Digital Sales Funnels: Explained

Anyone with a business in the digital space, whether it be an online storefront or online coaching services, knows that bringing in new leads to your business is its lifeblood. You don’t have a business if you don’t have customers and the process you use to draw those leads in is very important. 

This is essentially the purpose of your digital sales funnel. A digital sales funnel refers to the process your business uses to bring in new leads, convert them into customers, and ultimately retain them as a repeat purchaser [if that’s part of your business model].

This is not to be confused with a sales funnel website, or sales landing page, which refers to the actual website that you send customers to in order to either entice them to purchase from you or provide their contact information in exchange for a compelling free offer [like a lead magnet]. 

Digital sales funnels have fairly easy steps, but they do take some planning and research on your part in order to maximize your conversions. As with many good things, the research and prep can make all the different in how successful your digital sales funnel will be.

Why The Structure of Your Digital Sales Funnel Matters

Do you remember [or remembering hearing about] door-to-door salesmen? These fancy folks used to come knocking on your door selling a new vacuum cleaner or a new fax machine and, let’s be honest, more often than not, they were sent on their merry way without closing the sale. Now, times were different then [I mean we are talking about the fax machine era, right?], but unless the salesman was incredible, having to sell an appliance to a cold audience was a monumental task! 

This is why the structure of your digital sales funnel matters. It’s about preparing your potential customer and providing them with the information that they need to buy-in to your offer and ensuring that they understand how your offer will benefit them. 

For this reason, it’s important to make sure that with your digital sales funnel layout you are putting effort into attracting that new lead into your business and taking the time to properly nurture them into a purchase, not just asking them for the purchase right out of the gate. 

It’s your job to build up trust and authority with your new lead in order to make them more comfortable in purchasing from you knowing that they will get the solution they are seeking. This is where the research comes in…

Follow These 5 Steps to Create Your Next Digital Sales Funnel

Now, any marketer worth their salt knows that an effective digital sales funnel is a combination of market research and real time adjustments. As we mentioned earlier, the market research aspect might not be the most exciting part of mapping out your digital sales funnel, but will greatly contribute to the overall success of your business. With that said, let’s jump into the five steps you need to take to make sure that your next digital sales funnel converts like crazy!

Step 1: Study The Behavior of Your Audience

The first step in setting up your next digital sales funnel is, you guessed it: research, research, research! In order for you to be able to effectively talk to your audience, you have to know your audience! Now depending on what your offer or product is, your audience will be completely unique to your business. 

Where does your audience, or ideal client, like to hang out in the digital space? Are they on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn? 

Are there any Facebook groups that they are active in? What books are they are reading on topics similar to what your offer addresses? 

This is the mindset you need to be in when you are researching or studying the behavior of your audience. You need to put yourself in their shoes so that you can learn as much as you can about what makes them tick. 

The more information that you gather on what your audience is interested in and what their interests are, the easier it will be for you to speak directly to them. The goal of this research is to gather as much information as you can so that you know who your audience is, how your offer can solve their problem, and how to talk to them about your offer. 

Step 2: Engage With Your Audience

Once you have your baseline knowledge about who your ideal client is, next you’ve got to get out there and attract them to your business!

Because you’ve put in the time and done the research, you know where your ideal client hangs out in the digital space which means you know where to target your marketing and content creation efforts in order to capture their attention. 

Focus your attention on creating engaging content that will speak to your ideal clients pain points and will directly address the problem that your offer solves for them. 

Pro Tip: Provide opportunities in your content to open conversations up with your audience. This could be by encouraging comments on an IG post or a YouTube video or doing live video events so you can answer their questions directly.

These are great ways to engage with your audience and get to know them even better. Pay close attention to how they describe their pain point or problem. Take notes on the words they use or the feelings they shared so that you can adjust the way you talk about your product to speak more directly to your ideal client. 

The goal of the content you create [and the way you talk about your offer] is for your ideal client to feel like you are speaking directly to their problem. If you’ve done your research well and paid attention to your interactions with your ideal client, the content that you produce, and the way you talk about your offer, should resonate deeply with them. 

You want them to feel like you completely understand where they are coming from and that feeling alone builds a great deal of trust with potential customers.

Step 3: Create a Landing Page

At this point in the process, we’ve researched our ideal client and have engaged with them so we understand how to talk to them in a meaningful way. The next step in your digital sales funnel is to collect their contact information so that you can continue to build your relationship with them. 

This is typically done through a combination of a free or low-ticket offer coupled with a landing page. Now don’t fret, in most cases, in order to have an effective digital sales funnel system, you do not have to have a fully built out multi-page website. 

In fact, if you’re just starting out with your online business, all you really need is one landing page, to collect contact information, that offers a targeted resource for your ideal client and a way to deliver that resource. 

