real time case study of sales funnel

11 Ultimate Sales Funnel Examples That Convert Like Crazy

You already know how a sales funnel works: your potential customers become aware of your company, use search engines and social media to do some research, check out social proof like reviews or comparison shopping sites, call your sales team with questions, and then buy what you’re selling (or not).

That entire customer journey from prospect to customer is the sales process and can be visualized as a sales funnel .

But how can we optimize that? There must be a way, right?

Turns out, there is. This post will explain how the sales funnel has evolved from a basic view to multiple phases. We’ll look at how different businesses use sales funnels to drive revenue by closing deals left and right and how you can use the sales funnel model to increase your team’s effectiveness and revenue.

Pssst... Want to know how to optimize your B2B Sales Funnel for maximum conversions? Check out our article.

What is a Sales Funnel and How Does it Work?

We use a funnel shape for two reasons. First, the sales funnel works like a regular funnel. Liquid poured into the wide end moves down a gravity-driven path to the narrow exit and is not meant to go back up, the same way prospects move through the sales pipeline.

Second, the top of the funnel is full of leads, but as the leads move through the sales process, many are lost along the way. Very rarely will all your leads turn into closed sales, and there is attrition at each stage of the journey.

This is not always the salesperson's fault, as there may have been unwanted or low-quality leads that fall away. This is all part of refining your audience and converting the right ones to the funnel's bottom stage.

The sales process has evolved significantly over the years. Today, customer-centricity is the backbone of successful businesses. Companies have realized that customers should be at the heart of everything they do. As a result, they have expanded the traditional “AIDA” model (awareness, interest, desire, and action) to add a phase on customer retention and loyalty.

Sales and marketing teams work to push prospects through the customer journey and down the funnel, establishing clear calls to action (CTA) for moving from stage to stage.

Different sales funnel models will have different names for some of these phases, and some may tie in the potential customer's phase, from lead to qualified lead to prospective, etc.

Tools like the Close Sales Funnel Calculator can be incredibly useful for optimizing sales funnels effectively. It helps visualize your sales pipeline, showing exactly where potential leaks might be and how many leads you need to grow your revenue more efficiently. With such tools, you can gain actionable insights to refine each stage of your sales funnel.

Stages of the Sales Funnel

Different organizations may have slightly different approaches or different names within the funnel. Let’s start with a broader view of the funnel’s three key sections.

What is a Sales Funnel and How Does it Work?

Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

The top of the funnel (TOFU) is the first key section of the funnel. This section covers the beginning of the customer journey when customers become aware of the need and discover your business while looking for answers. The top of the funnel is typically broken into two stages: awareness and interest.

The Awareness Stage is called such because it’s when the potential buyer becomes aware of the need for a certain product/service or determines there is a problem that needs to be solved. During the awareness stage, buyers are looking for lots of information, so that’s where search engines, social media, and marketing come into play. Content types such as deep-dive blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, industry reports, and educational webinars can be great lead magnets for the awareness stage.
In the Interest Stage , your prospects have become aware of your business and have provided their contact information to you. They are now referred to as leads. During this part of the sales process, they look for different solutions and try to figure out what is the right one for their needs. This is the stage where your prospect is reading expert guides, watching how-to videos, requesting demos, or booking meetings. At this point, the lead’s biggest concern is collecting the right information to make an informed decision. At the end of the interest stage, your lead may lose interest and drop out. This is normal in the process.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The middle of the funnel (MOFU) is the phase in which prospects know their needs and research different solutions. It can be divided into consideration and intent stages.

The Consideration Stage happens when the customer has identified the features they need to ease their pain points and is ready to consider the different products or services that include such features. They’re immersed in product demos, training videos, product reviews, free trials, vendor comparison charts, case studies, and more. Concurrently, the salesperson should consider whether the prospect is a good fit. This is done by asking qualifying questions and determining if the prospect is a qualified lead.
A lead can be identified as being in the Intent Stage when they fit your ideal customer profile and become highly engaged in the sales process. A salesperson’s top priority is keeping high-intent leads engaged, showing them high value and a great experience. This stage is later in the process, so it’s also the time when leads have lots of questions, relay any previously unspoken objections, and address remaining pain points.

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

The bottom of the funnel (BOFU) phase is at the end of the sales funnel where customers are equipped with all the information they need to make an educated decision and choose the right solution for their needs. The two prominent phases here include the purchase and loyalty stages.

The Purchase Stage happens when all your marketing and sales efforts pay off. All previous stages are paving the way from awareness to action, and this is when it finally happens: you convert your prospect to a customer.
In the Retention and Loyalty Stage , customers have, in effect, exited the funnel and landed in an exclusive club with fabulous benefits. An account manager teaches them how to maximize their new purchase while the club’s restaurant offers fresh content and general training to nourish them.
In this stage, your customers feel so good about their experience that they can’t imagine leaving the exclusive club that is being your customer. They even become brand advocates, giving reviews, sharing their impressions on social media, and recommending your businesses to their network, which adds new prospects to your sales funnel, and the sales cycle starts again!

Suppose you’re using a good CRM system. In that case, you’ll see various statistics like your sales funnel conversion rate , the points where prospects leave the funnel without buying (also known as funnel leaks), and lead qualification data. This data can benefit companies of all sizes, from small businesses to giant corporations.

Have you seen our guide to effective lead conversion with MQL vs. SQL ? It's a must-read.

11 Top Examples of Effective Sales Funnels

Let’s look at eleven of the best examples of sales funnels in action.

Close is a high-performance CRM that gives sales teams the tools to record opportunities and effectively manage their leads.

