How to build a sales funnel without the hype

This post is for those folks who are tired of the hype and guru BS that make it sound like building a sales funnel that converts is easy.

It’s not.

I’m going to break down what I’ve tried, tested and found works across numerous vertical.

And without any hyped up tactics or sleazy marketing tricks.

Funnels that have resulted in stats like this (Disclaimer: These results are NOT typical. Learn more)

If you searched Google for “sales funnels” or “how to build sales funnels”, you’ll most likely end up with a basic rundown of what a sales funnel is, types of sales funnels, examples of sales funnels, and if you’re lucky find actual sales funnels that works.

It does look and sound easy to do, especially if you have picked one of the latest, and best sales funnel builder with all the bells and whistles.

But are you wondering, that even after following every training, template or course about sales funnel, when it comes to actually launching and making sales funnel PROFITABLE and converting, it is so dang difficult…

It’s because you’ve most likely SOLVED 1 (maybe 2) of the 3 crucial pieces of what makes a sales funnel work.

After launching and managing sales funnels for hundreds of clients in dozens of verticals in different industries (ecommerce, lead generation, affiliate marketing, coaching, online courses), I’ve found out that there are ALWAYS 3 steps that you’ll need optimize and improve upon.

If you got these 3 main steps rights, you’ll most likely have a converting sales funnel.

The 3 main steps of what makes a sales funnel work are:

1. Have an irresistible offer
2. Build the right sales funnel system
3. Drive targeted traffic to your sales funnel

Need to launch a funnel fast? Download my Free Checklist

Most people spent a lot of time building the “sales funnel” itself (the landing page, the sales page, emails, etc).

That’s the easy part.

The hard part is figuring out if the OFFER that you are presenting your ideal customer and audience is WHAT THEY WANT to buy at the price you are asking.

But there's a way to make your OFFER a desirable one.

People in my industry call this building an “IRRESISTIBLE OFFER”.

An “irresistible offer” is just what the name implies.

It’s an offer that you don’t want to miss out on.

Here are some examples of “irresistible offers”.

[Ex 1 – 5]

In the eyes of the right audience, these are offers that they won’t want to miss.

Figure out how you can make your offer irresistible (not cheaper).

Most brands and business think that lowering price or providing a discount makes their offer irresistible (it doesn’t – it cheapens the brand long term).

What makes these digital products (info products) an irresistible offer?

If you look closely, you have the core program or the core product.

But you also had BONUSES or VALUE added to the product.

In these examples, there’s a workbook guide, templates, private community, campaigns, general admission tickets.

But you don’t just ADD random stuff that doesn’t add value to the CORE product.

These BONUSES help speed the results with the core product.

If done correctly, you’ll have an “Irresistible Offer” that people would be glad to pay.

One way that I can quickly test if I have an irresistible offer is to 10x the VALUE of my offer.

If I’m selling a $97 product, I want to make sure that it’s at least worth $997.

If I know that, I’ll be willing to pay $997 for this $97 product, then I know that I have an irresistible offer.

Step 2 : They have a system to turn strangers into buyers, leads or customers

Once you have an “irresistible offer”, you need to have the right system to sell it.

This is where sales funnels comes in.

If you skipped the first step, it would be hard to build a profitable sales funnels because you’ll have a product that people don’t want to buy.

Don’t make this mistake. It will save you a lot of money and headaches.

Make sure you’ve created an “irresistible offer” or turned your existing product into one.

For this step, you need to figure out what type of sales funnel you need.

There are many types of sales funnels meant for different purposes.

There’s a sales funnel for selling other people’s products (affiliate marketing funnel), a different funnel for selling high ticket programs, and a different funnel for selling ecommmerce (physical) products.

Are you selling a physical product? Use an ecommerce funnel

Are you selling an online course? Use a course funnel

Are you selling a coaching program? Use a high-ticket coaching funnel

If you need help figuring out what type of sales funnel you need, take this FREE Quiz : What Type of Sales Funnel Should I Build?

Step 3: Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Sales Funnel

Once you’ve built your sales funnel, it’s now time to drive targeted traffic.

