It’s no secret that a strong digital marketing funnel is key to a thriving online business as it’s a great way to attract and convert leads into paying customers.
They are used by everything from teen entrepreneurs, digital marketers, and business owners of all sizes in order to increase sales and grow businesses.
But how do you create one without spending either a fortune or a ton of time?
Creating a sales funnel doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive! In this post, I’ll show you how to create a digital marketing funnel for your online business, and entirely for free as well.
This post will be packed with tons of value, so make sure to read it, understand it, and take action immediately after you consume it.
| What is a digital marketing funnel?
A digital marketing funnel is a strategy that you can use to systematically turn interested visitors, viewers, a target audience, leads, or even existing customers to buy your product through a series of steps that are persuasive enough for them to pull the trigger.
The sales funnel starts with attracting attention and capturing leads through a series of emails, ads, social media marketing, content marketing, articles through search engine optimization, or other touchpoints.
The goal is to guide potential customers through a process with your marketing strategy that will lead them to buy your product or service.
There are many different types of digital marketing sales funnels, but the most common one is the three-stage sales funnel:
Awareness -> Interest -> Consideration -> and Conversion.
Source: Ahrefs
All of the above might sound like a lot, but there is no need to make things complicated as marketers love to make this entire process unnecessarily complex and dragged out.
If you have a solid grasp of the true basics that drive any sale, you’ll be fine.
What drives sales and human psychology
Before we even get to touch a modern internet marketing funnel, we need to pull up a refresher on what sales are and what drives conversions.
By knowing the basics well enough, creating your digital marketing sales funnel for your target audience should be a breeze.
I’ll borrow some excellent points from Andrew Kirby (retired by age 21) on what you really need to know about online sales.
He goes more in-depth around the subject so I do recommend you to watch the entire video above, but for creating a digital marketing funnel, the following points are enough to grasp.
Understand money
A sale is simply this: A value exchange between two parties.
You want someone to give you money. In order for someone to willingly want to part with their money, and give it to you, they must receive something they perceive as valuable.
What do people think is valuable?
Anything that either solves an urgent problem or moves them towards their desires.
Business is nothing else than the paragraph above, problems to be solved, or desires to be fulfilled.
Your job, before even building any type of sales funnel, is to figure out why these people buy things.
I’ll repeat it once more:
People either WANT to get closer to something, or they WANT to get further away from a problem that they are having.
Your entire digital marketing strategies or marketing tactics should be built around helping people on that journey.
Fail to do so and your entire funnel marketing strategy will be doomed from the start.
Choose their most urgent problem or desire and try to find a solution for it
So by now, you should know what people want, if not then come back to this step later after you’ve done your research.
Now we’re going to help people to get what they want, so how are we going to do that?
By solving their most urgent problem. Problems that they think about all the time and actively try to solve without success.
This is where your content marketing starts. You should map out what steps your potential customers need to take in order to get from the position that they are in, and where they want to go.
Everything that you write, every email copy that you craft, and all of the landing pages you create should cater towards moving the prospective customers forward to their desired goal.
Sell before you build by using the MVP concept
This concept is a gem and a game-changer that you should act on immediately, and it’s the concept of Minimum Viable Product or MVP for short. I use it myself daily for my content marketing strategies, with posts that use search engine optimization.
The premise is that you want to first test if what you have to sell is actually what people truly desire and want to learn more about.
There is nothing worse than building a product or service, spending hours, weeks, and months and paying for an expensive digital marketing funnel. And when the time comes to launch your product, no one wants it.
That’s because you failed on a fundamental level in business.
FIRST get the sale or visitor that shows interest, and verify that people WANT what you have to offer, THEN build the product or service that solves their problems.
There is no need for upfront capital, huge investments, or costly business software in order to test your idea.
That is why you should start with a free digital marketing funnel software that does the job excellently.
Once you get some sales in without even having a product to sell, let them kindly know that there are some delays and you’ll throw in a free bonus for them as compensation as soon as the product is delivered.
Do you see what you have done with this digital marketing strategy?
You’ve effectively minimized business risk, verified a viable product idea, and done so entirely for free.
How to create a digital marketing funnel
So far we’ve gone through some juicy information that I hope you got a lot of value from.
