Did you know that 96% of first-time visitors aren’t ready to buy anything?

And because of that, a whopping 79% of marketing never leads to sales.

This shows that businesses lose thousands of dollars because of this.

Are you one of those businesses as well?

Are you also losing your money and time with online marketing?

But you have seen your competitors making huge amounts of money, beating you at your game, isn’t it?

Do you want to know how they are able to do that?

The answer:

SALES FUNNELS

As a marketer, knowing your customer and communicating with them on a regular basis helps you build trust and therefore helps you increase your profits…

…and SALES FUNNELS are the weapon to do that effectively.

Building one can give a crazy boost to your business.

Here’s what I mean with crazy:

• It can double the number of leads.
• It can double the number of conversions.
• Which means 4X the number of paying customers for your business. 

If you want proof of how sales funnels have helped businesses, you can go and read the case studies of successful marketing funnels here.

I’ll wait for you here.

Convinced about the benefits of Sales Funnels for Business?

Great

In this article I will be explaining the different types of sales funnels that you can use for your business.

Do you know that 68% of companies have yet not identified or attempted to measure SALES FUNNEL…

Currently you might be falling into this category…

…but now after learning this, you can turn this into an opportunity for your business.

You need to utilize this gold mine and become part of the remaining 32% who are using it and making thousands of dollars for their business.

But how?

Where should you start?

Your questions are right on point and that is why I have covered all the sales funnels that you can employ for your business.

NOTE: You can use multiple types of sales funnels for your business as well.

So, don’t lose attention while going through this article, chances are you might miss the one best for you.

Let’s get started with the types of sales funnels…

1. The Lead Magnet Funnel

This is one of the simplest and most used types of sales funnels. 

It is also known as the free sample funnel.

The concept of this funnel is that to get the prospect into your email sequence, offer a freebie in return. 

This is like a give and take situation.

Different types of lead magnets that you can offer are:

• A Report
• A Checklist
• A Cheatsheet
• A PDF guide
• An Email Course
• A Video Course
• A Whitepaper
• A Newsletter, etc.

Once your prospect opts-in and gives you the contact information in exchange for your lead magnet, you can nurture the prospect with your emails and then promote your products to them via email.

The workflow of this funnel is as following:

Lead magnet landing page > Email nurture sequence > Buying your product 

This funnel works best when you want to sell a low ticket product. 

Check out this example from HubSpot using the Lead Magnet Funnel for their business:

Let’s jump onto the second most popular type of funnel…..

2. The Webinar Funnel

As the name suggests this funnel is used to get the prospect to register and attend your webinar.

The Webinar Funnel gives you more time to close potential customers at a higher price point.

If you are going to sell your product/service through online events, this is the type of funnel to use in your business.

Webinar Funnels can be divided mainly into two phases:

The first phase of webinar funnels consists of a live version that is generally hosted on a 3rd party software (Zoom, Go-To-Webinar, etc).

In this phase, during the live session, your aim should be to increase the curiosity of the prospect so that he/she is tempted towards your product or service. 

The second phase is the money making part of your webinar. 

This is where you’ve delivered value to your prospects and now you present them your offer. 

To increase the number of sales, you can build a sense of urgency and scarcity in the mind of the prospect by deploying timers, limiting the stock etc.

Here’s how the landing page of a webinar registration page can look like:

Moving on to our next funnel, which is….

3. The Service Upsell Funnel

This funnel can help you make more money from almost the same amount of effort. Here’s how:

You have convinced your prospect to buy your main front end offer. 

The customer has entered in his card details and made the payment.

But before sending him to your thank you page, you send them to a landing page that gives them an opportunity to buy a higher price product, complimentary to your front end offer. 

Just because this product will help solve your customer’s problems more efficiently and quickly than your FE offer, a few of your customers will opt for it and you will have made more money from the same customer.

Isn’t it amazing?

Check out this example of an upsell offer:

Moving on to the next funnel in the list…

4. The Cross-Sell Funnel

It is a further expansion of the upsell funnel.

