This article covers the 7 core pieces of every high-converting sales funnel. This is a brief summary of a webinar that I listened to following the purchase of Funnel Trax which is an app for recording and tracking your sales funnel stats that has just been launched by Mark Thompson.
I thought long and hard about buying Funnel Trax because in circumstances where your funnel is set up on JVZoo, or one of the other affiliate platforms, your stats are already recorded by the affiliate platform. But I thought that in circumstances where your funnel pages lie outside such a platform this app could prove useful. It also enables me to run A/B split-testing using this same app (quicker than Google Analytics) and also to carry out link tracking for marketing campaigns.
Funnel Trax looks to be very simple to set-up and use. Within the Funnel Trax training there was also a very useful video showing how to plan out a sales funnel using a mind map.
The webinar about the 7 core pieces of every high-converting sales funnel was presented by a sales funnel specialist and was a lengthy presentation. I jotted down some notes below and hopefully you can get the jist of what was discussed.
The off-putting thing is that there was a whole list of other things at the end of the webinar (- see under ‘Additional Elements’ below -) that he didn’t discuss because the presentation segued into a pitch for more training which I declined. Hopefully, from the headings below you can get an idea of what was likely to be covered.
Apart from Point 6 below, I pretty much agree with the main points listed below being the critical factors for sales funnel success. Instead of Point 6, I would have included monitoring and tracking as being crucial to sales funnel success – hence my purchase of Funnel Trax!
1. Big Idea/Differentiated Hook
- Goal is to prevent prospect mental opt-out
- Idea behind marketing is new, interesting, compelling, and different.
- Enter into the conversation already in your prospects head.
- You must know your markets sophistication level – when market is sophisticated introduce a unique mechanism or process that produces the result
- What are the dominant appeals, claims and benefits being presented in the market right now?
- You need to differentiate yourself from the market
- What is the most surprising thing about your content
- Present something unexpected (contrarian perspective)
- Simple education-based sales funnel: Squeeze page – 3 content videos – 1 sales video
- Power of metaphor language – instantly accessible
- Tangible and concrete
- The power of emotion
2. Single, Unique Big Promise
- Stems from understanding the market
- Must resolve an urgent problem
- Powered by the unique results delivery mechanism
- Understand the deeper benefits behind obvious benefits
- Show, don’t tell
- Turn the promise into a picture
- Picture touches as many of the 5 senses as possible
- Appeal to mind, heart and wallet
- It must appeal to feelings, beliefs and desires
- Power verbs not hypey-adjectives
- Recommended Book: The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale
3. Education-Based Pre-Selling Content
- Everything you say in the funnel should ‘further the sale’ (strategic)
- Create rapport and trusted authority based relationship whilst leading them to buy, rather than trying to sell… all giving them a sense of freedom of choice/decision.
- What do prospects need to believe to buy? – about themselves, you, your product
- Linear progression of claims and benefit statements to establish those beliefs
- Turn a want into a need
- Don’t over teach – educate in a way to create more desire and demand
- Hit emotional benefits
- Contrast – emotional benefits of what you are offering
- Demonstrate results, role performance, relief, relaxation, recognition, remuneration
- Goal is to make selling superfluous
4. Unquestionable Proof
- Every single claim and/or benefit statement must be backed with at least one proof point
- Always be specific
- Strong reasons ‘why’
- Vivid compelling pictures
- Strategically placed customer testimonials/case studies – outcome-based – proactively generate the right type of testimonial. Survey that elicits testimonials.
- Dimensionalise facts and figures
5. Unique Delivery System
- The unique method system or process behind your product/service that brings the outcome they desire
- Truly unique versus ‘not being talked about’
- Explain the unique mechanism for getting them results
- Present the mechanism as the catalyst of results (pluralise the verb – strip body fat v strips body fat / put music in your life v puts music in your life)
- Explain why the unique mechanism works (remember proof)
- Establish the value of the unique mechanism
6. Multiple Engagement Paths/Sequences
- Never arbitrarily move your prospects through the funnel
- Conditional content
- Behavourial triggering
7. Irresistible Superior Offer
- List, offer, copy – order of importance
- Hard offer v soft offer
- Proof of value
- Damaging admission
- Objection resolution
- Scarcity – time-based and quantity-based. Give a reason why.
- Risk reversal – creative guarantee
- Why now?
- Repeat, reinforce and summarise the main benefits
- Outcome scarcity/urgency v offer scarcity
Additional elements
- Lead magnetic creation – strategically created to pre-sell
- Opt-in page creation
- Conversion optimization
- Funnel content
- Funnel flow and retention
- Multi-media follow-up
- List segmentation
- Data collection
- List management
- Segway into offer
- Offer structuring
- Overcoming objections
- Split-testing
- Metrics and tracking
- Stick strategies post-sale
- Testimonial acquisition
- Refund reduction
That concludes my notes on webinar about the 7 core pieces of every high-converting sales funnel… I hope this was useful, if only because I gave you a link to the new product called Funnel Trax!