Getting highly targeted traffic is the name of the game.

If you’ve built an audience and a following, this won’t be a problem.

You can easily send out an email broadcast or newsletter and announce your sales funnel to the world.

And because they already know, like and trust you, getting a sale wouldn’t be a huge problem.

The problem starts when you are starting from scratch, with ZERO audience, ZERO authority, and ZERO email list.

The skill of converting COLD TRAFFIC into a WARM LEAD or PAYING CUSTOMER is a 6-figures to million-dollars skill. 

It’s the skill that I have been mastering in the past few years across various niches and industries. 

Fortunately, it’s much easier to get started now because all you need to do is to LASER FOCUS on a traffic source first, master that traffic source and scale to other channels when you have data on what works.

Most people get started with either Facebook ads or Google (SEO or Google Ads).

Ignore the rest of the traffic sources like native ads, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. 

98% of the time, these 2 traffic sources would be sufficient for all your needs. 

I ALWAYS start with GOOGLE to drive targeted traffic because of this (learn more)

Is it really just these 3 steps?

It can’t be this simple

Yes and No.

Yes, most successful sales funnel will ALWAYS have these 3 steps, but No because getting these 3 steps right is easier said than done.

In this article, I'll be sharing as much information as I can about helping you understand and implement them for your own online business.

Let's get started!

How To Make Money With Sales Funnels

Imagine what you can do with the money that you can earn from a profitable sales funnel?

Pay your house?

Pay your debt?

Treat your family to a luxurious vacation?

Have financial freedom?

When Russell Brunson (Clickfunnels) said on the One Funnel Away Challenge, that the life you want, the marriage that you want, the family that you want is going to be fueled by the business that you build, it is so true for me and it resonated so well.

I’ve built numerous sales funnels, but one of my absolute favorite is my “affiliate marketing sales funnel” where I use this type of sales funnel to sell other people’s products.

The “affiliate marketing sales funnel” helped me generate commissions like the screenshot below, on autopilot. 

[SCREENSHOT]

Disclaimer: Not a get rich quick scheme

I do the work once, update it from time to time and it is still generating commissions up to this day, as long as there is traffic.

If you’re interested in building out your first affiliate marketing sales funnel like this, check out this article (how to build an affiliate marketing website)

So before we start building the actual sales funnel (landing pages, emails, sales pages, etc), there are FUNDAMENTAL principles that we need to discuss and understand.

Let's start with the first one:

Stages of Awareness : Sales funnel stages

It’s important to have the right message at the right stage of awareness.

Stages of awareness in sales funnels are important because they give you the opportunity to change how a customer feels about your company and product.

In order for this process to work, it’s important that there is messaging at each stage of awareness so potential customers can be aware of how they feel when thinking about your organization, products or services.

This allows them to grow their knowledge on what you have to offer and how their needs will be met with these products/services.

If any one part in the funnel breaks down then it can severely affect how conversions happen within the business model overall which is why we advise against hype tactics as much as possible!

Instead create content that educates potential customers on how they’re going benefit from buying something from your brand while also providing relevant info.

Your content (article, blog post, video, ads) is what helps move a potential customer from one stage of awareness to the next…

Content for Every Stage of Your Marketing Funnel.

When you create content at the right stage of your marketing funnel, it’s more likely to get the right action and have a higher chance of conversion.

This is because it will be relevant in how you are making the customer feel at each stage before they make their purchase.

It should also provide them with how your product solves any issues that can arise from this stage as well which may help reduce any hesitation on buying something!

The stages of awareness within our sales funnel include: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Purchase/Sale.

These stages give potential customers information about what they need to know about how an organization conducts themselves at various points when someone is considering purchasing from them.

1. Top of the Funnel

Top of the funnel refers to how potential customers find about a company and how they are introduced to the idea of purchasing from you.

In order for this stage to work, it’s important that your marketing campaigns have an understanding on how someone will hear about your product or service in their day-to-day life through word of mouth or social media platforms like Instagram! The goal here is to create awareness which could lead into interest if done correctly.

