When you have an online business or you are a blogger who wants to sell a service then you need to build a sales funnel which plays an important role in every business. What does a sales funnel do? It basically attracts potential customers with low-cost items (or even with free ones). In this way you try to convince them to sign up on your mailing list or to your RSS feed.

What is the most important thing when you want to build a sales funnel? The most important thing is your customer’s contact information. Why? Because you want to start a relationship with them and you want to communicate with them. You want to be also sure that once they are ready to buy they will come to you. The other thing is that you have to offer them different products at different prices so they can make their choice plus you can build up their trust and they will buy your higher-priced services or items as well. The sales funnel is also important when you charge your customers by the hour or by the project. It helps to create diversity in how you earn you income.

Let’s check out how exactly the sales funnel works:

Step 1. Attracting leads
This is a very important step because without leads you can’t go far. That’s how you attract potential customers or clients:

• You need to post blogposts that offer free advice.
• Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can get you leads.
• Make the search engines your friends because you need traffic
• Try to get in the press and publish articles on different other sites

Step 2. Free service or product
So you got your potential customers contact details but what do you offer them? You can offer them free items like:

• newsletters that you send out regularly
• mini e-books or even e-courses
• audio recordings
• white papers
• free graphics or free software
• free samples
• free teleseminar
• coupon code
• free consultation

Step 3. The importance of low-cost items
First you have to show your potential customers a low-cost product that would actually convince them with your knowledge. They don’t definitely have to work with you at the beginning you just show them your product or service that can help them. The good thing about low-cost items that your clients or customers don’t have to risk a lot of money in order to “try you out” but they can decide whether they want to work with you in the future. Low-cost items are usually:

• e-books
• video or audio series
• workshops
• membership sites
• consulting packages or even group coaching

Step 4. The goal – medium to high cost items
What clients do you need most? The ones that buys higher priced items or services from you and they know how valuable your work is. They are very important because they will hire you for larger and more important project of theirs. Please check out the following medium to high cost items or services:

• 1 on 1 coaching
• Project management
• Monthly retainer clients

Now let’s see some great online sales funnel examples:

Example of how to create a Facebook Sales Funnel

This is how a visitor go through the sales funnel