How to Build a Successful Sales Funnel for Accountants

Last updated on February 7th, 2024 at 02:41 am

Are you an accountant looking for ways to grow your business?

Here’s what we’re going to discuss today:

• What is the Value Ladder sales funnel?
• How to build a Value Ladder sales funnel?
• How to drive traffic to your Value Ladder sales funnel?

Want to get more clients?

Continue reading…

What is the Value Ladder Sales Funnel?

We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.

It was created by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).

This sales funnel has four stages:

1. Bait – You offer the potential customer a lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
2. Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
3. Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive product or service.
4. Backend –  You offer the customer your most expensive product or service.

Ideally, you also have some sort of a continuity program, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.

The reason the Value Ladder sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

1. Start the relationship with that person by offering free value
2. Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email
3. Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage

Here’s how Russell explains it:

How to Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel

Here’s the good news:

You don’t need to have an entire line of products or services ready to build your first sales funnel.

You can start by creating one that has just two stages:

1. Bait
2. Frontend

The frontend offers should be the least expensive accounting service that you provide.

Then you can add Middle, Backend, and Continuity offers later on as you expand your business.

Here’s how you can build a basic Value Ladder sales funnel in just three steps:

Step #1: Create a Super Valuable Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to potential customers in exchange for their email addresses.

It can be anything that they can either download to their device or access online:

• A report
• An ebook
• A webinar
• A video course
• An email course

…etc.

What matters is that:

1. Your lead magnet offers a solution to a problem that your potential customers are struggling with
2. That problem is either the same or related to the one that your frontend offer addresses

Ask yourself what issues come up over and over again when you are working with clients:

• What problems do people need help with?
• What are the most frequently asked questions?
• What are the most common misconceptions?

Pick an issue that is the “hottest” aka the most pressing one and provide a solution to that problem with your lead magnet.

For example:

If you specialize in helping freelancers manage their finances, you could create an ebook where you explain the basics of accounting that every freelancer should know.

Now, you might wonder, “Why would people hire me if I give away all this knowledge for free?”.

Look, no offense, but the vast majority of people find accounting to be boring – they’d much rather pay someone to do it for them than do it themselves.

So if you give people a guide on how to keep their own books, then offer to do it for them, you will probably get clients.

In fact, skimming through that guide might be enough to trigger an “I can’t deal with this” reaction and hence the desire to hire an accountant.

And what about the people who can’t afford your services at the moment?

Providing them with high-quality, helpful information means that if their situation ever improves and they decide to hire an accountant, you will be the first person that comes to their minds.

Learn more:

How To Create a Lead Magnet That is Highly Effective [With Examples]

Step #2: Create a Landing Page for Your Lead Magnet

You also need a landing page for your lead magnet.

This is the page that is going to serve as an entryway to your sales funnel – that’s where you are going to drive traffic to.

We recommend you start with a simple squeeze page that has these three key elements:

• A headline that explains what your lead magnet is all about.
• An opt-in form where the potential customer can type in their email address. It can be either displayed immediately or shown after they have clicked the call-to-action button.
• A call-to-action button that encourages the potential customer to get your lead magnet.

You might also want to experiment with adding various other elements such as a subheadline, social proof, relevant images (e.g. a 3D mockup of your ebook), etc.

Here’s an example of a simple, yet high-converting squeeze page that we are using for one of our lead magnets:

Learn more:

How To Create a Squeeze Page That Converts [With Examples!]

10 Tips For Killer Lead Generation Landing Pages

Step #3: Create an “Indoctrination” Email Sequence

We don’t recommend hitting the potential customer with a sales pitch for your frontend offer the moment they give you their email address.

Remember, closing a sale requires trust, which you probably haven’t built enough of yet.

So send them this six-email “indoctrination” sequence instead:

• Email #1: Who are you? Introduce yourself.
• Email #2: Where did you come from? Tell them a story about how you became an accountant.
• Email #3: What do you do? Provide more information about what it is that you do.
• Email #4: How did you gain this expertise? Explain what makes you qualified to offer accounting services.
• Email #5: Who do you do this for? Explain who are your ideal customers + share a case study on how you helped such a person.
• Email #6: How can you do it for me? Pitch your frontend offer.