Be careful with how much hype there is though because too much can cause sales funnel stages to break down at different points before purchase happens! Your content should be more informational and present what your organization does without overselling anything so readers know where they’re going before making their decision.

The top of our funnel includes: Awareness, Interest.

2. Middle of the Funnel

Middle of the funnel is all about how a potential customer becomes more aware of how your ideas solve their problems.

In order to reach this stage, it’s important that you have some type of content which outlines how the problem is relevant as well as how these solutions are going to be better than other people’s!

You should also provide them with how they will benefit by buying something from your brand instead of someone else’s because at this point customers need reassurance before making their decision so they know what all goes into purchasing here.

The middle stages include: Interest, Consideration, Purchase/Sale.

3. Bottom of the Funnel

When it comes to the bottom of the funnel, it’s all about how customers make their decision.

This is a great time to use some type of form that asks them how they feel about how your organization handles customer service, how you communicate with people and how the product has helped solve any problems from one stage before it!

The goal here is for people who are interested in buying something from your brand to convert into sales by getting them excited enough to purchase what you’re offering.

Bottom stages include: Purchase/Sale.

At each stage, ask yourself these questions:

What does this person know about me? How do I want them feeling when considering my business or idea? Is there anything else I need to say at this point in order for someone to buy my product or be on board?

Stages of The Sales Funnel Process

If you think that building a sales funnels and launching a successful sales funnel is all about the design, logo, color, font, or the overall aesthetic appearance of your funnel, you’re missing out on a fundamental principle of the sales process.

An effective sales funnel understands the different stages of awareness of a potential lead and customer.

Then you need to match your marketing automation, content marketing strategies, and landing pages into the particular sales funnel stage that your leads is in.

The job of your sales funnel is to move that lead from being a stranger into an actual paying customer.

What most people do with their sales funnels is that they ASK for the sale before a relationship and trust has been established.

If they are an existing customer, that’s not going to be a huge problem because they already know you.

But most of the time, when a website visitor is still on the awareness stage, they are not yet ready to buy the product or service that you are offering.

Fortunately, once you understand the 5 stages of awareness by Eugene Schwartz, you’ll be able to create a highly converting sales funnel faster, turning a website visitor from a stranger into an ideal customer.

Watch the 5 Stages of Awareness

[Watch video]

Here's the 5 stages of the sales process that can be applied to most online sales funnels. Each stage has a different type of content that address the potential customer's needs at that level, and helps move them to the next level (without hype).

Stage #1 – Problem/Need Recognition (TOFU)

At this stage, there is no selling, no hype tactics.

This stage is all about achieving awareness and calling out your ideal customers by reiterating the problem that they are currently facing.

It's kinda like asking a crowd of people who are having a set of problems and asking them to “raise” their hands if they are experiencing any of those problems.

The goal at this stage is simple: To identify people who have “problems/needs”, and get them to the next stage.

Stage #2 – Information Search (MOFU)

This stage is all about ‘scratching the itch' and agitating the problem that your ideal customer is having.

You want to educate them at this point, provide information, clarity and position yourself as the authority in helping their problem solved by actually providing them with “value” before even asking for a sale.

The types of content that works best during this stage are blog posts and videos.

Stage #3 – Evaluation of Alternatives (MOFU)

During this stage, they are now into buying mode and are starting to look for the “best” products or services that will help them solve their problem.

The types of content that works best at this stage are ROUNDUP articles like “best sales funnel builders” or the “best webinar software”.

At this stage, your ideal customer believes that they need to solve their problem but are now looking for the best provider for the solution they want. You'll want to position your brand or product as the ideal solution.

Stage #4 – Purchase Decision (BOFU)

When an ideal customer arrives at this stage, you'll immediately know them.

They are people who have landed your checkout page or clicked the “add to cart” if it's an ecommerce business.

At this stage, you'll want to reinforce the value of purchasing from your brand, alleviate customer anxiety, and help them make a decision fast while giving them assurance that their purchase is secure and reliable.

