21 October 2022

Sales Funnel Checklist: Everything You Need For an Efficient Sales Funnel

Regardless of what you sell, getting people to buy from you doesn’t just happen. It takes a process that is captured through sales funnels.

From attracting prospects, turning them into leads, nurturing, and eventually converting them into loyal paying customers. The sales process unfolds in various stages.

And these stages are made up of elements that ensure you get the best results from your funnels.

In this article, we’d go over 8 points of the sales funnel checklist to enable you to build an effective sales funnel.

Let’s get started.

Sales Funnel Checklist: 8 Compulsory Elements

Here are 8 pointers to build a well-optimized sales funnel.

#1. Traffic

Having a great product is cool but having people interested in the product is how you make money.

To get traffic to your sales funnel, use all your cards to get people interested in your products. It could be running ads online, sharing free content, or giving an irresistible offer. Whatever you choose, it should be something valuable and in-demand enough to pique the interest of your customers.

A good strategy is to understand your target audience. Get to know who they are, their demographics, interests, online behavior, and everything else that directly affects their reaction to your business.

Next, you find them where they are. A rule of thumb in marketing is to go to where your audience is and market to them. So, discover what groups, communities, and social media platforms your target audience spends the most time on and set up your store there.

By meeting your target audience where they are, you can easily lure them into your sales funnel and move them further down the funnel as you want.

If you’re yet to understand how traffic works for a sales funnel, Here’s an Ultimate Guide on How to Drive Traffic to Your Sales Funnel in 10 steps.

#2. Lead Magnet

The next thing humans love after freedom is free products/services. A lead magnet is a free product or item given to potential buyers to lure them to you. By giving out free products, you have a greater chance to capture the attention of your audience, collect their email addresses, and pitch your paid products to them.

The great thing about using lead magnets is the awareness it brings to your business by helping you generate more qualified leads. In other words, bringing in more traffic. These qualified leads eventually become paying customers.

This is why lead magnets are an essential part of your marketing strategy. When you offer something of value, your customers get what they want, you get emails and everyone wins.

Lead magnets can be ebooks, mini-courses, white papers, reports, case studies, discounts/offers, or even a trial subscription.

The best lead magnets have the following characteristics;

Are highly valuable
Must be specific
Delivers on its promise
Easy to use
Shows your expertise

If you ever need to learn more about Lead magnets and how you can use them to grow your business, check out this ultimate guide on Lead Magnets and how to use them to grow your business.

#3. Bait – Low Price Offer

This is an upgrade to the lead magnets you give out for free. Here, you’re giving your audience an opportunity to test the waters with very little investment.

This means you’re offering them another highly valued product at a very low price. Chances are, some people will take you up on your offer, while others will bail. And that’s totally fine.

Those who take you up on your offer have shown that they are interested to know more about the problems you solve, which makes them qualified leads.

So, once they accept your offer, send them to a landing page that showcases all they stand to gain from your product. A psychology hack is to make them think they are getting more for less. It always works.

Emmanuel Akpe, a seven-figure copywriter and sales expert says a strategy that increases his conversion rate is having an irresistible offer. In his words, “I make sure my offer is really irresistible. I mean, hundred to one. You’re giving me one Naira and you’re taking 100 Naira from me. It’s a big thing for me. And I’m not giving you cash, I’m giving you intangible value. You’re seeing the value and you believe you’re collecting so much more from me.”

Sell the value of your low-priced offer. The easier it is for your audience to recognize the value of your offer, the more likely they’ll take you up on it.

#4. Landing page

A landing page is another important element on your sales funnel checklist. A landing page is like every other web page, but with one singular focus, helping you capture leads.

It becomes more effective when there’s a high-value lead magnet in front. So when prospects come to download your lead magnet, they fill out the opt-in form and are lured into your sales funnel.

Landing pages are very important to creators looking to sell their digital products. Every word, sentence, and image should lead to one action – converting prospects to leads and then to loyal paying customers.

The most effective landing pages contain two most important things – text and elements.

The texts, also known as copy, are written to compel the reader to take action. While the elements further complement the copy in influencing the reader to take action.

To write an effective copy convincing enough to your prospects, keep these tips in mind;

Write for your audience
Make your sentences short and sharp
Use bullet points or numbered lists
Showcase your brand personality
Use subheadings to break up large chunks of text.

You can also include images and videos that further talk about your product and convince prospects to download it.

Alternatively, you can have a sales page that helps you to sell your products. But that depends on the type of sales funnel you’re building and your goal for it.

This technique is used if you want to sell directly to prospects, then gather leads you can upsell more products to later.

However, if you want to capture leads, nurture them, and pitch your products to them later, then it’s best to have a landing page.

With Selar’s page builder feature, you can create ideal landing pages designed to drive traffic to your funnel and convert prospects to customers. The best part? It’s easy to use with no technicality required.

#5. Content Strategy

For your sales funnel to be complete and provide the best results, you need to have a content strategy.

How are you going to increase awareness of your product?
How will you gain their trust?
How will you nurture your leads to become loyal paying customers?
And so much more…

The best way to attract customers to your business is by first offering high-quality valuable content.

Get to know the pain points of your audience and create content tailored to their needs.

Don’t forget, customers will be in different stages of the funnel so create content that supports their stage in the funnel.

For the top of the funnel, prospects have a specific problem and are looking to find solutions for it. They are not ready to buy yet. They just want to fix their problem. Content ideas for this category can include how-to articles or basic explainer videos.

In the middle of the funnel, prospects have a deeper interest and are not just looking for quick fixes anymore. They want to understand the problem they have and the best way to fix it such that they never have the same issue again. Content ideas you can create at this point include; ebooks, mini-courses, and thought leadership courses that buttress the topic.

For the bottom of the funnel content; prospect knows their problem and the type of solution they need. They just have to decide who to get it from. Your content and sales funnel strategy determines if they trust you enough to buy from you.

Generally, develop a wide range of content in various formats like; blogs, videos, emails, case studies, quizzes, etc that address your audience’s needs.

Repurpose this content into short-form email messages that would be sent to prospects as they progress down the funnel. If your content is good, chances are they’d stick around, wanting more, and moving down the funnel till they eventually buy from you.

#6. Email marketing automation/sequence

After creating a content calendar, the next thing to do is create an email marketing sequence for your prospects.

This is because email marketing is a critical part of the success of your sales funnel. 72% of consumers only engage with marketing messages that have been personally customized to their interests. And the only way to do this is through email marketing.

Email marketing helps nurture leads because you send them campaigns directly to their emails that either helps them solve a problem or add value to them.

So, decide on an email marketing tool that helps you to send email messages to your customers and automatically add users to your email list. Typical email marketing tools used include ConvertKit, MailChimp, Sendpulse, etc.

With Selar, you can integrate your favorite email marketing tool and monitor the progress of your business all from your Selar dashboard.

Here’s a video that shows how to integrate Mailchimp and Convertkit to Selar.

Next, after you’ve decided on an email automation tool, create a schedule to follow suit. Thanks to your content strategy, you already have pieces of content created for specific users at different stages of the funnel and with different needs.

Depending on your audience and business structure, an email schedule can look like this;

Day 1: Welcome email
Day 2: Free content
Day 3: Free content
Day 4: Free content with another free resource
Day 5: Free content
Day 6: Offer a free trial
Day 7: Offer to buy your product (You can offer discounts here too)
Day 8: Follow-up emails

Struggling with automation? Learn How to Create an Automated Sales Funnel to Boost Sales of Your Digital Product.

#7. Premium offer

Another important factor on your sales funnel checklist is a premium offer. Always have irresistible offers for your sales funnel. By creating unique offers, you increase your chances of moving leads further down the funnel till they buy from you.

Now, not everyone who sees your one-time offer will take you up on it. In most cases, your prospects would prefer to stick to a no-risk association with you than jump to your next tier of product/service. For them, there’s no guarantee they’d get their money’s worth. That’s why you need to have a series of mini-offers all leading to one ultimate offer.

At the end of each stage, have a unique offer that pushes your lead to the next stage of the funnel. It could be a discounted event, to join a group for exclusive access to you, a webinar, a course, etc. You can also upsell a lower-priced product with a discount. Whatever works for you.

#8. A checkout page

After all is said and done, an excellent way to be rewarded for your efforts is for people to buy your products. Hence, the need for a checkout page.

As the name implies, a checkout page is a page where your customers enter their payment information to purchase your products online. It is a must-have for every sales funnel.

When you host your products on Selar, your customers have different payment options and can even pay you in different currencies. And if they do not complete payment on the checkout page, Selar’s abandoned cart feature automatically sends them an email to complete their purchase.

As a merchant, you also get the details of the customer so you can reach out to them and further encourage them to pay. This way you never lose a customer for any reason. That’s why Selar helps you to close all loose ends so you are guaranteed every sale.

What’s Next?

Make a list of all these factors for your sales funnel checklist and ensure to cross it off when you have them added. These are all you need to have an effective sales funnel.

To recap, here’s an 8-step sales funnel checklist to follow;