You may have been told that you need to set up a sales funnel for your wellness business. But you also may have been told that the tech involved is complicated and expensive. In this article I explain what you need for sales funnel tech and when you need more complicated options.
What is a sales funnel?
You’ve probably heard of a customer journey - the path your ideal client takes to becoming a paying customer. This journey can be short and simple or it can be long and winding with bumps along the way.
With a sales funnel you are trying to guide your ideal client to their final destination in a clear path. You put the steps in place so that your customer can follow the path easily. Of course most won’t. And some will bypass the steps you’ve put in place and take their own path. Especially if your customer journey has multiple entry points, you’ll see it can become hard to see how to lead your ideal client to their destination.
It’s called a funnel because many people will enter at the top (website visitors, social media) but only a few will come out at the bottom (you’ve made the sale).
Examples of sales funnels
One example of a sales funnel is providing a free download on your website or social media accounts. Once someone signs up for the free download, you can send them a welcome email sequence. After you’ve sent some emails that have welcomed this person into your world, you can invite them to book a cal with you to discuss your coaching services.
There are many other ways that you can start and end the sales funnel. You could start it with a workshop, a challenge or ?
And you can end it with whatever your offering is. There can be more than one paid offer in a funnel. You might offer a low cost product available first, then a higher priced one. However some will want to bypass the low cost offer and head directly to the high end product.
And not surprisingly, many people will go through your funnel more than once, or go through different funnels before they decide to purchase from you.
Tech that you can use for free
Hopefully I’ve made it clear what a funnel is. Now let’s look at some of the tech that you can use, starting with the free options
Email marketing platform
An email marketing platform is key to your funnel, especially a low cost funnel. A platform like MailerLite allows you to set up website forms, landing pages you can use on your website or social media, your email follow up sequence, your sales email sequence, and your sales page if you have one. You can choose other free or paid platforms, but review the list of features carefully. ConvertKit, for example doesn’t include automations in the free plan.
Discovery calls
If you are booking free discovery calls, you’ll need a couple pieces of technology. Appointment booking software and a place to host your calls. There are several free appointment booking options . Calendly and Appointlet are two options. Accuity is another popular scheduler but does not offer a free plan (only a free trial).
The next step in the discovery call funnel is reminder emails for your calls. This is something you will have to do manually if you are using the free versions. If using a paid appointment scheduler, this will be included.
You can host your calls with a free Zoom account. Both Appointlet and Calendly integrate with Zoom. Other options for hosting the calls include Google meet or Microsoft teams.
And finally you’ll likely need to send out follow up emails.
You’ll also need a payment processor like PayPal or Stripe that you can quickly (even during the discovery call) send a link for payment.
Challenges
If the opt in phase of your funnel is a free challenge, you have a few options for this part of the funnel. Your email marketing platform is key for sending out reminder and follow up emails. You can even send the entire challenge via email.
If your challenge is live you can host it on Facebook for free. If evergreen you can use email and YouTube or a platform like MemberVault.
Webinars
If you are doing a free workshop or webinar as part of your funnel you’ll need a few pieces of tech to make it work. You’ll need some way to let people sign up. This can be part of your email platform or your webinar platform. Some email platforms have a single click sign up procedure.
Next you’ll need some where to host your webinar. Software like Zoom is probably the most reliable, but the webinar version is quite expensive. Another option is using YouTube to host the webinar which doesn’t seem quite as professional as Zoom, but totally acceptable when you are starting out.
Having a free offer or paid offer available from your webinar is also a key part of your funnel
What Tech Do You Need?
To start and grow your wellness business
Landing page software
In order to get people to sign up for your free offer and eventually for paid offers landing pages and sales pages make life easier. Your email platform will likely allow you to create simple landing pages and even more complicated sales pages. You can also create landing pages on your website, but is can be a little harder to make this look professional.
Payment processing
Once you get someone wanting to sign up, you’ll need to have a payment processor. You can use Stripe or PayPal for payment processing. I explain options in more detail here.
More complicated options
Once you have created simple funnels, you may want to look at more complicated options. This may mean better analytics, paid webinar software or a more robust email marketing platform. Don’t think that you need to start with the most expensive and most complicated options. You will likely not use all of the features available.
Some examples of more complicated sales funnels include an evergreen webinar funnel, upsells, or putting leads into different funnels depending on their interests, engagement or past purchases.
Summary
The tech needed for sales funnels shouldn’t scare you. Start simple and add things to your funnel or add new funnels as you go. If you need help putting this all together book a free call to see how I can help.
