Step-by-step Free Guide to Sales Funnel Template That Help You Sell More

People don't randomly buy what they see or like.

There's a process we all go through before swiping our credit card or hitting the "order now" button.

Sometimes it takes us days, weeks or months to make these decisions. Other times, it's the exact opposite. We decide almost in an instant.

This happens for many reasons, but the bottom line is that this decision-making process exists, and as a smart entrepreneur or marketer, you need to understand how it works.

Only then can you meet your audience at different stages of their decision-making process with the right offer and the right marketing message.

And a sales funnel template can help you chart the most likely path your audience will take before becoming paying customers.

Author's Note: If you are looking for a solution that will help you automatically build your sales funnel from scratch and increase your sales, check out the GetResponse conversion funnel here.

TABLE OF CONTENT of Guide to Sales Funnel Template

What is a sales funnel template?

The 7-step sales funnel template

• Step 1. Generate targeted traffic
• Step 2. Send traffic to a SPECIFIC high-converting landing page
• Step 3. Convert visitors into subscribers & leads
• Step 4. Make your leads and subscribers true fans
• Step 5. Get fans to become customers
• Step 6. Bring them back if they abandon their cart
• Step 7. Close the sale!
  

Conclusion

What is a sales funnel template?

By now you have probably figured out the definition yourself:

A sales funnel template is a design of a consumer's journey to become a customer and what happens after.

Think of it as a whiteboard where you completely map out, by drawing, your potential customer's journey - from when they think of something they need to when they finally find your business.

Your customer journey might look like this:

1. First your prospect identifies a need – “I need a pair of shoes”
2. They go onto Instagram to search for inspiration
3. They type their search term in the search bar
4. After browsing through different shoes and designs they find something interesting
5. Eventually, they find something promising and visit the vendor’s website
6. They add their new favorite product to the shopping cart and check out

And sometimes the customer journey is much more complex than what we've shown in this illustration, but that's basically how it works.

So what your sales funnel template does helps your business show up at every step of the customer journey until they finally make a purchase (more on that in the “Seven Steps” section). below).

Now that we've clarified what exactly a sales funnel template is, let's take a look at a seven-step sales funnel template you can use for your business.

And what kind of business is this template for?

It's universal!

It doesn't matter if you sell digital products like e-books or online courses. Or you are a professional doing online consulting and coaching. Heck, even if you're selling a service that's provided offline, like self-defense lessons.

This sales funnel template will help you generate more leads and sales for your business.

You might be interest to read: Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Funnels

The 7 Step-by-Step Sales Funnel Template

Regardless of the nature of your business, consumers would often go through these seven stages (or similar) before becoming paying customers:

Visual representation of a sales funnel template you can use to grow your business.

So, the image you see above is the exact sales funnel template you need.

In fact, if this is the only sales funnel you work with, it alone can take your business to the level of growth you want.

But of course you have to know how it works first.

So we will explain each stage of the funnel that we have identified in the illustration above.

Step 1. Generate targeted traffic

Generally, the more traffic you get, the more sales you get.

But you probably already know: it's not that simple. Because you may generate thousands of visitors to your website or online store, but never convert any of them into customers.

But it's bad traffic, and you don't need it; it never converts to sales.

Instead, here's what you need: targeted traffic. Targeted traffic is site visitors who are most likely interested in your product or service and would be interested in buying it.

To get these types of visitors, you need to know where your target customers go every day – like the online communities and groups they belong to, the search engines they use (and the keywords they search with) and the influencers they follow.

Then you will go to those places and give them a good reason to visit your site; "give them a good reason to visit" means that you will need to provide them with a free valuable resource (e.g. ebook, case study, webinar) that they can get on your site.

You can call it a lead magnet. An incentive that your target audience is willing to trade their email address for.

Once they land on your site, your sales funnel is already in motion. And this is where the second step comes in.

Step 2. Send traffic to a SPECIFIC high-converting landing page

You may already know what a landing page is, but if you're not sure: it's a page you design specifically to convert visitors into leads or customers.

But a major mistake that ruins sales at this point is sending your visitors to a generic webpage, like your homepage or another "non-destination page."

Your homepage (or any page that isn't a landing page) just isn't designed to send visitors to the next step in their buying journey.

So what would happen is they would land on the page and keep looking around – because a page that isn't a landing page isn't focused on a SPECIFIC TOPIC. It often contains links to several other pages like your product/service page, about page, blog page, contact page, etc. as shown below:

And there's nothing wrong with having a homepage; it's just not designed to help you convert as many visitors as a specific landing page into leads.

A landing page, on the other hand, focuses on a single topic and its purpose is to speak to your visitors and persuade them to accept a SPECIFIC OFFER; so it looks like this:

When you send visitors to a landing page like this, they know what it's for, and the page helps their minds focus on one thing: your offer.

The only two options they have here are either a) to sign up for your offer and give you their email address or b) to leave your squeeze page.

And that's exactly what you want to do in your lead generation strategy.

By the way, this is just a sample landing page, your landing page can be longer if needed so that you can effectively persuade your visitors to convert. You will find great sample landing pages here.

Step 3. Convert visitors into subscribers & leads

Now, it's one thing to send visitors to a landing page...

It's another thing to convert those visitors into subscribers and leads.

When people come to your page, they immediately think…

• "Is this offer worth my time?" »
• "Do I have to sign up because I really need this stuff?"
• "Or should I just leave?"

