Sales funnel is among the core elements in the digital marketing world. While it may look a bit odd, this concept can actually take a business from scratch right to a profitable marketing machine overnight. A business without a sales funnel can be related to setting up a store in the middle of the desert, where chances of anyone visiting the business is almost nil. As much as you may be selling quality products at affordable rates, it is impossible to reach your expected sales target if you do not give your customers a clear path to follow when visiting your store.

The good thing with sales funnel is that you can always attract customers to your business without having to input too much efforts. Some of the main requirements for a sales funnel include a traffic source, email marketing software and webinar software. Here is a six step guide to help you create a sales funnel for your business.

Identify a specific problem faced by your target group

As much as you may be selling high quality products, not everyone may need them. There is a specific group of people that will be more interested in your products compared to the rest. Such people are the ones who belong to your target group. To be successful in your business, it is very important that you know who and where your target group is. After knowing your target market, the next step will be to find out what their needs are, and come up with a solution for those problems. This can be done by doing a background research on your target group or asking them directly.

Create a blog post to help solve a specific problem

After you find out the need of your target group, the next step will be to come up with a blog to help solve the problem. The main reason behind this is to provide value to your target group even before introducing your products/services to the market. This will also help in earning the customers trust. However, it is important to ensure that the content you create in your blog post is both informative and appealing.

Come up with a mailing list

Well, not every person who reads the blog post will eventually purchase your products/services. One of the best strategy to ensure that you only come up with interested customers is to ask them to subscribe to your mailing list.

Send a welcoming email

This is among the easiest steps in creating a sales funnel. It involves creating an autoresponder email. This helps to send emails to your subscribers after a specific period of time. A welcoming email should be sent immediately a customer subscribes to your email alerts. The email should be short and simple.

Create automated email follow ups

Here, you need to come up with a bunch of emails and include them in your autoresponder series. You can them decide how frequently you should send the emails (preferably on weekly or monthly basis)

Follow up non-buyers in your mailing list

At times, not everyone who signs up in your mailing list will purchase your products. This should not come as a disappointment considering that even salespeople may not win the hearts of all the clients they talk to. And at times, you can get nasty replies from your subscribers. This is a clear indication that you need to make changes to the follow up emails by adding more information, and especially on the FAQ page.

Lastly, do not expect your sales funnel to be as perfect as you expected. Try as much as possible to come up with different approaches and measure the results to ensure you are at the right path.