What Is A Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel involves steps a customer needs to take to purchase something. As businesses changed and refined their marketing techniques, sales funnels have become more and more popular as a result.
Your customers starts to your shop which is step 1 of the funnel. The next step is someone walking in because they’re attracted by the sight of the cupcakes on display. Once insidethey take a gander at the cupcakes and sweets inside. They will look at the menu inside and choose a few items to their liking.
Next, they can place the order and process the payment.
Each step of the funnel needs to come in before the customers can convert. The potential buyer can otherwise leave the store without completing the purchase at all.
Make sure you are constantly testing the funnel so it converts the highest number of customers.
Examples that Apply to your Business
10 best Sales Funnel Examples
NETFLIX
Netflix
Netflix is one of most popular paid subscription platforms for video streaming with which members can watch a number of movies and tv shows. THey can watch documentaries on several different devices as a result.
Statista shows that by 2018 Netflix had over 72.9 million monthly users.
The uX and navigation is fairly intuitive. Most of the explanation is built inside the player and the homepage isn’t verbose. You intuitively understand what’s going on in the site. You can change the background image based on the content you’re currently watching.
They offer risk reversal where you can cancel the show and not be locked inside a contract.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Homepage: the homepage displays the risk-free trial with progress bar built into the design. There’s no commitment with the free trial and you can cancel whenever you choose to.
- Pricing Page: go to the FAQ section and here’s where you get pricing information
Netflix selects premium plan for you and you can downgrade it any time you want.
Why The Sales Funnel Works
There are multiple payment options to pick from: starting from gift card to credit and PayPal. You can edit the information to avoid locking out.
It’s first and end is the customer and they answer questions concisely. They rely on brand power. They share their phone number and its exceedingly simple to move around.
GROUPON
Groupon is a big company that has millions of consumers. They come with a clear opt-in email on the site. The pop-up displays on the homepage to visitors on the first visit.
This pop-up is part of the strategy they have been using for a while. It has successfully been growing their audience since they have continued to use it over the years. Let’s examine the rest of their sales funnel to see how it works.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Traffic: from ads, direct visitors, affiliates, referrals and more
- Homepage: the pop-up that shows up incentivizes people to give their email address. They get 70% or more off on restaurants and spas.
Why The Sales Funnel Works
When you get a deal on Groupon the clear CTA invites a click. Sign up through your email to get it.
Groupon has follow-up offers that are tailored to customers taste.
They offer more tailored content each time someone visits the site.
No free trials. The sales funnel is a big email list that has a website front.
HELPSCOUT.COM
Help Scout has a demo video on the site. The design and the animations tug at the heart.
The site offers plenty of contrast. Nothing interferes with the copy. There’s nothing to mess up the background. The clear CTA and social proof make things easy to understand. It can be below the fold.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Traffic: comes from the blog
- Homepage: It’s an extremely clean design offering contrast. There’s social proof and clear CTA.
- Pricing Page: The there pricing tiers means there’s standard, company and plus packages to pick from
Why The Sales Funnel Works
Help Scout comes with great design. The message and services are clear. They’re doing everything right to address basic issues.
The blog design is great. They have a number of resources and graphics. They have high quality content. It has original layout. They have a strong lead magnet coupled with a CTA>
AUTOGROW.CO
The done for you business sales funnel . They craft a custom funnel that generates leads for their clients. This helps them with higher quality prospects and build a sales funnel packed full of clients. They can implement strategies.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Traffic: the organic traffic and referrals arrive from Autogrow’s blog and newsletters
- Homepage: this is the call to action to the demo video for the DFY service. The product pages lead to the homepage
- Pricing: The pricing is defined as Supreme package, ultimate package, Superhero package and hero package.
Why it Works
The copy is written out very clearly on the pages. The page displays product information, its features and guarantees for products as well.
Basecamp
Basecamp lets you manage company projects, work and communications all at a single place. They test designs and the copy is around problems the product can solve.
Basecamp has a personal design. They present social proof in a unique manner.
- Traffic: it comes from the blog from the PR and from organic search
- Homepage: in addition to social proof they showcase product in action. They put a face on the logo to bridge an emotional connect.
- 30-day free trial sign-up: Basecamp is a free to try too. There’s no need for you to add credit card information at first. The pricing is super simple as well.
Adding pictures of real people may enhance the user experience. People see faces on testimonials. Adding images to website can improve subscriptions by 34.7%
PLANSCOPE.IO
Planscope
Planscope gives you control over the agency, getting your team and clients on the same page. This helps you earn contracts and gives you opportunities to create better business. This is simple really.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Traffic: it comes from the email newsletter and blog
- Homepage: the homepage is designed well. You can see very well what the software looks like on the page
- Pricing Page: the pricing page with the pricing table is simple. It has tiers like freelancer, small team, consultancy and agency.
Why It Works
Planscope works because it doesn’t require a credit card.
Harvest
The primary CTA on the homepage is the 30-day free trial.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Homepage: the homepage has a number of clear Call to Actions on the page, product explanations and testimonials
- The free trial signup has a cta button
Why It Works And What Makes It Unique
There’s detailed testimonials on the page that adds to social proof.
