Regardless of what you’re selling online, sales funnels are the key to a successful ecommerce business. However, many entrepreneurs just starting out aren’t sure how to set up their funnels, or they’re wary about trying them. The fact is that, without a proper sales funnel in place, you’re going to struggle. To help you get started, we’ll go over how to stage your business for success with our free Clickfunnels template. You can download this sales funnel today and make it your own.
Start With the Squeeze Page
When you’re running any kind of online store, there are many aspects to think about as you get started. The advantage of a sales funnel is that it redirects your focus to the person you’re selling to instead of the storefront itself. As you first get into sales funnels, you’ll want to begin with the squeeze page. This is a landing page or opt-in page that hooks people into the sales funnel.
What Squeeze Pages Do
In short, the squeeze page is the page that you send your customers to when they’re about to order your products. In our free Clickfunnels template, our squeeze page sells a “Shooting Trainer” that basketball players can use to work on their shooting skills. You might bring people to your squeeze page from Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or other sources. The page will highlight a single product instead of a bunch of them. This helps ensure you connect with a specific audience. As a result, if someone isn’t interested in this particular product, they’ll be likely to click away. But active shoppers stay on the page.
How to Set Up an Effective Squeeze Page
Ultimately, you’ll want your squeeze page to get people to become leads during the first step. This means entering shipping information such as their name, address, phone number, and email address. After submitting their information, people will be in your database, allowing you to contact them later.
Once they’ve opted in during Step 1, they’ll enter Step 2, which will allow them to select a specific product and enter billing info to complete their order. For example, in our free Clickfunnels template, people can choose to buy one or two basketball trainers through our offer. You can use Step 2 to list quantity breaks and discounts; highlight appealing offers to further drive sales for greater quantities of products.
Additionally, we have a one-time offer of an ebook download below the billing info. It’s a “Basketball Mastery Guide,” which makes it easy for customers to add this to their order. This is essentially free money for us: the ebook cost us no more than $10 once, and we can repeatedly sell it for $15 to multiple customers through this order bump.
Remember the Real Purpose of a Sales Funnel
As you develop your squeeze page, keep in mind that the main purpose of a sales funnel is to generate assets for your business. This primarily consists of emails and phone numbers that enable you to promote new products and other offers. Secondly, you’ll want to use your funnels to maximize the average cart value by getting people to spend as much as possible on initial sales. This is huge for helping keep up with the costs of maintaining your business. Finally, your funnel should also maximize the overall lifetime value (LTV) through repeat sales, which generate consistent, predictable revenue.
Take Customers to an Upsell Page
Once customers have completed their order on the squeeze page, it’s time to lead them to your first upsell page. Don’t feel limited to one or two upsells, either. You can lead people to as many upsells as you want, all of which are one-click opportunities that make it easy to add more items to their order instantly. While people can choose not to add these items, many people are likely to be interested in purchasing additional products if they’re relevant to their initial order.
With more upsells comes a bigger increase in the average cart value. This can lead to increased revenue that you can then use to improve your ad campaigns. This will give you even more of a competitive edge. It’s important to remember the adage: “He who can spend the most to acquire customers wins.” With ample upsells and a maximized average cart value, you’ll be able to afford more ads that flush out the competition.
In our free Clickfunnels template, we’ve included two upsell pages: one for a “Limited Edition Shooting Strap” that corrects posture, and one for a pair of “Pro Skill Trainer Gloves” that allow for a better grip. Both of these go toward boosting the value of the average cart when people buy our Shooting Trainer through the squeeze page.
Offer a Form of Continuity to Maximize LTV
As we mentioned, the main goal of a sales funnel is to generate assets in the form of leads. All cold traffic should go through a sales funnel regardless of what you’re selling, with focus areas on specific products that attract equally specific audiences. First, you can maximize the average cart value through initial sales and upsells. Then you can conclude with continuity that maximizes the lifetime value of your customers. Once you’ve made that initial sale, you need to keep customers coming back to you with some type of continuity.
Continuity could include subscription boxes, digital memberships, and other offers that help generate income on a yearly or monthly basis. In our free Clickfunnels template, we create continuity in the form of a one-click upsell. People can pay $14.97 a month for weekly industry secrets that can improve their basketball training. That adds up to impressive compound interest that keeps the money coming in.
Subscription boxes are always a great option here if you’re offering physical products. You can work with a supplier like AliExpress to put together your boxes and ship them to customers.
Regardless of the subscription you implement, a focus on continuity is vital for generating consistent revenue and enabling your business to grow without the need to spend more on ads.
Complete the Funnel With a Thank You Page
After taking people through your squeeze pages, upsells, and continuity offers, you can complete the interaction with a “thank you” page. But this page can include more than an order confirmation and a message thanking customers. It can also include additional affiliate offers or links to Shopify stores, further boosting sales.
Get the Results You Want With a Reliable Sales Funnel
We encourage you to try this free Clickfunnels template with your bestselling products and see how well they perform. With a complete sales funnel that includes a squeeze page, multiple upsells, and continuity, you can see a significant increase in:
- Conversions
- Initial sales
- Long-term customer relationships
Subsequently, you’ll have more money to spend on supercharging your marketing. You can stay ahead of competitors in an increasingly saturated market.
If you would like to learn more about how to use sales funnels to build a successful dropshipping business, reserve your seat at the Ecommerce Empire Builders masterclass. We’ll show you how to use sales funnels to your advantage and generate a full-time income online in no time. You can also visit my YouTube channel for in-depth advice and insights.