Their headline draws the prospect in and gives a nice overview of what Close is about. A clean pay layout, meanwhile, makes it super easy for a prospect to enter their sales funnel. The prospect must press "start a free trial," and their service can begin. Once they do this, they’re part of Close’s sales funnel.

With Close automation software, leads are scored in real time based on thousands of data points. Prospects are then directed to either the self-serve funnel or if their lead score is high enough, an Account Executive will reach out to consult them on how to get the most out of Close.

The benefit here is that sales reps aren’t tied down to responding to every lead that walks through the door. Prioritization through lead scoring allows reps to focus on the biggest deals with the most complicated use cases, spending their time answering questions and showing the prospect how effective the platform can be.

For smaller deals or those with standardized use cases, prospects can investigate the software, see how it solves their problems, and even start a free trial themselves. (Yes, that trial eventually ends—but only after showing the user how incredible our platform is!)

The result? The sales team spends more time selling and closing high-value contracts while the less complicated deals roll right in. That, my friend, is a win-win.

How to use this in your sales funnel: Don’t overcomplicate your homepage with too much detail. Instead, focus on encouraging trials, demos, and sign-ups or getting bottom—and mid-funnel prospects the information they need to convert. Then, use lead scoring to prioritize the leads, allowing your team to focus on the biggest and best deals possible.

2. Brevo (previously Sendinblue)

Brevo is a SaaS company offering a cloud-based marketing communication software suite with many tools to help you learn digital marketing and improve your company’s standing within your industry.

When someone enters the Brevo website, they are met with several options to sign up for a free trial. A user can click the "Sign Up Free" button on the top right of the screen or click the "Take a Free Test Drive."

If the prospect isn't ready to sign up immediately, they can scroll down the page and read more about Brevo's offerings.

The Brevo homepage is laid out according to the AIDA model mentioned above. The standout words " Prepare for takeoff " grab the user's attention at the top of the page before building interest with information about the different tools Brevo offers.

Underneath the product offerings, users can navigate through the customer testimonials page, which builds their desire for the product before again being offered the chance to take action by signing up for a free trial at the bottom.

Consider incorporating video testimonials on the page instead of the usual text-based version. Video testimonials can be highly effective in building desire for the product, as they allow potential customers to see and hear real-life examples of the product in action.

However, ensuring that these video testimonials are professionally produced is essential to maintain high authenticity. Companies may want to consider investing in professional video testimonial production apps to achieve this.

When users click on one of three CTAs (Calls to action), they are brought to a simple landing page where they can enter their contact details. Then, Brevo can nurture the prospect through targeted email marketing and move the prospect down the funnel.

By taking up the free trial, the prospect also gets to try out the product for free and under no financial pressure; if they have a positive experience, they’re much more likely to become a paying customer.

How to use this in your sales funnel: Capture your site visitors’ interest immediately with an interesting visual or headline. Keep it short and intriguing. Then, draw users in with exciting details that frame your product as the solution to their problems. Include current customer testimonials and social proof, then drive the whole thing home with a solid yet simple CTA.

Like Brevo's homepage, AI company Aura draws the user in with a bold headline. At the same time, one of the main benefits of their service is put right under the headline.

This hooks the reader and entices them to click the "Learn more" button if they need to know more before signing up for a free trial.

Companies offer free trials to allow users to try their service for free, usually for a limited period. This allows users to try out the software, learn its features, and experience how it can solve the issue they’re trying to solve.

Free trials are a lead generation method aimed at hooking prospects into converting them over time to paying customers; while free trials may not make sense for all SaaS companies, they can be powerful when used correctly.

Peter Cohen, the author of ’Practical Advice on SaaS Marketing,’ points out that a "Free trial without a well-constructed follow-up effort isn’t worth much." While free trials have their upsides, it’s important to note that they can still cost the company money in terms of any ongoing customer support required and any customer setup fees.

It’s important to note that the percentage of prospects who sign up for a free trial but don’t convert will be higher if a company doesn’t have a follow-up strategy . Those who don’t convert after follow-up can be added to a retargeting campaign for future contact.

How to use this in your sales funnel: Offer users an option to try your product before buying in one of two ways. First, users can add a credit card signup when creating their trial account, which is later charged after the trial period, allowing users to continue using your product. A second option is to provide a free trial with no credit card required, where access to your product is cut off for that user once their trial period ends.

A free consultation offer is often a great addition to your sales funnel if your business provides services rather than products.

The free consultation sales funnel is used in slightly different circumstances to the free trial funnel. Free trial funnels are commonplace in the SaaS industry, while "free consultations" are used more frequently for high-end services, like business growth consultants .

Take, for example, Cobloom , a consultancy that advises SaaS businesses on addressing their audiences, developing targeted creative strategies, setting and aligning goals, and adjusting their pricing models.

Cobloom’s site encourages users to learn about its different services. At the end of every informational page, there is a CTA to request a free consultation .

Using a free consultation works well, especially in knowledge-based services, as it offers potential clients peace of mind and relevant information they'll need if they need to hire a consultant without committing to an upfront spend.

If a prospect is interested in booking a free consultation, they need only press the "free consultation," fill out the contact form, describe their company, and book the consultation.

At the end of the consultation, providing the business is in a good place for growth; the Cobloom team can ask the lead if they’d like to move forward and become a client. This situation takes the pressure off the prospect, particularly if their budget is tight or they want to save money.

How to use this in your sales funnel: Adding a Free Consultation CTA to your website is as easy as adding a form. Make contact fields like name, email, and phone number required information, but also include an option for your leads to tell you more about their situation so you have a leg up on your research before contacting them.

Jumio helps ensure your customers are exactly who they say they are—and that your business remains free of fraud and financial crime. With offices around the globe, Jumio has processed over a billion web and mobile transactions.