The companies get free marketing as a result.
CRAZYEGG.COM
Crazy Egg’s sales funnel has several stages. It begines with their blog. The traffic by and large comes from the blog. Every blog post has a subscription sign up box. This drives people into customers and to join their list.
- Traffic: the traffic is from referrals, from organic blog posts and from ads.
- It’s placed on the homepage for a 30-day trial. After you sign up for the email list, you will be on the homepage, and you can engage with more content.
- Homepage: add your website URL
- Pricing: when going to the pricing page all packages show the free trial and 30 day plan
- The pricing page is similarly designed to the rest of the site.
The checkout page offers light company. The focus is on social proof.
Once you choose pricing plan, add credit card details. The card isn’t charged in the first 30 day s.
Why It Works And What Makes It Unique
CrazyEgg has doubled conversions with revenue growing year on year
There’s not much company. The focus is on strong visuals. The landing page design explains the benefits of the service. There’s no bombarding the customer with so many queries.
Perfect Audience
Perfect Audience has made changes to design and the pricing page is now a little hidden.
- Homepage: if you visited the site in the past you’re going to be retargeted and sked to come back to the site
- Free Trial Sign-up Form: If you click on any CTAs inviting prospects to start the trial when clicking on the CTA to start the trial.
- You are going to get redirected to sign up form.
Why It Works
The design looks great. There’s social proof and there’s case studies. But the pricing page is deep inside somwhere. Customers keep wondering what Perfect Audience costs.
GRASSHOPPER
Grasshopper
Grasshopper is a virtual phone system helping business owners have number for their company.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Traffic: from their PR, blog and ads
- Homepage: the copy is easy to understand. There’s 30 day money back guarantee. The services explained in inviting, 2 minute YouTube video and through bullet points
- Pricing Page: The pricing page is clear. And products are compared with each other for pricing and features. The free trial also gets displayed.
The color combinations and design changes have improved the site and made the CTA stand out further.
Years have gone by and the site design hasn’t changed much
What Makes It Unique
The ;pgp and brand character is worth nothing. They use a design that exemplieis product simplicity.
MIXERGY.COM
Mixergy
Mixergy features courses with well-known entrepreneurs. The courses sold at a premium have the help of a funnel beginning with a CTA offering early access to interviews of entrepreneurs for an email address. You get the email link for the video.
Now that they have collectedleads, they can message you and move your information to the premium section.
- Traffic: is from the email list, from social media and referral sites traffic their way.
- The homepage has a number of ctas most of which are promoting recently done interviews and master classes
- Premium Content: they ask site visitors for signing up to Mixergy’s premium content restricted to members only
- Pricing Page: there are two pricing options the first one for monthly membership and second for annual membership
Once you reach teh checkout form in one click and there’s the pop-up payment form.
Why It Works
Mixergy’s funnel works because of the contact information. They send you access to the entire content and they charge you for the same. There’s some mental friction with this.
If you opt in with the same information to another video they might ask you to sign up once again. You can enter another email but if you believe in paying for quality content you won’t do that.
MailChimp
MailChimp is a freemium email marketing tool. It has a free plan and this is the biggest reason why their business stands today where it is. They added a plug Powerd by Mailchimp at the bottom of each of their emails. This spread the word for them and created a viral loop.
Steps In The Sales Funnel
- Traffic: the traffic can be organic traffic from search engines, from emails from blogs and word-of-mouth
- Homepage: the homepage is the first step of the sales funnel. It motivates and is for self expression. You can a/b test your emails.
- Pricing/Features Page: Mailchimp’s pricing page helps you get signed up for free. You can get started with just the email username and password.
What Makes It Unique
The interactive pricing page for a prospect’s know how is great. You can automatically change the pricing by adding a subscriber count. It’s also simple to use. It’s based on the number of subscribers you have. Mialchimp barely mention email marketing. They focus mostly on results.
#1 The ‘Russell Brunson’ Sales Funnel
Free Book Funnel
Russel Brunson asks leads for their address to send them a free book. The customers need to pay for shipping though. Since an address is personal the product needs to tempting enough to convince potential customers to sing up. This is why them offering leads a book than an eBook makes all the difference in the world.
What does this sales funnel look like?
The customer goes to the landing page with the help of ads, through referrals, through social media and once they add the address, the sales funnel starts. Step 1 is where they send the free book to the customer, the one time offer is for another product, and then there’s upsells for live events.
Why is this type of funnel used?
The sales funnel is great for anyone with multiple items on offer. THey start with an attractive offer at first like a physical book which add people to their sales funnel and who doesn’t want a $20 book for free.
The goal is to add as many people as possible to the sales funnel so that there’s enough customers to upsell to.
What makes it unique?
Prior to offering physical ebooks, almost everyone only offered ebooks. The offer wasn’t as attractive now as before since everyone did this. Russell decided to come up with a physical version of the booking instead of offering something of lower perceived value like an eBook.
The unique thing about this is Russell gets an unlimited number of customers for free and makes profits in on at the backend, selling software and coaching programs as well as masterminds.
With this russell spends $23 on a book and generates $37 on a customer so he gets 14.7 as profit from a customer and then sells backend products.