This is where you'll find most sales funnel tactics and strategies like creating urgency, providing 30 day risk free trials or money-back guarantees, social proof indicators and more.

Stage #5 – Post-Purchase Behavior (BOFU)

Most people forget this stage and only focus on the last 4 stages because they lead to the actual sale.

This stage is only available to those who have purchased your product.

For me, this is the most important stage. What happens AFTER the sale?

Are you giving your customers a great onboarding/client experience?

Are you giving your customers opportunities to check out your other products and services (upsells and cross sells)?

Are you asking for feedback on why they bought, what else can be improved and more?

Don't neglect this stage because you'll be able to learn a lot from this stage and use it to further improve the first 4 stages.

[Loving this article? You'll love my Sales Funnel Checklist. Download here.]

Sales Funnel AIDA: Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action

You might have heard of the acronym A.I.D.A.

It's a popular framework for understanding sales funnel awareness. The term and methodology was commonly attributed to sales pioneer, E. St. Elmo Lewis way back in the 1898.

So while, sales funnels built online are just still gaining popularity, the concept of the different sales funnel stages has a strong history.

Optimize Landing Pages for Top of the Funnel

Here are some tips when optimizing the landing pages for top of the funnel stage

• Use a strong compelling headline that hooks the reader's attention
• Address the customer's problems first and agitate it further
• Use stories to create a connection with your reader
• Have a simple call to action to transition the reader from one stage to the next

Optimize Landing Pages for Middle of the Funnel

Tips for optimizing your landing page for middle of the funnel stage

• Serve don't sell
• Your copy, design and logical progression of ideas should be clear
• Address all potential objections

Optimize Pages for End of the Funnel

And lastly here are optimization ideas for closing the sale

• Make sure that the experience of buying is as frictionless as much as possible
• Assure the customer that their purchase is risk-free or has a guarantee
• Provide them an easy way to address their objections

Examples of Effective Sales Funnels

Let's look at some of the different sales funnels in the wild. As a disclosure, I don't work and have not worked with any of these sales funnels, and they are publicly accessible (but offers, sales funnels might change anytime).

Example 1: A Not-so-Effective Marketing Funnel

Let's first start with a not-so effective marketing funnel. I'll just start with my own example and how I've lost thousands of potential “affiliate commissions” because of this blunder.

Here's how I've done “affiliate marketing” for years.

[Image – blog post -> affiliate offer]

Why is this broken?

Because once I've sent traffic to the affiliate offer, that customer who visited my website is gone forever…

Poof**

I've worked hard to bring them over to my site with SEO, Paid ads, etc. And all I did was send them away via my affiliate link.

Yes, big face palm!

But it worked for a while. And this is how 99% of gurus teach you how to do affiliate marketing.

But it's not-so-effective anymore in 2021.

In 2020, I've focused on adding another step into my affiliate marketing funnel.

Here's how that step now looks like:

[Image – Blog post -> Optin -> affiliate offer]

This does two things. First, I build my own email list of people interested in this particular offer (super targeted list), and second, I can still earn affiliate commissions because they can still go to the affiliate offer once whether they subscribe to my list or not.

Example 2: An Effective Marketing Funnel

Now let's look at a bigger marketing funnel. Let's break down this marketing funnel step-by-step.

When it comes to online streaming, Netflix is definitely one of the strongest brands. But Disney+ is not far behind. Aside from using their brand and trademark to create awareness, Disney+ is marketing aggressively to take more piece of this multi-billion dollar industry.

Steps in Disney’s sales funnel

I'll be looking at the 3 steps of building an effective sales funnel and see what Disney does for each step.

1. Have an irresistible offer
2. Build a sales funnel or system of turning visitors into subscribers/buyers
3. Have a targeted traffic source

Let's start with the irresistible offer. And here's what I've found:

6 months for free

Sales funnel framework

Have a targeted traffic source: Amazon partnerships, leverage other people's traffic

Why does this sales funnel work?

There's an offer that I can't refuse. They made it super easy for me to subscribe as a new user. And I heard about this offer because I'm an Amazon PRIME subscriber (super targeted offer).

