5 Ways To Increase Sales Online For A Small Business

Last updated on February 23rd, 2025 at 10:36 pm

Wondering how to increase your online sales?

It boils down to:

1. Increasing your conversion rate
2. Increasing your traffic

Today we are going to share five ways to do that.

Ready to start making more sales than ever?

Continue reading…

#1 Create a Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is the journey that a person takes from first hearing about your product to purchasing that product and subsequent products.

Here’s the big picture view of it:

• Top of the sales funnel (ToFu): Target audience – You get the attention of a person in your target audience.
• Middle of the sales funnel (MoFu): Potential customers – You get that person interested in your products or services.
• Bottom of the sales funnel (BoFu): New and existing customers – You persuade that person to purchase your products or services.

All businesses have some sort of a sales funnel in place.

However, “some sort of a sales funnel” is not enough if you want to maximize your revenue, you need one that is well-thought-out.

Our co-founder, Russell Brunson, has developed a sales funnel model called The Value Ladder, which we believe is the most effective way to sell online.

Here’s how it looks like:

It has four stages:

• Bait – You offer the potential customer a freebie known as a lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
• Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product.
• Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product.
• Backend – You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product.

That way, the person is getting more value at each step of the funnel, so they are climbing the “value ladder” so to speak.

This sales funnel model is so effective because you are gradually increasing commitment as you are building trust.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

So if you want to increase online sales, you should create a Value Ladder sales funnel.

It’s the best way to convert site visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

That being said, we understand that building a sophisticated sales funnel like that from scratch might seem overwhelming.

That’s why we created our 5 Day Challenge where Russell teaches you how to build your first sales funnel in just five days. It’s completely free!

#2 Optimize Your Website for Lead Generation

The purpose of your website should be to generate leads by converting site visitors into email subscribers. But how can you do that?

Add a Feature Box to Your Homepage

A feature box is an opt-in form at the top of your homepage.

For Example:

Here’s the feature box that online marketing expert Derek Halpern uses on his website Social Triggers:

You need to click on the “Click to Get Free Updates” button to get access to the opt-in form:

2-step feature boxes are becoming increasingly popular, so you might want to consider using this approach for your own feature box.

Add an Opt-in Form to Your About Page

Derek Halpern was the person who popularized adding opt-in forms to About pages.

Here’s the template that he used to promote back in the 2010s:

1. Prime people for your website’s content and why it’s important
2. Opt-in form
3. Show social proof
4. Opt-in form
5. Show personal back story
6. Opt-in form

Now he only has one opt-in form on his About page, though:

You might want to experiment with both Derek’s old template and a single opt-in form to see which approach works better for your business.

Add an Opt-in Form at the End of Each Blog Post

It makes sense to add an opt-in form at the end of each blog post. Why?

Because it’s an opportunity to offer the visitor your lead magnet when they are likely to be particularly receptive to it.

For Example:

Matthew Hussey, a world-renowned dating coach, has a blog where he and his brother Stephen Hussey share dating advice for women.

One of the most recent articles at the moment of writing is Stephen’s “If You’ve Lost Hope In Love, Don’t Try To Change Your Thinking. Change What You Do…”.

At the bottom of the post there’s a 2-step opt-in form:

When you click on the “Get My Guide” button, you are taken to the “9 texts” landing page where you can download the guide.

You can set up your content management system to automatically add an opt-in form to the end of each blog post.

It doesn’t take much time but it’s guaranteed to get you more leads!

Learn more:

“How To Generate Leads From A Website In 2021 – Full Guide”

#3 Build a Popular Blog

Blogging is a great way to increase your traffic because it allows you to generate organic search traffic from Google.

However, today blogosphere is more competitive than ever, so if you want to build a popular blog, you need to use the right approach.

Adam Enfroy launched his blog in January 2019. He ended up making $203,736 that year. And then he went on to make $812,718 in 2020.

So how did he manage to make over $1M from blogging in just 2 years?

As he explains, when it comes to ranking on Google, there are two ranking factors that haven’t changed in over a decade:

1. Content
2. Links

So his approach can be summarized as:

1. Create SEO content
2. Build backlinks to that content

Let’s take a closer look at this strategy…

Create SEO Content

SEO content is content that is designed to rank on the first page of Google for a specific keyword.

Here’s how the process of producing a piece of such content looks like:

1. You do keyword research, identify promising keywords, and pick a keyword that you want to focus on.

2. You analyze the content that is already ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword.
3. You then write an article around that keyword  with the aim of creating a piece that is better than what is already ranking on the first page of Google. Tools like Clearscope can come in handy here.

Note that the article doesn’t have to be perfect in order for you to publish it, you can start with what Adam Enfroy calls a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) version of the post.

He recommends publishing an MVP article that is optimized for search engines, then updating it for humans once you are sure that you can rank for that keyword.

You can learn more about his Content Assembly Line method here:

Build Backlinks to That Content

Once you have a piece of SEO content, you need to start building backlinks to it. Why?

Because other websites linking to your article indicates to Google that the content must be high-quality.

Guest posting is the best way to build links as a new blogger:

1. You identify popular blogs in your niche
2. You reach out to those blogs and offer to write guest posts (free articles) for them
3. You write the guest posts and get backlinks in exchange

Adam Enfroy emphasizes that backlinks have an inherent value which is why link building should be approached from a value exchange perspective.

You need to think about what you bring to the table. Why should this popular website give you a link?

