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Elements of a Sales Funnel and How to Optimize It

Written by: Charles Godbout

Article Overview: The front-end Products are the first products you sell. They may not even make a profit. You need at least one, preferably two or three. These can cost anywhere from nothing to hundreds of dollars, but they need to be as broadly appealing as possible. One method is to offer a very low-priced product that is an extremely good value, something that will blow the customer away.

Elements of a Sales Funnel and How to Optimize It

The front-end Products are the first products you sell. They may not even make a profit. You need at least one, preferably two or three. These can cost anywhere from nothing to hundreds of dollars, but they need to be as broadly appealing as possible. One method is to offer a very low-priced product that is an extremely good value, something that will blow the customer away. You can also include a free trial of a subscription product. This helps build the initial relationship with the customer and prove the quality of your products using an extremely low barrier to entry. Another option is to offer a free-trial subscription as your front-end product.

The common wisdom is that you’ll get a better quality of customer if you charge even a small price for your front-end product. The subscription products are one way to keep people interested and keep revenue coming in is to create a product that has a recurring monthly benefit that people subscribe to and pay for each month.

The Back-end Products are used once people purchase your initial product, you can offer them several additional products that are more profitable for you than the initial product. You might charge $97 for a more advanced product, and $297 for the next level, etc. If your front-end product is an eBook, you can typically charge 50 to 100% more for a physical copy.

The key is to make it as easy as possible for them to order again, so it’s important to have a shopping cart system that remembers their details, so they don’t need to enter them every time.

You should also test the order of the offers you’re presenting. You can do this using split testing. This has to do with how much the first up sell will be. Many people say the first up sell should be less than the initial sale, but it may be difficult to turn a profit this way. You’ll need to test which style works for your market. So people don’t feel like they’re being deluged with special offers, you can create a progress bar that tells them their position in your system. Make sure the pages for each offer are different. You don’t want one offer to look similar to the one the customer just came from.

Split up products or services that are $100 or more into payment plans. This way customers can pay a reasonable monthly amount. The amount of re-billing attempts that fail is easily offset by the increase in conversions.

Use sales intensification methods to add urgency. This means offering them a one-time buy that will expire when they leave the site. If they pass up that offer, you can present them with it again as a second chance at some point in the future.

A thank-you video/message after the initial sale and before the special offers can go a long way toward making your customers feel welcome and valued. It then introduces them to your special offers that are only available right now.

Use navigation links appropriately, reducing the navigational choices as they get deeper into the sales funnel, particularly in the checkout process. You might have noticed that when you enter the checkout process on most sites, you suddenly have no navigation links. They don’t want anything to distract you from completing your purchase.

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Article Tags: additional products, benefit, br, ebook, free trial subscription, initial product, next level, relationship, rsquo, shopping cart system, subscription product, subscription products, wisdom
Referred by: http://jaykubassek.com



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