You’ve probably heard people talking about “funnels” like they’re the magic solution to fix your business overnight.
“Just build a funnel.”
“Funnels are how you scale.”
“Funnels generate revenue while you sleep.”
Sure, these statements are true in theory, but if you’ve ever tried building a funnel yourself, you know it’s not that simple. Anyone can set up a lead generation funnel, but actually generating leads takes real strategy.
Although 96% of visitors aren’t ready to make a purchase when they first land on a website, a big percentage are willing to give you their contact information if you have a great offer. But how do you create an offer people actually want? How do you build a lead generation funnel that converts?
Whether you’ve felt too overwhelmed to start, or you’ve built a funnel that just isn’t converting, this guide will explain how it’s done.
You need leads coming through your website every day, otherwise your business will flatline. While you can certainly generate leads from a variety of sources, around 50% of marketers say that web forms convert the most leads. If you don’t have a lead gen funnel, you’re missing out.
There are two main ways to get leads:
· Offer something free. Free offers include access to white papers, case studies, templates, cheat sheets, demos, PDF guides, ebooks, etc. You’ll get more leads this way, but most will be cold, just curious, or looking for freebies. You’ll need to warm them up with a solid email sequence that builds trust, solves micro-problems, and creates a desire to buy.
· Offer a low-ticket product ($10-$50). These are low-cost digital products or physical items. You won’t get as many leads as you would with a freebie, but the ones you’ll get will be far more valuable. They’ve already paid something so they’ve proven they’re willing to spend money, and these leads tend to be more targeted.
Both types of leads are valuable; it just takes more time to warm up the first group.
With this in mind, here’s how to build a high-converting lead generation funnel in five steps:
An effective lead gen funnel speaks directly to the intended market. A highly targeted message will make people take your offer without hesitation. In fact, companies that utilize detailed buyer personas see a 56% increase in high-quality leads and a 73% boost in conversions.
Think about your market. What do they want? What are they afraid of? What keeps them up at night? How does your offer solve their problems?
A well-defined target audience ensures your messaging resonates and your offer appeals to those most likely to convert. If your product or service has multiple markets, separate them so you can market more effectively.
Start by creating a detailed buyer persona. Develop a profile of your ideal customer that encompasses demographics, interests, pain points, and buying behaviors. Use this profile to create your landing page content and ads. The better you know your ideal customer, the easier it is to get them to convert.
No matter how well you think you know your target market, start searching online for discussions to get insight into their desires, fears, and hopes. Reddit is a great resource for market research along with Facebook groups. It also helps to engage with your market through surveys, feedback forms, and conversation to derive insights into their needs and preferences. Don’t start building your funnel until you’ve nailed your buyer persona.
If you’ve never built a lead generation funnel and you’re trying to do it manually, the learning curve can be pretty sharp. While it’s easy to connect a simple web form to an existing email marketing system, there’s far more to successful lead generation.
When you try to build lead gen funnels manually, you have to build all of your landing pages from scratch, and that’s where things get tough. Even if you’re using a templated content management system like WordPress, you’ll need design and coding customization to create effective landing pages. Doing it this way can take weeks and thousands of dollars to launch. And if you want to add in upsells and order bumps, you’ll have to pay even more.
When you use software specifically designed for building online funnels, you can launch in hours, not weeks or months. Integrations are easy, and you’ll get built-in analytics and split testing.
Where price is concerned, software is budget-friendly. Instead of paying someone an hourly rate for manual funnel building, software comes with a set monthly fee. The best part is most funnel building software comes with conversion-optimized templates so you won’t need to build your landing pages from scratch and hope they work – just apply the template and fill in the content.
A lead gen funnel is more than just a landing page with a sign-up form. At minimum, you’ll need the following:
· A traffic source (organic posts, referrals, PPC ads, etc.)
· A landing page
· A thank-you page
· Email automation
· Follow-up emails
You can use more advanced strategies, but it’s not necessary. Even a basic funnel has the power to bring in thousands of leads if it’s highly targeted. The good news is – with a few exceptions – most popular funnel building applications include everything you need to build and launch high-converting lead gen funnels. Not sure which one to choose? Here’s an overview of the the top 6 funnel building applications:
· ClickFunnels. Designed for entrepreneurs and small business owners, ClickFunnels is the easiest way to build lead generation funnels. The drag-and-drop editor is easy to use even for beginners, and if you get stuck, there’s a help button inside the builder that will take you to a knowledge base or let you chat with an agent. While the templates inside the builder aren’t the greatest, they offer better lead gen templates on their blog. If you search Google, you’ll find plenty of templates created by third-parties that you can install with a couple of clicks.
The pricing is a little higher than other options, but it comes with email marketing and unlimited contacts even with the basic plan. You can create landing pages, regular website pages (like your terms of use and contact pages), storefronts, courses, a community, and more.
· Leadpages. Leadpages has been around for a long time and offers some of the best conversion-optimized templates. However, they don’t offer email marketing. The standard plan from Leadpages is more affordable than other options, but once you go pro and above, you’ll be paying about the same as applications that have more to offer.
· GetResponse. GetResponse is one of the oldest lead generation applications around, and offers a complete funnel building solution with easy-to-use templates. You can create social media campaigns, landing pages, courses, and webinars, and it comes with an email marketing service. Many people with Shopify stores use GetResponse to manage their email marketing campaigns.
