Optimize Sales Funnel

Have you seen a typical sales funnel like this? A freebie offered in an opt in page, followed by a front end sale plus some other up sales, down sales, cross sales offers on the web. Eventually there might be some back end follow up to your email.  Why is this so popular? Simple, because it is working and hence people adopt this kind of sales funnel in their business to maximize their profit.

Why Freebie?

You might be wondering why you need a freebie offer? Can’t you just present your product to people and ask them to purchase? Well, the objective to have a freebie offer is to entice the people to opt in to your list so that you have chance to convert the visitors into buyers at a later stage. It might not be necessary to have a freebie offer, you could have a $1 trial or a very low cost product. The point is to offer people an irresistible offer to get them on your list first.

People generally won’t buy from you the first time because they have no idea if they can trust you and if your product is decent with great quality. So, getting your prospects on your list is the first step as it provides both you and your prospects a chance to find out more about each other.

Does Your Sales Funnel Convert?

So, the question lies on how do you know your offers (both your freebie and front end offer) convert? You need traffic. Lots of traffic to test your sales funnel.

Squeeze Page

The first thing you would need is to increase the conversion rate of your opt in page. If you can increase the conversion rate of your opt in page, you will increase the exposure of your front end offer and hopefully increase your sales. So, it is critical to optimize your squeeze page to get the conversion you satisfy before you scale the traffic sources. Otherwise, you might just waste lots of the the traffic without a converting squeeze page.

Front End Offer

Subsequently, you need to test your front end offer. After the people opt in and get your freebie, you have an option to present your front end offer immediately so every subscriber will get a chance to see your offer. Some people do not prefer go to this route as it might be aggressive. Personally, what I would like to do is to add a few wording (or image) on top of the front end offer, for example:

“Thanks for subscribing, your free gift is on its way to your inbox and will arrive in the next 5-10 minutes. In the mean time, check out the offer below.”

This is essential otherwise people will be confused because they knew that they just opt in for a free offer but they never receive what’s promised and rather be taken to a paid offer. The explanation is just to make things clear for your subscribers while maximize the exposure of your front end product.

Another thing to watch out is that the front end offer should be highly, closely related to the freebie offer (the very first offer). For example, if you have a “Facebook fanpage ebook” as a freebie, you should have similar offer for your front end such as “Penny Traffic To your Facebook that Generating xxxx Dollars in 24 Hours”. Never offer a front end not relevant to your freebie offer as that would only sabotage your sales funnel.

Up Sales, Cross Sales, Down Sales

You can prepare products for up sale, down sales or cross sales after the the front end offer to maximize your profit. Up sales can be something that is more powerful and advanced that will help the buyers further. Down sales can be a stripped version of your up sales with less content but cheaper price. Cross Sales can be something less relevant to your main offer.

A typical example could be something like the following:

• Front End Offer: Blueprint For $100/day With Article Marketing
• Up Sales: Article Mass Submission Software (2000 Article Directories) With Spinner
• Down Sales: Article Mass Submission Software (500 Article Directories) With Spinner
• Cross Sales: Traffic Blueprint

The above is just to illustrate what a sales funnel could look like. There is no hard and fast rule and it is totally depend on how you would package your products. If you have a proper sales funnel in place, you will not only add more value to your customers, but also increase your profit per visitor.

When you have sufficient data for your sales funnel conversion, you can start optimizing them by testing different headline, color, arrow size, buy button, etc…However, only test 1 variable at a time.

You can opt for free traffic or paid traffic to test out your sales funnel. Obviously, it takes time and effort for free traffic so if you are not tight on money, I would recommend to test via paid traffic such as PPC, PPV or solo ads. Out of these 3, I especially prefer solo ads because it is the easiest and fastest way to get guaranteed traffic to your sites.

Your Voice

How do you optimize your sales funnel? Drop me a comment below to share your experience.

To Your Success,
Ming Jong Tey