The ULTIMATE Guide to Creating an Online Sales Funnel - WITHOUT Paid Ads

TL;DR:

When you hear the word funnel you may think that you have to come up with some crazy complex system that involves a ton of different steps for getting someone from not knowing who you are to paying customer.

But it doesn't have to be that complicated, especially if you're just starting out.

You don't need to complete a long checklist, but instead you need to understand who your target audience is and how you can get them to know like and trust you so that they buy from you.

if you're just starting out chances are you don't have much of a following. This means that not many people know who you are and what you do. And this is a problem because if people don't know who you are and what you can do for them, then they will never buy from you.

So how do you solve this problem?

It doesn't matter which one, the only thing that matters is that your target audience is also using that platform. Wherever your customers are is where you need to be. Don't listen to all the talk about why LinkedIn is the next best thing, or why Instagram is where you need to be creating, or why YouTube is where you need to be creating, focus on your audience and where they are already exist.

Put yourself in the minds of your ideal customer and ask yourself the following questions:

Start creating content that will speak to these talking points. This will signal to your target audience that you are someone that can provide value to them, hence attracting them to your offer.

So you started posting on social media and you're starting to get some traction. People are starting to follow you and engage with your content, now what?

In order to turn your idea into a real business, just getting someone to know about you and your products and services isn't usually enough - especially in saturated marketplaces. That being said, some people will want to solve their problems so badly that you can get them to buy without developing the like and trust phase. So instead of waiting until you have a full content funnel built out, you can start testing out offers as soon as you start posting on social media.

What does a good offer look like?

It should solve one of your target audiences problems.

Let's get into an example, if you are someone that helps people create content online you can create a notion template that has a content creation system that makes it easy to consistently create content. Or you could make a PDF about how to come up with ideas for creating content.

How much should you charge for this?

At this point, you should charge a very small fee or nothing at all. The goal for now is to figure out what people actually want. If you have something good and it actually solves someone's problem, by keeping it free you, you will gain goodwill with your customers. They will trust you because you've solved their problem without asking for anything in return.

But how do I make money if I'm giving everything away for free?

Once you've solved that first problem people will have other problems. Coming back to the content creator example once you've helped someone come up with ideas for creating content then you can help them produce content at a higher quality level. You give them the idea PDF for free and now that they trust you, you can charge them to help them produce higher quality content.

Now that you have a way to get in front of strangers (social media) and you have an offer, you can start nurturing your leads and building a system that generates consistent cashflow.

Assuming that you are making some sales, at this point most people will probably start creating on other social media platforms. And that definitely has its benefits, you'll reach an audience that you weren't reaching on your platform that you started with, but what we have to remember is that social media is rented media. You don't own the audience on the platforms.

If you want to truly build a machine, here's what the high level funnel looks like: awareness using rented media and nurture using owned media.

But what is owned media?

It's media where you can actually push your message to your audience and you're not dependent on an algorithm to push it for you. Examples of this include email lists, websites, text lists, and mailing lists. Once you have an email, for example, if you want to run a promotion you can simply email the person. They've already signaled to you that they like you enough to buy from you and chances are if they bought from you once that they'll buy from you again.

It's incredibly important to get started with creating owned media as soon as possible because this type of media does not scale nearly as fast as rented media. Even if you have incredible content in an email, you won't receive the same network effects you receive on Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter. Although it is hard to grow this, this type of media converts incredibly highly.

This is a pretty simple breakdown of a content funnel. Each phase of this funnel can have multiple variations and inputs in them. For example for awareness instead of just doing one platform, the biggest brands create for all platforms. Instead of just an email newsletter, the biggest brands have high traffic blogs, email communications, text communications, and direct mail campaigns. However, if you don't have a big team it's impossible to do every platform effectively. So when you start, just pick one platform until you can hire people to own growth on other platforms.

Additionally this guide is assuming you're not using any paid ads, but paid ads are an incredible way to scale content that works. If you have a piece of content that is driving sales, it would be foolish not to run ads with that piece of content.

Here’s what our funnel looks like for Branding Deep Dive.

Awareness:

Like/Trust:

Offers: