Free Training!
The 3-step system I used to make 7-figures of Affiliate Commissions in my first 3 years as an affiliate marketer.
It doesn’t matter how great the product or service you offer is. If you don’t create a targeted, relevant sales funnel to go with it, you won’t be able to drive many conversions from your site traffic.
Luckily, there are many tried and true sales funnel templates you can use capture leads, nurture them, and drive sales. Here are 5 of the most popular and effective sales funnel templates marketers use to target their site visitors:
5 Sales Funnel Templates to Help You Drive More Conversions in 2018
The squeeze page funnel
The squeeze page funnel is one of the simplest and most effective ways to capture the contact information of potential leads. This is a simple two-page funnel. On the first page, you present a point of curiosity that visitors just can’t resist. In order to get the answer to the question, they have to fill out their email address.
The first page of a squeeze page funnel doesn’t need to illustrate anything about your products, services, or even business branding. It’s a simple, hyper-focused landing page designed to pique visitor interest in a specific headline, then providing a call-to-action for them to click through.
You can use lead magnets as part of your squeeze page funnel. A lead magnet is a tool, resource, or even product that you give away for free to visitors in order to capture their contact information. Here are some examples of common lead magnets businesses use to capture leads:
- Ebooks or guides
- Free tools
- Reports
- Case studies
- Content upgrades
- Free trial or product sample
- Quizzes or surveys
- Free video or email mini course
Creating your lead magnet is a one-time investment you can use to capture endless leads long term. Once you’ve captured their email address, you can market to them through email to encourage them to convert. Smart marketers often create a variety of lead magnets that speak to the specific interests and needs of audience members. They then use these to trigger different targeted email campaigns based on which lead magnet users download.
One of the most creative lead magnets I’ve ever seen was created by Tim Soulo of Blogger Jet. He wrote a blog post about how he managed to capture the attention of Rand Fishkin as an influencer. But instead of spilling all the beans, he created a simple content upgrade to capture reader contact information:
The squeeze page funnel is probably the most commonly used funnel type in the digital marketing world, and that’s because it works. People love getting access to free/exclusive stuff, and that’s exactly what you’ll be offering if you use this funnel type.
The membership funnel
Membership sites are some of the most profitable on the web. Sell monthly access to exclusive resources and an online community who offers advice and tips related to your niche.
But first you have to get your leads to convert using a membership sales funnel template. There’s actually a lot of ways to approach this. You can capture lead contact information using a resource or event like a webinar. Another option is to offer free trial access to your membership site, asking your leads to create an account then offering them paid subscription options.
That’s the strategy that Mixergy uses for their membership funnel. Mixergy is a membership site that offers exclusive interviews from entrepreneurs and courses to educate aspiring entrepreneurs. When you land on their homepage, they offer 9 popular interviews for free if you sign up:
After capturing your contact information, they send you to your inbox to confirm:
There you get access to the free interviews, and Mixergy explains that if you want more where that came from, you’ll need to sign up for a premium membership:
After you’ve already created an account and Mixergy starts marketing to you, they present Mixergy Premium paid membership options:
The membership funnel and squeeze page funnel are quite similar — the only difference is you’re using your lead magnet to get visitors to sign up for a basic membership.
The tripwire funnel
The tripwire sales funnel template is about offering value in stages. Getting people to make an initial purchase is a huge challenge of most sales funnels, but once you do, it’s easier to upsell and encourage them to spend more.
First you offer a low-dollar but extremely valuable initial product that visitors would find irresistable. This is your tripwire, an offer people just can’t pass up. Get them to convert by purchasing this product, then you can start upselling or downselling your more expensive products to them. At this point you already have their contact and payment information, seriously limiting their barriers to future purchases.
Authority Hacker has a great case study of an effective tripwire funnel. They created a video course called Double Your Leads, and decided to take part of the product and turn it into an introductory video. They valued the introductory tripwire at $9.95, and the full course at $297. In their initial experiment, they got 30 customers for the tripwire course and a further 8 that went on to purchase the main offer: 
An even better way to set up the Tripwire funnel is using two steps. On the first page, focus on capturing a person’s contact information, then ask them to click through to a second page to enter their credit card information.
If you present all this on one page, it will likely keep some users from converting. But if you offer these tasks in steps, it minimizes how difficult the task seems for users. Most importantly, if users enter their contact information then fail to enter their credit card information on the next page, you already have enough information to follow up with them as leads.
The fishbowl funnel
The fishbowl funnel is probably the most intuitive and simple sales funnel template you can use to drive conversions. It’s popular with ecommerce sellers, but actually came about long before the digital age.
Ever throw your business card into a fish bowl at a local business or the mall to enter to win a prize? That’s where the “fishbowl” in this funnel type comes from.
Your fishbowl offer could be a free lead magnet or a sweepstakes people enter to win a cool prize. Choose anything that will attract the interest of your target audience:
After you get them to register, then you can target them with a sale or discount on your main product:
Make it a limited-time offer. As you can see in the template above, if you use Clickfunnels, you can include a custom countdown timer as part of the offer.
Once users make a purchase, you can target them again on your “Thank You” page with more of your products and services.
The product launch funnel
The Product Launch funnel is one of the best ways to generate buzz and interest about your new products. Use this funnel-type the right way and you can generate a considerable payday once your product does launch.
The goal here is to build anticipation for a new product in the months and days leading up to its launch. Using launch countdowns and sneak previews are examples of how to do this.
Creating product launch videos is a great way to build hype by offering pre-launch previews and discussion. If you want more insights into how to best use videos as part of your product launch funnel, I recommend checking out Russell Brunson’s DotComSecrets book. You can use Clickfunnels’ product launch funnel template to create a series of videos to generate buzz about your product:
As part of your strategy, you also limit how much your audience can purchase during the first week of launch. For example, highlight and promote the fact that you only have 500 copies of your product available for initial launch. This creates artificial scarcity and urgency to buy as soon as your cart opens.
Another idea instead of limiting inventory is offering some kind of launch special. For example, the first 100 buyers get a discount or extra features.
Wrapping up
These 5 sales funnel templates are just a few of the many ways you can attract leads and nurture them, driving conversions and profit through digital marketing. Use these examples as a starting point to help you build the most targeted and relevant sales funnel for your needs.
It’s also important to remember that these sales funnels don’t have to be used in isolation. For example, you can use a lead magnet or squeeze as a starting point before leading users to a tripwire offer.
Think of how many people visit your landing pages every month but never click through. Do whatever you can do to get users to take that initial action, as it’s the hardest part of the sales funnel process. Then you can use more advanced funnel strategies to encourage them to make their first purchase, upsell, and the rest.
