If your Instagram feed is anything like mine, along with the pics of the people I follow I get served (in fairly equal measure) ads for reduced price Yoga leggings as well as ads for business coaches wanting to sell me their ‘signature systems’. You may have also noticed that often among these ‘systems’ is mention of a ‘sales funnel’.
Sounds kinda enticing, right? Some special thing that is going to funnel sales right into your business. Who wouldn’t want one of those? So much so, that some business coaches will charge you a considerable sum to learn what a sales funnel is, let alone how much they’ll charge to teach you how to make one.
So what exactly is a sales funnel? Do you need it and can you make yourself one without the fee?
What is a Sales Funnel?
At its most basic level a sales funnel is communication journey you take people on where they start out with one thing that you have to offer, and then they are invited to consider buying something else, or a series of other things. Most commonly sales funnels are comprised of emails (and that is the form I’ll be largely referring to here). They can also be automated social media messages, ads or even actual mail.
The reason its called a funnel is because of the ‘conversion rate’. That is to say, many people will opt in or buy the first thing in your ‘funnel’ (think of the wide-mouthed top of an actual funnel). As people progress through the funnel, fewer people will buy the next offer and then the next: you’ll have far fewer people still active in your business by the time your ‘funnel’ is complete. In general, sales funnels have a free or very low priced item at the top, which has a wide appeal to many people. As the funnel progresses the offers become more expensive and may have a more niche appeal, leading to fewer sales—or conversions—as the communication journey completes.
Here are some examples of sales funnels that cover a range of Yoga business sizes:
· Free guided meditation > discounted first month membership ($10) > ongoing monthly membership ($69)
· Free online class > mini retreat ($95) > 12-week Yoga class block booking ($180)
· Free e-book > online short course ($497) > Private Yoga coaching or mentoring ($1497)
· Paid half day workshop ($85) > international Retreat ($1999) > 200 hour Yoga teacher training ($3999)
Why is a Sales Funnel a Useful Thing?
There are three main reasons I believe a sales funnel can be a really good thing for you and your Yoga business:
1. It helps you arrange your business model
One of the common mistakes I see Yoga teachers make—especially when they are feeling financial stress or uncertainty—is to create all sorts of offers, classes, workshops and courses because they’re feeling they need to ‘do everything’ to try and make money. It makes for a lot of busy work (which can be a distraction for actual success) and it can also be confusing to your customers and potential customers as they try and parse exactly what you’ve got for sale and what they should buy next.
Creating a sales funnel of one or two paid offers that are presented to the customer sequentially will help you stick to your business plan and keep you out of ‘throwing shit at the wall’ energy when you’re, well, freaking out.
2. It can streamline your sales
One of the things I work on with my clients is creating automated email sequences so that the sales funnel is running in the background while you’re doing other important things in your business, like doing your OWN practice and finishing up those online courses you bought a year ago!
(And if you want some email sales funnel templates, check my Insta. There is a basic one in my feed that will get you started.)
3. It can help you anticipate your earnings
Over time you’ll generate data from your sales funnel. You’ll start to see how many people enter the ‘top’ of the funnel compared to how many people end up at the ‘bottom’. That is, how many people buy the low ticket item or sign up for the free thing, compared to how many people buy the first, second or third thing you offer them. Once you have a sense of this comparison you can anticipate your sales into the future. How many people go into the top of the funnel compared to how many people buy the higher ticket item at the bottom is called your ‘conversion rate’.
Knowing your conversion rate is not only useful for estimating your earnings, it can also inform how much to spend on your advertising. For me, it also helps provide a sense of financial confidence, being able to roughly anticipate what I need to do (i.e. invite a certain number of people into my sales funnel) to achieve my financial goals (i.e. the number of sales to make in a month, for example).
How to Figure out your ‘Conversion Rate’
Aa client of mine developed a fun short course about selfcare. It was a freebie and she ran a Facebook and Instagram advertising campaign to invite people opt in for it. By the end of the campaign just over 400 people had opted in for her free, fun short course.
