So maybe you’ve heard about sales funnels and how you should have one as an online coach, but you have no idea what one looks like or how you should set one up in your coaching business?

If you want to learn more about sales funnels for health and life coaches then read on, I’m going to break it all down for you in this simple guide.

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WTF is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is basically a systemised way of attracting potential clients / customers, nurturing them and then selling to them.

You can read plenty online about traditional sales funnels, but in this post I want to focus specifically on the sales funnels that are relevant for health and life coaches and what works for us.

A sales funnel will tend to have several key elements:

• A way to generate traffic – paid ads, SEO, social media etc – your key methods of marketing
• Lead Magnet / Freebie (the freebie itself and the page to promote it and get people to sign up for it)
• A sequence of emails
• A conversion event designed to generate sales – perhaps that’s an individual sales call, webinar or live event or the sales page itself

You can also have several different types of sales funnels depending on what you’re selling and how you want to sell it:

• General nurturing sales funnel
• Evergreen sales funnel
• Sales funnel with a live event

Sales funnels, in some way shape or form, are likely going to be an essential part of any coaching business so it’s worth understanding them and what they may need to look like for you.

Let’s take a look at the different elements of a typical sales funnel…

The goal

Before you begin crafting a sales funnel you’ll need to get clear on what the main goal of the funnel is. What is it you’ll be selling? What’s the purpose of the sales funnel? This will help you choose the best format for it, more on that later.

Traffic

The first part of a sales funnel is the people you want to put into it. These people can come from many different sources – for example paid ads, social media, blogging for SEO, podcasting, Press & PR, collaborations, live events etc.

Ideally you want to be finding people via your wider marketing that are experiencing the problems you solve or the aspirations you help people achieve and who generally fit your ideal client profile.

Lead Magnet / Freebie

A lead magnet or freebie is a gift you offer in return for someone joining your email list. You want it to be something really helpful and valuable even though you’re giving it away for free. As well as the gift itself – which could be a PDF, audio series, free training etc, you also need to create a page that ‘sells’ it so people are encouraged to sign up for it and join your email list.

Sequence of emails

Once someone has opted in for the freebie and joined your list, this is where you can nurture them and sell to them.

You’ll need some kind of email service provider to automate these emails as well as the delivery of the freebie. I use and love Convertkit!

The design and set up of this sequence of emails will depend on the goal you have for your sales funnel. With a more general nurturing sales funnel that perhaps is focused on having someone connect with you and sign up for a discovery call you might have a sequence of 5 or 6 emails.

If you’re selling a course on an Evergreen basis, those emails will look very different and will likely be automated out across a shorter period of time.

A conversion event / sales page

A conversion event is something that takes place which is specifically designed to have someone buy – it will take them through a process of converting them.

This could be an individual discovery call, a live or pre recorded webinar or perhaps if it’s an Evergreen funnel it could simply be a sales page designed to utilise urgency with an evergreen countdown timer.

Other elements you could include

Some sales funnels will include another shorter sequence of emails after the main conversion event that acts as a ‘downsell’ for people who did not purchase the main offer. There’s also other things that you might want to tag on at the end of a sales funnel like seeking feedback etc

Now that we’ve covered the different elements of a sales funnel, let’s look at some of the different types.

General nurturing sales funnel

This is what most of my clients start with. It’s a simple funnel that includes a lead magnet / freebie and a sequence of emails to nurture potential clients to check out their coaching offer or book a discovery call. Sometimes I’ll suggest that we use this kind of funnel with a Priceless Power Hour style offer where we offer a discounted one off call as the key thing we’re selling and then use that call to sell into our more comprehensive coaching offer.

We might also incorporate a tripwire offer into this kind of funnel where a small offer is presented on the thank you page as someone subscribes to get the freebie. Tripwires are usually small digital products that come with a time limited discount. Having someone buy as soon as possible once they’ve entered your world helps to establish trust, draws them deeper into your world and moves them towards being a ‘hotter lead’ because they’ve moved from simply being a subscriber to being a customer.

I’m also a big fan of ‘humanising’ your general nurturing sales funnels, especially if you’re a newer coach, where you reach out to people on an individual basis perhaps with emails or even video.

Evergreen Sales Funnel

An Evergreen sales funnel is something that is more specifically focused on selling a course, programme or product. It’s often about trying to recreate a typical launch, but triggered on an individual basis.

It might look like a lead magnet / freebie that leads into a sequence of emails that are very specifically selling an offer and it might be combined with an Evergreen offer that expires (creating urgency) on an individual basis. This basically means that the time frame in which the discount or offer is available is triggered whenever an individual enters the funnel.

A live event

This type of sales funnel is where we’re getting more into your typical launch, which is still a funnel in its own right.

Instead of a lead magnet / freebie, the hook to get people on to your list is the value that’s been offered in the live element of the funnel – be that a challenge, webinar, masterclass etc.

This live event is accompanied by emails before and afterwards that sell your offer. In my business I’ve often run more of a live event funnel / launch and then repurposed those emails into an Evergreen sales funnel for the same offer.

Sales Funnel Tech

Most sales funnels are going to require some tech to make them work. At the very least you’ll need an email service provider, such as Convertkit so you can automate emails and deliver your lead magnet / freebie to your subscribers.

You’ll need a website for hosting sales pages and everything you need to sell and deliver your offer. If you’re using Evergreen urgency then you’ll need some tech to make that work, such as Deadline Funnel or Automate Hero or a plugin that enables you to trigger individualised countdowns.

Having more than one sales funnel

It’s common, especially if you have more than one offer or have a multi offer business that you’ll end up having multiple sales funnels. These can work really well for selling individual offers and products.

You’ll tend to have a different lead magnet / freebie (or multiple freebies) for each sales funnel which connects to an email sequence and then the individual product.

In my business I’m actually in the process of simplifying my sales funnels as I’ve had several different things going on at once that became a bit too complex, but overall if you have different offers it can make sense to have a setup such as this as your business grows.

So there you have it, a run through of what you need to know when it comes to sales funnels for health and life coaching businesses!

If you’ve found this helpful, then do check out my free training the Aligned Marketing and Client Attraction Workshop to help you better understand how to create an overall marketing strategy that gets you more clients:

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