So, what makes Jumio’s sales funnel special? In addition to well-placed CTAs across their homepage, they offer live chat to serve your needs.

Upon landing on their homepage, a chat window opens asking if you’re looking for product info, need support, would like to chat with the sales team, or are just browsing. Before being connected to your resource of choice, you’re asked to share your email address in case you get disconnected.

Those who select "Chat with Sales" are instantly matched with a live sales rep to help answer questions, introduce product features, and build rapport. If no sales reps are available, users are presented with an entire calendar of times and dates to set an appointment with a sales rep. How’s that convenient?

How to use this in your sales funnel: Chatbots are handy, but live chat instills a sense of transparency and personalized attention that a bot can’t provide. If your team has the capacity, consider adding a live chat window to your homepage and setting your sales reps up to converse with curious leads who come in. After all, who could be better at answering questions about your product and encouraging new sign-ups?

6. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the king of "catch-all" marketing funnels. The moment you land on the home page, you will see why. They have limited-time deals, exit intent pop-ups, lowered pricing, and great CTAs. But how do all of these sales funnel puzzle pieces fit together?

Limited-Time Deals: Nothing drives urgency more than a deal about to expire. Encourage leads to strike while the iron is hot and before that deal expires.
Exit Intent Pop-Ups: OptinMonster serves a pop-up showing that “70% of your visitors do what you just did and never come back.” How’s that for awareness? The pop-up then provides a link to a 35% discount to encourage you to return to the site.

Strong, Repeated CTAs: No one needs to guess what OptinMonster wants you to do. With four CTAs to “Get OptinMonster Now,” one “Get Started,” and one “Get Started Now”—all of which land on their pricing page—it seems like OptinMonster wants site visitors to select a plan and get started.
Lowered Pricing: Speaking of pricing, once users land on that pricing page, they’re presented with four options, each with a red strike through the normal cost and a significantly lower current price on display.

These four tactics are great examples of how you can include multiple methods to trigger urgency as part of your conversion technique.

How to use this in your sales funnel: These examples are easy to implement and can usually be done in a day or two. Work with your web team to add promotional language, repeated CTAs, lowered prices, and a pop-up banner to your site. While some of those elements may require some design work, most can be accomplished with simple text updates.

7. SmartPassive Income

Smart Passive Income Sales Funnel Example

SmartPassive Income’s free webinar sales funnel allows them to build a personal connection with their prospects. This is particularly beneficial as many of their marketing states that they’ll work alongside prospects when they want to start their own business or earn passive income.

Webinars can feel more personal for the prospect, particularly if they want to know more about the solution, the pain points it solves, and a plethora of FAQs.

With 72 percent of consumers preferring to watch a video over reading an article, it’s not uncommon for webinars to generate more leads than free downloadable resources like ebooks or white papers. Keep in mind that you should always test what works for your own audience. The best-performing lead generation assets in Close's free sales resource depository, for example, are ebooks.

ClickFunnels suggests that, on average, 20 percent to 40 percent of webinar attendees turn into qualified leads, while about five percent of attendees will purchase at the end. That’s a pretty good conversion rate. If we apply these stats to the SmartPassive Income example above, two will become paying clients for every 50 attendees they attract to a webinar.

How to use this in your sales funnel: A great starting point for building a webinar series is to list the most common questions your sales team gets about your product and then turn each question into its own webinar.

Schedule topics throughout the year, ideally with at least one each month, and start promoting your series on your website, email blasts, and social media . Have interested users register on your website to collect their information and send them a link for the Zoom call and calendar invite. Look at that; now you have their contact info and an opportunity to show how your product solves their problems!

Meet Semrush , a global leader in search engine optimization — or, in layman’s terms, getting your website to appear at the top of your users’ Google searches.

Semrush is best-in-class for a couple of reasons: First, and unsurprisingly, they know how to get new leads to their website. But what do they do with them from there? Well, they convert them.

Being at the forefront of SEO, Semrush has a wealth of knowledge that many seek to tap into. While they previously offered an extensive ebook library, they continue to provide valuable insights and resources in other formats, ensuring that their expertise remains accessible to a global audience eager to learn from the best.

Of course, each of those titles is a lead magnet in its own right, requiring your name, email address, and phone number to download. After entering their email address, the prospect has entered the company's sales funnel, and the company can then nurture the prospect down their sales funnel.

A lead magnet acts as an incentive for prospects to enter their details to receive a piece of content (e.g., an ebook, a report, a training guide, or a video) that either educates them or solves a particular problem.

Lead magnets work well to increase the number of subscribers to an email list or blog and help transition prospects from the 'awareness' stage to the 'interest' stage of a sales funnel.

How to use this in your sales funnel: Pub how-to guides, best practices, and other relevant industry knowledge your company excels in. After all, you’re the expert in your arena, and others want to learn from you.

Save your documents as PDFs, then create a simple form with the required fields for name and contact information. After submitting the form, documents can be automatically emailed to the email address provided, or users can be directed to a landing page with the document download.

A sales funnel we’ve all probably entered at one time or another is Netflix’s.

Netflix attracts new customers by offering them 30 days of free service before payment. As shown in the two screenshots above, Netflix places a large CTA button that tells the prospect that they get 30 days of free service.

Netflix utilizes a 7-stage sales funnel model that has proved extremely successful in attracting millions of subscribers worldwide.

The seven-stage of Netflix’s funnel are:

Sales funnel landing page
Plan introduction page
Plan pricing page showing different upsell and cross-sell options
Create an account introduction page
Create an account sign-up page
Payment method page
Payment details page

The Sales Funnel guides the user step by step, from entering their contact information to providing payment information at the end. Once the payment details are inputted, users can enjoy 30 days of free service before their paid service begins.