When prospects buy your introductory product from you, then you can try to sell a different product to the customer which is not similar or related to the first one.

But keep in mind that the product should be relevant in solving your target customer’s problem, just like your first product. 

The new product you would offer should be supplemental, so the customer feels compelled to spend more before they check out.

This will make the process easier and will help you drive more profits.

Amazon has been using it since quite a long time by showing the section “People who bought this also bought…”

An example of a cross sell can be:

Now let’s jump onto another profit-making funnel….

5. The Limited Time Info Product Launch Funnel

You must have heard about the products SONY PLAYSTATION and MICROSOFT XBOX.

If not, let me tell you that whenever a new version of these products is about to launch they reach out to the audience way before the launch date.

Why do they do this?

The answer is simple: 

To build anticipation and curiosity among its audience.

The Limited Time Info Product Launch Funnel allows any business to build anticipation before a customer buys a product.

This funnel involves showing the previews of the product to the customers and prospects days before the launch.

By doing so businesses are able to maintain the sense of urgency and scarcity in the mind of the prospect till the final day of the product launch, before the product is no longer available.

Some businesses use time-sensitive offers to generate scarcity in their prospect’s minds. And believe me: 

This works wonders. 

Almost every successful company in the market is using this funnel, and now you should too.

You can nurture your email list and build curiosity about your new product as shown below: 

Let’s see what’s next in the list of different types of sales funnels that you can use for your business is…

6. High-End Clients Sales Funnel

You can’t use any random funnel for your high-end products.

You need a high-end funnel to target high-end audiences.

High-End sales funnel basically filters out the unqualified leads for your high-end products and leaves you with only the qualified ones. 

This way you don’t waste your time convincing prospects who can’t afford your premium product to begin with.

For your premium programs, your funnel should include a step where you get on a call with your qualified leads because people generally need to talk to a real person before they spend thousands of dollars on flagship products.

If you give proper attention to your leads in this funnel, they will surely convert into high paying customers.

Here’s how it typically works:

Service’s page > Page with a pre-qualifying questionnaire (so you can filter out the qualified leads) > Get on a free call > Sign the client

This is the most basic structure of a High-End sales funnel. 

You need only good fits for your premium product so that you can close them on a 1:1 free call.

Check out this example of how people need to subscribe for the Advanced and the Agency Plan:

Now let’s see what the next funnel has in store for you…

7. The Cancellation Funnel

The Cancellation Funnel is used when a customer is trying to either refund, cancel a service, or return a product. 

Many times they are canceling because they don’t understand something about what you offer. 

That is when this funnel comes into the picture. 

This funnel gives you your last chance to reduce refunds, cancellations. 

Here’s how:

Create a survey asking people why they are leaving. 

Figure out what’s the real reason behind the cancellation or refunds and then try to save the sale.

You can also create a quiz that asks questions on the first page and then try to save the sale on the next page.

Here’s how Netflix uses this funnel as part of their business:

This funnel can help you drastically reduce refunds, cancellations and churn rates.

This funnel is most commonly ignored by businesses. 

You shouldn’t be one of them.

Let’s head on to the next funnel that can drive you revenue by selling other people’s products….

8. The Affiliate Sales Funnel

If you don’t own any products but still want to earn some bucks, this funnel is for you.

The Affiliate Sales Funnel is great for online entrepreneurs.

There are many ways to make an affiliate sales funnel work, but here’s an example of how it could work:

A lead magnet in exchange for prospects email > Thank you page with a button below with affiliate link to buy the product > Email nurture sequence educating + adding value + soft-selling the affiliate product again and also selling other products.

Check out this example:

This is just one example. 

You can do affiliate marketing with any of the above promising sales funnels as well. 

Just the product will change, and the rest of the sequence will remain the same.

Now let’s see how the next funnel can help your business reach new heights…

9. The Tripwire Funnel

Tripwire is used to attract prospects with such an attractive and low-cost offer that it becomes irresistible to purchase.