Importance of a sales funnel

Sales funnels are important because they help you turn a random stranger into a paying customer (and hopefully a loyal customer or fan).

Sales funnels are kinda like your best sales person on steroids. They don't take a break, they don't ask for a raise, and they don't stop working.

As long as you are driving targeted traffic, have an irresistible offer, and have a sales funnel that converts, the potential is limitless.

How to Build a Sales Funnel Fast

I know you are wondering, so how can I create my own sales funnel fast. If you want to get started the quickest way possible and with the highest chance of conversions, you'll want to take these steps.

#1. Know Your Target Audience

Why? Because you need to communicate differently to each type of audience. Let's say you're selling a weight loss product, you'll have to communicate differently to a person who wants to lose weight because of an upcoming wedding between a person who wants to lose weight because of health reasons.

#2. Build Your Buyer Personas

Once you've identified your target audience, you'll want to create a buyer's persona for that audience. You'll want to understand their problems, pain, what keeps them awake at night. This will help you create messages that resonate with your target audience.

Most people skip this part and wonder why their sales funnels are not converting. Don't skip this part as this is what separates the PROS from the amateurs.

#3. Plan on Generating Traffic

Before you even start building your actual sales funnel, you'll want to figure out how you are planning to generate traffic.

Once you know your traffic source, you can then start building a sales funnel that matches your traffic source.

#4. Build your sales funnel

Once you have all the necessary ingredients in launching your sales funnel, it's time to build your funnel.

Choose from one of these sales funnel builders (I recommend Kartra if you're looking for an all-in-one solution or Elementor PRO if you plan on using WordPress).

#5. Start driving traffic and convert leads

Once you've built and tested your sales funnel, it's now time to start driving traffic. You'll want to drive clicks or actual visits to your sales funnel.

After 100 clicks, you'll want to have at least 1 sale or what we usually call a purchase conversion.

If there's no sale after 100 to 200 clicks or visits to your sales page, it's time to optimize your sales funnel and figure out what's not working.

Why You Need to Optimize Your Sales Funnel

I would say that almost 100% of the time, you won't get your sales funnel profitable or converting on the get go.

Especially if you're entering an unknown market and you're just launching for the very first time.

This is the reason why you need to optimize your sales funnel.

The problem is that people optimize the wrong elements or steps of their sales funnel.

This is the part where you can get a PRO to take a look at your sales funnel, or learn how to optimize them yourself.

I'll teach you the basics in optimizing a sales funnel below. Let's get started.

How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel

When I was an ER nurse, we have a nursing process.

This is probably where I've learned the discipline and skill to approach marketing in a similar way.

The first step is to ASSESS.

Did you drive enough traffic to your sales funnel? How much are you paying for a click? How many people went to the actual checkout page? Did people bounce off your checkout page?

Once you've answered the basic questions, it's time to figure out where the bottleneck is.

And the second step is to DIAGNOSE.

If you have not installed tracking like Funnelytics or Google analytics, it's hard to diagnose what's not working.

If you have tracking in place, I always start at the last step, then work backwards.

How many dropped off on each step?

I then identify the drop off percentage based on industry standards (if I don't have any previous data).

Once I've identified the bottleneck, the next step is to PLAN your course of ACTION

What needs to be fixed? How are you going to fix it? Do you need tools or professional help to fix it?

Then the next step is to IMPLEMENT

Once I've decided on the appropriate action to take, I then implement (or get help in implementing them).

And the last step is to EVALUATE

After gathering data on the latest changes, I'll evaluate if the action I took had a positive or negative effect.

If it had a positive effect, I'll keep on doing it, and if it's a negative effect, then I'll have to change it and test another idea.

When you follow this process, it takes a lot of the guess work in understanding how to optimize and build a highly converting sales funnel fast.

Measuring the Success of a Sales Funnel

When it comes to measuring the success of your sales funnel, it's going to be different for each funnel.

You'll want to set KPI's (key performance indicators) and track those that matters to your business.

