164: You Won’t Believe How Easy Selling Can Be With This
In this episode, I'm diving into the world of automated sales funnels for online businesses. I believe that all online business owners, especially ones that sell digital products, should have this running in the background of their business 24 x 7.
I talk about the perks of using these funnels, the tech tools you need, and the types of offers you can promote. I also share tips on adding a personal touch and ethical promotion practices, as well as some must-have traffic strategies.
So, if you're an online business owner looking to for an easy way to attract customers, listen in!
Mentioned In This Episode:
Pins to Cash: Selling Digital Products on Pinterest: Listen in here.
Funnel Cure Mapping Workshop: Master the Funnel Puzzle: How to Choose Offers That Maximize Profit: Sign up here.
Freedom Formula: In this private podcast series, learn that it's possible to generate consistent revenue from a digital product business without the need to be glued to your desk, constantly live launching, or worrying about social media algorithms. Sign up here.
Automated Sales Funnels for Online Business Success
In this episode, I share insights into leveraging automated sales funnels for consistent revenue generation. Let’s dive deep into how you can set up an automated sales funnel that grows with your business, keeps your audience engaged, and doesn’t break the bank.
The Magic of Automated Sales Funnels
Automated sales funnels, often referred to as evergreen or tripwire funnels, are systems set up to sell your products or services round the clock, without the need for daily hands-on effort. Once in place, these funnels require only periodic tweaking and data review, freeing up precious time for entrepreneurs.
Why You Should Love Automated Sales Funnels
Consistent Engagement and Trust-Building: They provide a mechanism to continually engage with your audience, offering quick wins and building trust over time. This is crucial because customers who have purchased from you once are more likely to do so again.
Cost-Effectiveness: For business owners, the cost of setting up these funnels is relatively low. For customers, the entry point is inexpensive, making it easier to draw them into your ecosystem.
Scalability: Automated sales funnels are incredibly scalable. Whether you're starting with a single digital product or have an array of offerings, these funnels can accommodate and promote them all effectively.
Setting Up Your Automated Sales Funnel
Starting with a compelling lead magnet which encourages potential customers to enter your funnel. Following the signup, they're presented with a special offer and, possibly, an order bump on the checkout page. This process can incorporate various upsells and cross-sells, enriching the customer's journey and increasing your average order value.
The Technical Side
The technical setup of an automated sales funnel is straightforward with the right tools. Platforms like Leadpages for landing and sales pages, Thrivecart for checkout processes, and ConvertKit for email automation are among the favorites mentioned in the episode. The inclusion of a countdown timer, specifically a 20-minute one, has proven to be highly effective for creating a sense of urgency.
Diversifying Your Offers
Automated sales funnels are not just for digital products. They can effectively promote a wide range of offers, from coaching packages and meal plans to affiliate products and high-ticket courses. The key is to select offers that align with your audience's interests and needs.
The Importance of Ethical Selling
While automated funnels can significantly boost sales, I also emphasize the importance of ethical selling. Transparency about what's being sold, avoiding pushiness, and allowing customers to make informed decisions are paramount. Incorporating personal touches and being upfront about recorded webinars being non-live can help maintain trust and credibility.
Driving Traffic to Your Funnel
A funnel is only as good as the traffic it receives. Organic search strategies like blogging, podcasting, and utilizing platforms like Pinterest and YouTube are effective ways to attract potential customers. Guest podcasting and speaking opportunities also offer avenues to introduce your funnel to new audiences.
Analyzing and Tweaking Your Funnel
Constant analysis is vital for funnel optimization. Regularly review your landing page conversion rates, tripwire conversion rates, and the effectiveness of your order bumps. Adjusting your strategy based on this data will help improve your funnel's performance over time.
Final Thoughts
Automated sales funnels are a powerful tool for any digital product entrepreneur. They not only streamline the selling process but also foster deeper connections with your audience. By setting up a funnel that aligns with your business goals, keeping an eye on the data, and continually optimizing your offers, you can achieve sustainable growth and success in the online marketplace.
