I get it…

Sales funnels are a hot topic right now.

You’re probably wondering if you even need one.

Here’s my short and sweet answer:

If you want to stop spending all of your precious time trying to find new clients and customers, and instead focus on serving your current clients and customers, then you need a sales funnel.

Simple as that.

But the phrase “sales funnel” might be giving you the heeby jeebys right now, and understandably so.

In the online marketing world, there are two ways to do sales funnels — the sleazy internet marketing way OR the genuine from-a-place-of-service way.

If you’re reading this, then I hope I know which way you’d prefer to go.

So let’s dive into why your creative business could seriously benefit from a genuine sales funnel.

But first, a friendly reminder:

A sales funnel won’t fix a bad offer. If your offer isn’t currently selling, you need to find out why.

Is it because you don’t have enough people who know about it or is it because it’s not something people need? If it’s the latter, then you’ll need to figure out what people need before you can create a sales funnel around it.

One way I like to make sure my offer is something people actually need is to do a small “live” launch for my offer before I turn it into an evergreen product.

Evergreen products are much harder to sell, because there’s a lack of urgency around them.

But when you run a live launch of your product, more people pay attention to make sure it’s not something they’ll want before you close down enrollment or raise the price.

Once you people buying your product or service organically, even if those sales are very inconsistent right now, that’s when you’re ready for a sales funnel!

Let’s start by talking about what a sales funnel is…

There are many different types of funnels you could create.

Nurture funnels for new subscribers, affiliate funnels to sell a JV offer, webinar funnels to get people onto your webinars, as well as onboarding and offboarding funnels for your 1-on-1 clients, just to name a few.

Today, however, we are talking specifically about a sales funnel for an evergreen product or service, meaning that your offer is available year-round and you want to be introducing new people to this evergreen offer on a consistent basis.

Sales funnels have 6 main steps…

Step 1: Provide a valuable piece of free content that doesn’t require them to opt-in for anything

Step 2: Ask the reader to give you their email address in exchange for another valuable and relevant piece of free content (lead magnet)

Step 3: Offer them a low-priced introductory product that provides them with a quick win and gets them used to buying from you. Win win!

Step 4: Send them more valuable free content, while also telling them more about your business and how you can help them.

Step 5: Present a solution to them that solves one specific problem (this would be your core offer)

Step 6: Scale your business and grow your revenue

So, given that, here are the 6 reasons your creative business needs a sales funnel…

Reason 1: You build up the KLT (know like trust) factor with new faces

Whether you decide to offer a tripwire after they sign up for your lead magnet or not, getting new faces into your sales funnel allows you to nurture them with more free content that is relevant to them and establishes you as the expert.

The more they hear from you and see your name in a positive way, the more likely they are to buy from you in the future.

Reason 2: Your content now has a purpose

When you put a sales funnel into place in your business, you’re being strategic with the amazing content you’re creating.

If you’re prime content doesn’t have a sales funnel in place, even if that means just simply including a content upgrade within a blog post, you’re leaving serious money and subscribers on the table. And in my opinion, treating your blog as a hobby.

Plus, you’re doing your readers a disservice by not offering them additional resources that will help them solve their problem.

Reason 3: You’re giving people access to a solution right away

Instead of holding out on them and making them work for a solution, you’re presenting your solution to them right away.

You’ll know exactly what problem they are dealing with based on the blog posts they are reading and the lead magnets they opt-in for. This is huge intel, and allows you to tailor their experience to guide them down a path to solving that problem.

Don’t hold back on offering your solution if you truly believe it works.

Reason 4: Your sales become much more consistent

Nobody likes the ups and downs of revenue in a business. Only making money when you’re promoting your products and services is no fun.

A sales funnel allows you to put your marketing on autopilot and bring in new clients and customers consistently without much effort on your end.

Even if it isn’t much at first, a sales funnel will start to pad your monthly revenue to offer just that little bit extra security.

Reason 5: You can ditch the “launch” method once and for all

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand the traditional method of launching. It stresses me out and I hate putting all my eggs in one basket, praying that this launch goes according to plan or my revenue for the year will greatly suffer.

Instead, I’d much rather put something out there for people to buy when they need it and focus instead on testing and tweaking the different parts of my funnel until everything is running smoothly.

I found this blog post really helpful for figuring out whether your offer should be evergreen or not.

Reason 6: Allows you to scale your business so you can do more of what you love

Instead of focusing all of your time on finding new clients and customers, because your sales funnel is now doing that for you, you get to focus on the work you love most and spoil your VIPs.

That’s the ultimate dream, right?!

Less work on the front-end of onboarding clients means more time on the back-end with your clients, and they’ll love you for that.