You should end emails #1 to #5 with:

1. A question to the new subscriber
2. A call to action encourages the new subscriber to hit the “Reply” button and respond to the email
   
   Ideally, you should reply to all emails that you get as a result, at least for as long as it is logistically feasible.
   
   You might eventually reach the point where you simply don’t have the time to respond to everyone anymore due to the volume of emails coming in.
   
   As for the last email of your “indoctrination” sequence, you should end it with a call to action for your frontend offer, then provide a link to the sales page where people can book that service.

We recommend you to use the Hook, Story, Offer framework for every email in this sequence:

How to Drive Traffic to Your Value Ladder Sales Funnel

Okay, so now that you have your sales funnel, how can you drive traffic to it?

Here are three ways to do that:

Paid Advertising

We recommend you start with paid advertising because it’s the fastest way to put your lead magnet in front of your dream customers.

LinkedIn is the advertising platform that seems to be the most suitable for promoting accounting services since it’s the world’s largest professional social network.

Alternatively, you might also want to consider Facebook, which is such a huge advertising platform that you can almost certainly find your dream customers there.

Whichever option you choose, begin with a small daily ad budget, then start increasing it gradually once you are sure that your funnel works.

Once you have gotten the hang of paid advertising and are reliably generating leads that way, you can start expanding to other marketing channels such as SEO and YouTube.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You can use search engine optimization (SEO) to get organic search traffic from Google and then convert it into leads and into customers.

Here’s a quick overview of the process:

1. Do keyword research – There are plenty of free keyword research tools out there but we recommend going with Ahrefs instead. They have a 7-day trial that costs $7. That’s enough time to create a list of keywords to target.
2. Identify a promising keyword – It has to be something that your dream customers are searching for!
3. Create SEO content that targets that keyword – Remember that the purpose of this content is to rank on the first page of Google for that specific keyword. You can use tools like Clearscope or Surfer SEO to optimize it.
4. Publish that SEO content on your blog – Something to keep in mind here is that it’s not only the text that matters but also the readability. Make sure to format the content properly with H2 subheadlines, numbered lists, bullet points, etc. Avoid long paragraphs – they should be 2-3 lines maximum. Add plenty of images to break up the text.
5. Build backlinks to that SEO content – This is extremely important. Merely creating great content is not enough to rank on Google anymore. You have to be proactive about building backlinks!

Then rinse and repeat until you have built a solid library of content that attracts organic search traffic from Google.

Realistically, since we are talking about the accounting niche, people are probably not going to become regular readers of your blog – they will come seeking answers to specific questions and then leave once they get them.

That’s okay and it’s to be expected – accounting isn’t a topic that people enjoy reading about for fun. Unless they are accountants themselves, but that’s not who you are targeting!

What you want to do is optimize your website for lead generation so that you would capture the email addresses of those site visitors:

• Promote your lead magnet at the end of each article.
• Add content upgrades to the most popular articles. Say, if the article is a guide on how to prepare taxes as a freelancer, you can add a special lead magnet that’s relevant to that particular topic such as a printable step-by-step checklist.
• Use exit-intent pop-ups that are shown to the visitor when they are about to leave your website. You have nothing to lose at that point, so you might as well pitch them your lead magnet one last time!

Learn more:

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

YouTube

You are probably already aware that YouTube is the largest video hosting platform in the world. But did you know that it’s also one of the most popular search engines?

People go there to search for answers to all kinds of questions, from how to build a garden shed to how to make pasta bolognese to how to manage their finances.

Making videos that answer the frequently asked accounting questions can help you drive traffic from YouTube to your lead magnet landing page.

For Example:

Accounting Stuff is a YouTube channel with over 350k subscribers. It is run by an accountant from the UK named James Hearle.

Some of the most popular videos on this channel cover topics such as debits and credits, income statements, and bank reconciliation.

Just remember that the goal here isn’t to simply build a YouTube channel, it’s to generate leads for your accounting business.

That’s why you need to promote your lead magnet at the end of each video – you want to capture YouTube’s traffic and then direct it to your lead magnet landing page.

Want Russell to Show You How to Build Your First Sales Funnel?

Let’s keep it real:

Building a sales funnel from scratch can seem like a daunting task.

That’s why we created our 5 Day Challenge where Russell walks you through it step-by-step.

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 today. It’s completely free!