Building the perfect sales funnel Introduction There is no doubt that owning and running your own successful online business can be a tremendously liberating thing, as thousands of online entrepreneurs and marketers all over the world have discovered for themselves. If you are already in a position where your business is successful, then congratulations are undoubtedly in order. However, here’s a question for you. Although your business is already successful, perhaps even already achieving as much as you could ever have hoped for, is there any possibility that you could be doing things more effectively? Are there ‘flaws’ in your systems that are letting potential customers escape without putting their hand in the pocket to pull out their credit card? Alternatively, you might just be starting out on the road to earning an online income, and if that’s the case, there is probably a great deal about internet marketing or online business that is confusing and apparently complex. Trust me, this is a position that even the most experienced of online marketers will understand because we have all been there and experienced exactly what you’re going through right this minute. The problem with online marketing is that by the nature of the beast, there are dozens of new products hitting the market every week, and it is only natural that the creator of each of those products or services believes that they have just invented the best thing since sliced bread. Quite naturally in most cases, the product creator has probably not achieved quite as much as they might believe they have. Nevertheless, the fact still remains that there is a mass of new information out there in the world of online marketing almost every day, an ‘information overload’ that can make getting your new online business off the ground seem dauntingly difficult. But here is the most important thing. It does not have to be this way because running an online business does not have to be difficult or complex. It is simply a question of focusing on the key issues, ignoring information that is not directly related to the kind of business you plan to set up and run, and getting on with it. This book is focused on one of the most important issues that any online marketer will ever face, which is a simple question of making your business as efficient as possible. Whilst I have no doubt that there are dozens of new products out there in the market as you are reading this that appear to be more ‘cool’ or ‘sexy’ than this one, you should not ignore the information you will gather herein. The basic truth is, the more efficient your system is, the less it matters what kind of business you are running, because you will be maximizing your profits at every turn in any case. It is entirely irrelevant whether you are selling the latest ‘super duper gizmo-style widget’ or a product that has been around for years, with an efficient sales system in place, you are naturally able to squeeze every last drop of profit out of whatever it is you do. It should be obvious that this is extremely important, but you may never have considered exactly why it is so important. You are about to find out. Why is having an efficient sales system so important? You’re probably aware that it does not matter how attractive your website is or how fantastic the product or service offer that you’re making from that site is either. If no one ever visits your website, it is totally impossible for you to generate any sales so without site visitors, it is equally inevitable that your business is going to collapse around your ears sometime very soon. You may also understand that sending visitors to your website is not enough because unless those visitors are targeted, your sales process is far less than efficient. This is something we will look at in a little more detail later. However, for the moment, let’s consider how you attract visitors to your site. There are in essence three different ways of pulling visitors onto your web pages. Firstly, you can buy visitors by using paid advertising like Google AdWords to generate traffic. Doing things this way can be very efficient as long as you know what you’re doing with the possibility of driving visitors to your site in a matter of hours. On the downside, you have to pay for advertising and it is a fact that when you are using AdWords in particular, it can work out extremely expensive until you have mastered exactly how the system works. This is because the pricing structure adopted by Google is flexible with the cost of each click on your adverts varying according to whether your adverts and the supporting website at which your ads are ‘pointed’ are constructed in the way that Google want them to be. There are of course dozens of alternatives to AdWords. Nevertheless, the fact is that most online marketers use AdWords because nearly 70% of the internet enabled population of the planet use the Google search engine rather than any of the alternatives. In short, if you want your advertising to be seen by the largest number of potential prospects, then AdWords is the most sensible choice. With AdWords, it is possible to reduce your costs by making sure that your adverts and your site comply with Google requirements. This can however take time. The second option is to promote your business for free by publishing keyword focused articles, video materials on sites like YouTube and Google video, forum marketing and so on. All of these methods are effective but they are usually far slower than using paid advertising and there is considerable time involved in preparing the materials in the first place. For instance, unless you are an expert article author, it could take you anything from 30 minutes to 1 hour to do your initial research and then write your article. If you were to follow the advice of many experts who suggest that you should always submit at least five or six articles that are based on the same topic or subject matter together, it becomes fairly obvious that even something as simple as creating articles can be pretty time-consuming. The third option is to ‘borrow’ traffic by getting involved in suitable joint-venture operations with other marketers in your market sector or niche. This is a fantastic way of marketing, because you are leveraging the popularity and market presence of the person you’re working with to generate business. Consequently, joint ventures are often the most successful form of marketing. However, there is yet again a proviso because joint ventures do not happen overnight. You have to build or develop your relationship with the marketer with whom you’re planning to work and you have to put together a top quality package of marketing materials to make their job as easy as possible.

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