If you’re having a difficult time getting more clients to work with you then you should try an application funnel.
It’s a good strategy for businesses that want to establish a relationship with their prospects before scaring them away with their offer.
Probably the reason why most companies fail is that they focus more on their ads rather than on their sales funnels.
If you think about it, no matter how good your campaigns are doing, if you don’t have an effective funnel for your business, then you won’t get a good amount of conversions.
And if you get low conversions, then that means that your business isn’t doing well.
Sales funnels are very effective for businesses that want to guide their clients throughout the sales process, generate leads, nurture customers, and more.
In fact, it’s one of the reasons why the famous Russel Brunson is successful with ClickFunnels, a funnel-building software, that he even wrote a book about sales funnels.
Online businesses use sales funnels to get more clients signing up and to grow their sales.
Since there are no salespeople on the internet (except for live chat), a sales funnel guides your prospects and can work on its own.
This basically means that you don’t need to hire more people just to convince them to buy anything.
So what exactly is a sales funnel and why do you need it for your business?
Sales Funnels
Generally speaking, sales funnels is a process in the marketing industry that turns prospects (leads) into customers.
To understand how it works, there are four stages inside a sales funnel that are used as a basis to create a sales funnel for your business.
Awareness
The awareness stage is where your prospects are aware of your brand after seeing it from an ad or somewhere else.
Interest
This stage is where the potential customer finds your brand interesting that they start to do more research about it.
Desire
The third stage of your sales funnel is where they decide if they want to engage with your brand.
Action
Lastly, this is where they interact with your brand by signing up for your newsletter, calling your company, downloading free content, making a purchase, etc.
This model is called the AIDA model that guides prospects throughout the sales process until they reach the bottom of the sales funnel.
Who can use a sales funnel?
Marketers use sales funnels for their online businesses since it’s a lot easier to generate leads on the internet than in the real world.
Sales funnels have this unique ability to convert website visitors into customers that’s why it’s a very important element for anyone who’s selling online.
Whether it’s an online course, digital content, physical products, or anything, a sales funnel will serve as a guide to help you get more conversions on your website.
What are the three parts of the funnel?
The sales funnel has three major parts, the top, middle, and bottom, that are responsible for filtering qualified prospects before they proceed to the next stage.
To make it easier to understand, let’s connect the concepts to the four stages of the AIDA model.
Top
This is where your prospect becomes Aware after knowing about your brand.
During this journey, they are still unaware of the problems that only your company can solve.
For example, your company sells a wide range of supplements but they don’t know that they need to buy vitamins for themselves.
Middle
The middle part of your sales funnel includes the second stage on the AIDA model which is Interest.
This means that this is where they start doing more research by scrolling through your product catalog to know more about your offers.
Since your company is selling supplements, they start to get a vision of what they can do with your products and start to assess if they need to buy them.
This is also the part where they try to think if they ran out of supplements and start to compare it with the competitor brand.
Additionally, this is also where you qualify leads to see if they’re ready to take the next step of your sales funnel.
Bottom
The bottom part of your sales funnel is where the customer makes a Decision before Acting.
It’s also where they finally become part of your email list after signing up.
Sometimes, this can be the part where they call your company to know more about your products before deciding to buy your product.
Why is it important?
Sales funnels serve as the path or journey that your customer takes from initial awareness through conversion.
When you know the right way to build and use sales funnels for your business, then you can easily get them to proceed to another sales funnel after going through the first funnel.
It’s a never-ending process of upsells, downsells, and more, so you can dramatically increase your sales.
However, if you don’t know how its’ done, then it will only be a waste of time.
Now that you already know what a sales funnel is, let’s talk about application funnels so you can get more clients to sign up and start generating more leads (if you’re an agency you can learn to use this for your clients too).
What is an application funnel?
You’re probably thinking, “Do I need to create an app for this specific funnel?”
No, you don’t.
An application funnel works by having prospects fill out an application form to qualify them before you present them with an offer.
It’s also an excellent lead generation tool since it collects emails for you to make follow-ups.
The best part?
It’s very easy to build since this is a 3-page-funnel you can even get them to call you first.
What’s inside the application funnel?
Application funnels are great because they help you generate more sales even if some people may find it a little expensive.
First Page: Landing Page
This is where you present people with the results that they can get when they work with you.
You can present them with someone’s story that you’ve worked with before (like testimonials) to make them interested in your products or services.
If you’re a fitness coach then you can place a video of your previous client that was satisfied with the results that you have given them.
Or you can also offer them a “Free Case Study” page that doesn’t include testimonials.
Instead, it’s a different type of story where you tell them your strategies except that you don’t give everything away by telling them the whole process.
In summary, your first page has to be able to captivate them to make them interested to work with you.
And since one of your goals is to get a hold of them, then this page will also play as a lead generation tool where you get their email address.
Second Page: Application Page
Once you’ve collected their email address this is the part where you provide follow-ups on your leads until they finish filling out all the application forms.
This means that your application page will also be responsible in prequalifying leads since applicants will be answering different types of questions.
It’s actually quite similar to survey funnels except that there are no bucket questions included here.
The application page is also where your applicants will be expecting a sales call where they will be asked a few questions.
Third Page: Homework Page
The last page of your application funnel is where your qualified leads will be taken to a homework page where you tell them what to expect and encourage them to make a call.
Well, the homework page actually has different goals that are focused on building a connection with your clients.
Since they’re interested to work with you, then this is also where you will be telling them about the next steps that they should take.
Whether it’s to watch a video on your website that will help them gain more knowledge or reading the eBook that you sent to their email address.
This is very important since you’re also nurturing your clients here.
When you provide them the information that they need, this makes them want to work with you more and are very much likely to call your company.
Although you can still call them during the application process, this is actually a better strategy since you can easily identify the different types of clients.
Plus, this also saves you from the costly process of calling them at any time of the day that won’t even lead to a conversion.
Why is it important?
When you have an offer that’s a little expensive, an application funnel can help you make a sale (or more).
That’s because it helps in persuading your potential customers before they even purchase the product.
You can think of it as a tease or a warm-up for your leads so you can make them call you first, which saves you time and effort convincing them to buy your product.
Compared to cold calling, an application funnel will help qualify your leads before you even call your clients.
Additionally, an application funnel also helps identify your target audience since it will filter everything for you.
Who can use application funnels?
Application funnels work in different types of businesses which is why this funnel is very versatile.
It works for:
- Authors
- Consultants
- Affiliates
- B2B
- Professional Services
- Retail Businesses
- eCommerce
What are other types of sales funnels?
Other than application funnels, there are also different types of sales funnels that you can use for your business.
And since your goal is to get more leads and get more conversions, then you can also give them a try.
- Lead Funnels
- Survey Funnels
- Book Funnels
- Challenge Funnels
- Webinar Funnels
- Summit Funnels
- Product Launch Funnels
- Cart Funnels
- Video Sales Letter Funnels
We have covered a bunch of these previously and you can check the whole thing by reading our DotCom Secrets Review to know more strategies for your business.