When users sign up for Netflix, their billing will auto-renew every month until they cancel. Interestingly, a study by Fintech Startup Hiatus found that almost 62 percent of consumers have unintentionally paid for subscriptions because of an auto-renew feature. This means there are probably quite a few Netflix subscribers who have meant to cancel their subscriptions but haven’t.

How to use this in your sales funnel: Require users to input their credit card details when they sign up for your trial, and have them agree to auto-renewed monthly subscriptions that begin immediately after the trial period. Alternatively, you can give users the option of selecting one-time payment subscriptions or slightly discounted auto-renew subscriptions.

10. Dropbox

One of the things Dropbox does best is to provide an incredibly personalized experience on its website.

Anyone who lands on their homepage will first be greeted by an incredibly hard-to-miss “Start for free” call to action. But if the user isn’t ready for that, they can scroll down the page, where they’ll see questions that work to create a choose-your-own-adventure type of experience.

For instance, the first question asks users, "What can Dropbox help you do?” Clickable answers span getting free cloud storage, accessing online storage for the whole family, and simplifying work processes. Each of these options, of course, leads the user to a dedicated landing page with pricing and sign-up forms for each respective area of interest.

Additional actions down the homepage encourage users to learn about using Dropbox for work or personal use, investigate partner integrations, view customer stories, and explore pricing options. No matter what the user is interested in, Dropbox makes sure they can find a solution that fits their needs and validates Dropbox as the solution.

Of course, Dropbox is no stranger to lead conversion. They’re well-remembered for an incredibly successful explainer video that earned the company $48,000,000 in revenue from new users in 2009. And it turns out video is just as effective today, too. A 2024 report by explainer video company Wyzowl found that 89 percent of video marketers say video gives them a good ROI, while 80 percent of video marketers reported that video has directly helped increase sales.

How to use this in your sales funnel: When building or refreshing your website design , consider your target audience and their needs. Develop clear paths for each audience type and create targeted landing pages specific to that user.

11. HelpScout

The final sales funnel example we’ll examine is HelpScout. HelpScout provides an all-in-one customer service platform to over 11,000 businesses in 140 countries.

In this example, the user can start a free 15-day trial of the platform or book a demo to see the platform in action. If prospects sign up for a demo, they are now in HelpScout’s sales funnel.

From here, HelpScout can utilize an email marketing service to send the prospect information before their scheduled demo.

Their home page layout is clear and concise; there’s no messy background, a clear CTA, and lots of social proof, making it easy for a prospect to start a free trial or book a demo.

The ‘book a demo’ sales funnel is normally used when a company wants to target customers who need personalized help or advice. Demos are usually necessary for software services with a higher price point and can be a great opportunity for a sales rep to show off the software's features and benefits.

How to use this in your sales funnel: Create a clean experience on your website—especially your homepage—with one, or a maximum of two, clear calls to action front and center. These should be your highest-value calls to action. Two CTAs we’d recommend including are signing up for a trial , where leads can explore your product at their own pace, or booking a demo, allowing your engaging sales team to start building a relationship.

Why is a Sales Funnel so Important?

For most of us, a visual representation of even the simplest concept helps form a deeper understanding. Using the sales funnel concept with your team illustrates the path that a prospect needs to take to conversion. The sales funnel is important to ensure the sales team is properly screening for ideal customers from the lead sources that marketing efforts generate, such as website visitors, trade show attendees, etc.

When salespeople and managers understand each part of their sales funnel, they can identify issues and work to fix them quickly.

A sales funnel needs to be monitored and improved consistently. This means identifying funnel leaks and patching them with better attention, sales training, marketing collateral development, and product improvements.

Sales managers and company executives can use your company’s CRM software to view where each contact is in the buying process, review each salesperson’s own sales funnel and look for leaks or clogs to see where they may need coaching or resources, and evaluate factors along the sales process that affect customer retention and loyalty — all using the sales funnel model.

How to Measure the Success of a Sales Funnel

During each sales funnel stage, there are factors that indicate success and metrics to look at regularly, including some of my tips to take your measurements to the next level.

Track beyond the total number of leads to include qualified leads.

Take this to the next level: Work with your marketing team on SEO optimization , google search analytics, and marketing campaign improvement. Then, analyze if the percentage of qualified leads increases each month.

Conversion Rate

Measure your closed-won sales conversion rate across the company and for each salesperson.

Take this to the next level: Track conversion rates from stage to stage of the sales funnel. You may discover that leads leak out of the funnel at the purchase stage because your competitor’s contract language is easier to understand. Use the feedback from your sales team to make changes to fix any issues that are losing sales staff.

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Acquisition Costs

Calculating the total cost spent on customer acquisition is an important variable. This cost includes all the marketing and sales costs you pay to acquire a new customer.

Take this to the next level: Measure both acquisition costs for leads and customers. Then, calculate how long it will take you to recoup those costs from the customer’s revenue.

Lifetime Customer Value

Calculate the LTV to help determine how effectively your business model performs over time. Determine each customer’s base revenue and the value added from upsells and cross-selling . The LTV is equal to the customer’s actual (or projected) annual value times the number of years in an average lifespan.

Take this to the next level: Find your LTV, then implement a strategy to increase retention and promote more upselling, thus increasing LTV. Be sure to start tracking LTV over time to measure your strategy's success.

Sales Cycle Length

This tracks how long it takes to advance along the funnel from one phase to the next. It will give you a picture of slow spots in the sales process.

