In this article I am going to show you the step by step process behind our core digital marketing strategy….
And I think it should be the cornerstone of your product promotional efforts.
Why? Because it simply works and, if done right, it will not only give you a steady stream of potential buyers for your products…it will actually generate an enormous amount of sales in the process.
I’m talking about creating a Digital Sales Funnel Engine.
TEN THOUSAND FOOT VIEW OF A DIGITAL SALES FUNNEL ENGINE
Before we delve into the details…let’s do a 10,000 foot view of what we are going to be doing.
First, you have to keep in mind that 99.9% of people have never heard of you or your product…so if you just try and put an ad up, or ask for someone’s email address, you’re likely going to get zero response.
So what we do with a funnel is that we build trust first, THEN we go in for the sale, and we do that through a five step process, which I’ll explain more thoroughly as we go.
AN OVERVIEW OF HOW A DIGITAL SALES FUNNEL ENGINE WORKS
OVERVIEW OF THE FIVE STEPS
First we give them what’s called a lead magnet, which is something for free that they will find of high value, and (importantly) relates directly to your product.
So for example, if you sell skin creams, it could be a free report called Ten Tips for Erasing Eye Wrinkles.
In order to get the report, they have to enter their email address which then allows them to download it.
Next, after they sign up, we instantly offer them a great deal on one our products.
We do this to test the waters and see if they’re actually interested in buying anything.
Step three, we will engage them with a steady stream of emails…which I like to do no more than once a week…where we offer them valuable free content.
Things like blog posts, infographics, testimonials…just any sort of content that relates to our products that they will find extremely useful…I’ve found that it’s always best to make them as visual as possible.
At the end of each post we’ll include a link with a very soft sell basically saying “hey you may want to check out x product of ours.”
Next is step four, where we maximize sales…and we do this through a variety of ways ranging from a monthly sale, to an introduction to a new product, to a flash sale….the sky’s the limit.
Lastly, we repeat the process!
So at any time we are finding new customers…and when we have new products, we send our existing customers and new customers to new lead magnets and start all over again.
TOOLS YOU WILL NEED
Just a quick aside on the tools you’ll need to create a Digital Sales Funnel Engine.
I’m not going to get into the specifics here on how to use them…
But you will need an email marketing system…in order to gather and sort the email leads you collect, as well as for sending out emails to your list (we use ActiveCampaign but there are a bunch of different options)…
And you will need a way to simply build sales funnel websites (we use Click Funnels because it’s pretty intuitive and you can actually build full sales funnels yourself).
IMPLEMENTING THE DIGITAL SALES FUNNEL
Step 1
So first thing we’ll do is set up a simple Facebook ad that will drive people to opt in for the lead magnet.
For our dry mouth products we created a cheat sheet of drugs that cause dry mouth.
So chances are, if someone opts in to get that report, they’re likely having issues with dry mouth….ergo…a potential customer!
Step 2
Once they opt in to receive the report, we instantly email them with a thank you note, and then offer them a chance to buy our product at a discount.
Now for this particular campaign, we are trying to drive people to buy the product at a specific retailer…but we could as easily include a coupon to our own website, or even a promotion they can redeem on Amazon.
Slide 21
Next, we’ll send them an email about once a week with various pieces of high value content like infographics and videos…
Something like the below chart on how to eat well as an older adult.
And the best part is, you don’t have to spend hours creating content…
You can readily find content that others are happy for you to share…just make sure you give proper attribution.
Sites like Visualy are awesome for finding infographics, and of course Youtube is amazing for finding videos….
Just add some commentary around the piece you find and voila! You have an awesome piece of content!
So for example, we know dry mouth is a huge problem for older adults….
So I’d probably say something about nutrition being as important as your medication when it comes to staying healthy as you get older, so here are some tips for eating well as you age.
Then I’d include a simple soft sell with something like a “PS, we just introduced these purse sized dry mouth sprays that people are loving! Here’s a link if you want to check them out.”
It’s actually pretty simple!
Step 4
My rule of thumb is that every four or five emails I will hit them with some sort of product offer.
It can range from highlighting one of our products that we’re trying to push…to running a great special, but I never like to give discounts any more than once a month
Why?
Because I don’t want to train people to wait for a sales email.
Think about Bed Bath and Beyond.
If I ever bought something from that place without a 20% off coupon my wife would kill me!…Because they’ve trained the entire country to expect 20% off coupons to show up once a week.
You don’t want that.
So sprinkle in discounts as special events, but otherwise make product offers at full price.
Step 5
After that, you rinse and repeat the whole process!
That way you’re constantly bringing in new customers through the funnel…
Every once in a while you send people on your email list a new lead magnet relating to a new product that you’re introducing…and slowly but surely you’re building out your email list and more importantly your business across a variety of products.
CONCLUSION
Building a Digital Sales Funnel Engine is one of the most powerful and efficient promotional tools you can implement and create for selling your products.
They key is being patient as you get it going, and being willing to tweak, test, tweak and test some more….
Trust me it’s worth it, because once it’s all set up, you’ve almost got a perpetual sales engine going that will last for years to come!
So how are you going to apply a Digital Sales Funnel Engine to your products?
This article was originally published at Napkintoshelf.com, by author Afif Ghannoum.
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