Like a funnel, a particular company takes people through a process when purchasing a product. The process can be divided into different stages, which differ from company to company depending on the specific sales model. The people that start at the beginning will not end up taking action at the end.

The best ways to generate traffic to your sales funnel are using multiple social media platforms, targeted emails, podcasts, educational YouTube videos, guest posting, high-quality search engine optimized content, and purchasing advertisements.

If you want to make money online selling a physical/digital product or service, you need to understand how to drive traffic to your products. You might have the best merchandise globally, but if that potential customer is not aware of your existence, you’ll probably make less or no sales.

In today’s article, I'll be discussing in detail several untapped methods you can use to drive traffic to your sales funnel for free and turn that potential visitor into a recurring sale!

According to a report by Oberlo, there are over 3.78 billion social media users globally.

The number is rapidly growing with time as more and more people are starting to use social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That’s a big number over there for your sales funnel!

You’ll surely not drive the entire social media world to your sales funnel. However, with the right strategies, you should get enough customers to convert into sales and become recurring customers. 

Social media platforms are the easiest place to create awareness for the product/service you’d like to sell, and once harnessed properly, you should see conversions in your sales funnel.

Again, you should not just stick to a single social site but experiment with the most popular social media platforms and find out what works best for your product and maximize on making more sales.

In my experience, a good sales funnel needs to;

• Create awareness- The first time you catch your customers attention
• Interest the customer in moving to the next stage of your sales funnel
• Make the customer decide to make a purchase
• Finally, take action in making the purchase

One of the best ways to build hype around your product is by creating a Facebook group tailored towards your specific product. That way, you could offer an upsell or down-sell to the group members while taking them through your sales funnel and maximizing the number of people who take action.

Email marketing is the process of promoting products to potential clients using email.

It's a form of online marketing companies and individuals use to create awareness of their new products/services inexpensively. It can significantly increase your sales once done correctly.

Even though social media marketing has surpassed email marketing in the recent past, email is still effective.

One way to capture these emails is through creating an opt-in on your landing page asking your visitors to key in their email addresses in exchange for a free article, product, or daily newsletters.

Customers taking action from email marketing tend to be more personalized with your product since they’ve interacted with your content before, in exchange for leaving you their email addresses.

A good email marketing sales funnel will;

• Build your brand and form a strong relationship with customers
• Generate more awareness around your product or service
• Increase your website visitors and revenue
• Establish you as a go-to-person in your niche
• Improve the way you communicate with your potential clients

The trick is to create a mailing list and establish authority in your niche by providing value to your visitors. Give them a reason to want to click through the emails you send them because they know what value your products could bring.

Podcasts let you connect to your potential customer more discreetly through your stories.

Unlike written content, podcasts are a great way to share your story, journey, and achievements through speaking to the client directly. As of recent times, podcasts have grown globally as more and more people are starting to listen to them.

While traveling, I tend to listen to my favorite podcasts through my phone, which is a great opportunity for businesses and individuals to drive traffic to their sales funnel by engaging with their possible customers.

However, for a podcast to convert listeners into customers, you need to value them first and offer something no one else offers in your field. Make your listeners trust you to the point of willing to spend on you.

You don’t need to get technical to create your first podcast. There are plenty of free platforms available that will let you do so at the comfort of your house and in a very inexpensive way.

However, make use of a good microphone and avoid recording from noisy places so that your listeners can clearly understand what you are saying. Just like blogs, content is king, a rule that shouldn’t be forgotten when creating a podcast.

Youtube is the second largest search engine in terms of traffic, sitting just behind google.

Starting on YouTube is pretty easy as anyone can set up their account and begin publishing! However, the first few videos might not be great, but you'll get the hang of it with time and perfect the skill. Every great YouTuber you see out there was once an amateur like you. Consistency is key when it comes to video. 

By providing high-quality and educational content to your audience, you can throw in some offers and take your viewers through your sales funnel. If you’ve got a smartphone with a good camera, you're good to go and start creating youtube videos.

But if you’ve got a good DSLR, then you’ve got more than enough to start that next big youtube channel that’ll play a big role in marketing your products/services and taking people through your sales funnel

Unlike written content, I’ve realized that people prefer watching a video on the subject at hand, considering it provides a personal connection between the creator and the viewer, especially when discussing technical issues.