Take this to the next level: Find slow spots and work to bring them up to speed with training, resources, or other tweaks.

Referral Rate

The referral rate shows the number of referrals you receive from existing customers and the number of existing customers who send you referrals.

Take this to the next level: Find exactly how these referrals happen. Industry leaders could share at trade shows, customer evangelists could sing praise during podcasts, people could endorse your company on LinkedIn and social media, or forward your content marketing materials to their peers.

What About eCommerce?

Suppose your company’s primary revenue stream is eCommerce. In that case, you might not have an individual sales team. You can still apply these principles to website design, SEO strategy, digital advertising, social media, and other tools like live chat, customer service systems, etc. Yes, the marketing strategies involved in e-commerce are a little different, but the customer journey is the same.

How to Use These Sales Funnel Examples on Your Sales Team

Understanding and visualizing the sales funnel stages helps close more deals. While there are quite a few sales funnel models, most focus on moving a prospect from the awareness stage to the interest stage.

Once a prospect has entered the sales funnel, companies can engage in targeted follow-up campaigns to move them further down the funnel toward a conversion. Nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, so take the time to set up your sales funnel using templates, case studies, and phone follow-ups appropriate for the prospect’s location in the funnel.

We’re pretty proud of the sales funnel tools built into Close, and we think you will be, too. You can try Close free for two weeks (you don’t even need to enter your credit card info). You can also find over a dozen free resources on the Close Resources page . These tools will have you putting the fun in sales funnels in no time.

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5 Case Studies of Successful Marketing Funnels

Be sure to check out the previous post in this series: Tools to Optimize Your Marketing Funnels and Generate Massive ROI

As your business scales, one of the most important factors to help it grow systematically is a marketing funnel . Without one, it becomes significantly more difficult to see the areas of your business where you could improve in order to generate more revenue.

Marketing funnels are essentially a structured path for a potential customer to go from hearing about your business all the way down to making a purchase.

In this post, we’ll talk about the different types of funnels, how to test them, and 5 case study examples of how companies set up their funnels to boost conversions and revenue.

Traditional Marketing Funnel

For a more in-depth description of marketing funnels, check out The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Marketing Funnel .

Generally t he traditional funnel is made up of four stages: AIDA:

The “ Awareness ” stage usually consists of blog posts, e-books, paid advertising, and other content to make more people aware of your business.
The “ Interest ” stage is designed to keep people engaged and interested so that they return, and one of the best ways to do that is by collecting e-mail addresses.
The “ Desire ” (or “Evaluation”) phase consists of the prospect opting in to your e-mail list and then evaluating your products and services against your competitors. At this stage, content like whitepapers and case studies tend to be most effective.
And finally, the “ Action ” stage is the natural conclusion to the preceding three stages and is when the prospect makes the decision to purchase.

While this funnel outline covers the basics of what a marketing funnel should do, there are other funnel formats that marketers use.

Learn More:

How to Create a Marketing Funnel that Generates Sales (Templates Included)
How to Map Out Your Marketing Funnel
[Podcast] How to get Sales and Marketing to Work Together

Conversion Funnel

Neil Patel is a big proponent of what he calls the conversion funnel, which places more emphasis on customer behaviors, lead nurturing, and retention at every step of the process.

There are more questions asked at each step of the funnel, such as:

“How do we make the customer more aware of our brand?”
“How do we entice them with an irresistible offer?”
“Why would they not act and what can we do to fix it?”
“How can we recognize and anticipate their needs?”

This type of funnel is more open-ended than the traditional funnel because it doesn’t conclude when the prospect buys your product, but rather works to retain them.

Case Studies of Successful Marketing Funnels

Step 1: Attracting Customers

This stage would likely involve driving customers to a landing page from articles, social media, etc.

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make at this step is not understanding what their customer really wants. For example, check out this landing page for a school that specializes in nutrition courses:

From a customer’s point of view, there are a log of unanswered questions on this page that would prevent them from completing the sign-up form — questions like:

“How do I talk to someone if I have questions?”
“Where can I find the course catalog?”
“How much does it cost to take a course?”
“What do other students say about the course?”

Without getting these questions answered, there’s not much motivation for customers to enter their information which prevents you from moving them further down the funnel.

Step 2: Encouraging Action

How do you compel action from your prospect? By creating an emotional investment in them through a series of “quick wins.”

Allowing your prospect to achieve a quick win will help guide them through each step of the funnel by encouraging them to take one small successful step at a time. For instance, a quick win for Instagram would be guiding your potential user to create their first picture. As Growth Hacking Pro says, “ It’s their immediate reward for going through the trouble of learning about you, trusting you with their email, and going through the registration process. The quick win should be a small taste of your product’s core experience.”

For example, check out what Seamless (an on-demand food delivery company) did below. Their main customers are busy professionals who don’t have time to cook or constantly plan their next meals.

Knowing this, the company created short, mobile-friendly messages that offer a discount code.

Source: Neil Patel

Then they sent this follow-up code:

The message is brief and sharable.

Once you understand what your audience wants, you can encourage them to take action in “bite-sized” ways as they move through your funnel.

Step 3: Build a Content Plan

Neil Patel gives an example of a computer repair store. In the first step of the funnel, you’d use local media outlets, social media, and content on your blog to address some common computer repair problems that customers have. The top of the funnel is about getting more people familiar with the services you offer and convincing them of your expertise.

As they move down the funnel, the motivation for purchase would be urgency-based because most people who seek computer repair help need it right away.

Once customers have purchased, you could add on an outreach program, local contests and events, and loyalty programs to increase the likelihood of referrals and repeat business. Upgrades and new software could be a great way to craft up-sells and cross-sells to get customers to buy more than once.

