Sell Your Digital Products Without a Complex Sales Funnel
So, you’ve created your passive income product. Yay for you, love! But you might be thinking…. “Now what?” How can you sell your digital product or offer in a way that makes the income truly passive?
If you want your product to practically sell itself (or at least, keep up momentum behind the scenes), then you need to plan out how your audience comes into contact with your product. You could simply shout it out on social media or talk about it in your emails, but let’s be honest: both you and your audience will get tired of that pretty quickly. And it may not attract the kind of revenue you’re hoping for!
This is where a sales funnel comes in.
A sales funnel might be an awesome way to build your email list, offer value, and make passive sales. And it might not. I won’t say sales funnels are for everyone and every offer. But if you’ve been thinking about creating a sales funnel for your digital offers, I have good news: You don’t need a 20-step sales funnel to make it work for you! I’ll show you how to sell your passive income products with sales funnels in just a few easy steps.
Before We Get Started: What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is the process in which a customer finds, considers, and ultimately purchases your product — usually starting with a freebie or low-cost offer. Once a potential buyer takes the first action, like downloading an opt-in or buying a low-cost product, they’re added to your email list or sent through a sequence of sales pages that encourage them to buy your main offer.
If you’ve already looked into creating a sales funnel, you probably already know how complicated they can be. Some look like they’re written in another language entirely! However, you don’t need a convoluted sales funnel to get people to buy your product. All you need is a plan and a simplified, strategic approach.
Do You Need a Freebie to Start Your Funnel?
Most sales funnels tend to start with a freebie. It’s an easy way to entice customers to check out your work without having to face any risk for doing so, and it can help get a lot of people’s foot through the door. But if you’re just starting out, do you really have to give your hard work away for free right out of the gate?
The short answer is no. Freebies are meant to entice, but they’re not required. They’re just one way to engage your customer on an emotional and rational level. (The emotional side loves getting a good deal, while the rational side loves to get a well-made product.)
You can 100% create an offer that still appeals to your customer emotionally and rationally without giving it for free. Your offer needs to:
- Solve an immediate pain point
- Be easy to obtain (one-click shopping), and
- Be upfront with the value it has to offer (translated: explain why it’s a screaming deal!)
You want to give a clear, valuable offer to your customer: make it easy, applicable, and accessible. Freebies not required!
Want to start your sales funnel with a freebie? Think about how you can parse out your main product to give them a taste of the transformation. This way, they’ll see how much value you’re giving away for FREE and will be tempted to “upgrade” to the main offer after going through your funnel.
Stay Strategically Simple
Creating a simple sales funnel is the key to better sales for your passive product, but what does that look like? Here are a few ways that you can approach your funnel:
Start with a freebie (not your product)
You can start by creating an opt-in page for your free download or low-cost offer. Customers submit their email in exchange for easy access to your product, which lets you add them to an email sequence that warms them up and ultimately gets them to buy the higher-cost offer.
Use a sales funnel tool
You can use a sales funnel tool like ClickFunnels, Kajabi* or FGFunnels. These tools map out your funnel for you, often come with templates to make it easier to know what to include on a page, and even have options like a timed offer page or order bump. It can be nice to have a template to work from, but these tools can admittedly get complicated really fast, so consider what kind of time and monetary investment you want to commit to this kind of funnel upfront.
Have your nurture sequence ready to go!
Especially if you have a freebie or opt-in at the start of your funnel, you’ll want to make sure you have your email sequences or follow-up processes on point. You want to “nurture your prospects”—in other words, keep the feedback loop going! You'll want to include emails that show the value of your freebie or low-cost offer, share other resources, and build relationships. From there, you can start to introduce your main offer and give them an incentive to buy!
Know Where to Promote Your Sales Funnel
You don’t need to have all the bells and whistles or fancy tools to make an effective sales funnel. In fact, that’s a good way to clutter up your sales funnel, lose buyers, and frustrate yourself. Not recommended.
Instead, start by thinking about where your audience is likely to be (or where you already engage with them). Where do you find your customers? Where do people in your industry congregate and share ideas (either online or in-person)? This is where you want to start. The first step is fairly straightforward: simply promote your product and sales funnel in venues where you already engage with your potential customers! You can share on your:
- Blog
- Social media
- Email lists
- Landing pages
- Podcast
- Facebook ads
- YouTube videos
- And more!
