How To Maximize Your Sales Conversion Funnel

Want to make more sales, increase your revenue, and improve your profit margins?

You can do all that with the Value Ladder sales funnel!

Avoid This Online Marketing Mistake at All Costs!

We would argue that the most common online marketing mistake entrepreneurs make is driving traffic directly to their company websites or product sales pages.

This is a huge waste of time, energy, and money. Why?

Because it’s the online equivalent of walking up to a stranger and saying “Yo, here’s my product, now buy it!”.

They don’t know you, they don’t trust you, and they haven’t had the time to do their research. So why would you expect them to buy from you?

Think about your own shopping habits:

We have all made impulse purchases in the past but if you are like most people, you probably primarily buy from brands that you trust.

So the real question is this: how can you earn the trust of your dream customers?

This is where the Value Ladder sales funnel comes in…

Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel For Your Business

We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.

It was created by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).

This sales funnel has four stages:

• Bait. You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
• Frontend. You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
• Middle. You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
• Backend. You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.

Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.

We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross-sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.

So the main idea is this:

Instead of driving traffic directly to your website or sales page, you drive it to your lead magnet landing page and convert those visitors into email subscribers.

Then you pitch your products and services to them via email and drive traffic from your email list to your sales pages.

The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

1. Start the relationship with that person by offering free value.
2. Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email.
3. Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

Building a Value Ladder sales funnel and then driving traffic to it is the single best thing you can do to increase your conversions!

Example: “DotCom Secrets” Value Ladder

ClickFunnels is a software company.

However, unlike most software companies, we don’t limit ourselves to only selling software.

We also sell info products, host both virtual events and live events, and have an exclusive paid community.

Russell even wrote three best-selling books on the subject of growing online businesses:

• “DotCom Secrets”
• “Traffic Secrets”
• “Expert Secrets”

All three books are available on Amazon but you can also get them directly from us for free because we use them as lead magnets. Each book has its own sales funnel.

For example, here’s how we structured our “DotCom Secrets” Value Ladder:

Create Irresistible Offers for Your Value Ladder Sales Funnel

Now let’s talk about creating offers that convert…

The Irresistible Offer Formula

The most important principle that you need to understand if you want to create offers that convert is this formula:

High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer

This might seem like common sense but you’d be surprised how often entrepreneurs fail to get it right!

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.

It can be anything that they can either download to their device or access online:

• A report.
• An ebook.
• A video class.
• A video course.
• An email course.
• A webinar.

…etc.

It’s important to understand that people won’t give you their email addresses unless you offer them something super valuable in return.

That’s why you must ensure that your lead magnet provides an effective solution to a problem that the potential customer is struggling with. It should help them get a specific result.

Encourage the potential customer to set a small goal and then provide a step-by-step blueprint for achieving it.

E.g. “Do your first pull-up”, “Get your first 100 followers on Twitter”, “Get your first 1,000 email subscribers”, etc.

The narrower the scope of your lead magnet, the easier it will be to deliver a specific result!

Ideally, you want your lead magnet to not only serve as bait but to also set the stage for your upcoming frontend offer pitch.

The best way to do that is to have a lead magnet that gives the potential customer a taste of the value that they can expect from your frontend offer.

For example, let’s say that your frontend offer is an online course about building an audience on Twitter.

You can use a “Get Your First 100 Followers on Twitter” lead magnet to attract your dream customers and set the stage for your upcoming sales pitch.

There should be a logical progression from the lead magnet to the frontend offer. The more seamless the progression, the easier it will be to close the sale.

Frontend Offer

The purpose of a frontend offer is to convert leads into paying customers.

You can use an existing product or service as your frontend offer but we recommend creating a new product designed specifically with that goal in mind.

Here are three practical tips for creating an irresistible frontend offer:

1. Make it digital. This applies regardless of whether you sell services, digital products, or physical products. Ebooks, video classes, and video courses are all great frontend offer formats.
2. Price it at $7. This price point is not low enough to make the potential customer question the quality of your frontend offer but also not high enough to make them stop and think twice before buying.
3. Remove all financial risk by providing an unconditional, no-questions-asked 30-day money-back guarantee. This ensures that the potential customer doesn’t have anything to lose by checking out your frontend offer. Worst-case scenario, they will simply get a refund.

Once again, the purpose of a frontend offer is to convert leads into paying customers, so don’t worry about maximizing revenue here. The money is in the backend!

Continuity Program

We also recommend adding a continuity program to your Value Ladder regardless of your main business model.

You can do that either by creating a SaaS app or by launching a membership community.

If you can manage to convert even a tiny percentage of your customers into SaaS users or community members, it can have a drastic impact on your bottom line.

Moreover, if you ever want to sell your business, recurring revenue should help you get a higher valuation.

Something to keep in mind here is that everyone is already paying for a bunch of subscriptions: YouTube Premium, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Audible, Spotify, Substack, Patreon, you name it.

People are understandably wary of adding yet another monthly fee on top of all that and are trigger-happy when it comes to canceling subscriptions.

This means that if you want your continuity program to be a success, you need to take the High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer formula and put it on steroids.

Make sure that you not only undercharge and overdeliver but that you also continue increasing the value of that subscription every month with new features, new content, online events, etc. Never get complacent!