A helpful piece of content for new prospects who arrive on your site is a “ start here ” page. This is a page that tells you exactly what you should do once you arrive on a site, along with the main categories of what it has to offer (i.e. “first, check out XYZ articles, then sign up to my e-mail list”).

Step 4: Get Referrals

Not only are current customers more likely to buy from you again , but new customers are also 71% more likely to purchase based on social media referrals.

Dropbox got amazing results with their referral program. They went from 100,000 to 4 million users in just 15 months. In one month, users sent out over 2.8 million referrals from the platform.

In Dropbox’s case, there were multiple factors that contributed to their huge success with referral marketing: 1) the person that gives the referral gets something (like free space up to 16 GB), and 2) the referral gets something as well (more space in their account if they sign up).

Here are a few key points to keep in mind when building referral systems at the end of your funnel:

Identify the target market that could get the most benefit by sending you referrals.
Let the market know specifically what type of customer you’re looking to attract.
Offer tempting incentives for the referrals.
Make your system rewarding.

But what you do after getting your conversion is even more important than everything you did to get that customer to convert. After a customer transacts with you, think about what they would want in the next step:

They want to be reassured that they made the right decision.
They want to quickly get started using your product (with clear instructions).
They want to see support options in case they have any questions.
They want to know how to request a refund or make a return.

The main difference between the traditional and conversion funnels is that the conversion funnel doesn’t make the assumption that conversion ends once the customer buys. Instead, it continues until the customers become advocates for your business.

Automation Master Brad Martineau on How to Set Up Successful Sales & Automation Funnels [Podcast]
How to Guide Your Customers Through the Marketing Funnel with Interactive Content
Step by Step Guide: How to Build a High Quality Marketing Funnel

Testing Your Funnel

Once you have all the parts of your funnel set up, you’ll have to test them in a budget-conscious way. H ere’s what to look at when figuring out which pages to test first:

Prioritization . Focus on your best performing pages rather than try to improve your worst performers.
Ease of implementation . If you expect any part of your implementation to be highly technical or time consuming, move on to the next one.
Conversion value . The parts of the funnel that bring in highly targeted customers who are aware of your brand are the ones that should be prioritized the most. These are the customers who will be more likely to convert with a lower up-front investment.

There are a couple of tools you can use to test out your funnel in a cost effective way.

Google Analytics

The easiest way to start testing your funnel is by setting conversion goals in Google Analytics. This tool allows you to track customers from the moment they land on a page, see what their actions are, and discover where they drop off. Funnels have “holes” at each step, and the best way to patch those up is by looking at the data on drop off patterns.

Source: Coast Digital

Once you add your website to your Google Analytics page, you’ll find the relevant tracking code on the “Admin” link. From there, you can copy and paste the code on all the pages you want to track.

There are a few different types of conversion goals that you can track:

Destination – Use destination goals to set a page view as a conversion.
Duration – Set duration goals to measure time on page, and tie that to a conversion goal.
Pages/screens per session – Setting pages/screens per session as a goal allows you to measure user engagement by observing the number of pages/screens a user views in a single session.
Event – Set an event goal if you want to set a user interaction on your site as a conversion (like signing up for an e-mail list).

See how to c reate conversion goals within Google Analytics in our previous post: Tools to Optimize Your Marketing Funnels and Generate Massive ROI .

Now you’ll be able to measure conversion rates at each stage of your funnel so that you know the patterns behind customer drop off. This will better equip you to patch those “holes” and ultimately boost your bottom line.

Another way to track your conversions is through Optimizely .

Once you log in to Optimizely, you can go to the Editor where you can click on the flag icon to add new conversion goals or experiments.

From there, you can create a new goal:

By sharing goals between experiments, you can save time that you might normally spend recreating them each time. To add a goal that you previously created, you can click “Add a Saved Goal.”

Optimizely also has a variety of goal types that you can choose from:

Click event goals : If you want to track clicks as conversions, then this goal will do the job.
Custom goals : If you want to track how many times a certain item (i.e. input boxes on forms) was clicked, then you can create a custom goal. If you have your revenue numbers broken down at each step of the funnel, you can also assign monetary value numbers to conversion goals. For example, maybe you know that 1% of e-mail subscribers end up buying your product. Based on your product’s price, you should have a good idea of what each subscriber is worth to you.
Page view goals : Just like Google Analytics, this goal measures how many times a specific page was viewed.

Finally, you’ll want to make sure all these individual goals fit within the grand scheme of your funnel. In Optimizely, this is called “multi page experiments.”

To do this, first choose a multi-page experiment. You can easily do this from the Editor by going to Options > Experiment type.

Then, just like you added individual steps to your goals, add individual pages to your funnel by clicking the “Add page” link.

Next, create variations of the different pages that you want to test.

For example, Crate & Barrel varied their holiday messages on a couple of different pages to see which would encourage more sales.

The second option was this:

After the test pages are set, you have to makes sure that users continue to see the same pages as they move through the funnel.

You can do this by going to Options > URL Targeting and specifying the targeting conditions for each page:

Once you have your data, you can start tweaking the pages of your funnel to reduce customer drop-off at each step based on which copy, design, and messaging resonates with them.

Now we’ll take a look at a few companies that used funnel optimization strategies to boost their conversion rates and revenues.

The Turkish Rug Funnel (How A Rug Store Got Me To Shell Out A Few Thousand Dollars with ZERO Initial Interest)
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Case Study #1: CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg is a SaaS company that provides a heat map tool to help businesses better understand how users are interacting with their site.

