Do you have a funnel?

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You’ve probably seen ads, articles, posts about funnels, but what even is a funnel?

The basic concept is at the top of the funnel are your ads, your opt in pages, your lower priced/entry level products and services and as your audience moves through the funnel, fewer and fewer of them are buying more expensive products and services.

Your funnel might contain:

• Access To Digital Products

  • Communities

  • Newsletter Content

  • Online Courses

  • Software
    

• Physical Products

  • Books

  • Merchandise

  • Physical Products
    

• Ads (BeeHiiv is great)

  • Boosts (Promoting Other Newsletters)

  • Ads

  • Sponsors
    

• Affiliate Products
  (Getting Commissions to Sell Other Company’s Products and Services)
  

• Coaching/Consulting/Services
  

• Events/Experiences/Speaking Gigs

Basically think of your funnel as an end to end system where you get in front of your audience either with ads, with partnering with other companies who send you business, with referrals and word of mouth, with social media, with your business cards and any other form of advertising you do. This is the top of your funnel.

Your Sales Process:

Next, what does your sales process look like?

What products and services do you sell and in what order?

Does the order you try to sell products and services in end up being the order in which your customers buy them in?

Should you reorder your sales process?

Should you add (or remove) products and/or services from it?

What is the best path to take your customers from where they are to where they want to be and where you’ll help them end up (the transformation you’re selling)?

These are some questions you should ask yourself as you work on creating or optimizing your business.

Draw Your Funnel (Follow the money):

Take a sheet of paper and draw your funnel.

1. Ads / Commissions You Pay Others To Promote Your Products/Services

2. (Optional) Opt In Page (Build An Email List)

3. (Optional) Webinar

4. Sales Page of Introductory Product/Service

5. (Optional) Sales Page of More Advanced/Additional Product/Service (Upsell)

6. (Optional) Sales Page of Recurring Product/Service (Upsell)

How much in ad spend/affiliate commissions does it take to generate one lead (email opt in) or if you’re sending people straight to a sales page, how much are you paying in ads to get a sale?

Oftentimes, people will choose to breakeven on the introductory product/service they sell and make their money on additional products and services they sell to customers of the first product/service they sell them.

Try to look at and understand your numbers and see if it makes sense. Once you have a clear picture of whether your investment of $1 into ads returns $0.10, $1, $10 or something in between when looking at your entire funnel helps you scale your business. The more profitable you can make it and the faster you’re getting your ad spend money back (return on investment and return of investment) the faster you can scale your company.

You can look for additional ways to add revenue including adding ads and promoting other newsletters within your newsletter to add extra revenue to try to help offset advertising costs.

To help us better understand your funnel (and create more content to help you):