There’s more ways to set up a sales funnel than there are sales funnels in the world.

That’s why, when you set up your own, it’s easy to miss one or two crucial steps that could have ultimately led to greater conversions, more leads and more sales.

Never fear: we’ve put together this handy-dandy checklist which breaks down every step of the sales funnel creation process.

It includes exactly what you need to do, from start to finish, to create this simple, 5-step funnel structure:

There’s more ways to set up a sales funnel than there are sales funnels in the world.

That’s why, when you set up your own, it’s easy to miss one or two crucial steps that could have ultimately led to greater conversions, more leads and more sales.

Never fear: we’ve put together this handy-dandy checklist which breaks down every step of the sales funnel creation process.

It includes exactly what you need to do, from start to finish, to create this simple, 5-step funnel structure:

Ad → Squeeze Page w/Lead Magnet → Email List → Main Offer → Upsells (etc)

1. Your Offer
Before you start, it’s important to get a good idea of what you want to achieve with your sales funnel and what you want to offer. You must identify:

• Your target audience
• Their problem
• Your solution
• The product(s) or service(s) you want included in the offer
• The benefit each product or service provides
• The features of each product or service

2. Marketing
It’s a good idea to have a solid handle on how you’ll drive traffic to your funnel before you’ve started creating it. Put together a marketing plan from this list of options, and create the content. Just two or three methods is more than enough for a solid foundation, and don’t pick more than you can focus on:

• Social media posts
• Blog posts
• Guest articles
• Videos
• Interviews (podcasts or videos)
• Email marketing
• Affiliate offers

3. Lead Magnet
Commission or create a free lead magnet to promote your offer and build your email list. If you’re not sure what to offer, here’s some ideas:

• Report
• Case study
• Whitepaper
• Newsletter
• Tutorial
• Video series
• Ebook
• Checklist
• Planner
• Printables

4. Email List
You should create an autoresponder list to deliver your lead magnet to subscribers and direct them towards the main product in your funnel. You can create this message in autoresponder services such as Mailchimp or Infusionsoft. Here’s a simple sequence:

1. Thank you and download link
2. Follow-up introducing your main offer
3. Reminder about your main offer
4. Urgency email
5. Final message

5. Other Offers
Now you’ve done a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, it’s time to review your funnel so far and expand if you can. Check for opportunities to:

• Up-sell – when and where can you offer the next higher priced product to your customer?
• Cross-sell – when and where can you offer complementary or supplementary products to your customer?
• Down-sell – when and where could you grab back attention with a lower priced product?
• Create special promotions – where and when could you introduce special promotions to your customers?

6. The Pages
It’s time to write your pages. Include each page below, don’t forget to connect your autoresponder forms and check the next step for an easy-to-follow sales page outline:

• Squeeze Page
• Thank You (lead magnet download)
• Sales Page (main offer, see below)
• Any upsells, downsells etc

7. The Sales Page (Main Offer)
Now you’ve collated enough information about your target audience and offer, write the sales page according to this simple outline:

1. Headline – make it attention-grabbing
2. Introduction – introduce the problem your target audience is suffering from
3. Reveal – position your service or product as the solution
4. Proof – add social proof or testimonials
5. Features and benefits – a shock-and-awe list of everything they’ll get
6. Urgency – encourage them to act now, for example with a limited offer
7. Call to action – tell them how and where they can buy

8. Analytics
Once you’ve published your funnel, you should set up systems to collect data about:

• Email messages click through rates
• Links and calls to action on sales pages
• Email open rate
• Landing page conversions
• Sales and profits for each customer and offer

9. Testing (optional)
After reviewing your sales funnel’s performance over time, you can choose to split test to see if you can optimise for further conversions. If you’re not sure where to start, here’s an idea of what you can tweak to see how your audience responds:

• Button colours
• Microcopy (such as 404 errors, page titles, footer text, and other small portions of
• copy that aren’t the CTA)
• Call to action
• Headline
• Layout
• Fonts
• Lead magnet
• Offer
• Price

Following these steps will give you a solid, profitable funnel you can make sales from almost immediately. Don’t forget to connect all your forms, spread the word about your funnel, and keep in touch with your subscribers.

Here’s a short recap of your sales funnel workflow:

1. Offer – what are you selling?
2. Marketing – how will you get people into your funnel?
3. Lead Magnet – what will you give away as an incentive?
4. Email List – set up the autoresponder to receive subscribers
5. Other Offers – decide on upsells, downsells and cross-sells
6. The Pages – write your squeeze page, thankyou, main page and other offers
7. Sales Page – pay attention to your main offer page
8. Analytics – publish your funnel and track conversions
9. Testing – optimise by tweaking elements of your sales funnel

Not everyone puts this much effort into planning out a sales funnel before they begin – but that’s how you’ll gain the edge over your competition. Gaining an intimate knowledge of your sales funnel’s working parts will help identify what’s working well, what isn’t performing as expected, and how to fix things if explosions occur. Once you get used to the process, nothing is stopping you from getting creative and subverting the structure, adding extra steps and goodies for your customer to keep them coming back for more.

Have you found these instructions useful? Have a sales funnel of your own that you’re proud of? Let us know in the comments!