Their sales funnel breaks down in the following five stages:

1) Awareness

Building awareness is the first step of any funnel. Before readers can be guided down the process to make a purchase, they first have to find out about your business in some way and become interested in what you have to offer. Marketing at this stage involves paid traffic, blog content, and optimizing for SEO to get more exposure for their brand.

Here’s one of CrazyEgg’s Facebook ads that was used to build awareness:

Source: Click Funnels

Here’s another example of content that was used to build awareness:

For readers who want to know how to boost e-commerce revenue, they’ll find one of CrazyEgg’s blog posts on the first page of Google’s search results.

Readers will have different experiences going through CrazyEgg’s funnel depending on what content they see first. In this example, we’ll stick with what follows after clicking on the Facebook ad.

2) Interest

The second step in CrazyEgg’s funnel is directing readers to their home page. From there, prospects have the option to express further interest in the business by entering their website’s URL to see a heatmap analysis of why their visitors are leaving.

3) Decision

Once prospects enter their website URL into the box on CrazyEgg’s home page, they are taken to a page that requests access to their Google Analytics account. After they’ve provided access, they’re taken to the following pricing page, where they’re asked to choose between a few pricing plans.

Leads can either choose one of the options right away, or they can bounce, in which case CrazyEgg sends them a lead nurturing autoresponder sequence over a span of time.

For example, according to Clickfunnels , CrazyEgg builds a relationship over time with their audience by sending out “How can I help you” e-mails and educational e-mails to give leads more information about the product and the company.

Finally, when leads are ready to buy, they’re directed to the following page where they’re prompted to fill out their billing information. This page includes logos of popular brands that use CrazyEgg, as well as a list of common questions (i t’s no secret that FAQs can grow your sales ) .

T he reason this funnel works is because:

CrazyEgg gives customers real value at every step of the funnel. For example, their landing page copy — “What’s making your visitors leave?” — hits the exact burning question that their target market has.
They offer a 30-day free trial period so that there’s minimal risk for the buyer.
They set cookies on customers’ browsers so that they can easily pick up at the appropriate place within the funnel if they revisit the site.

Case Study #2: Basecamp

Basecamp is a project management tool that helps businesses collaborate in a more efficient way.

They follow a similar step-by-step funnel outline as CrazyEgg. They start off by building awareness for their company and products, then funnel prospects to a page where they have the option to express further interest in their offering, and finally they’re directed to a page where they can make the decision to purchase (in this case, sign up for a free trial).

Basecamp doesn’t normally run much paid advertising campaigns, but they do share relevant content on their blog — called Signal vs Noise — for their target audience.

Once potential customers move through the top of the funnel by coming across one of Basecamp’s social media updates, blog posts or referral links, they would likely land on the company’s website home page where they’re immediately prompted for their e-mail address and a few other details.

Here, they’re asked for their name, e-mail, and password. They also have the option to sign up with their Google account. Once potential customers submit their details, they’re taken to the final stage of the funnel.

Finally, leads are sent to a page where they have the option to sign up for a free trial. They’re also sent an e-mail about how to sign up. Once they start the free trial, they can start with a sample Basecamp dashboard or create their own.

T he main reason why this works is because it guides people from prospect to lead with just two clicks. High friction is one of the biggest reasons why people drop off in various parts of a marketinf funnel. Friction is anything that reduces conversions, like a slow loading page, too many forms that need to be filled out, more steps than necessary in a funnel, and a CTA button that’s hard to find.

According to Chris Goward , the CEO of WiderFunnel, friction is one of the biggest killers of e-commerce sales: it causes $1.8 trillion in abandoned shopping carts every year.

By reducing the number of steps in their funnel and keeping it highly efficient, Basecamp is able to maintain high conversions while keeping their process really simple.

Case Study #3: Grasshopper

Grasshopper is a virtual phone system that lets businesses set up toll-free numbers and their sales funnel has brought them over $30 million a year .

While this funnel is similar to CrazyEgg’s, Grasshopper simplified theirs even further by removing one step from their funnel sequence. The reduction in friction is responsible in a big way for their success.

As usual, the first step in a funnel is the awareness step. At this stage, Grasshopper leverages various forms of content, including YouTube videos and blog posts, as well as paid traffic to get their company’s message out to more people.

One unique way they differentiate themselves at this stage is by creating funny, interesting videos. For example, this “ 80’s Entrepreneur Training ” video got over 260,000 views:

They also have a blog that provides valuable content for their target market — entrepreneurs.

Once a prospect watches a YouTube video or stumbles across a blog post, there are built-in ways for them to get directed to Grasshopper’s home page.

For example, near the end of this YouTube video , they present a link to their website:

On the home page, they outline a few unique selling points, a money-back guarantee, and a CTA that says “see how it works.”

Once prospects click on “see how it works,” they’re taken to a longer form sales page where they’re encouraged to sign up. This page provides all the information prospects need to make a decision, along with several credibility markers (such as press features). If they click the button to sign up, they’re immediately directed to a pricing page.

Once prospects click on the “sign up” link, they’re presented with a pricing page with several different plans, which all include a 30-day money back guarantee.

They’ve also included recognized brands and press features as social proof to boost conversions on this page. A big reason why this works is because the product is clearly explained throughout the sales funnel, which weeds out unqualified leads.

While most people obsess over button colors or font sizes in sales funnels , the highest leverage activity is often optimizing your copy and making it specific to the needs of your target audience.

For example, one of the biggest concerns that clients have when choosing a marketing agency is whether the services will be tailored to their specific, unique situation. That’s why we included this at the bottom of our services page :

Grasshopper displayed a long form, in-depth sales page that preceded their pricing page which described how their product works and what it does — and because of this, their leads are mostly qualified.

