How To Get The Highest Quality Leads From Your Sales Funnel

How To Get The Highest Quality Leads From Your Sales Funnel

Lead generation isn’t free.

It costs time, energy, and money. 

That’s why you need to think about it in terms of ROI. 

Want to know how to make the most out of the leads that you bring in?

Continue reading…

What Is a Lead?

A lead is a potential customer that has:

  1. Expressed an interest in your product.
  2. Given you their contact details.

Note that the person has to meet both of these criteria to be considered a lead.

Meaning:

Someone who visited your website but did not give you their contact details isn’t a lead.

And neither is someone whose contact details you have somehow obtained but who has never shown any interest in your product.

It’s important to use the correct definition of the word “lead” if you want to create an effective lead generation strategy.

What Is Lead Generation?

What Is a Lead? What is lead generation graphic.

Lead generation is the process of converting potential customers into leads by persuading them to give you their contact details.

Note that there’s a difference between lead generation and sales prospecting.

Typically:

  • Lead generation is automated, sales prospecting is manual.
  • Lead generation relies on inbound marketing (with the exception of paid advertising), sales prospecting relies on outbound marketing – usually cold outreach.
  • Lead generation is done by marketers, sales prospecting is done by salespeople.

In this article, we are going to be focusing on lead generation.

Learn more:

Lead Generation Vs Prospecting – The Differences Explained

What Is a Lead Generation Funnel?

What Is a Lead Generation Funnel?

Companies that generate leads online typically do so via lead generation funnels.

Here’s how you can build one:

  1. Create a lead magnet.
  2. Create a landing page for that lead magnet.
  3. Start driving traffic to that landing page.

When a potential customer provides their email address in exchange for your lead magnet, they become a lead.

That’s where lead generation ends – the next step is converting them into paying customers.

Learn more:

The Lead Generation Funnel – What It Is & How To Build It

Lead Quantity vs. Lead Quality

It’s important to understand that it’s not just lead quantity but also lead quality that matters.

What Determines Lead Quality?

Lead quality is determined by how likely that lead is to convert to a paying customer – the more likely, the higher the quality.

The same person can be a low-quality lead for one business and a high-quality lead for another business.

Say, a 75-year-old woman who enjoys knitting would be a low-quality lead for an info product business in the fitness niche that sells a workout program designed to help men put on muscle.

However, that same 75-year-old woman who enjoys knitting would be a high-quality lead for an info product business in the crafts niche that sells knitting books designed for elderly knitters.

This also illustrates why lead quantity by itself is a useless vanity metric – having an email list of 1,000,000 grandmas will not help you sell more muscle-building workout programs for men.

Obviously, that’s an absurd example, but you get the point.

And you would be surprised how common it is for businesses to waste money on generating leads that will never convert.

The Trade-Off Between Lead Quantity and Lead Quality

The reason why businesses waste money on generating low-quality leads is that there’s a trade-off between lead quantity and lead quality:

  • Casting a wide net will attract more but lower-quality leads.
  • Being more precise with your targeting will attract fewer but higher-quality leads.

There needs to be a balance between the two:

If your lead generation strategy is too generic you will get a bunch of leads that don’t convert and if it’s too precise then you will barely get any leads at all. Either way, you’ll struggle to make sales!

That’s why you need to pay attention to:

  1. The number of leads generated.
  2. Lead to customer conversion rate.
  3. Revenue.
  4. Profit
  5. The relationship between all these metrics.

That will help you create a balanced lead generation strategy that produces maximum ROI.

Go After Your Ideal Customers, Completely Ignore Everyone Else

Here’s how you can increase your lead quality:

  1. Analyze your sales data.
  2. See what attributes leads that convert to paying customers tend to have in common.
  3. Create a customer persona based on those attributes, then use it to make the targeting of your lead generation campaigns more precise.

You should also see what leads that don’t convert to paying customers tend to have in common and stop targeting people that share those attributes.

For example:

Noah Kagan is the founder of AppSumo and Sumo. 

You know what he did when he realized that female email subscribers typically don’t convert into paying customers? 

He started excluding women from his Facebook Ads campaigns!

Here’s how he explains this decision:

“It’s not that I don’t like women. I love them!

But the point is that they are not actually as interested in my content.

There’s probably someone who can better share that type of content with them.

So I target my audience which is males, 25-44.”

Note how Noah recognized that this demographic would probably be better served elsewhere.

You might feel uncomfortable with excluding entire demographic segments but here’s what you need to understand:

If people aren’t converting into paying customers, then it’s likely that your message simply doesn’t resonate with them.

So even if you got them to subscribe to your email list, you wouldn’t be doing them any favors by sending them emails, content, and sales pitches that they aren’t interested in.

Meanwhile, when it comes to people who are the most likely to convert from leads to paying customers, it’s clear that your message resonates with them. That’s why they are buying your stuff!

So it makes sense to:

  1. Focus on bringing in more leads like that.
  2. Completely ignore everyone else.

Remember, lead generation isn’t about adding random people to your email list, it’s about getting the contact details of your dream customers!

Go After Your Ideal Customers, Completely Ignore Everyone Else

Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel

We believe that the Value Ladder sales funnel is the best way to sell anything online – and that’s why you should build one for your business!

What Is The Value Ladder Sales Funnel?

The Value Ladder sales funnel 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).

It 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.
  3. Middle. You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product.
  4. Backend. You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product.

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

Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel. The Value Ladder graphic.

