Sales Funnels

Making A Sales Funnel For A Financial Advisor

Are you a financial advisor looking for ways to grow your business?

Here’s what we are going to talk about today:

  • What is the Value Ladder sales funnel?
  • How to build a sales funnel as a financial advisor?
  • How to drive traffic to your sales funnel as a financial advisor?

Want to get more clients?

Continue reading…

Why Having a Website is Not Enough

You probably already have a website. But guess what?

Websites are dead. Sales funnels are the future.

Think about it:

What happens when a potential client visits your website?

They see a navigation bar. They start clicking around. They read this page. They read that page. And then they leave… Possibly to never come back again.

How does any of this help you grow your business?

It doesn’t!

Meanwhile, a sales funnel by definition guides the potential client towards the sale, step by step – instead of throwing a bunch of links at them, you present them with one decision at a time.

So is it any wonder that, according to our data, on average, sales funnels generate 6x more sales than regular websites?

This suggests that your website might be costing you a lot of money in lost potential revenue!

By the way, this isn’t just us philosophizing, we practice what we preach – we built a $100M+ software business without having a regular website!

Moreover, over the last seven years, we’ve seen countless customers in a wide variety of industries drastically increase their revenues with sales funnels.

That’s why we want to challenge you to build a sales funnel and then test it against your website. See which one gets you more clients.

We are pretty sure that we already know what the results of that experiment are going to be, though 😉

What is the Value Ladder Sales Funnel?

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

Physical products, info products, software, services, consulting, you name, it works for everything.

And we are confident that it’s going to work for your business as well! 

The Value Ladder sales funnel has four stages:

  1. Bait – You offer the potential customer a lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
  2. Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product.
  3. Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product.
  4. Backend – You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product.

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

The reason why the Value Ladder 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 our co-founder Russell Brunson explains it:

How to Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel

So how can you build a Value Ladder sales funnel to sell your services?

We recommend you start with a basic funnel that has just two stages:

  1. Bait
  2. Frontend

Your frontend offer should be your least expensive service.

Once you have tested this funnel and are sure that it works, you can add Middle, Backend, and Continuity offers (more expensive services and a retainer).

Here’s how you can build your first sales funnel in just three steps…

Step #1: Create a Super Valuable Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to potential customers in exchange for their email addresses.

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

  • A report
  • An eBook
  • A webinar
  • A video course
  • An email course

…etc.

What matters is that:

  1. Your lead magnet offers a solution to a problem that your potential customers are struggling with.
  2. That problem is either the same or related to the one that your Frontend offer addresses.

Think about the issues that come up again and again when you are working with clients:

  • What are the most common problems?
  • What are the most popular misconceptions?
  • What are the frequently asked questions?

You can either pick one issue and cover it in-depth or you can create a resource that explains the basics of what you help your clients with.

Say, if you specialize in financial planning, you could either provide a solution to a specific problem (e.g. planning for retirement) or a general resource that explains the basics of financial planning.

What’s important is that there’s a logical progression from the lead magnet to the frontend offer.

Fortunately, it’s easy to create such a progression as a financial advisor:

All you need to do is provide general guidelines with your lead magnet and then offer a consultation where you advise clients on how to implement that advice in their particular situation.

Learn more:

How To Create a Lead Magnet That is Highly Effective [With Examples]

Step #2: Create a Landing Page for Your Lead Magnet

Your lead magnet needs a landing page.

This landing page is going to serve as an entryway to your sales funnel – this is the page that you will send traffic to.

You can start with a simple squeeze page that has these three elements:

  • A headline that explains what your offer is all about.
  • An opt-in form where the potential customer can type in their email address. It can be either displayed immediately or shown once they have clicked the call-to-action button.
  • A call-to-action button that encourages potential customers to get the lead magnet.

You should also add social proof to your squeeze page to reassure potential customers that you know what you’re talking about.

Mention relevant:

  • Experience
  • Credentials
  • Accomplishments

It’s ideal if you can also add a testimonial from one of your previous clients.

Just make sure that it’s clear that this client is a real person whose existence can be verified – display their first and last name, their current job title, and their photo (with their permission, of course!).

Here’s an example of a simple, yet high-converting squeeze page that we use for one of our lead magnets:

Learn more:

How To Create a Squeeze Page That Converts [With Examples!]

10 Tips For Killer Lead Generation Landing Pages

Step #3: Create an “Indoctrination” Email Sequence

You don’t want to hit the potential customer with a sales pitch the moment they subscribe to your email list. They don’t know you yet!

Send them this six-email “indoctrination” sequence instead:

  • Email #1: Who are you? Introduce yourself.
  • Email #2: Where did you come from? Tell them a story about how you became a financial advisor.
  • Email #3: What do you do? Provide more information about the services you offer. Don’t pitch anything yet, though!
  • Email #4: How did you gain this expertise? Explain what makes you qualified to offer financial advice.
  • Email #5: Who do you do this for? Explain who are your ideal customers + share a case study on how you helped such a person.
  • Email #6: How can you do it for me? Pitch your frontend offer.

Every email except the last one should end with you asking a question and encouraging the new subscriber to hit the “Reply” button and respond to that email.

As for email #6, you should ask the potential client to schedule a consultation, then link to your frontend offer sales page where they can book it.

We recommend you to use the Hook, Story, Offer framework for all six emails:

Learn more:

The Definitive Guide on How to Create a Sales Funnel

How to Drive Traffic to Your Sales Funnel

So now that you have your sales funnel, how can you drive traffic to it?

Where are Your Dream Customers Hanging Out?

