Are you a blogger who wants to build a sales funnel or a marketing funnel, but you’re not sure how, or where to start? Maybe you’ve heard ad nauseam about the potential power of sales funnels, but there seems like no straightforward process for new bloggers to start on the right foot?
If you can relate, then you should read this blog post. We’re about to wargame 5 clever marketing funnel ideas perfect for bloggers who wish to jumpstart their marketing funnel endeavors.
5 Ingenious Sales Funnel Ideas For Bloggers
- # 1 – Book Funnels
- # 2 – Email Course Funnels
- # 3 – Membership Funnels
- # 4 – Traditional Lead Magnet Funnels
- # 5 – Webinar Funnels
I’m excited to break these sales funnel ideas down further so you can learn more and determine which sales funnel idea might rock for your blogging endeavors.
# 1 – Book Funnels
A book funnel is easily one of my favorite marketing and sales funnel ideas for bloggers, writers, authors, and self-publishers of all varieties.
My advice is to play your strengths in life. That’s why I recommend book funnels for dedicated bloggers and writers.
Why do book funnels rock for bloggers? One of the main reasons is that as a blogger, you presumably have an abundance of fantastic web content laying around that you can potentially turn into a book. In other words, I earnestly believe that all passionate bloggers are potential authors!
If you have books sitting around on your desktop that you haven’t published or promoted properly, even better. A book funnel can help you to launch your book to the world. Stop waiting for the perfect time. A proper book funnel can help you launch your book without needing fancy guru friends, a publisher, or a massive marketing budget.
As someone who has published a plethora of digital books, I fully understand any hesitation you may feel when launching your first book. First, let me just say that you don’t have to charge an arm and a leg for your book. Charging just a couple of bucks for your book (instead of $27, $47, or even $97) can help to minimize the stress you feel when you first publish.
If you don’t want to print physical copies of your book, no problem! It’s elementary to upload, list, and sell digital books through platforms like ClickBank, Kajabi, ClickFunnels, or Kartra.
Book funnels also boast a variety of nuanced benefits. One of the best benefits is that you can also upsell your other books. So, if you’re a prolific author with tons of books that you want to sell, then it’s easy to creatively bundle and create one-time offers.
If the tech side of things holds you back, once again I remind you not to stress. Consider using a proper sales funnel tool like ClickFunnels or Kartra to make the process easier.
# 2 – Email Course Funnels
Email course funnels are another ingenious marketing funnel idea for bloggers.
I honestly think that online teaching, distance education, and online learning are the future. I’m a huge fan of teaching digital courses! That’s just one reason that I think email course funnels rule.
The main benefit of an email course is that email courses are versatile. Email courses also have a ton of benefits for bloggers. For example, email courses can help to build your email list, share your best content, build your brand, and you can also pitch your products and services via an email course.
Creating an email course is much easier than you think. If you’re not sure how to begin, then ask yourself what your prospective blog readers want to learn more about and study. If you can make a list of 10 hot topics that your readers would love to brainstorm, then you’ll probably find it much easier to craft beautiful and helpful email content.
Also, if you already have a ton of fantastic content published on your blog, consider repurposing some of that content so you can streamline your email course creation.
If you want to learn more about how to create and publish a legendary email course in much more detail, I wrote a dedicated guide that you can read for free by clicking the link in this very sentence!
# 3 – Membership Funnels
Have you ever thought about building a membership website as a lead magnet for your most diehard blog readers?
In other words, imagine if you had a “member’s only” private access part of your blog where only your email newsletter subscribers, customers, or students could claim access to exclusive content. Sounds cool, right?
Because maybe you want to keep your best content, videos, lectures, insights, courses, or blog posts for your email subscribers (or buyers) only?
That’s the beauty of a decent membership funnel. A membership funnel can help secure your premium content behind a membership area while keeping looky-loos and trolls locked on the outside.
Inside the membership area, you could host special tutorials, lessons, reviews, workshops, or courses reserved only for your blog reading VIPs. You could let email subscribers access your membership area, or restrict access to only paid customers. The choice is yours.
If you’re an online teacher, or if you love to create cool video tutorials, then membership funnels might be one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling marketing funnel ideas to consider.
There are a handful of membership tools and plugins available for WordPress bloggers. If you wish, you can also use third party tools like ClickFunnels, Kartra, or Kajabi to help build and manage beautiful membership funnels with surprisingly little tech or coding prowess required.
# 4 – Traditional Lead Magnet Funnels
If you want one of the simplest marketing funnel choices, then consider a traditional lead magnet funnel.
Lead magnet funnels help you to build your email list without as many moving parts or stress as other marketing funnel ideas.
But, make no mistake. Despite their few moving parts, traditional lead magnet funnels rock! Not only is a lead magnet funnel one of the simplest and most straightforward marketing funnel choices, but they can also help you to build rapport, share your content, build authority, and more.
I’ve split tested and launched many lead generation funnels over the years right here on the MrComputerScience.com blog. One of the main reasons that I love lead magnet funnels, is because they’re simple to brainstorm and deploy without tech stress or too much effort.
Lead generation funnels are also remarkably adaptable. It doesn’t matter if you’re a food blogger, a beauty blogger, a political blogger, a garden blogger, a fiction blogger, or a health blogger. You can effortlessly brainstorm a smart lead generation funnel if you put in the time and effort.
You also have a variety of options regarding your preferred tool for building your lead generation funnel. Tools like ClickFunnels, GetResponse, Thrive Architect, Kartra, and LeadPages make it ludicrously straightforward to build nifty marketing funnels without the dreaded tech stress.
# 5 – Webinar Funnels
If you’ve read much of the content on my nerdy MrComputerScience.com blog, then you may recognize that I’m a huge proponent of webinar marketing and webinar funnels.
I think that in our era of social distancing and online learning, there’s never been a better time to launch a webinar funnel.
One question you might have, is what topic your webinar should teach? As a blogger, finding the perfect webinar topic might be as easy as viewing your blog’s analytics.
Ask yourself, which of your blog posts are the most popular? Which of your blog posts do your readers spend the most time reading? Might these topics make for good webinar topic ideas? Food for thought.
Another colossal thing I love about webinars is that they’re excellent for branding. A webinar allows you to potentially captivate your audience for minutes or even hours with your most useful content.
Try your best to entertain, educate, and to welcome your attendees with amazing content! At the end of the webinar, you can naturally take a few moments to promote your products or services that you offer.
If you’re worried that you don’t have a product to promote during your webinar, then don’t stress! There are endless affiliate programs with incredible offers that you could pitch during your webinar. That way, you can conceivably have a ton of fun by sharing good content, and then, if all goes well, you can also promote some of your favorite products simultaneously.
When it comes time to launch your webinar, consider exploring popular webinar platforms like EverWebinar, ClickFunnels, Demio, GoToWebinar, EasyWebinar, or Stealth Seminar.
I’ve also compiled an epic blog post that details 15 powerful methods to promote your webinar. I invite you to read if you love webinars as much as I do and if you wish to brainstorm.
Marketing Funnels For Bloggers FAQs
As a longtime blogger, I’ve put a ton of thought into the following questions that novice bloggers are likely to encounter when first exploring the world of marketing funnels. I invite you to brainstorm the following sales funnel tips for bloggers!
# 1 – How Can Bloggers Generate Leads?
One of the best ways, in my opinion, for bloggers to generate leads is by publishing oodles of high-quality content.
But not just any old lame content! Try your best to serve your blog readers with content that can help them accomplish their goals. What are the top difficulties of your dream blog reader? Write incessantly about those topics.
Then, within each blog post, you can try your best to promote your best lead magnets. You can promote your lead generation funnels, webinar funnels, membership funnels, email course funnels, et cetera.
Take the MrComputerScience.com blog as an example. You’ll notice that I advertise my lead capture page in my blog’s header menu, before each blog post, and after each blog post.
That way, in theory, every blog post I publish has a chance to at the very least, promote my lead magnet and generate a lead.
Knowing that my blog is metaphorically “boobytrapped” to generate leads produces the ultimate motivation for me to write nonstop blog content! This is important. In my opinion, as a blogger, motivation is everything!
# 2 – What’s The Best Lead Magnet Idea For Bloggers?
As a blogger, you have nearly unlimited lead magnet options. As a blogger, you’re an animal who creates nonstop content! Therefore, you’re a lead magnet creation machine. Why stop at just one lead magnet? Why not create, and split test numerous variations?