The reason why 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.
  3. Build trust by providing progressively more paid value.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

How To Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel

But what if you have only one product?

You can still use a Value Ladder sales funnel to sell it!

All you need to do is build a funnel with these two stages:

  1. Bait.
  2. Frontend.

Then you can add the Middle, Backend, and Continuity products later.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to build your first sales funnel:

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 devices 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 paid product addresses.

You want to make sure that there’s a logical progression from the lead magnet to the frontend product.

For example:

Lead magnet: A free video tutorial on how to learn your first pull-up.

Frontend product: A video course that teaches fundamental calisthenics skills such as bodyweight squats, hanging leg raises, dips, pushups, pull-ups, etc.

Also, keep in mind that your lead magnet serves as the foundation of your entire sales funnel, so it needs to be super valuable.

Otherwise, if you disappoint the potential customer with your lead magnet, why would they buy your frontend product?

Hint:

They won’t!

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

We advise you to create a separate lead generation landing page for your lead magnet.

It doesn’t have to be fancy, a simple squeeze page will do.

It should have these three key elements:

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

You might also want to experiment with various additional elements such as a subheadline, social proof, images, etc.

Typically, these elements increase the conversion rate, but you still need to A/B test everything!

Here’s an example of a simple but high-converting landing page that we use to promote our “Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” lead magnet:

Learn more:

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

10 Tips For Killer Lead Generation Landing Pages

Split Testing – What It Is & Why You Should Be Doing It

Step #3: Create a Sales Page For Your Frontend Product

You also need a proper sales page for your frontend product.

Here are some copywriting tips:

  • Make sure that your headline clearly conveys the value that your product offers. How will it make the potential customer’s life better? Emphasize that.
  • Features tell, benefits sell, so focus on the latter. A feature is a quality or a function of a product, a benefit is the value that the potential customer will derive from it. You should focus on the benefits not only in your headline but throughout the entire sales page.
  • Add as much social proof as possible. Everyone knows that you are biased when it comes to your product. Of course you claim that it’s amazing, you have a financial incentive to do so! That’s why potential customers are more interested in what other people have to say about it. So make sure to add endorsements, testimonials, “As Seen On” media badges, etc. to your sales page.

Keep in mind that copywriting is a craft that can take a lifetime to master.

That being said, if you want to quickly pick up the fundamentals, we suggest you get a copy of “Copywriting Secrets” (FREE + shipping).

Get a FREE Copy!

Create a Sales Page For Your Frontend Product

Step #4: Create an “Indoctrination” Email Sequence

We don’t advise hitting the potential customer with a sales pitch the moment they subscribe to your email list.

You should send them a 6-email “indoctrination” sequence instead:

  • Email #1: Who are you? Introduce yourself.
  • Email #2: Where did you come from? Explain how you came to do whatever it is that you do now.
  • Email #3: What do you do? Explain what it is that you do in more detail.
  • Email #4: How did you gain this expertise? Explain how you gained the expertise that makes you qualified to do what you do.
  • Email #5: Who do you do this for? Explain who are your ideal customers + provide a case study on how you helped such a person.
  • Email #6: How can you do it for me? Pitch your frontend product.

Emails #1 to #5 should include a call to action where you simply ask the new subscriber a question and then encourage them to hit the “Reply” button and respond to your email.

We suggest you use the Hook, Story, Offer framework when writing these emails (in this context, “Offer” means the call to action, except for the last email where you present your frontend offer):

Step #5: Start Driving Traffic 

Once your Value Ladder sales funnel is all set up, it’s time to start driving traffic to it.

We recommend you to start with paid advertising because paid traffic is immediate – you can quickly see if your lead magnet resonates with your dream customers.

Here are some advertising platforms that you might want to consider:

  • Facebook.
  • Instagram.
  • YouTube.
  • TikTok.
  • Twitter.

If you don’t know which one to choose, then start with Facebook ads.

Set a small daily budget then begin gradually increasing it once you are sure that your ad campaign is profitable.

And then, once you know that your sales funnel works, you can start adding other marketing channels to the mix (blogging, YouTube, affiliate marketing, etc.).

Start Driving Traffic

Add Upsells, Downsells, and Cross Sells to Each Offer

You also want to add these extra offers to each product in your sales funnel:

  • An upsell is an upgrade on an offer that the customer has already accepted (e.g. “Would you like to supersize that?”).
  • A cross-sell is an offer that is complementary to the one that the customer has already accepted (e.g. “Would you like fries with that?”).
  • A downsell is a downgrade on the initial offer that you pitch to the customer after they have rejected it.

You should add all three to your frontend, middle, and backend offers – that will help you maximize average order value (AOV), customer lifetime value (CLV), and total revenue.

Add Upsells, Downsells, and Cross Sells to Each Offer

Learn more:

What Is An Upsell? How Upselling Can Greatly Increase Profits

What A Downsell Is & Why You Should Be Using One

3 Cross Selling Strategies You Should Start Using

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

Implementing everything you learned in this article should help you generate more and better leads, convert more of them into paying customers, and increase your revenue.

But 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!

2 thoughts on “How To Get The Highest Quality Leads From Your Sales Funnel

  1. Getting high quality leads through funnel management is incredible for sure! Also, I believe and have found that the advertising that brings the leads through the funnels, is just as important. Because your copy and messaging does dictate who responds to the advertising and content produced. Great article and examples, keep rocking on!

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