Create Websites with CHEETAH
Build and operate lucrative sales funnels with "Cheetah" (1)
Many websites are not primarily designed for presentation tasks, but serve direct commercial purposes, i.e. lead acquisition and the sale of products and services. They therefore follow a predefined purpose and guide potential customers to a successful conclusion via various sub-steps. Since the number of potential customers decreases with each step (because they drop out) until only the "buyers" remain at the end, in the B2B sector this is referred to as a "sales funnel". By designing your website as such a "sales funnel", you can virtually automate the process from lead acquisition to the sale of products and services.
A sales funnel works in such a way that after each step, more potential customers who are not interested in or do not have a budget for an offer are eliminated. In the end, only those customers are left for whom closed orders or sold products can be recorded.
A typical sales funnel consists of five sections, each serving its own function:
1. Define target group, attract attention
As a rule, you have to rely on paid traffic for sales pages if you don't want to invest a lot of effort in corresponding SEO measures (which also only have a medium- to long-term effect). Here, the right selection of the target group and how to specifically address them (e.g. ad design for Facebook ads or Pinterest) is of essential importance. The goal of such a traffic campaign must be to attract as many members of the selected target group as possible at a reasonable financial cost who will actually click on the link to the product landing page (see Step 2).
2. Arouse interest, obtain address data
This is the task of a special "landing page", which should contain a so-called "lead magnet". This usually means a free digital product in the form of a checklist, an eBook, a trial lesson (video course), etc., which the prospective customer receives in exchange for his e-mail address according to the double opt-in procedure.
3. Initial contact
Once the prospects have been screened and are available in the form of an e-mail list, for example, this list can be used for an initial contact, i.e. this is where e-mail marketing comes into play. An appropriate presentation of the offers is here of advantage, because with this step customers fall away again, who do not see a use for themselves in the products/services.
4. Offer submission
This section of the sales funnel deals with the actual offers made to the customers acquired. Different sales strategies can be used here. Customers for whom the offers are not suitable are dropped from the sales initiation process at this stage.
5. Order, cooperation
In the last step, the products or services are finally sold.
Through the 5 steps of the sales funnel you have now selected the suitable customers and can now profit from them. Through regular, legally correct contacts, the cooperation can now be expanded and follow-up orders can be generated.
In detail, sales funnels designed in the form of websites will of course differ from one another depending on their purpose and complexity. Therefore, it is essential to plan such funnels first before starting their concrete realization.
A simple lead magnet tunnel
It is always better for customers to come to us than for us to have to search for them. In the age of the Internet, this is achieved with the most irresistible enticements possible, so-called "lead magnets. These are usually digital products that solve one or more problems for the potential customer, and for which he is happy to give away his e-mail address in order to enjoy them. This product must be designed in such a way that it appeals to their target group for once and offers something special that cannot be obtained anywhere else for little money. Potential new customers want to have a real added value and see solutions to problems that also lead to real comprehensible solutions. In short, successful lead magnets solve the problems of their target group. A "perfect lead magnet" is something that your customers can use in their everyday lives. In our case, that could be checklists, action guides in the form of eBooks, instructional videos, a special app, or a special PowerPoint presentation. But remember - it always depends on the content! If the potential customer is disappointed with the content, then most of the time you can forget about them as a future buyer of your other products....
In a lead magnet tunnel, the lead magnet is the first stage:
There, the interested party has to leave some data in a form (name and email address should be enough - more is rather counterproductive), so that he can download the lead magnet (for example, a free eBook). Technically, in our case, the form is connected to the email autoresponder Mailingboss, which saves the form data and sends a confirmation mail to the addressee. If the interested party confirms this mail, he receives a release link to the download page (or is immediately directed to it). There he can now download the digital product and you have his mail address, which you can now use for mailing campaigns, in a completely regular and legally compliant manner (since double opt-in).
Tip: Of course, after the successful download, you can immediately redirect the prospect to a sales page where you will make him another, but now not free, offer with certain benefits (discount).
As you probably already guessed, building such a funnel in "Cheetah" is done quickly. We only need four pages: A landing page, a hint page for the confirmation email, a thank you or download page and a page for the obligatory imprint with privacy policy.
After we have created these four web pages, we still have to design them and connect them functionally. The easiest way to do this is to use the ready-made banner templates.
For the home page = landing page, a suitable banner from the "Lead Magnet Page" category is just perfect for this. Whichever template you choose here, it depends on the element "Mailingboss Form", which you have to connect to a Mailingboss list. This is done by the dialog hidden behind the gear icon in its header menu.
Note: If you are not using a Banner template, then you can find a selection of Mailingboss form elements under "New" - "Elements" - "Email Marketing Form". Note that you must explicitly create the fields that such a form contains with the list you are using in Mailingboss.