Here are a few ideas. You could create a list of your top blog posts. You could write an eBook. You could launch a webinar. Or, you could create a collection of reports, case studies, cheat sheets, et cetera.
It might be a great idea to launch various lead magnets to see which idea gets the most attention from your ideal subscribers.
What better way to test for demand than by experimenting with numerous lead magnet ideas? Maybe you could launch a new lead magnet periodically and see which one gets the newest subscribers? Food for thought!
# 3 – Do Bloggers Need A Unique Product Or Service To Build A Marketing Funnel?
I think that having a product to call your own is always a great goal to aspire to and reach. Especially for creative entrepreneurs, writers, teachers, small business owners, and yes, bloggers.
That said, it’s theoretically possible to build a beautiful marketing funnel without having a product, per se. However, it’s also important to be realistic. For example, if you don’t have a product or service, then how do you intend on monetizing your marketing funnel? In other words, what is the overall strategy and purpose of your marketing funnel if you don’t have a product or service of your own creation?
What happens if you’re a blogger without a product, but you still want to generate leads, or build your email list? One option to consider, is affiliate marketing. With a little creativity, you can artfully promote your affiliate links throughout your blog posts, webinar funnels, course funnels, email course funnels, lead generation funnels, et cetera.
Of course, please make no mistake! Affiliate marketing requires a ton of work, effort, skill, time, passion, and luck to implement successfully. However, I’m a huge fan of affiliate marketing, and I encourage all bloggers to learn more about affiliate marketing.
Therefore, even if you don’t have a product of your own to promote via blogging, email marketing, and marketing funnel placement, you can at least try your best to promote affiliate products within your marketing creatives.
# 4 – What’s The Best Sales Funnel Tool For Bloggers?
Before I shed light on my favorite sales funnel tool for bloggers, just let me quickly state that these days, you have at least a dozen solid choices. In my experience, any famous marketing funnel page builder will offer loads of templates and marketing page functionality so you can launch a cool sales funnel without stress.
Two of my favorite tools are ClickFunnels and Thrive Architect. Both rock. Let’s talk about how each of them works for a moment.
If you’re a WordPress blogger, then I recommend for you to consider Thrive Architect. Thrive Architect is a WordPress plugin that works beautifully without tech skills.
There are a few reasons I love Thrive Architect for WordPress. The first reason is that the plugin is very light. I won’t tolerate cumbersome or laggy plugins! I’ve noticed that Thrive is also elementary to use.
If you love to tinker around in WordPress, then you can’t go wrong with Thrive. Thrive also has plenty of templates for various marketing pages.
I’m also a huge fan of ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is entirely cloud-based, so there’s no tech stress or installations required when building a marketing funnel. One of the best advantages of ClickFunnels is that it’s easy to use across devices without hassle.
Another thing I love about ClickFunnels is the training and community. Since the ClickFunnels community is so massive, there’s ample training, third-party marketing funnels, and support available. Also, in my opinion, ClickFunnels easily boasts some of the coolest marketing training for small business owners. Therefore, I heartily recommend ClickFunnels to colleagues, bloggers, students, and readers alike.
# 5 – Is WordPress The Best Blogging Platform For New Bloggers?
In my humble opinion? Yes! I’m an enthusiastic fan of WordPress, for sure! One of the main points I love about WordPress is the number of premium themes and plugins available to WordPress bloggers.
That said, WordPress isn’t the only game in town. As a prospective blogger, you have other options.
Blogger, Wix, Tumblr, Medium, Weebly, Joomla, and Constant Contact offer free (or dirt cheap) blogging options that rock and are worthy of consideration.
My advice? Examine some of the top blogging platforms, and see which one you like the most!
Conclusion
In our modern era of social distancing, remote work, and distance education, I believe bloggers of the world have an indispensable role to play.
That’s why I’m thrilled to share my most immeasurable blogging insights and strategies with you.
As a tenacious fan of blogging, WordPress, lead generation, and sales funnels, I hope you had fun reading this blog post.
Thanks again for reading, and please have a glorious day!
Cordially and humbly yours…
Mike “Forever A Blogger” DeVincent
MrComputerScience.com