Remember, the key to a successful automated sales funnel is not just in its setup but in its ongoing management and optimization.
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Transcript:
Speaker A [00:00:07]:
Welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destini Copp, and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desk, constantly live launching, or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there. Destini here, and I am super excited about our podcast episode topic for today. And this is something that I truly believe that almost all online business owners need to have set up and running in their business day in and day out, and that is an automated sales funnel. You may have heard these referred to as different things like evergreen sales funnels or tripwire sales funnels or selling on autopilot, and they all mean the same thing. You have a funnel that is always ready to sell in your business.
Speaker A [00:01:15]:
You set it up once and then you can basically walk away from it and forget it to some extent. You're gonna need to review your data, you might have to make some tweaks here and there, but you're not having to work on it every single day once you have it set up and running. Another reason why I love these automated sales funnels, and this is probably one of the main reasons why I love them, is that it keeps people interested in you. Right? You're giving them a quick win. You're building relationships with them. They're getting to know you as a business owner. They're getting to know whether or not they like your teaching style. They are getting a taste of what it's like to kinda work with you, and we all know that the data out there that says people who purchase from you once are more likely to purchase from you in the future.
Speaker A [00:02:11]:
So that's one of the reasons why I absolutely love automated sales funnels. The other reason is is that they don't break the bank. Now for you as a business owner, it's relatively inexpensive for you to purchase the tools to set this up. But for your customers, it's not breaking their bank either. In general, these are low cost offers for them. So let's say you're in the b to c market, your tripwire offer might be $17 or $27. And if you're in the b to b market, it might be a little bit higher, maybe even, like, $49, but it's not breaking their bank. You're giving your potential customers an opportunity to get a taste of what it's like working with you at a relatively low cost.
Speaker A [00:02:56]:
The other thing I love about them is that they grow with your business. So let's say, today, you just have your lead magnet in one digital product. You can use that as your trip wire, and as you add more in your business or you add additional offers in your business, you can add them to your automated sales funnels. You can even add your higher priced courses and coaching programs or even services later on in these funnels. So there's tons of opportunities there. Now if you want to get a taste and kinda look at this from a potential subscriber perspective, I would invite you to sign up for the lead magnet that I have for this particular podcast episode. Now you can go to destinicop.com/funnel and then from here you will see my lead magnet which is my funnel cure mapping workshop. So in this workshop, which is extremely short, I think it's 15 minutes or less, I walk you through how to master the funnel puzzle and how to choose offers in your funnel that maximize profit.
Speaker A [00:04:06]:
This particular lead magnet also comes with a funnel mapping worksheet, so you can kind of use that and map everything out. So once you sign up for this, on the next page, you're gonna see a special offer for my funnel cure course, which goes through how to set up basically everything that we're talking about today. Now if you click on that and go to my course checkout page for that particular offer, you will see an order bump there too. So you'll see the offer for the course and the order bump. And if you continue to go through it, you will see some additional cross sells and upsells in that particular funnel. So if you wanna check that out and see how that works, go to destinycop.com and you can, forward slash funnel, and you can see how all of that is set up. Now, let me talk a little bit about the tech tools that are required for these funnels. So if you go to my landing page for my lead magnet, that particular landing page is built in lead pages.
Speaker A [00:05:10]:
I love lead pages. I use it for the sales page for the course also. The other thing I love about that, it has a countdown timer in there for urgency. We use 20 minutes in these automated sales funnels. We've tested out different ones. We've tested out 15 minutes. We've gone longer with, like, 30 minutes. That didn't work.
Speaker A [00:05:31]:
That was a disaster. We have not included the countdown timers, and that didn't work at all. So we've landed on using a 20 minute countdown timer for these automated sales funnels, and that works the best. That is, you know, work the best for us. And we do all of that in Leadpages. Now if you click to buy the course and go to my cart checkout page, that is actually in Thrivecart. Now there's other options out there for you. I know some people use SamCart.
