A Simple Funnel System Everyone Can Use

Funnels can be complicated. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful things you can do and it can all get too much very quickly.

Then, you actually have to have a product to sell afterwards. What’s more; you have to match the funnel to the product and before you know it, you’re overwhelmed.

Here’s a simple system to avoid that.

Step One: The Landing Page & Quick Guide (Free)

I’ve written about lead magnets before. Check out that article, because I don’t want to repeat myself.

Essentially though, a lead magnet is a free solution to a little problem your readers and potential subscribers are having. It’s a lot easier to convert someone to a paying customer if you have already given them something and they trust you than it is to convert them straight to a paying customer from cold traffic.

Now, a lot of people go mad when it comes to opt-ins for free stuff. You can get assaulted by pop-ups when you’re innocently browsing, people write long form sales letters for opt-ins and all sorts of weird stuff.

Absolutely none of this is necessary. Get a decent pop-up/capture software (I use Thrive Leads,) use simple landing pages and headlines and don’t overly try anything flashy.

Why?

Because if you can’t convince someone they want a free, quick and easy solution, it’s going to be very difficult to convert them to a paid customer. You want to make it easy for yourself, and hard for them. Not the other way around. What’s better?

• 1000 visitors, 5% convert into subscribers and 50% of those buy your product.
• 1000 visitors, 10% convert into subscribers and 10% of those buy your product.

In the first example, you have fifty subscribers from one thousand visitors and twenty-five sales.

In the second example, you have one hundred subscribers but only ten sales.

The first, despite attracting fewer subscribers, is better from a profit standpoint by a long shot.

Keep your landing page and opt-ins simple and to the point for this reason.

Step One-Point-Five: The Starter Pack (Discount)

You don’t need a Step 1.5 in most cases. I wasn’t going to include. Let’s say though that you’re an SEO consultant. You get people in with a lead magnet like, “15 Things That Will Kill Your Home Page SEO.”

It’s basic Yoast stuff but it gets people in the door. The door to your $500 an hour consulting practice.

Needless to say, it’s a massive ask to have people go from £0 invested in a book to $500 an hour.

So you might need an intermediary step. A cheaper alternative which makes them invest, but not too much.

Plenty of people on entrepreneurial forums ask, “Well, if Tony Robbins can charge $5000 a seminar, why is he selling a $10 book on Amazon? He must be a scammer!”

Regardless of whether you think he’s a scammer or motivational guru, the fact is that he’s just doing the above. A person that reads his $10 book and has a positive experience is more like to spend $100 on an e-course. A person who spends $100 on an e-course might consider a $1000 bootcamp. So on and so forth.

Will everyone spend escalating money up the ladder? No, but $10 is $10 and some will.

So, it might on occasion be worth having the trinket item in between step one and two. But not at all necessary, if that seems like hard work.

Step Two: The Complete Overview (Paid)

This is your product.

Your reader and now subscriber pays for this.

I like to think in these simple terms: Free guide = quick fix.

For your complete thoughts on a topic, you have a paid option.

A good example:

5 Ways To Fix Your Posture = Free guide with five exercises you can do at your desk.

Fully paid product:

A Complete Postural Exercise System where you give a six week workout.

You could even give away the exercises in the free guide and then have the person upgrade to the progression and routine, though I’d be careful with giving away that much. It would work though and people would click through.

Obviously a ton more thought goes into a paid product, but as a simple concept, free = quick fix, paid = complete solution.

In Between: The Email System

You can send out an unlimited amount of emails in a round-and-round way. Just keep them with different themes.

Here’s a blueprint you can follow:

1. Get Feedback on Freebie.
2. Give Feedback on Freebie. (I.e. Testimonial on what their peer has experienced.)
3. Additional info from either Part II or III (You can pitch at the end of this or leave it)
4. Testimonial from paid product
5. What would you like to see in the future? (Open ended question, no pushing your subscriber for a particular answer)
6. Straight up pitch for product

You can repeat that with different tips, pitches and testimonials for as long as you have them. The key here is that you vary the autoresponders. I get on some lists and people will pitch me on some new product with every single email. No value add, no telling me why I should get it outside of their pitch.

Don’t do this. It’s better to only pitch once per month and send five other emails than to pitch six times a month. Another way to do this is to get some basic sales psychology stuff like Cialdini’s six principles and have each email embody one of those things (so, “I’m one of the guys” followed by “here’s a testimonial”) so that you’re not constantly selling.

When a person gets sales fatigue, they’re just going to stop opening emails. If you only pitch them 1/6 times, they won’t get fatigued. (This is assuming a reasonable time frame. If you email every day, pitch less often in the ratio.)

Final Thoughts

This is relatively straightforward as a simple funnel, but you can obviously expand it to be as complicated as you want. Multiple opt-ins, list segmentation, pitching more to people who open every email versus dialling back if open rates fall.

All of those things are options and if it seems complicated, forget the options. Instead, do the following:

• Create a landing page
• Create a single solution or quick guide lead magnet
• Send emails of varying intention
• Upsell to a paid solution at the end of the sequence

You can add in the 1.5 step if you need to, but that’s not necessary in all cases.

As always, it’s easy to start simple and introduce complexity, but most people try it the other way round.