Note: this doesn’t mean you should spam these channels. Maintain a stream of consistent free content as well (like you were before your digital product). This still offers value to anyone on the fence, and it also will leave the door open to any good feedback or collaboration opportunities down the road.
Second note: You don’t want to do all of these at the beginning, or at least, not all at once. (That’s a recipe for burnout!) Instead, focus on a few key channels, and start your sales funnel with a few simple steps.
Create Urgency in Your Funnel
In marketing, creating urgency is key to getting your customers to actually spring into action. Have you ever hemmed and hawed over a product in your cart, not sure whether to pull the trigger? Give people a reason to buy your product once they’ve stepped into your funnel. You can let them know you’re only giving a discount to the first 20 buyers, or your discount expires in 24 hours.
That being said, you don’t need to scare your customers into purchasing your product. You just want to nudge them in the right direction. You can do that by emphasizing the immediate solution your product provides to a common problem in their day-to-day work (and therefore immediately improving their quality of life). You can also use a countdown on your sales page to have their cart expire after a set number of hours.
Sweeten the Deal
If you have room to do so, adding a bit of a bonus or discount to your offer is always an encouraging move. If you want this to be a truly passive offer, don’t offer coaching or consulting calls. Instead, you can link to your other offers (i.e. “Take my free website planning training and get my website project management template for free!” or “Buy my content planning guide for $19 and get a 50% discount on my email sequence templates”). The more you can connect your offers, the better.
Master the Follow-up
Lastly, you want to follow up, follow up, and follow up some more! When someone steps into your funnel, you want to capture their email address. That might mean giving them a freebie or simply asking for their email at checkout. This gives you a pass to show up in their email inbox, sharing value and promoting additional resources (preferably your main paid offer!).
There are other (more technical) follow-ups you can create, as well, like Facebook Pixels on your sales funnel pages that allow you to target visitors with ads. You can create an email that reminds them of their expiring cart, too, or that sends them a text to ask if there are any questions they have. These are obviously less “simple” sales funnel strategies, but they can be so effective!
A note about following up and sales funnel email sequences: Always put the customer first. You want to make sure that all of your messaging and any follow-up strategies you use are in their best interests. You don’t want to just push your products on them — you’ll lose them. Instead, think about how you can connect with them, let them know you have a solution that can help them, and share the most value.
Keep Up the Momentum
Remember, a funnel works best with gravity: You want your customer to move through the process as easy as possible. In a way, it should feel as natural as a conversation with your friend. Your customer finds your freebie on social media, receives a bundle offer, snags it before the cart timer runs out, and waits eagerly for the link as a “Thank you” email chimes in their inbox.
The goal of your sales funnel is to have it run practically on autopilot. It can take a bit of prep work, but once you have it set, all you have to do is give it a nudge; gravity takes care of the rest.
Do you need some inspo on how to start your sales funnel off with a bang by promoting your opt-in? Check out my guide on how to use your social media graphics to promote your best opt-in yet.
And if you’re ready to take your brand to the next level, don’t forget to check out Kajabi*! Not only can they help you build a stunning custom website, but they also have all the tools you need to house your offers, your community, your coaching notes, and more.
If you need help bringing your Kajabi site and sales funnel design to life faster and with less of a learning curve, we can help! With our semi-custom Kajabi design services, you can select one of our pre-made templates and we’ll customize it for you! This speeds up development and makes launching your new website or sales page possible in a matter of days.
We know Kajabi inside out. Your new website or sales page will be seamlessly integrated with the rest of your business. No more tech headaches! Interested? Schedule a Kajabi Strategy Call where you’ll tell me what you would like to achieve and I’ll tell you how to make it happen.
If you book a project, your Strategy Call Fee will be applied to your project.
Next, you’ll select one of our beautiful Kajabi templates that speed up the design process. In this phase, we’ll book your project, save your dates, and choose your templates. Then, we’ll set up a project board in Asana and gather all the info, assets, and insights we need to produce the right deliverables the first time. You’ll always know where we are in your Kajabi design process!
Then we get to work, creating your stand-out Kajabi design. Once we’re done, bust out the bubbly! Your new Kajabi sales funnel will be ready before you know it!
Want to get started? Our sales funnel package includes the design and customization of a medium sales page, up to 3 offer pages, and a thank you page to redirect customers to their action step. Investment starts at $4500.