A business that can make a customer worth more to him than that of a competitor will make more money than the competition.
#2 The ‘Consulting.com’ Sales Funnel
Type of sales funnel: ‘Free Trial’ Funnel
Consulting.com offers a free trial to their consulting accelerator program.
With this they provide access to subscription based tools like hosting and membership. You can use these services for free for up to 14 days. It’s the same model some QR code generators use.
What does this sales funnel look like?
Once you get up and running on the free trial, enter your credit card details.
After that you need to answer a series of questions on your business and operation hours. Questions about the number of employees and income level and more.
This is a good way to gather important information on the audience.
After this you get access to the learning portal and get insights on the target customer.
Once the 7 days are over you’re going to be charged and get full access to modules, lessons and all resources.
Once you purchase the program you can also get access to things like Uplevel consulting and quantum mastermind.
This maximuzes their profit.
When is this funnel used?
SaaS companies usually offer free trials to get customers started on their journey. Especially to customers who don’t want to spend all their money on something they’re not yet fully confident on.
The customer can take time to understand the service before they decide whether they want to invest with them.
What makes it unique?
Free trial funnels are not unique in the sense more and more companies use the model. Wha’t unique is the funnel they use for online courses.
Based on this the funnel being used for more than year it shows whether its workking or not.
AN important insight is to establish the out of box mindset for your business, marketing and sales funnels
#3 The ‘Mailshake’ Sales Funnel
Mailshake does a good job for their sales funnels. The book a demo call to action isn’t suited for the SaaS industry but works well.
This is a good sales funnel to depend on for high value items to sell products or services and to talk to someone one on one.
What does this sales funnel look like?
The sales funnel directs to a free demo and once there they’re prompted to sign up for the service.
When the potential customer types add their personal and company data they get an email from MailShake with a link to a 30 minute explore mailshake zoom call.
Eric then begins to tell customer about the platform
Email outreach
Phone dialer
Social sales integration
Lead catcher
And more
If the customer feels he’s going to benefit from the service, Eric offers an affordable pricing.
When is this funnel used?
The book a demo/phone a funnel is for when you targe customers who require personalized advice with the draw being an investment in high-value service.
What makes it unique?
A company like Boxmode knows that such a funnel can be geared towards companies who sell web design and software like Adobe that may need tutorials.
\The chief advantage with a 1:1 call is that you get to build trust with customers and that improves conversion rates.
#4 The ‘OptinMonster’ Sales Funnel
OptinMonster works by the logic that each reader can be a potential conversion . That’s why they need multiple sales funnels to usher in new customers. They use a number of tools and sales techniques to make this possible. These tools play on your psychology like countdown timers, exit popups, content upgrades and lead magnets for optin forms.
THey offer low prices for customers that choose the annual billing option. Another sales funnel tactic is the exit intent popup that looks this way.
An exit intent popup surfaces if you try and leave the site. It works well to convince customers that may not come back again.
What does this sales funnel look like?
Most sales funnels try and work in a sense of urgency. Once a customer comes to the landing page, discounted price is often the reeling in factor.
Why are these funnels used?
Funnels are used to work in a sense of urgency by adding in a last minute discount and convince customers to prevent from opt out.
What makes it unique?
Optin Monsters Convert everybody logic is great at taking advantage of every visitor that walks through their door. That’s why they use multiple techniques for the leap.
#5 The ‘Backlinko.com’ Sales Funnel
Brian dean ranks for a number of high-search volume keywords on Google and YouTube and they use a number of lead magnets to make this possible.
What does this sales funnel look like?
Once someone becomes a part of Brian’s email list, a number of follow-up emails are sent to build up this relationship. He adds follow up emails and adds various courses to new subscribers to grow expertise.
Why use this funnel?
The funnel is a splendid way to bring in sales and work for bloggers who want new ways to sell courses online.
Email isn’t dead.
What makes it unique?
Brian’s key to success is his strong relationship with subscribers to sell courses and anyone who does that is a lifelong customer.
#6 The ‘Gymshark’ Sales Funnel
Type of sales funnel: ‘Influencer’ Funnel
Gymshark is exactly what it sounds. It’s an apparel company for gym goers landing around £41M in Sales.
IUnflunecer marketing is at the heart of growing the company and they have influencers spanning different platform.s
It’s a good example of the influencer funnel because they rely on atheists who have a good fan following and who trust their opinion.
This has turned gymshark to a brand in its own right. People recgonize and trust the name that helps increase their social following and reach across people.
Most traffic is from social media funnels. They are working with fitness influencers to market these products. Their social accounts cater to millions of fans. They use the trust that personalities have and sell the products to grow the brand/.
Gymshar reaches out to athletes who have alarge following on social media.
THey compensate the athletes to advertise their product son on social media and post their account bio by posting pictures earring gymshark geear.
Image via Instagram
Image via Instagram
Why use this funnel?
This is a good funnel depending on how you want to grow your brand. Ecommerce stores who showcase their products daily use this kind of product. You will see food and clothing rband exercising this.
Influencer marketing isn’t unique anymore and this works by fostiering influence and relation of established accounts.