Once the prospect purchases your low priced front-end product, then you upsell them with other products that you actually wanted to sell, which will give you high-end profits.

Typically, the goal of this Tripwire funnel is to break even on ad-spend with the lower ticket product and then allure paying customers to higher-ticket offers on the Thank You Page.

Here’s how it works:

This is a highly effective funnel because once you buy the first product, the chances of buying another from the same vendor increases.

You should definitely use this funnel effectively for your business if it suits your business model.

The next funnel that you can use for your business is…

10. Self-Liquidating Funnel

If your main goal is just to acquire leads, this funnel is for you.

This funnel is used by businesses who are not aiming for profits but simply gaining leads for business and trying to liquidate ad cost.

Which means no profit and no loss.

But why should I use this if there are no profits? 

It will not benefit my business, right?

NO, my friend, it will benefit you and I recommend that you should create a self-liquidating funnel for your business.

I’ll explain how.

So, first, you acquire leads for no profit no loss scenario…

…and once you have the leads, you can sell them anything in the future and that will be pure profit because you didn’t waste a single penny on the acquiring process.

You may not make a profit immediately, but it will turn out to be a gold mine in the long run.

Here’s how it works:

Landing page > Tripwire (sell something for really cheap) > Upsell #1 > Upsell #2

An example of a self-liquidating funnel is like this:

A low-cost and attractive product will help you bring in a cold audience into your list. 

Keep in mind this will not bring you significant profits, though it can cover your ad cost.

Now the choice is yours if you want to use it or not.

Have you heard about the invisible funnel? Let’s find out…

11. The Invisible Funnel

This funnel totally depends upon how good your product or service is.

And you need to make sure that prospects like your product or service.

The invisible funnel works on the principle that a business should give away at the front and only charge if the customer liked it.

It’s like going for a ride and only paying for it if you liked it.

It is not suitable for every business model, so you need to be confident in your product/service if you want to use this funnel.

Here’s how it works: 

First, the customer has to add his credit card details to get access to the product/service.

Then comes the thank you page. If the customer likes your product/service they are told to do nothing, and their credit card will be billed within two days. 

And if the prospect didn’t like the product/service, he just needs to tell you that and he should not be billed at all.

This is all about the invisible funnel. 

Some examples can be seen in the case of a streaming platform like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The second last funnel on the list is…

12. The Survey Funnel

This is an interesting funnel.

As the name suggests the prospect has to go through a survey at front.

This survey has two primary purposes:

First, it lets you engage with your prospect at the start, which is a good signal as the relationship of trust is built from the very beginning.

Second, it allows you to figure out what your prospect really needs so that you can show them the right sales page for your product. 

You can also check if your prospect is really interested in the services/products you are offering or not.

You can use this funnel effectively if you have more than one product/service to offer.

For example, you may ask a question like:

“Are you a man, or woman?” 

If they choose ‘man’, you would then direct them to a version of the funnel that is set up to sell to a man. 

But if they choose the other way around, you will direct them to the other version.

Here’s an example of a survey funnel:

After the quiz, you can ask for the lead details as shown below:

Heading on to the final funnel on the list…

13. The Video Sales Letter Funnel

Nowadays one of the most attractive and highly consumed contents on the internet is video.

A lot of products/services are being sold on the internet through video sales letter funnels.

A video helps convince the prospect to buy your product/service. 

So you need the best video for this purpose. 

You don’t want this part of the funnel to be boring for the prospect.

Add to cart pop-ups can be shown after the video is over or during the video is streaming, but only after the price is revealed, because you want your prospect to take some action after going through your video.

Here’s how you can structure them:

TAKEAWAY

Congratulations.

You have gone through different types of sales funnels available in today’s world. 

Now you know that if you want an edge over your competition, you need to integrate different types of Sales Funnels into your business.

You can also use some valuable tips about how to build your own first sales funnel. Do give a read.

Which funnel do you think is the best for your business?

Let me know in the comments below.