Downsells, Upsells, and Cross-Sells

You want to add downsells, upsells, and cross-sells to your core offers whenever possible:

Downsells

A downsell is an offer that is a downgrade on the offer that the potential customer has already rejected.

It’s best if it’s something that addresses the same problem as the initial offer but at a smaller scale.

Let’s say that you sell an online course about dating for $257. You pitched it to the potential customer and they rejected it.

You can then downsell them a $7 ebook on how to optimize one’s dating profiles on various apps.

Upsells

An upsell is an offer that is an upgrade on the offer that the potential customer has already accepted (e.g. McDonald’s infamous “Would you like to supersize that?”).

This could mean offering them:

• A subscription for that product at a better price. This can work well for products that people buy on a regular basis (e.g. hygiene and grooming products, cleaning supplies, staple foods, etc.)
• More of the same product but at a better price. This can work well for products that have a long shelf life.
• A bundle based on that product. This can work well for books and info products (e.g. if you sell a book, you can upsell a bundle that includes a paperback version + a Kindle version + an audio version + exclusive content).

Cross-Sells

A cross-sell is an offer that is complementary to the offer that the potential customer has already accepted (e.g. McDonald’s famous “Would you like fries with that?”).

Say, if your main offer is a backpack, you could cross-sell packing cubes, a tech toolcase, a travel wallet, etc.

Keep in mind that the best time to pitch your products and services is when the potential customer is already in a buying mood.

Downsells, upsells, and cross-sells can help you take advantage of this!

Use Proven, High-Converting Landing Page and Sales Page Templates

We don’t recommend designing landing pages and sales pages from scratch unless you have previous design experience. Why?

Because online marketers have been relentlessly optimizing landing pages and sales pages for at least two decades now.

At this point, we know what works and what doesn’t. Or, to be more precise, we know what’s most likely to work.

That’s why when it comes to the initial designs of your landing pages and sales pages, it makes sense to follow the established best practices.

The most straightforward way to ensure that pages in your sales funnel comply with those best practices is to use proven, high-converting templates.

ClickFunnels includes a template library that features landing page and sales page templates for all of the most common use cases.

So why waste time reinventing the wheel when you can simply do what’s been proven to work?

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Sell Your Offers With Persuasive Copy

Copywriting is the most important skill that you need to master as an entrepreneur.

It’s what Russell attributes his success to:

“Copywriting is what made me rich…

It has more impact on how much money you make with your company than anything else.”

Here are some copywriting tips that can help you write sales page copy that converts:

• Headline. Your headline should convey the value of your offer. How will it help the potential customer? Lead with that.
• Body copy. Appeal to the emotional buyers first with emotion-driven copy, then to the logical buyers with benefit-driven copy, and finally to the fearful buyers with scarcity-driven copy.
• Social proof. Provide as much social proof as you can in the form of customer testimonials, endorsements from well-known people, and “As Seen On” media badges.
• Call to action. Use offer-specific call-to-action button copy (e.g. “YES! I Want [Your Offer]”) instead of generic copy (e.g. “Buy Now”).
• 30-day money-back guarantee. Make sure that your money-back guarantee is explained clearly and display it prominently next to the call-to-action button. It should be impossible to miss!

There’s much more to sales page copywriting than that but unfortunately we can’t adequately cover this subject in this article due to space limitations.

But if you want to learn how to write copy that converts, we highly recommend our friend Jim Edwards’ book “Copywriting Secrets”. You can get it for FREE. All Jim asks is that you cover the shipping!

Get “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE!

Optimize Your Value Ladder Sales Funnel With A/B Testing

A/B testing is the primary method that online marketers use to optimize web pages for conversions.

Here’s how it works:

1. You create two variants of the same page: variant A and variant B. There should be just one difference between them (e.g. the headline). That’s the element that you are testing.
2. You split your traffic in two and drive half of it to variant A and half of it to variant B.
3. You let the experiment run until it reaches statistical significance, analyze the data, and keep the winning variant.

Use A/B testing to optimize every page in your sales funnel. This can help you 2x, 5x, or even 10x your funnel profits!

Here’s how Russell explains it:

Troubleshoot Your Value Ladder Sales Funnel

But what if you have implemented all the advice in this article and yet your sales funnel isn’t converting?

We recommend examining your:

Offer

It’s possible that there’s simply no demand for whatever it is that you are selling.

In that case, you should ditch it, go back to the drawing board and come up with something that people actually want.

It’s also possible that the demand exists but you failed to implement the High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer formula correctly.

In that case you can either increase the value or reduce the price of your offer.  Ideally, you should do both!

Copy

It’s possible that your offer is great but your sales page copy doesn’t convey its value.  In that case, you should improve the copy.

Traffic

It’s also possible that both your offer and your copy are great but you are driving the wrong kind of traffic to your sales funnel.

In that case, you should improve the targeting of your marketing campaigns so that you would attract your dream customers.

Build Your First Sales Funnel In Just Five Days!

Let’s keep it real:

Building a sales funnel from scratch can seem like a daunting task.

That’s why we created our 5 Day Lead Challenge where Russell walks you through it step-by-step.

You will:

• Create your first lead magnet.
• Build your first sales funnel.
• Set up a six-email welcome sequence.

…and launch your funnel in just five days!

So don’t hesitate. Take action now. It can change your life!

Join Our 5 Day Lead Challenge Today!

P.S. This challenge is completely FREE!