Speaker A [00:06:02]:
We use Thrivecart that's working very well for us. Another tool that we use in this is our email service provider, which is ConvertKit. Again, tons of options in the marketplace for you, but you need to have an email service provider that has the automations, the tagging, the segmentation. Now depending on what other tools you have in your automated sales funnel, you may need like a webinar platform or some type of scheduling system if you are inviting people to set up a discovery call with you. K? So tons of options for you there. Now let's talk a little bit about the offers you can promote in one of these automated sales funnels and I think the important point here is it doesn't have to be all digital products You can promote other option other offers that you have. So let's assume that you are a nutrition coach. You can promote your nutrition coaching packages.
Speaker A [00:07:02]:
You can promote a meal planning subscription. You can promote recorded workshops or webinars or online courses. Even affiliate products that you are promoting, you can promote these in these emails that you have that are going out after somebody signs up for your lead magnet or after they purchase your trip wire or any of the offers in your funnel. You can obviously promote low cost digital products like cookbooks or recipe guides. If you have a membership, you can promote that. Absolutely. And then you could even do something like a personalized nutrition assessment. So you can have that in your funnel.
Speaker A [00:07:43]:
And if somebody purchases that, you can work with them to set that up. So, again, lots of opportunities and a lot of offers that you can promote in some type of automated funnel. Now I always want to mention in these automated funnels, there are ways to add your personal touch in there. And also make sure that you, as a business owner, are being ethical in how you are promoting your offers in one of these automated sales funnels. Because the last thing you want to do is pressure people who aren't ready to buy from you. So I always say, be extremely clear and upfront about what you're selling. They're having to make a quick decision in a lot of cases. Right? You have this timer.
Speaker A [00:08:35]:
Right? That's on the sales page. And I highly recommend that you have one because it definitely increases your conversion there, but you also don't wanna be pushy, you know. So you can basically say, you know, here's what you're getting, here's what's included. You can even add your personal touch in here. So let's say that in your automated sales funnel on the back end of it, you are promoting, one of your higher priced offers. So somebody has already signed up for your lead magnet. They've already purchased maybe one of your low cost digital products, and you have some automated emails that are going out to them, and you're gonna invite them to one of your recorded webinars. In that recorded webinar, you can add some personal touches in there like a chat feature.
Speaker A [00:09:29]:
So if they have questions, they can email you and just say, you know, this is a recorded webinar. If you have a question, you know, email me here, and I'll get back to you. I always encourage folks to be transparent. You don't want to insinuate that a recorded webinar is live because it's not. Right? And a lot of people, they might even realize that it's not a live webinar, and then you have lost that trust with them. The other thing I would say is use urgency, but don't be pushy. Now how I like to set up these automated sales funnels with basically these timers is they can, you know, purchase within a certain time frame at a special price, but I always allow them to purchase later if they want the price just goes up, so we reward fast action takers, but people can still purchase if they want to. It's just a different price or maybe you're adding, additional bonuses in there if they purchase within a specific time frame.
Speaker A [00:10:37]:
Now next, what I want to talk about are traffic strategies to get eyeballs on your funnel. And this is probably one of the most important things that you will focus on as a business owner is basically letting people know that your offers even exist. So let's say that you are focused on more organic search type traffic. There's a lot of things that you can do there. Right? You can do blogging. You can do podcasting, like what I'm doing now and sending people to my free lead magnet. You can use Pinterest. Pinterest is one of the things that I absolutely focus on.
Speaker A [00:11:19]:
And if you want to go a little bit deeper into how to sell your digital products via Pinterest, check out episode number 163 that I did with Kate All with Simple Pen Media, where we talked about pins to cash and selling digital products on Pinterest, and I will have that link for that podcast episode in our show notes here so you can definitely check that out. YouTube is another content marketing strategy that you can use to drive organic search traffic to your lead magnets, which drives them into your funnels. The other thing that I love to drive traffic but also build authority at the same time is guest podcasting and speaking opportunities. Right? So if you're gonna be a guest on somebody else's podcast, a lot of times those, podcast hosts will say, you know, Destiny, do you have a free lead magnet for my audience? You can give them the link for that and you can drive traffic to your lead magnet which drives traffic to your funnel there. You can also do guest block hosting, any written interviews. I have a lot of examples of media on my website. If you go to destinycopp.comforward/media, you will see a lot of the ones that I have done to drive, you know, basically ongoing traffic and building that authority. Now one of the best ways, and I would say this is my number one way to drive traffic to my funnels are using other people's audiences through like bundles or virtual summits or even marketplaces.