They'll make one, and you can influence (and speed up) their decision based on what you have on the squeeze page — specifically your headline, body copy, and calls-to-action (CTAs). You need to make sure that these three landing page elements convey good reasons why they should sign up for your offer.

We'll use this landing page example below from Nia Shanks to show you what a strong headline, body copy, and CTA look like. Let's start with its title:

Nia opens the homepage with a title that reads: "The only fitness guru I still see in my inbox."

It's a type of headline that immediately grabs attention because it's a testimonial from a current Nia newsletter subscriber.

Anyone who lands on the page wants to see whether or not they should join Nia's newsletter. So, a testimonial from a current subscriber in the title of their newsletter's homepage goes a long way in convincing visitors to sign up.

Now, let's look at the body of his newsletter page:

Her copy body starts with a problem that many fitness enthusiasts are currently facing: Most health and fitness newsletters are terrible.

Next, she promises that her newsletter is different from the norm, including a testimonial to back up her claim. And then she added another testimonial right before the signup form.

To repeat that success, start by learning about writing landing pages here. And if you need a more general tutorial, follow this 7-step process to create a high-converting landing page.

Editor's note: All this would not have worked if the offer presented on the landing page was not good. Even if you manage to attract your target audience to your page, it doesn't matter if you have nothing of value to offer them. So how do you ensure your lead magnet is aligned with your audience's needs? These data and tips from the 2020 Best Lead Magnets study report will help you make the right choice.

Step 4. Turn your leads and subscribers into true fans

Can you really "turn" people into real fans?

Yeah. And there are several ways to do it.

For example, the Ahrefs team created the Blogging for Business course and many fans tweeted about it:

How did they do it? Here's how.

To turn your leads or subscribers into real fans, you need to deliver on the promise you made to convince them to become leads.

So, for example, if you promised them a marketing ROI calculator and they signed up for it, make sure the calculator works so well that they want to tell everyone they know about it.

Or if you promised them a course in business blogging (like Ahrefs), you need to make sure they get so much value out of it that they'll rush to share it with their friends and relations,

If you deliver on your promise to subscribers this way, chances are they'll start to trust you and become enthusiastic fans.

Then you need to move them from fans to customers.

Pro Tip: The thank you page your prospects see after signing up can be a great place to start building that genuine loyalty. Use it strategically to reinforce the positive emotions you have already managed to create and delight them even more. In fact, a good thank you page can even lead to an immediate conversion!

Step 5. Turn fans into customers

Your end goal with any sales funnel template is to make money.

After attracting visitors to your site and converting them into subscribers/fans, you need to convert them into customers.

But how? Closing a sale is an art in itself.

A simple strategy you can use to sell is to create a sales page.

This is a page that will be all about convincing your followers to buy what you are selling.

You need four main elements in your sales page:

1. Who you’re selling to
2. What you’re selling
3. Testimonials from your past or current customers
4. Your “Buy now” button or CTA

Here's an example of a good AdEspresso sales page - with the above four elements in action:

The title of the sales page reads: "Ready to master Facebook and Instagram ads?"

It is therefore clearly intended for people who want to learn how to advertise on these two platforms.

Next, they shared the benefits their students get from their course:

The next part they included is also important — testimonials from their current/past students:

And then their “subscribe now” CTA:

With these four elements, you can easily convert subscribers (and even visitors who aren't subscribers) into customers.

Step 6. Bring them back if they abandon their cart

If your business is like most, people start having doubts when it's time to pull out their wallet.

Several questions and thoughts begin to come to mind:

• "I hope I'm right about this service."
• "If I make the wrong decision, it will cost me dearly!"
• "Wait a minute, shouldn't I check out other alternatives to this product?"

You have one goal: to reassure them.

You need to reassure potential customers who abandon your services or checkout page that your business is worth it.

There are two ways to do this: retarget your audience using paid ads or email (assuming you've followed step 2 of this sales funnel template and collected email addresses). email of your visitors).

Their emails give you the opportunity to find out where they are in their buying journey. So when they are on your payment or service page but leave without buying, you can follow them, persuade them to make a purchase decision.

Here's how it works

Ideally, the tool you use to collect emails should also provide a way to track your subscriber's (fan's) interaction with your emails and website.

The tool should show you when certain subscribers move between pages on your site and which pages they go to.

So when they access your services, product, or checkout page, the tool notifies you.

The GetResponse conversion funnel is a tool you can use here; it's a sales funnel software that allows you to track your subscribers so you can track them if they abandon your product/payment pages and reassure them that you are worth doing business with.

Step 7. Close the sale!

This one is self explanatory...

Your end goal with any sales funnel template is to make money.

So now that you have the template, it's all up to you! Use it and increase your sales.

But how? Closing a sale is an art in itself.

You need to know how to create a high converting sales page and write compellingly and convince your subscribers and cart abandoners that your business is absolutely worth their money.

You can learn more about it in the following video.

Conclusion of Guide to Sales Funnel Template

Creating a sales funnel template is easily one of the smartest decisions you will make in your business.

One of the main benefits it offers you is that it helps you conduct your sales process with empathy because when building the sales funnel, you need to put yourself in your potential customers' shoes and get them to make a purchase decision.

And that's basically what we've provided you with in this guide - an example or template of a sales funnel to help you attract customers, build relationships with them, and then convert them into customers.