Lead Generation Sales Funnel

This article is a segment from my Local SEO Course available on Udemy. I recently added this lecture to my course as sales funnels have become an extremely important strategy for increasing sales for local businesses.

Let’s first define a sales funnel and why would you need one.

What is a Sales Funnel?

Regardless of the type or size of your business, you already have a sales funnel in place whether you realize it or not. From the moment that a customer calls you or walks into your office until they buy from you, they pass through different stages of your sales funnel.

For example, say that you offer a professional service like a dentist. When a customer enters your office, they speak to your receptionist and they give you their contact information (they become a lead), who then guides them through the sales process of setting the appointment for your service (the funnel) until they become a paying customer (the conversion).

This same sales process happens online with the use of a sales funnel. This sales funnel takes your potential customers along their buyers journey, collecting their contact information (the lead), making them aware of the problem that they need a solution (awareness), the customer begins to understand the solution and considers their options (consideration of your offer), and finally leads them to the decision making stage where they choose a solution and take action (conversion).

Let’s remember that in the online world, many customers don’t buy at first glance so the collection of their contact information (the lead) usually name & email, sometimes phone number is very important. This allows you to follow up in the future and nurture your potential customers who are not ready to buy today. Plus it allows you to begin to build a growing list of potential future customers.

So, for a small business you would want to create an awesome front end offer that you would use to start your sales process for your sales funnel. I call this your front end offer because a sales funnel allows you to add additional offers in what you would call your value ladder.

Value Ladder

For our dental office example, depending on the services that are offered.

The value ladder may look something like this:

A) New patient exam (Cleaning, x-rays)

B) Teeth Whitening

C) Fillings, Root canals, Extractions

D) Cosmetic Dentistry – porcelain and composite veneers

E) Dental Implants

F) Orthodontics

The Initial Offer

On our example here, the initial offer would be a New patient exam with cleaning and x-rays if needed at a special discount price. This allows you to show the value that your dental practice provides and allows you to build the customer’s confidence so that they may be interested in additional services that you offer.

The next step on the value ladder may be teeth whitening. Now that they are comfortable with you and your exam, they may be interested in a teeth whitening to shine up those pearly whites at an additional charge.

After the exam, you may find that they need a filling. This could be another upsell on the value ladder.

As you get to know your customer, you may learn that they have always been interested in having some cosmetic work done or possibly implants. These could be more upsells on your value ladder.

Add in some repeat visits to your dental office and you now have powerful sales process.

We can now see the benefit of a value ladder and how it can turn a low cost initial offer into a profitable customer. And all of this adds to the lifetime value of your customer.

But, what if we could automate this entire sales process?

We would need our initial offer, we would need some sort of a value ladder, and we would need some way for our customers to schedule their first appointment to get them started into the sales process.

Let’s stick with our dentist example and take a look at a funnel that would work for this situation.

There are several types of funnel building software tools that are available, but I personally use ClickFunnels because of it’s ease of use, wide variety of funnel templates and plug and play set-up.

So, let’s log into ClickFunnels and take a look at my dentist funnel.

Ok, we are logged into the main interface of ClickFunnels. If we go to the top and hover over Click Funnels it opens a drop down menu with links to your funnels, contacts, sales, the funnel marketplace, and the funnel builder. For now let’s select funnels.

We see that the first funnel is our dentist funnel, let’s select it.

With the dentist funnel you can see that there are 5 steps or separate pages included with this funnel. Let’s open the funnel to see what a client would see when they visit this funnel.

We notice immediately that there are several calls to action for the potential client. A company logo and phone number at the top to build trust. And 3 buttons offering a discount for services (your irresistible offer).

In the center is “Schedule an appointment” when you click on this button it brings up the offer = the new patient package, a $340 exam, including x-rays and a cleaning for only $45 if you act today. Increasing the scarcity of this offer is the note on the button “Claim this deal today – Only 16 vouchers left as of (insert date where you could customize the date)”

So, you’re giving a huge limited time discount to get your potential clients in the door and on the road to becoming a regular customer at your dental practice.

If we enter our name and email, remember we talked about building our list of future customers, it takes us to a Thank You page telling your potential client that if they Call to book their appointment now, they will get an addition 10% off the already low pricing, that’s $40.50 for the New Patient Package. This is the magic of the sales funnel for local businesses. It allows the business to take the potential customer on a buyers journey giving them an irresistible offer that is only available for a limited time.

To the right of schedule your appointment is Claim your voucher. When they click on this, it also brings up the New Patient Package. But remember, everything on ClickFunnels is fully customizable, so you could make this another offer if you would like.

To the left of the schedule your appointment is Teeth Whitening, when you click on this button it brings up another offer for teeth whitening. $50% off a 40 minute teeth whitening Regular price $149 only $74 if you act today. This may attract clients that are interested in teeth whitening. Just like the new patient package, If we enter our name and email, it takes us to a Thank You page telling your potential client that if they Call to book their appointment now, they will get an addition 10% off the already low pricing.

The navigation at the top of the page takes you to different sections of the funnel home page and the Meet your Dentist button takes you to another page where you can put the bio and head shot of the dentist, but that page opens in another window keeping your clients on the home page with the calls to action. At the bottom of the home page is another Claim your voucher button to entice them again.

The sales funnel works so well because it allows you to guide your prospect through the buyers journey providing your irresistible offer, creating scarcity by making it only available for a limited time, without any distractions that may be found on a traditional website.

For more information on my Local SEO Course on Udemy –

Visit the link here ==> https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-increase-sales-with-local-seo/