Everyone talks a lot about sales funnels and how you should be locking all your good, valuable content behind payment gateways. But what if we give people the content ahead of time, and only charge them if we actually fulfill our promise to them?
We are also focused only on the leads that we convert and how to get them to the next stage of our value ladder. But what about everyone else that doesn’t opt-in for our freebie? How are we serving them further if we don’t have their email address?
These two scenarios are both described as an Invisible Sales Funnel. We will be explaining these different scenarios more in-depth, and why they are still both called an Invisible Sales Funnel.
Introduction to the Invisible Sales Funnel: 2 Parts
The Free-First Event
The first version of the Invisible Sales Funnel is when you set up a normal sales funnel, but instead of charging people for your up sells (main products) up front, you give those away for free too.
You still take payment information beforehand, but you let people know that they will be charged on a certain date in the future and not right now.
This gives them the chance to try out your info product or attend your event, knowing that they haven’t been charged yet. You let them know that they can pull their information and won’t be charged if they aren’t completely satisfied with what you have to offer.
This takes all of the risk out of the equation for them, thus giving them confidence to try what you are offering.
Sure some people will cancel their payment, but as long as you offer solid value, a majority of people will be happy they had the risk-free experience, and let the charge go through.
The Invisible Sales Funnel Outside the Funnel
The second type of Invisible Funnel people refer to is the funnel that you don’t really control outside of your main funnel.
You are used to serving the 5% of people who opt-in to your free offering, but what about the other 95% of people that fall off?
These people aren’t necessarily gone from the equation. They are still looking for a solution to their problem. They are still going to go elsewhere to find what they are looking for.
This is the Invisible Sales Funnel happening outside of any funnel that you create, and one that you can take some steps to take advantage of.
We’ll discuss more about this missed opportunity a little later.
The Completely Free Offering
The version of the Invisible Funnel where you give your product now and charge later shows that you really care about your customers more than you do their money.
You let them decide if they like the value you have provided and want to spend their money on it.
Even if someone plans from the beginning to cancel their payment whether they like your content or not, they will be left with tons of value they haven‘t paid for, and will be indebted to you on a psychological level.
This will leave them more open to accepted paid offers from you in the future.
A good example of this type of Invisible Funnel is Russell Brunson’s Two Comma Club Live.
It’s a 3-day virtual event that will be live streaming the best presentations from Funnel Hacking Live, and you only have to pay for the event afterwards, and only if you found it valuable.
It’s a prime example of an Invisible Funnel.
The Missed Opportunity
When people don’t convert with you, their problem isn’t automatically solved.
They are still looking for a solution. They may even be looking more into your solution, and you just don’t know it.
It’s a good idea not to leave money on the table and cover all your bases.
People may be wanting to find out more about you and your company, so they back out of your funnel and do a search for reviews of your product. In this case you can have ads waiting for them leading them to a page showcasing positive reviews for what you offer.
People may go to Facebook to find your page and read more about you, or ask others if they have any recommendations. You can have retargeting ads setup to follow them to Facebook and offer a more in-depth informational page about what you offer.
They may be looking for competitors on Google. Place ads above your competitors that compare why your product is the best solution compared to the others.
The main thing to focus on is getting into the mind of your prospect, figuring out why they clicked into your funnel to begin with, and thinking about where else they may be going after visiting your landing page to find out more.
Identifying this Invisible Funnel will help you recapture this previously lost traffic, and put yourself in control of more touchpoints along the way to their buying decision.
The Invisible Sales Funnel Thank You Page
In the case of your Invisible Funnel where you offer your value up front and charge afterwards, the thank you page is vital to the retention of your paying customers. And there are actually two thank you pages in this type of funnel.
If you don’t want people asking for refunds afterwards, it’s important that you use the thank you page to your advantage.
For the thank you page after the payment information is set, make sure you reiterate your promise that they can cancel their payment, and by what date they need to do so, if they don’t get the value they were hoping for.
This will continue to build the trust factor and also let them know that you know you are giving them good value, and you are the one taking the risk and not them.
You can also use this page to give them homework to do before your event or class takes place. This will give them more value up front and help structure their problem in a way that they can better work to solve with the information you give them in the presentation.
For the second thank you page, auto-redirect after your final presentation or add a button below the final lesson leading people to an after-event page.
On this page you will offer a short challenge or extended class that is free. This step will help people really utilize what they learned in your main event and use the information you provided to ultimately solve their problem.
It will also keep them working past the cancellation date for the payment. This isn’t to trick them into forgetting, but it’s to offer them even more value that they don’t even consider cancelling the payment.
If you are still helping them solve their problem when the cancellation date comes, they can’t justify cancelling the payment in their mind.
If they do want to cancel, you can lead them through a downsell funnel where they can get a discount on a lesser value product that can still help them.
Learn More About Lead Funnels
This was a little bit more of a complicated lead generation funnel since there are two common uses of this that are both referred to as an Invisible Funnel.
Everyone should be utilizing the missed opportunity funnel to capitalize on dropped traffic. Using the invisible event funnel is up to you if you are confident in your value-giving abilities and want to take all the risk of getting paid on your shoulders.
As always, if you are looking for more information about lead gen funnels, I always recommend the Lead Funnels Swipe File.
It’s over 106 world-class examples of lead gen funnels that have worked wonders for top-of-the-line businesses in industries across the board.
See what worked for others and model it.