You need to first ask yourself where your dream customers are hanging out online:

  • What blogs do they read?
  • What podcasts do they listen to?
  • What YouTube channels do they watch?
  • What online communities do they participate in?
  • What social media influencers do they follow?

Knowing all this will help you to:

  1. Be precise in your targeting
  2. Advertise in the right places

Here’s how Russell explains this:

Why You Should Start With Paid Advertising

We recommend you to start with paid advertising because it’s the fastest way to generate traffic – it allows you to immediately see whether your lead magnet resonates with your target audience. 

By the way, if it doesn’t resonate with them, don’t be disheartened – here at ClickFunnels we often test several free offers to find one that works. That’s completely normal!

The advertising platform best suited to promoting financial services is probably LinkedIn since it’s the largest professional network in the world. 

You should begin with a small daily budget, then start gradually increasing it once you are sure that your sales funnel is profitable.

You might also want to consider advertising on other social media platforms, podcasts, blogs, etc. 

Just make sure that your sales funnel works before you start expanding into other marketing channels!

Also, you can use paid advertising to optimize your sales funnel, which can help you 2x, 5x, or even 10x your profits.

Here’s how:

Why You Need to Build Traffic-Generating Assets

Paid advertising is great but you don’t want to be completely reliant on it.

Your long-term marketing strategy should include building traffic-generating assets.

That way, you won’t have to pay for each and every click forever, which means that you will be able to reduce the customer acquisition costs (CAC) over time.

Build a Social Media Following

The easiest way to create traffic-generating assets is to build a social media following:

  1. Pick a platform
  2. Decide on a content schedule (e.g. post 3x every day)
  3. Use social media scheduling software like Buffer or Edgar to schedule posts in advance
  4. Block out time every day to interact with your followers in the comments
  5. Promote your lead magnet to your followers

Once you gain traction on one platform, you can start expanding into others. Don’t spread yourself too thin, though.

Build a YouTube Channel

YouTube is the largest video hosting platform in the world that has more than 2.2 billion users.

You can tap into that massive user base by creating videos on topics that your potential customers might be interested in.

Uncover popular keywords by typing a generic term related to your niche into the search box and looking at search suggestions that come up.

Say, if you type in “how to plan for retirement”, you might see these suggestions:

You can now start creating videos targeting these keywords.

One thing that you need to be aware of is the difference between:

  1. Content that appeals to your dream customers
  2. Content that appeals to a broader audience

Remember that the goal here isn’t to become an e-celeb, it’s to generate leads for your business.

This means that you should focus on creating videos that might be of interest to your dream customers, not videos that appeal to the general public.

Say, reacting to horror stories from r/personalfinance might get a lot of views, but will those views convert into leads and sales?

You would probably be better off making videos on “boring” financial topics that answer questions that your dream customers might have.

And make sure to promote your lead magnet at the end of each video. Don’t be shy about it!

Build a Company Blog

You can also use search engine optimization (SEO) to build a company blog that gets organic search traffic from Google.

Here’s an overview of the process:

  1. Do keyword research
  2. Identify a promising keyword
  3. Create SEO content that targets that keyword
  4. Publish that SEO content on your blog
  5. Build backlinks to that SEO content

Then rinse and repeat!

Keep in mind that simply creating great content is not enough to rank on Google anymore, you also need to be proactive about building backlinks.

In fact, it might make sense to spend more time on link building than on content creation, since the former is arguably much more challenging than the latter.

You should also optimize your website for lead generation:

  • Promote your lead magnet at the end of each blog post
  • Add content upgrades to the most popular pieces of content
  • Use exit-intent pop-ups

Again, the goal here isn’t just to “build a blog”, it’s to generate organic search traffic that you can then convert into leads.

Learn more:

How To Generate Leads From A Website In 2021 – Full Guide

Be Patient!

It’s important to understand that building traffic-generating assets takes time.

You need to go into it with realistic expectations – you will probably need to put in 12-18 months of work until you start seeing significant results.

Most people give up before they reach that point – the Internet is littered with abandoned social media profiles, YouTube channels, and blogs.

This means that simply being consistent over a long period of time can help you get ahead of the competition:

  • Post three updates to your social media profiles every day for 18 months
  • Post a new YouTube video every week for 18 months
  • Post a new blog post every week for 18 months

Obviously, the content itself needs to provide value to your dream customers, but in the long run, consistency matters more than quality.

Moreover, the longer you stay at it, the better you will get at producing content, so don’t obsess over quality too much when you are just starting out.

Want Russell to Show You How to Build Your First Sales Funnel?

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 Challenge where Russell walks you through it step-by-step. You will learn how to:

You will learn how to:

  • Generate unlimited leads
  • Create your first lead magnet
  • Build your first sales funnel
  • Create a simple 6-email follow-up sequence
  • And launch your funnel

…in just five days!

So don’t hesitate.

Join our 5 Day Challenge today. It’s completely free!

John Parkes

John Parkes is a Master at driving web traffic. For more than five years now John has been a coach and stage presenter to tens of thousands of marketers looking to up their Facebook ads game. As Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at ClickFunnels he runs the entire organic and paid traffic teams and dominates the markets he jumps into. Having spent millions in ads and generated tens of millions he knows his way around ad campaigns like the back of his hand. John has been featured on several podcasts: FunnelHacker Radio, Just The Tips, Next Level Facebook Ads Podcast, Trent Talks, and The Big Shift to name a few. Whether it’s optimizing things on the campaign, audience, or ad creative level, John is the man with the skills, strategy, and experience to create world class results.

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