How to Create a Sales Funnel and More

If you missed it, over the last month my friend Cari and I have been doing a collaborative blog series all about taking your brand concept from an idea to ready to launch to the world. We kicked the series off with a Q&A all about conceptualizing your brand and over the past few weeks, we’ve covered brand and website design, brand photography, and social media. Today we’re going to be talking about lead magnets, sales funnels and email sequences!

First, let’s define some terms:

What is a sales funnel? 

A sales funnel is basically the journey you want your audience to take from discovering your business to being loyal customers.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet, or lead generator, is something of value that you give away in return for someone’s email address, often referred to as a “freebie.” 

What is a nurture email sequence?

A nurture email sequence is full of value for your subscribers. It nurtures your brand’s relationship with your potential customers. Nurture emails usually provide helpful information and tips for your customers on a regular basis.

What is a sales email sequence?

A sales email sequence is all about convincing your subscribers to purchase from you and asking for that hard sale. It often coincides with a discount, limited-time offer, or new product launch.

a bit More about Sales Funnels:

How does a sales funnel work?

The basic idea is to create something of value to give away in return for someone’s email address. This is called your lead magnet. You can talk about your lead magnet on your social media and put a pop-up on your website too. When someone wants your freebie, they have to give you their email address in return for it. Once you have their email address you can add them to your email list and start sending them some helpful information as it relates to what you do. This builds a relationship and trust with your audience. Once you’ve gained their trust by providing real valuable content, you can hard sell them on your product or service and they are far more likely to be ready to purchase from you than if you cold-called them. Your sales funnel is the journey someone goes on from discovering your brand, to being interested in your product or service, to purchasing from you.

A bit more about Lead Magnets:

What should my lead magnet be?

Your lead magnet or lead generator should be something of value that you can easily replicate to give away to your audience! As a brand photographer, I sometimes give away free stock images in exchange for email addresses. I’ve also had good success with giving away different PDFs to help small business owners manage their social media accounts or plan their photoshoots. I’ve seen people do mini educational video series in exchange for email addresses, offer webinars, or even schedule consult calls with their audiences for their lead generator. The sky is the limit, as long as your audience will find it helpful and it’s not too much work for you to give away.

Where should I share my lead magnet?

I know we all hate website pop-ups, but you guys, they work so much better than a static email sign-up on your website! And if you truly believe that your lead magnet is valuable, then you shouldn’t have any qualms about putting one on your website because you know it will be helpful for your audience to get their hands on. Another great place to promote your lead magnet is on your social media accounts! I talk about mine often on social media because, as helpful as social media is for connecting me with my ideal clients, I don’t own my following and so my goal is always to get them off of the apps and onto my website or email list where I can continue to nurture the relationship without relying on someone else’s app.

A bit more about Email sequences:

How do I get started with sending email sequences?

There are lots of services available for email marketing but my favorite is Flodesk because it’s affordable and super easy to use. I love how beautiful and simple their designs are and how easy they make it to personalize them to my brand. You can sign up here for 50% off. If you’d like more information on getting started with Flodesk you can check out this blog post.

What should I send in my nurture email sequence?

I am a big believer in no-fluff emails because nobody has time to read a novel, and the reason they signed up for your emails in the first place was for the value you provide, not random stories about your life. 

The email series I have received the best feedback on was a series I called “Tuesday Tips” where I sent out a super short, one-liner tip for small business owners every Tuesday. It’s the one time that I found people actually responding to my emails personally to tell me how helpful they were. Keeping them short and to the point made it easy for people to make the time to read them and easy for me to produce too. Win-win!

I’ve also gotten good click-through on featuring my blog posts in my emails. Round-ups once a month featuring several blog articles seem to perform better than weekly emails with only one post link. This is probably due to the variety of subjects available within the email, but this format has worked well for me when I am too busy to schedule weekly emails anyway.

How often should I send emails?

There is no magic number of emails to send, as long as you’re not being spammy and sending tons of them every day. The whole point of a nurture sequence is to slowly nurture your relationship with your audience and this could be done with weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly emails depending on the amount of time you have available to spend on it. 

When I was sending weekly emails I batched out a month or two in one sitting and scheduled them out. Lately, I’m on more of a relaxed schedule but I still try to batch out emails to save myself time when I can and I suggest trying it so you are not always scrambling to pull your email together last minute.

What should my sales email sequence include?

Well, the most important thing here is to clearly ask for the sale, but some other helpful things to include in this sequence are sharing what problem you are solving for your clients, client testimonials, objections people may have and how you overcome them, and a vision for your client’s success if they purchase from you. Making your sales push a limited-time offer is also helpful to pushing your audience to purchase now, rather than waiting. The most important thing in sales emails is to be very clear about what you are offering and include several call-to-action buttons.

Do you have a Sales Funnel for your business?

I think this is one of the most important things you can do to grow your business and while I didn’t have the space to go super in-depth here, I hope this overview is helpful for you as you start to plan a sales funnel for your brand launch! If I didn’t answer a question you have about sales funnels, lead generators, or email marketing, please drop your questions in the comments!