The downside is having to pay more as your contact list grows. However, that’s pretty standard across the board for email marketing applications (with a few exceptions).
· GoHighLevel. GoHighLevel (GHL) is an all-in-one solution that makes it easy to build your website, landing pages, full funnels, and more. It combines the functionality of a CRM, email marketing, and funnel builder all in one place. The monthly cost is comparable to other options, but the learning curve is a bit steep.
· HubSpot. In addition to customer relationship management (CRM), HubSpot can be used to build your sales funnels with the landing page and form builders. There are a variety of plans available with fees that range from free to $4,300 per month.
· Thrive. Thrive is an all-in-one package that comes with a WordPress website builder and lets you create membership sites, online courses, and quizzes. Of course, you also get plenty of lead generation features.
Thrive is relatively cheaper than other options, but does have some big downsides. It doesn’t come with email marketing, and if you want to move your website to another host, you won’t be able to keep your theme. Thrive only offers their themes to monthly members.
Choose your platform wisely because if you need to switch companies, you’ll need to build your funnels again from scratch. There is one exception: ClickFunnels has a browser extension called Barnum PT that allows you to import your GoHighLevel funnels into ClickFunnels. However, you’ll need an active GHL account to complete the transfer.
A successful lead generation funnel begins with an irresistible offer. Visitors need a good reason to give you their email address and/or phone number. Email fatigue is real, and weak offers like checklists and infographics won’t always cut it. An irresistible offer consists of the following elements:
· Clear value. It should take no longer than three seconds for someone to see the value in your offer. It shouldn’t be just another advertisement for your bigger ticket products. Your offer needs to stand on its own with inherent value.
· Meets a specific need. Rather than creating an offer and then trying to get your market to bite, it’s more effective to find out what your target market wants and then craft a compelling offer specifically tailored to their needs.
· Specificity. Instead of vague statements like, “grow your business,” get specific with phrases like, “Get 25 qualified leads in 30 days or less.”
· Emotional hook. Even with your lead generation offer, you’re not selling the offer – you’re selling what it will do for your market. Appeal to desires, status, security, freedom, or belonging. Emotion sells, while logic just makes people think.
· Solutions. A good offer will solve a specific problem you know your market experiences.
· Urgency. People need a reason to act now. If there’s no urgency to act, many people will bounce and forget about you.
· Stacked bonuses. Multiple bonuses increase the value of an offer, but they can’t be basic. Each bonus should provide as much value (or more) as the original offer.
· Social proof. Landing pages with social proof convert up to 34% higher. If you have case studies, testimonials, media mentions, or reviews, reference those in your copy. People are more likely to do business with you if they can see that others are already happy with their experience.
You can offer just about anything as long as it’s deliverable, people want it, and it meets the above criteria. For example, you might ask visitors to sign up for your email list in exchange for providing a downloadable PDF file or mailing them a physical book.
Although the most common lead magnet is a free download, lead magnets don’t need to be free to be effective. In fact, depending on what you’re selling, paid lead magnets can qualify your prospects and weed out tire kickers. For example, if you’re selling ecommerce strategy coaching, you want leads who already have an ecommerce business. You don’t want to attract people who need to be walked through building a business from scratch. By offering a book packed with strategies for existing businesses – and asking leads to pay $10 for shipping and handling – you’ll generate targeted leads.
Copy is where most people lose their power. They write what sounds “professional” instead of what works. Effective copy feels like a real person is talking to a friend. Not a college English professor or marketing robot. Here’s what that looks like:
· The hook. This captures attention and stops people from scrolling. For example, “Why do some freelancers get 10 clients a month while others struggle to get just one?”
· The body. This is where you hit your target market’s pain and show the payoff. For example, “Most freelancers don’t know how to package their services. That’s why they’re stuck writing $30 blog posts. This free training fixes that.”
· The CTA. Your CTA tells them what to do. For example, “Click to get instant access.”
Make the desired action clear: what do you want people to do? Download a lead magnet? Buy a $27 mini-course? Book a call? Stick to one call-to-action (CTA) and make it clear and obvious. If there’s more than one CTA, people will be confused, and confused people don’t convert. If you want to provide multiple offers, use separate landing pages for each one.
No matter how you build your lead generation funnel, you’ll need to generate traffic to start getting leads. You can:
· Run paid ads on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Google, and YouTube
· Write content and get it ranked in the search engines using search engine optimization (SEO)
· Partner with other organizations for cross-promotion
· Borrow attention through guest posts, podcasts
· Use influencer marketing
All of these methods will generate traffic to your funnel, but make sure your messaging and back-end demographics specifically target your ideal leads. For example, if you’re offering a beginner’s guide to managing a remote team, don’t target freelancers with no team. Make sure you target managers, small business owners, and startup founders.
A high-converting lead generation funnel isn’t something you want to leave to change. The truth is, most funnels fail because they were thrown together without a solid strategy or compelling offer. But your funnel doesn’t have to follow this fate.
If you’re serious about generating quality leads and growing your business, we can help. At Marketer.co, we don’t just build funnels – we engineer customer journeys that convert leads into raving fans. Whether you need help fine-tuning your buyer personal, writing persuasive landing page copy, or anything else, we’ve got you covered.
Contact us now for a free consultation and let’s build a funnel that brings in qualified leads and turns them into paying customers.
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