page checkouts where somebody can can go, and they don’t have to worry about quantity or anything like that, right? They don’t, they don’t have to worry about shipping.

Chris Davis 18:53
And all of those other things. In fact, go listen to all systems go episode number 59. And it’s all about choosing helping you choose the right checkout software. So if you’re a little confused, like I don’t know which one to choose, that goes to all the consideration and also provides you with more technology. Okay, so I’m overloading you all with resources in this episode because I really want you to get this piece right for your business. And what I haven’t gone through is there’s also measure measurement points that should be in place for each one of these as well. eats the capture the following the close you should be measuring your conversion rate and capture how many how much traffic is coming of that traffic, how much it how many of them are, am I are submitting their information. Follow up how are people engaging with my messaging, my email, are they opening? Are they clicking? Are they ignoring me? Close? What is my close rate? Just measuring those fundamental things with a basic funnel is going to your you would see, it’s very hard not to improve on your marketing performance or marketing sales performance. And what we’re doing is we’re just leveraging the power of digital marketing and automation. It doesn’t just allow us to execute these things in a manner where we’re know our human energy, mind and time is no longer required. But it also delivers to us data on how it’s performing. So we can make more data informed decisions on improvement in optimizations. And guess what everybody, this is just the basics. This is just the basics. We haven’t talked about adding other steps, set different stages and systems that really made the customer journey a little more robust, but more highly converting. I say that to say everything that I covered right here, you can build today. And tomorrow, you’ll still need it. Five years from now, you’ll still need it. It’s the fundamental, it’s foundational to your presence online. It’s not going anywhere. Okay. And for that reason, for that reason, I was talking to my team, and they convinced me, my students convinced me, I just see their progress. I see what they’re doing. And when they get it, I mean, when that light shines, it shines bright. And I’m addicted, I’m addicted to turn it on the light bulb, everyone and I’m addicted to equipping digital marketers and aspiring mark, automation service providers with the best quality content and strategy to navigate these automation streets safely, powerfully, strongly, accurately. Right. So what I’m going to do is this right now, the course that walks through all of this about him by walkthrough, you literally get to look over my shoulder, I supply you with all the templates, the landing page template, the auto responder, copy the sales page template, you literally it’s a funnel by the numbers, like you’re piecing this together. Okay, one goes here, two goes here, three, oh, I think it works, right.

Chris Davis 22:27
All of that take away all of the design elements for the considerations from you. I, I’ve covered all basis. Alright, you don’t have to worry about what technology to choose. I’ve assessed the technology. So this is all in my course called the profit pathway, which is why I don’t call things sales funnels, I call them private pathways. So I have a course dedicated to this, I updated it. I’ve just recently updated However, I’ve closed enrollment for a time, because of some things that I’m doing. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. But only for this episode in this episode only. So do me a favor. Do not share this link that I’m about to give you if somebody has not listened to the episode. Yes, share the episode. Don’t share the link. And I know it sounds cannibalistic it’s like Chris, why would you not want people to enroll like the more we share the link to more people enroll. I’m telling you that you listening to this episode is the qualifier, I want you to understand exactly what you’re getting into exactly the level of excellence you’re about to step into in terms of building your online presence. And I want to honor that for people who have taken the time to really listen and dedicate the brain space that needs to be dedicated to do this the right way. Okay, so enrollment is open for listeners of this podcast only. And I’ve had to admit, I don’t know how long I will keep it up. I don’t plan on closing it at the time of this recording. But make sure you jump on it because I don’t know when that will change. And when that decision changes. I’m not going to record another podcast and be like, Hey, guys, that one’s no longer available, you’ll probably just go to the page and it’ll say sorry, enrollment is now closed. But if you’re ready in how use automation to do that, by the way, if you enroll you’ll be able to join the community and you can ask me Hey Chris, how did you do that? Okay. If you enroll if you want to enroll use this URL automation bridge.com/podprofit, P O D P R O F I T no spaces, pod profit automationbridge.com/podprofit and you will get to a page that is only available to that URL that it will allow you to enroll you’ll get immediate access to everything that I’ve mentioned on this podcast and how to build it. The course is just one of many that you get at no cost when enroll in my amplify my automation package. Yes, that amplify my automation package includes the automation service provider program. It includes free access to the community, along with all of the other resources, which this course is one of them. Alright, so you see, I’m committed to equipping you teaching you train you making sure you show up as powerfully as you can in your industry, but you represent the space of automation the right way. I’m hoping that this episode was timely for some of you. And this is something that you’ve been trying to figure out for so long, couldn’t quite piece it together. It’s here. Your solution has come it is at your door. Take advantage. I look forward to seeing you. If you happen to enroll based on this and I don’t call you out. Make sure when you come into the community and everything you say, Hey, everybody, I was listening to the podcast. Just so glad to be here I’m building my profit pathway. Every business needs it and everyone listening that does not have it or is not sure how it’s functioning. Start with the basics I outlined in this episode, and build from there. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly and you can access them all at all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly my friends