Adam also explains that guest posting is the engine, partnerships are the fuel. You need to develop mutually beneficial partnerships if you want to scale link building. 

You can learn more in this video:

Should All Content be SEO Content?

As Joshua Hardwick, the Head of Content at Ahrefs, explains in his post on SEO content:

“You might think that all content is SEO content, but that’s not the case.

For example, we have a lot of studies on our blog, and most of them get little or no organic traffic.

Does this mean those posts failed?

Not at all. We published these posts to bring new insights to the SEO community—not to rank in Google.”

So not every piece of content has to be designed to get organic search traffic from Google, you can also publish posts that simply provide value to your existing audience. 

However, to provide value to an existing audience you need to have that audience to begin with, so it makes sense to focus exclusively on SEO content until you get your blog off the ground. 

Once you have built a substantial readership, then you can start thinking about what content would add value without ever ranking on Google (think interviews, case studies, etc.).

#4 Build a Popular YouTube Channel

YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform in the world that has over 2.2 billion users. 

Moreover, it has an algorithm that is designed to get high-quality videos exposure, so that more people who might enjoy them would discover them. 

You can use this algorithm to tap into the platform’s vast user base and get your content in front of more people. 

However, YouTube is an extremely competitive environment, with countless professionally-produced videos vying for viewers’ attention. So how can you build a YouTube channel in 2021?

Here’s a video in which Brian Dean, one of the top SEO experts in the world who has 432k YouTube subscribers at the moment of writing, answers this question:

When he started his YouTube channel, he was struggling to grow it, but eventually he figured things out by testing everything to see what worked and what didn’t.

Here are some of the lessons that Brian shares in the video:

• Make a pro channel page – You want your channel page to look professional and immediately convey what you are all about.  You can do that by writing a detailed “About” description, uploading nice-looking channel art, and picking a great channel icon.
• Target popular keywords – You can find keywords by typing in a niche keyword into the YouTube search bar, then picking one of the Autocomplete suggestions. These suggestions are popular keywords that people are searching for right now. 

• Plan your videos – Either use a word-for-word script or an outline. Don’t freestyle unless you are an absolute natural in front of a camera.
• Optimize your videos for SEO – Include the target keyword in your video title, use it a few times in the video description (make sure that it looks natural, though!), and use keyword-rich tags.
• Get more comments – Videos with a lot of comments tend to outrank videos with fewer comments. You can get more comments by asking people a multiple-choice question in your video (something that they can answer with a few words), having that question as a pinned comment, and replying to as many comments as you can. Brian points out that if your channel is brand new, there’s no excuse not to reply to every single comment that you get.
• Get more subscribers – You should focus 100% on quality, not quantity. For example, Brian grew his channel to over 100k subscribers with only 20 videos. “Bottom line? No one cares how often you publish, just that the videos you do publish are awesome,“  he explains. Also, make sure to optimize your end screen for getting subscribers by adding a big “Subscribe” button and a call to action to it.

• Increase session time – Session time is a metric that shows how long someone spends on YouTube after they start watching one of your videos.  According to YouTube, the longer you can keep people on YouTube because of your content, the more your content may get surfaced. So have a “Next” video on your end screen and organize your playlists around outcomes and benefits (“power playlists”). This will help you keep the viewers watching after they are done with the initial video.

Note that the end goal here isn’t to just build a popular YouTube channel, it’s to drive traffic to your lead magnet landing page, convert those visitors into email subscribers, and then convert those email subscribers into paying customers. 

So make sure that you promote your lead magnet in your videos, video descriptions, and on your channel homepage. 

It’s even better if you have several lead magnets related to the topics that you discuss the most often.

This allows you to pick the most relevant lead magnet for each video as opposed to using the same lead magnet in all of your videos.

#5 Build a Social Media Following

Social media is another great way to reach more people:

1. Pick a platform that is frequented by your ideal customers.
2. Create a content schedule and regularly post updates that provide value to your ideal customers. You can use tools like Buffer and MeetEdgar to automate this.
3. Promote your lead magnet to your social media followers and encourage them to visit its landing page.

Just as with YouTube, the end goal here isn’t to just build a social media following, it’s to drive traffic to the lead magnet landing page, convert those visitors into email subscribers, and then convert those email subscriebrs into paying customers.

So don’t be shy when it comes to promoting your lead magnet on social media. That’s what you are there for!

For Example:

We have 155k followers on Instagram at the moment of writing.

See that link in our bio?

It leads to a page that has a bunch of links to various lead magnet landing pages:

This allows us to direct people to the link in the bio and then to the lead magnet landing page:

Conclusion

Your sales funnel is the foundation of your business.

A poorly thought-out sales funnel means an unstable business. It’s here today but it might be gone tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a well-designed sales funnel means a solid, sustainable business that can provide a better future for you and your family.

As we have explained in the article, our co-founder, Russell Brunson has created an incredibly effective sales funnel model called The Value Ladder.

It’s what he used to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10 million in annual revenue in just ONE YEAR with no outside funding.

And it’s what our customers all over the world use to build lucrative online businesses. Last year alone 263 entrepreneurs generated over $1M in revenue within the funnels that they built using our software.

Want Russell to teach you how to build your first sales funnel?

That’s what our Five Day Challenge is all about.

You will learn how to:

• Generate unlimited leads
• Create your first lead magnet
• Build your first sales funnel
• Create a simple 6-email follow-up sequence
• And launch your funnel

…in just five days!

So don’t hesitate.

Join our 5 Day Challenge. It’s completely free!