You’ve got a grasp of the problems and desires of your customers, and you’re ready to try out your ideas by building a digital marketing funnel.
A digital marketing funnel is simply a series of steps that you put a website visitor through in order to convert them into a paying customer.
It usually starts with capturing their email address or getting them to download something in exchange for their contact information.
For them to even get to this page, you’ll need a solid content marketing strategy, either through social media marketing or other venues.
Then, you’ll send them automated emails (also called marketing automation) that will educate and persuade them to buy your product or service.
The final step is getting them to actually purchase your product or service.
The absolute easiest and well know marketing funnel is this:
A landing page with strong copywriting ->
Sign up for an email list ->
Pitch the offer (your product or service) ->
Email marketing campaigns
What happens here is that people land on your “website” which is just a simple page, a landing page.
Here they read about your offer, why it helps them solve their problems or moves them closer to their desires.
This page usually offers something for free and that is valuable. This is called a lead magnet. The entire purpose is to get the visitor’s contact information (email address), so we can contact them later with the offer.
Once they sign up for your freebie, they will be taken to a “thank you page”, which essentially tells them about the next steps.
Usually, this page has some light instructions on what emails they will get, where to find the freebie, and also information about a product that they might want to check out more.
Most people will usually not buy your offer at this stage, as multiple touchpoints are necessary in order to build rapport and conviction with the target audience. If you already have existing customers then this process is much smoother.
This is where a sequence of pre-written emails is set up in the funnel, which is spaced out by a few days.
Everything I’ve described so far is part of the entire digital marketing funnel. The landing page, and offer, getting the sign-up information, and sending out emails. Set this up once and everything will run on autopilot.
There are several software platforms that make it easy to create a digital marketing funnel, but most of them are either complicated, clunky, or bulky, and cost a lot per month (up to $149 per month!).
Systeme.io that I use is easier than most of them, works great, is used by thousands, and is free as well! It’s the only one you need to get your MVP offer live, today!
They offer all the tools you need to create a digital marketing sales funnel, including automation, landing pages, and payment processors.
Plus, the platform is easy to learn and use, so you can get up and running fast.
Why you need to measure the success of your digital marketing funnel
The success of your marketing funnel should always be measured.
You need to know whether people are completing the desired actions (such as subscribing to your email list, clicking links, reading emails, or making a purchase) and what’s preventing them from doing so.
The data is easily visible inside Systeme.io’s dashboard, funnel steps, and email marketing page.
Once you have this data, you can make the necessary changes to improve your funnel and see better results.
Why do you even need a digital marketing funnel?
Imagine you’re at a trade show and you meet a potential customer.
You give them your business card and tell them to visit your website for more information.
But what happens when they get home and forget about you?
That’s where your digital marketing funnel comes in. A funnel is a series of emails, social media posts, and other marketing content that guides a potential customer through the buying process.
There are many reasons you might need a digital marketing funnel for your business as well.
Maybe you’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of website visitors yet.
Maybe you’re seeing a lot of traffic but not many conversions.
Or maybe you’ve got a great conversion rate, but you’re not generating enough leads to sustain your business growth.
In any case, a digital marketing funnel is a great way to maximize your website’s potential and help your business grow.
And since almost every online business uses some kind of funnel or email marketing strategy, you’re seriously not even competing if you’re skipping this.
The benefits of a digital marketing funnel
A digital marketing funnel is a process that automates the task of converting leads into paying customers, meaning you can handle thousands of visitors each and every day, on autopilot and entirely hands-off.
It does this by segmenting your audience and guiding them through a series of tailored marketing messages that eventually leads to a sale.
By automating this process with a digital marketing funnel, you save valuable time which lets you grow your business more quickly and efficiently.
Not only that, but you’ll also see higher conversion rates and a lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA), letting you focus on critical business decisions instead.
Wrap up
A digital marketing funnel is a great way to track your leads and sales as they move through the buying process.
By having a sales funnel and marketing strategy in place, you can easily see where people are dropping off and make changes to increase conversions.
Creating a digital marketing funnel is easy, and you can do it for free as well!
Use this guide to learn how to create a digital marketing funnel for your business, and watch your traffic and sales explode!