Speaker A [00:13:05]:
I've done a lot through that also. So let's talk about this in a little bit more detail. Now with bundles, basically, what's happening there is a bunch of business centers are getting together. They're in the same niche. They have the same target audience, and they are all pulling together a free type resource, a very, very valuable free type resource, and they're all promoting that bundle to their audience. Now you can be the host of something like this or you can participate in it. So if you've never done anything like this in the past, I would definitely suggest participating in one of these events first, get a feel for how it is, and maybe at some point in the future, you're gonna wanna host your own bundle. Another one is speaking at a virtual summit.
Speaker A [00:13:58]:
So there's tons of them out there in a lot of different ditches. I would go explore. And when you're a speaker at a summit, you'll have the opportunity to offer the audience your free gift, which will drive traffic into your funnel. Now in terms of marketplaces like Etsy or AppSumo, I know that there's business owners out there who are driving traffic from, like, Etsy into their free gift, which brings them onto their email list and onto their funnel. So that's definitely an option for you also. Now once you have one of these funnels set up, so let's say you have your lead magnet, you have your tripwire, go through your sales funnel just like a new subscriber. So you'll wanna test it out before you basically, you know, give it to the world. And if there's anything in there that you want to tweak or, you know, maybe make some changes there, you can do that.
Speaker A [00:15:06]:
Once you have it set up and you've been running traffic to it, I want you to go in and look at your data. So go in and look at your data, like, for your landing page and see how it's converting. What you don't want to happen is to drive a ton of traffic to your landing page for your lead magnet. Let's say you're speaking in a summit or you're participating in a bundle and you have a low conversion rate on that landing page. You don't want that to happen because you don't wanna go through all that work and drop in all that traffic to that landing page and have a very low conversion rate there. Now for a lot of our landing pages, I can get them up to, like, 60, 65%. Some of them may be a little bit lower, like at 45%. That's pretty high.
Speaker A [00:15:56]:
I would say that the industry average is gonna be anywhere from 20 to 30%, but I would really like for you to shoot for a little bit higher than that. And we see really good conversion rates with Leadpages, which is why I absolutely love Leadpages. You're not gonna pull me away from it because the conversion rates on my landing pages are so very high. So definitely, that would be one of the first places I would look if you feel like your sales funnel is not converting. And then I would look at the conversion rate of your tripwire. Now these can definitely vary in the sales funnels that we have done. We have seen anywhere from 5% all the way up to 10%. I would say 10% is pretty high.
Speaker A [00:16:43]:
Generally, what we're seeing is anywhere from 7 to 8% conversion rates on those tripwires. Sometimes it's a little bit lower in the b to c market than it is in the b to b market. But, generally, that's what we're seeing in terms of conversion rates for the tripwires. Now for the order bumps, what I like to see there is around 30%, and that's generally what we can get. Sometimes it's a little bit lower, sometimes it's a little bit higher, but generally 30% is what I like to see as the conversion rate for that order bump. So once you have your automated sales funnel set up, keep an eye on your data. I'd like for you to look at it every 2 weeks, no more than a month, or if you're running it to a big event, let's say you have a speaking opportunity at a virtual summit, I would keep an eye on it throughout a big event like that and to see if there's any tweaks that you need to make in the in the meantime. Okay.
Speaker A [00:17:43]:
There you go. If you don't have one of these set up in your business today, definitely definitely consider doing that. If you have any questions whatsoever on anything that I cover today, please reach out to me. I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you have. You can reach out to me on Voxer. I'd love to know more about you and your business, or you can DM me on Instagram. You can find me at destiny cop on both of those. Thanks so much for being here, and I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker A [00:18:15]:
Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day, and bye for now.