This is where the beauty of Social Fox shines. By utilizing an all-in-one marketing and customer relationship management tool you can keep all your marketing efforts in one place [and under one login]! We even make the process of getting your landing page up and running at lightning speed even easier by providing free landing page templates as well as lead magnet delivery email sequences. 

This means that all you have to do is update the graphics, adjust the written copy on the website [using what you’ve learned from your research], and start directing people to your landing page!

By having a landing page in place with an offer that addresses your ideal client’s pain points, you can begin collecting contact information and building up an email list of warm leads who are interested in your product offer. 

It’s important to note that a landing page is only effective if you are directing traffic through it. So make sure that you are sharing this link in your content that you’re providing to your ideal client whether that be through blog posts, YouTube videos, or social media posts.

Step 4: Utilize an Amazing Email Marketing Campaign

At this point, if your digital sales funnel dreams are coming true, you have an email list full of warm leads who have opted-in to communications with you [YAY!]. Now, what do we do with those leads?

I don’t think we at Social Fox are alone in experiencing the absolute ick of an overly salesy person. Anyone else having any flashbacks of buying a new or used car, or is it just us? No one appreciates feeling like they are just a sale. So it’s your job now to continue to provide value and build trust with your new email list subscribers.

The first step is to provide them with the resource that motivated them to sign up for your email list in the first place. This could be a free guide, a newsletter, a free sample, a coupon even. Here’s the good news about the delivery of this resource: these interactions can be completely automated through your online marketing system. Social Fox combines landing pages with forms to collect information and then triggers automated email sequences that deliver those resources directly to your new lead. 

This opens up some much needed time for you, as the business owner, and gives you peace of mind knowing that you have an automated system that’s working for you [even at 3AM when you're sleeping soundly in your bed]. There is a bit of finesse when it comes to these email sequences though…

Like we said, you want to avoid being overly salesy, so focus on providing value first. After you’ve provided your lead with the resource, continue to email them 1-2 times per week using your communications to take them on a journey.

These emails are where you can really use the language that you know resonates with your ideal client. Speak to their pain point in a way that takes them on a journey or tells them a story. As in life, people also love to be entertained in their emails.

Build your trust and authority with your ideal client by continuing to provide value for them and giving them the opportunity to learn more about you, your company, and your product in a way that feels personal. Avoid being the icky car salesman and asking for an immediate sale. 

By taking the time to build the relationship with your ideal client, you’ll reap the benefits of a dedicated customer over the long term. Throughout your email communications with your ideal client, give them opportunities to purchase from you by incorporating a call-to-action in your emails. 

This doesn’t have to be in every single email you write, you don’t want to come off as ‘one note’ where your customer knows what to expect in every email. Instead use a combination of different offers or products to entice your ideal client to purchase throughout your email series. Make sure that the story you’re telling in your emails provides the customer natural exposure to your product and encourages them to purchase after you’ve provided value to them and shown them why they need your product.

If you feel like you flounder when it comes to writing emails that are compelling for your ideal client, or you don’t even know where to start, don’t worry, we’ve got you! Check out our guide to sending effective marketing emails for our best tips and tricks.  

Step 5: Stay Connected with Your Audience

If you’ve set up your digital sales funnel optimally, your business automations are working and you’re converting the ideal clients on your email list into paying customers. Their customer journey doesn’t end there though!

Maintaining regular communications with your current customers is an excellent way to stay top of mind and to create repeat customers and raving fans of your business. After you’ve converted your lead into a customer, your email communications will change a bit. You’re no longer trying to convince, or sell, them on a specific product, you’re trying to retain them as a customer.

Be sure to keep in contact with them about new product offers, or changes in your current products so they can continue to be a well informed customer of yours. This is also a good time to encourage your customers to interact with you on other platforms. Maybe they know you from Instagram but you also have a YouTube channel? Provide more opportunities for them to engage with you and your business. 

Your current customers should always be in line to receive some type of email communication from you, so utilizing additional email automation series’ to maintain contact with your customers and even ask them for product reviews or referrals is a great option.

How to Create Your Own Digital Marketing & Sales Funnels Using the Best Tool on the Market

Creating and optimizing your digital sales funnel can seem like a monumental task, but it doesn’t have to be! We’ve gone over all the steps you need to build a successful digital sales funnel but where you build it is just as important. 

Choosing the right platform to house your digital sales funnel makes all the difference in the ease of execution and ability to scale your business. Social Fox prides itself on providing the best all-in-one marketing tool on the market to allow you to build your digital sales funnel with ease so that you can have leads coming into your business. 

Add to this that we provide templates for both your landing page and your email automation sequences and to us it’s no brainer. Still a bit curious about what Social Fox can do for you? Jump on our calendar for a free demo call to explore exactly what we can do for your business.