Take IKEA for example. If you've ever been to an IKEA, you've witnessed a brilliant sales funnel. When you walk into IKEA, it’s not like walking into a big box store like Walmart, where you can freely (and aimlessly) roam the aisles.

Instead, IKEA is strategic in their approach and they make you follow a path that takes you through their showrooms where they've staged every room in a house so that you can EXPERIENCE their products at work and see the genius behind their products' applications.

Even if you’re just there for bedding or kitchenware, you have to go through every other section of the store. Home offices, kitchens, living rooms, dining rooms, etc... before you can actually buy anything. The checkout is at the very end.

It might sound annoying, but they've made it very enjoyable because they're pros and they studied human behavior and have carefully engineered your experience through the store because you are inside of a sales funnel.

They know based on their studies that people spend more money when they get people to walk through their store in a strategic way, and it works... on ME... every time! 🤪

Everywhere you look in your physical life, and online, you see sales funnels.

 

 

There are of course other ways to structure a funnel, but this is pretty standard.

E-mail Automation

The other thing you’ll need is an Autoresponder, which is an email tool that can be used in a variety of ways.

Email marketing is NOT dead and you definitely want to build your email list so that you can keep in touch with your leads and customers without having to monitor your inbox 24/7 - which is NOT sustainable, or even possible...

Your emails can (and should) be automated for purchase confirmations and follow up communication. Basically you schedule a series of pre-written emails that contain the information needed to assist them in making a buying decision. If you've ever been in sales before, you’ve heard “the fortune is in the followup."

 

Opt-in Pages & Forms

This is a brief overview of how it works for opt-in pages / contact forms.

If you have a page / form where you're asking a lead for their email address it's because you are going to send them something in exchange for their contact info - like a free guide or something. You simply set up an autoresponder in your email tool (like systeme.io) so that when someone submits their info your email sequence is sent automatically - because you've written it once and told the system what to do.

This process is especially key for any affiliate offers you may have. In many cases the product owner (who you're an affiliate for) may not share the customer's contact info with you, so you need to capture that information on the front end so that you can connect with your leads regardless of whether or not they buy something, because who knows - maybe they'll buy something else OR more!

 

Newsletters

Then there's newsletters... which, if you're like me, you have a love/hate relationship with. On the one hand it's a key way you get new product info and first access to promotions from companies, but on the other hand they clog up your inbox and can get annoying fast!

As marketers we need to master the art AND science to effective email marketing, and that is a skill all its own. It necessitates its own blog post, and that is coming soon...

In the meantime, you can get started with the training course above so you don't get caught in spam folders or blacklisted by the email service providers (like gmail and hotmail, etc...) because you definitely don't want THAT to happen.

Education is key - so make sure you don't wing it. Get a reputable course, learn the skills and then keep reading... so you'll know where to find buyers to email!

 

NEXT → Where to Find Buyers