She created a series of emails that automatically went out to these people, each day giving them a new piece of the free course. Once that content had been delivered, the emails changed flavour slightly and she introduced those 400 people to her short course, which was in the order of $500. We had worked on 6 emails that went out over 3 weeks to invite people into that course. We wrote a combination of sales emails (invitations to sign up) and nurture emails (useful content for the reader, whether or not they bought her course).
Importantly, over the course of sending out these emails, quite a few people opted out of her mailing list. This is really important. People unsubscribing is a GOOD thing. If they aren’t interested in buying from you, then there’s no reason to keep emailing them. More on this in a moment. For now, don’t take it personally when people unsubscribe from your mailing list. Really.
In summary, my client’s sales funnel was comprised of three parts:
1. Emails that delivered the free course content
2. Sales emails for her paid course
3. Nurturing emails to provide useful info, but no sales
As I said, over the course of the sales funnel delivery, she had a number of people unsubscribe. And by the end she had sold 12 places into her paid course.
This means my client had built a sales funnel that had a 3 per cent conversion rate.
Knowing this will help her the next time she runs her program. That is to say, if she knows she wants 20 people in her paid program next time (i.e. 20 sales) then she can estimate that she needs 680 or more people at the top of her sales funnel, that is, opting in for her free course.
While there are variables (maybe the seasonality won’t work or will work better next time she runs it, maybe the free course won’t be as novel then or will be more relevant then etc) her 3% conversion rate can act as a reassuring guide. Certainly, the more times she offers the course and can find an average in her conversion rate, the greater confidence she can have in the number.
How to Invite People in to the Top of Your Sales Funnel
· Hold a market stall at your famers market and have people opt in for your free Nidra MP3
· Book a vendor table at a networking event and exchange an email for an entry into a 3 private Yoga classes competition
· Run Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn etc Ads (it’s not as hard as you think.)
· Work with an allied small business where they email their email list inviting them into your freebie and you do the same with your email subscribers for their business
· Put the link for your freebie as your Instagram hyperlink
· Message your new social media followers and ask if they’d like the freebie: send them a link to opt themselves in
· Create a poster about your funnel first step that has a QR code that leads to a signup form
· Whatever else you can think of!
NOTE: When you have an opt in it is critical to let people know what you are going to do with their data. Make it REALLY clear that you intention is to give them the freebie AND then send them marketing emails or that they will receive info about the small workshop they’ve bought AND you’ll continue to email them marketing materials. Remember: in Yoga consent is essential, and this includes sending people emails.
Some Final Funnel Advice
Over time your funnel may become more complex: ‘Okay, here's my freebie, here's my Yoga Nidra MP3, and then here's my casual classes, and then here's my terms booking, and then here's my weekend workshop, and then here's my private yoga package, and then here's my three-day retreat.’ Some parts may be automated. Some not. You might experiment with price points, the time between emails, the images you use in your emails, etc. Let this be a business asset you build and continue to mindfully work on, not a complete ‘set and forget’ that is going to ‘make you money while you sleep’*
(*Be aware of any business coach that offers this type of product. Danger.)
Overall, remember, a sales funnel is designed for funneling people OUT of your business. This means many more people will say ‘No’ than ‘Yes’ at every step along the way. People will unsubscribe. Some people might also email you back and let you know they really don’t like getting your emails.
All of this is normal. Make sure it’s consensual at the outset that you are going to be emailing people sales materials. Make sure opting out/unsubscribing is always clear, fast and straightforward. And be generous and accommodating with your customer support.
This month I am looking for my next amazing 1:1 client! Perhaps it’s you? Check out my private Yoga business coaching package, ‘Grow, Serve & Shine’ here: https://www.amymcdonald.com.au/coaching
More in to the free stuff? Awesome! In addition to these blogs, I put out a weekly training in the form of my podcast, Abundant Yoga Teacher, that you can check out here: https://www.amymcdonald.com.au/abundantyogateacherpodcasts