What's the goal of your sales funnel? Is it for branding/awareness? Is it for lead generation? Is it for purchases or sale?

Once you've determined your KPI, establish a baseline metric, create a goal, and go from there.

Which Marketing Funnel Metrics Should I Track?

Personally, I track these metrics on all of my sales funnels

ROAS – return on ad spend

CPA – cost per acquisition

CPL – cost per lead

CPC – cost per click

Traffic/Sessions – People visiting my sales funnel

Conversion rates – how many people are converting per ratio of people visiting my sales funnels/checkout pages

*Other metrics like CPM, CTR, impression shares etc are optional metrics that I usually look at specific ad channels like Facebook ads and Google ads.

Sales education resources:

• Best sales funnel software
• Top 5 sales funnel mistakes
• Clickfunnels sharetemplates
• All-in-one Sales funnel software
• Dot Com Secrets
• Expert Secrets
• Traffic Secrets
• Funnelscripts and Automaticscripts

Sales funnel FAQs

How is a sales funnel different from a marketing funnel?

They are technically the same. But some people use them differently because a sales funnel is usually just the collection of landing pages, sales pages, thank you pages, webinar pages, etc while a marketing funnel includes everything that a business owner needs (source of traffic, product delivery, etc)

How to Funnel Hack Your Competitors

Funnel hacking is a term coined by Russell Brunson (Clickfunnels) and it's a great way to understand what your competitors are doing in your industry. You'll want to look at your competitor's ads using tools like PowerAdspy, buy their products (so you could see their upsells and downsells), and try to figure out how they are getting traffic to their website.

Types of Sales Funnels

There are dozens of sales funnels, but I’ll talk about the most popular ones today.

Most of these sales funnels have made a lot of online entrepreneurs 5-6 figures. Hopefully you can implement some of these types of sales funnel for your own online business.

Tripwire or Self-liquidating funnel

This type of sales funnel is designed to break even so that you can acquire leads for FREE.

The “irresistible offer” in this tripwire funnel is usually priced below $20.

I’ve seen a lot of people price their initial offer at $7-$10.

The tripwire product should be worth more than 10x the asking price.

If you have a low quality product, your tripwire offer might not convert as well.

On the other hand, if you have a product that needs a lot of time to consume (6 week course) as a tripwire product, it can also backfire as well.

The best tripwire products are templates, cheat sheets, collections, and bundle offers.

Affiliate marketing funnel

As I’ve mentioned above, this is my absolute and favorite type of sales funnel.

An affiliate marketing also acts as a presell or bridge page to preframe the mind of the reader before they purchase the product that you are promoting.

This strategy helps improve your conversion rates so that you can earn higher commissions.

I love this type of sales funnel because it’s the closest thing to passive income. All the customer support and product delivery are handled by the VENDOR of the product you are promoting.

High ticket funnel

This type of sales funnel is what most people use to sell high ticket coaching programs and services ($3,000+).

The goal of the high ticket funnel is to drive interested and qualified leads to a phone call or strategy session.

During the strategy session, you determine if there’s a right fit to join your high ticket program and if there is, the sale is done on the phone.

Automated webinar funnel

This type of sales funnel is used to sell online courses and programs that costs between $297 to $2000.

Most people sell a $997 product using an automated webinar, and it’s a great way to build income online as this sales funnel is highly scalable.

Ecommerce funnel

There are many variants and hybrids for an ecommerce funnel.

Some of the most popular types of ecommerce funnel includes a combination of upsell, downsell and cross-sell.

Coaching funnel

If you’re selling a premium coaching program, then the high ticket funnel is the best type of sales funnel for that.

But what if you want to offer 1 hour coaching services.

This coaching funnel is best suited for that.

The initial offer is a 1-hour coaching session with you and then you can transition to a premium coaching if there’s a fit.

Online course launch funnel

Most high ticket courses are sold using the launch method.

The product launch method is popularized by Jeff Walker and is something that I have been using for my own business and the clients that I’ve worked with.

It’s extremely powerful because you build awareness and hype during the launch week, while having a cart closing date.