Case Study #4: How a veterinarian boosted e-commerce sales by 50%

When we think of sales funnels, we assume that it’s mostly B2B startups or tech companies that use them. But in reality, funnels can provide a solid framework for boosting sales for all kinds of business. Even veterinarians.

Integrative veterinarian Dr. Ruth Roberts was able to boost e-commerce conversions by 50% by implementing a high-quality sales funnel.

When building a sales funnel, it’s important to have a centerpiece that serves at the “nucleus” of the funnel. This is the piece that you drive all traffic towards. Sumer Copywriting wrote a live-action video sales letter which served as the “nucleus” for Dr. Ruth’s campaign.

Because the target audience in this case was pet owners, the content of the video sales letter had to provide information that was valuable to them specifically. And if someone is searching for vet services, then chances are their pet is sick. Their video sales letter hit the nail on the head by providing a video that shows how to give pets a better life, even if they’re sick.

Next, the copywriting team built a lead nurturing campaign to build a relationship with the audience.

They created a couple of campaigns to start out — one that targeted pet owners with older or sick dogs and cats, and one to help people prevent diseases in their pets.

They captured leads through blog posts that offered advice on pet care, and also drove traffic through Facebook ads. This is how they generated awareness for the business. The opt-in incentive was a video, for which prospects would enter their e-mail addresses if they were interested.

Then they crafted a lead nurturing campaign. Once ideal clients have been attracted to the e-mail list, successful marketing funnels continue to deliver educational material to build a relationship with the list over time. Sumer Copywriting wrote sales e-mails that highlighted facts, offered advice, told stories, and gave away no-strings-attached gifts. In other words, they didn’t start the relationship by trying to sell anything.

The e-mails reflected the pain points of pet owners, such as not knowing which brand of food to trust and not knowing how to solve that problem. Here’s an excerpt from one of the e-mails :

Remember, the funnel shouldn’t end with a sale.

It should end with referrals.

I t’s important to enhance the prospect’s user experience once they become a customer so that they are a source of referrals for the business. The post-purchase sequence in this case streamlined username and password storage, content access, bonus deliveries, renewal reminders, and more.

They summarized their process for coming up with a sales funnel like this:

They came up with a comprehensive marketing strategy to turn cold leads into returning buyers.
They composed compelling sales copy that reveals how to avoid illnesses common in dogs and cats — content that their target audience would love.
They created e-mail sequences that nurtured, offered free content, sold the program, and ultimately enhanced the user experience to turned customers into advocates.
They created a story-driven sales letter that captivates and educates viewers.
They used Click Funnels and Infusionsoft as tools throughout this process.
They set pricing for membership and shipments.
They initiated social media and other outreach campaigns to generate leads, driving traffic to the sales page and video content.
They increased conversions with split testing.

The results from this case study are quite stunning :

541 new e-mail list subscribers from $950 in ad spend
23 active subscriptions that generate recurring revenue of $730/month
Initial sales of $3,568
$15,000 in total online revenue in one month as a result of other promotional efforts

This case study goes to show how far you can go if you just understand the pain points of your market and create valuable content for them at every step in your funnel.

Case Study #5: Telestream

Telestream offers software that allows users to get video content to any audience, no matter how it’s created, distributed, or viewed. They produced a screen recording and editing product called ScreenFlow, as well as Wirecast for video streaming and production.

Telestream’s funnel consists of driving traffic to their website through a blog and paid traffic, and from there users can try out or purchase software.

This case study outlines how Telestream was able to boost their site conversion rate, send more traffic to cart pages, increase cart conversion rate, and ultimately boost their revenue by $2 million . Their cart conversion rate grew by 26%.

The first step in tweaking their funnel to get these results was changing their site navigation. According to Wider Funnel , the “Buy Menu” navigation tab on their site was confusing to users in the following ways:

The CTA under the menu “Buy” said “Contact,” which made users confused.
The links under “Buy” opened up an e-mail window where users had to type in their requests.

Simply put, there were many points of friction that prevented users from being able to easily purchase products from the site. This was deterring users from going from the “interest” stage to actually making their purchase.

By adjusting the copy and navigation labels, Telestream was able to see a site-wide boost of 4% in revenue , which added another $395,000 per year.

Next, they adjusted the product page to make it easier for new prospects to go through the funnel in a clear, step-by-step manner.

Before the adjustment, there were a few problems with the product page. For example, the “hero” section of the site featured three calls to action, which made it less likely that prospects would click any of the options to move through the funnel.

Source: Wider Funnel

In addition to that, important product features were pushed far down the page, where many users weren’t actually scrolling.

By changing the CTAs on the hero image and making them more focused, they were able to boost completed orders by 16% .

Notice how the image above highlights the product features and explicitly encourages prospects to move down the funnel by downloading a free trial or buying directly.

A few minor changes to your landing page copy can make a drastic difference when it comes to your conversions. By reducing friction and providing prospects with content that helps them make the decision to take next step in your sales process, you could potentially get massive increases in conversions overnight.

There are different ways to construct your sales funnel. You can use the classic AIDA approach , or add steps to the end of your funnel as suggested by Neil Patel’s conversion funnel .

You could make your funnel even more complicated, depending on the data you want to measure.

But at the end of the day, the same principles apply. You still have to guide your potential customers from the time they first hear about your business to the time they’re ready to make a purchase in the simplest way possible.

Depending on the amount of traffic you get, even small amounts of friction in your funnel could cause high drop off at each step. That’s why it’s important to understand what your customers want — and what their emotions are — at a deep level, so that you can push them through your funnel as smoothly as possible without leaving much money on the table.

Did you miss the first post in this series? Read it now: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Marketing Funnel

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