Affiliate marketers and network marketers these days have realised the benefits of using an internet marketing sales funnel to filter out the people that are serious about what they are offering, from those that are just curious.
The old methods of cold calling and approaching anything with a pulse to try a sales pitch on, are so outdated that you could call them prehistoric. Marketers have realised that people hate to be sold to, but love to buy on their terms.
An internet marketing sales funnel has the distinct advantage of being able to filter out people that are not buyers, and are just curious. By setting up different stages of your funnel in a strategic way, you are able to have qualified prospects come out of the other end of the funnel. These are the people that have put their hand up and clearly demonstrated that they are interested in what you are offering.
It is a massive time saver to be only communicating with qualified prospects. Tyre kickers and time wasters have no intention of buying from you, and have not qualified for your time anyway.
Lets take a look at the four different stages of an internet marketing sales funnel, and how to make it convert into sales.
1. Lead Capture Page
The lead capture page is the first place where you send all of the traffic. Obviously you should write your advertisements so that they are sending only targeted traffic to your capture page, particularly if you are paying for the traffic. It is also important to make sure your capture page is congruent with the advertisements that are sending the traffic.
The ONLY purpose of this page is to generate leads by asking people to fill out their contact details in exchange for something of value.
This could be a report, a training course, a subscription to your newsletter, some valuable information, a kit, some software, a one on one consultation or coaching, or an ebook. It could basically be anything that you provide for them, but the most important thing is that it is free, and it is something of value.
The lead capture page needs to have a great headline in large font that immediately gets the intention of the prospect, and motivates them to check out the rest of the page. Include a subheadline to back up the headline, and put this is in a smaller font.
The only other things that you should have on the page are a video, an opt-in form and an income disclaimer link, or a Terms & Conditions link. Everything on the page should be above the fold.
This means that people do not have to scroll down the page to see more. If you do decide to have a page that goes below the fold, then at least make sure you have an opt-in form above the fold – this is important.
Your video should be reasonably short, certainly no longer than 5 minutes, and it's primary purpose should be to entice the viewer into giving you their contact details. If you are shy to get in front of the camera you can always record a slideshow and use screen capture software to record it.
The opt-in form should have as few fields as possible, certainly no more than three fields. It is common these days to only ask for the person's email address because it increases the likely hood of getting an opt in.
You can also ask for a first name and a phone number, but understand that the more information that you are asking for the less likely you are to get opt ins.
It is a great idea to search for the top earners and internet marketing gurus and to study how they design their capture pages.
A brilliant program to make it extremely easy to set up professional capture pages without technical skills can be found at Optimize Press. It honestly can not get any easier to design professional capture pages than by using Optimize Press.
2. Thank You Page
Once the prospect has opted into your list the next page is what is known as the "Thank You Page". This page obviously thanks the person for opting in and then proceeds to offer them to buy something from you for a very small fee.
Again you could be offering them anything here, but whatever it is, it needs to be worth what you are charging them. A good price point for this stage of the funnel would be $9.97. You even offer a money back guarantee if they are not interested in buying your main product from you later.
The primary purpose of the "Thank You Page" is to filter out the people that are not serious about buying from you. If they are not willing to fork out a few dollars to learn more about your product, then there is no chance that they are going to buy your main product.
3. Sales Page
For those people that have purchased from your "Thank You Page" you are now going to try to upsell them on your "Sales Page". This is where you are going to be selling your primary product.
Your primary product should usually be somewhere in the $97 to $497 range, and could also be used to introduce prospects to high ticket items ranging from $2,000 to $20,000 if you wanted to. If you are selling these high ticket items they need to premium quality to justify the massive price tags.
The only people that have reached this stage of the funnel are qualified prospects that have proved that they are interested in what you are selling, because they have already handed over money, even if it is just a small amount.
It is very rare that people will buy the first time they reach your sales page, particularly if your product is expensive. The idea is to use well written auto responders to follow up with these people and get them back to your sales page (in a polite way).
The sales page should include as much information as possible about the product, the benefits of buying the product, and possibly also include a FAQ section (frequently asked questions).
From here it is important you contact the buyer and have a chat with them to show them how you will be able to solve their problems and help them. Make sure this call is focused on them and not yourself (ie making sales and money from them)
4. Auto Responders
Any decent internet marketing sales funnel should be connected to a series of well written auto responders which educate and entertain the prospect. Again these messages need to be customer focused and not just spam trying to convince people to buy your stuff.
The first message should be sent out immediately when they first opt in, and it should be an introductory message welcoming them and explaining to them how you can help them.
It is best to keep the messages reasonably short, unless you have exceptional copywriting skills. Long emails are usually deleted as most people can not be bothered to read them.
And of course the subject headline needs to be interesting as well, otherwise the emails will not even be opened and sent straight to the spam folder.
Setting up an internet marketing sales funnel from scratch is very difficult for the average person because they are not good at html and java script. And connecting an opt in form to the sales funnel is even more difficult.
If you are not confident to do it yourself then you could pay a professional to set it up for you. This can get extremely expensive though, especially if you need to set up a lot of different pages.
Another option is to buy an internet marketing system that includes built in sales funnels with it. The only downside to this though is that your sales funnel will be exactly the same as thousands of other people which does not give you much of a unique selling proposition.
But by far the best option is to buy Optimize Press. You will be able to easily create killer professional looking capture pages, without having to learn any of the technical stuff that bogs most people down.
Head over to the Optimize Press home page to see what I mean. 
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