Bulk of the sale happens during the cart closing sequence because people don’t want to miss out (FOMO – fear of missing out).

Facebook sales funnel

If you’re running facebook marketing and social media advertising, you can try creating a Facebook sales funnel or creating a landing page just for Facebook traffic.

It involves setting up a Facebook ad, and optimizing the use of the Facebook pixel as part of your sales process.

Then driving traffic from your Facebook ad to your regular sales funnels or a landing page setup just your Facebook ad. Some people use the entire ecosystem of Facebook ads (or any social media platform) to deliver brand awareness, lead generation up to the sales conversion.

When you have a seasoned Facebook pixel, the algorithm can find and look for your ideal customer. This is one of the huge advantages of having a Facebook sales funnel.

Lead generation funnel

If you are already building your email list and sending out email messages, you might not know it, but that’s already a lead generation funnel.

There are many hybrids to a lead generation funnel, and one of the most common question that I receive about this type of funnel is how often do you send out email messages.

The answer is it depends on your niche and industry. You have to find a balance of promotion and providing value.

When it comes to scheduling your posts, a good sequence to follow is the Fibonacci method.

Each number is the sum of the previous two.

Here’s the Fibonacci sequence for Email Autoresponders.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144

That means that you schedule your email autoresponders to send on

Day 1

Day 2

Day 4

Day 7

Day 12

etc…

Use this as a guideline for sending out email sequences to avoid sending out too many emails and avoid getting flagged for spam.

Live challenge funnel

I’ve seen a lot of people do live challenges on Facebook and YouTube as it needs a live streaming platform to work.

The goal here is to build engagement and awareness, while building trust and rapport with your audience during LIVE challenges.

Free + Shipping funnel

And last but not the least, free + shipping funnels.

They used to be very popular in the ecommerce space but not as popular today.

The goal of this funnel is to offer a product for free, but ask for the customer to pay for shipping costs (which covers the amount of the free product).

What type of sales funnel do you think you would need?

Top Sales Funnel Mistakes To Avoid

After you’ve decided the type of sales funnel you want, check out these top 5 mistakes most people make when building out their funnels.

This will save you a lot of headaches and frustrations.

If you prefer to watch a video, instead of reading, check out the video I’ve made for you below.

Best Sales Funnel Builders To Use

No carpenter would ever start building a house without the tools he or she needs. 

No sales funnel builder should also build without the right sales funnel software.

The problem is which sales funnel software should you use?

I’ve used THEM ALL because of my professional work and because I’ve been building my online business for years.

I know which funnel builders are worth checking out.

Check out the best sales funnel software and tools in 2021 here. 

How To Build Sales Funnels

Yehey!

If you’re at this point, you’re ready to start launching and build your sales funnel.

I recommend that you use a WEB-BASED or SAAS sales funnel tool or builder like SYSTEME.io or KARTRA (all-in-one) if you want to launch faster. 

There are tons of sales funnel management tools that have different features and benefits, and I’ve compiled all of them in this article.

These 2 sales funnel builders have complete sales funnel, email messaging, and marketing automation included within their platforms.

Kartra is my #1 sales funnel tool if you are looking to build a high-ticket conversion funnel.

How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel Properly

Now that you’ve launched your sales funnels, now what?!

You need to start driving targeted traffic.

After you’ve generated around 200-300 visits to your sales funnel, look at the metrics.

Did you make money?

Did you break even?

Did you lose money on advertising dollars?

Adjust and tweak.

Real Sales Funnel Examples

I’ll be updating this section and provide more examples of sales funnels that I’ve found in 2021.

Sales Funnel Templates You Can Use

Most of the sales funnel builders have built-in templates that you can use. If you're using Clickfunnels, I have a compiled list of Sharefunnel templates available for download here.

If you are looking for an all-in-one solution with free templates and campaigns built-in, check out Kartra.

F.A.Q. about Sales Funnels

I’ve compiled some of the most common questions about Sales funnels, and provided the best answers below. If I missed anything else, let me know.