Nevertheless, you are only limited by your imagination when it comes to Youtube content creation. The platform will unquestionably benefit your sales funnel in;

• Keeping your potential customer’s attention for longer periods
• Videos have proven to increase conversion rate
• It can be shared across other social sites, increasing engagement and sales
• Access to free traffic
• You can get found on search engines much easier

It all starts by nurturing and growing an audience. Once people trust what you’ve got to offer, they’ll be willing to spend on your products/services.

Guest posting is a great way to generate Do-Follow/No-Follow links, reach a new audience and generate more revenue with your sales funnel.

However, guest posting needs to be done correctly to generate traffic to your sales funnel. You can’t be guest posting on a technology blog, whereas you are selling historical ebooks.

You need to do a guest post on a blog with authority in your niche to connect with a different audience that shares similar interests as your product/service. The new audience is more likely to convert into a customer than guest posting on any blog you find far from your niche.

Bloggers and influencers are forever going to need new and informative content, something that takes time. Therefore, most influential blogs are always open to new ideas from experts in their niche to share their thoughts with a new audience.

Most influential blogs will link back to your website via Do-follow/No-Follow links easily accessible by people visiting the site. You can use this opportunity by tapping into a new audience that’s willing to go through your sales funnel and make that sale.

Advantages of guest posting include;

• Reach a new audience with informative content
• Growth to your brand in a new community
• Generate a backlink to your site leading to more traffic
• Increase social sharing of your content

By sharing quality content on an authority site, people will likely want to know more about you or your brand. That’ll make them visit your site, therefore, increasing traffic to your sales funnel.

Google algorithm loves well-optimized websites. They tend to show on the front page when someone performs a search as compared to non-optimized sites.

Search Engine Optimization is a broad subject that needs to be discussed on its own, but I’ll try to tackle it in the simplest terms possible for you to understand without going through too much jargon.

SEO is a great way to get on top pages of major search engines and drive targeted traffic to your sales funnel. The idea is to exceed the competition in rankings and maximize your business’s visibility among potential customers.

If done correctly, traffic from search engines will serve best to your sales funnel with even greater conversions because people coming from the search engine are more likely to purchase by searching for the exact thing on the engine.

Sites that produce great content, are linked to authority sites in the niche, use keywords correctly, and are optimized to work on various platforms are more likely to appear on top of the search page.

Your website needs to be easily navigable for both the user and the search bot to appear at the top of search terms. Meaning that your website's design needs to get updated if it's outdated.

Understanding different SEO techniques will greatly generate more traffic to your sales funnel, meaning more sales! And as an entrepreneur, it’s wise to follow up and keep up with the latest Search Engine changes to stay ahead of the competition when ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

The reason why Search Engine Optimization is the best route to drive traffic to your sales funnel is that;

• Traffic generated is targeted and organic.
• The conversion rate is higher as compared to the other traffic generation methods.
• You don’t need to pay anyone to get the visitors.
• You get a chance of getting ahead of the competition
• Increased brand awareness to the potential customer

All these benefits mentioned above will make it easier to focus on other things while your sales funnel runs on autopilot, racking more sales.

Paid advertising is fundamentally the art of buying targeted ads for your sales funnel.

All the other methods discussed in this article are free except for this one as you’ll pay for the traffic. Google and social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great places to buy advertising to your sales funnel.

If done properly, the traffic is more targeted and takes little time to show results than the other methods. You get to purchase keywords that people are looking for directly from search engines.

Any business that’s successful and making a profit today has spent a huge amount of money, whether digitally or offline, to create and boost products/services through advertising.

For starters, this might not be the right method to boost traffic to your sales funnel. You need first to understand how to create targeted adverts and not waste money targeting people who might not be interested in your product/service.

Say you’d like to sell onions to people living in Adelanto, a city in California; it’s much better to target these people directly than targeting the entire state. By doing this, you’ll be increasing the conversion rate to your sales funnel.

The benefits of using paid advertising to generate traffic to your sales funnel include;

• The traffic is more targeted to potential customers
• You get faster results from your campaigns
• Appear on top of the competition
• Access to analytics on how your visitors behave and what works best for them
• Only spend once someone visits your sales funnel’s landing page
  
  

Conclusion

In conclusion, whether you are an entrepreneur or representing a B2B business, effective marketing could skyrocket your product/service sales. To make more targeted sales, one needs an effective sales strategy to funnel visitors and convert them into paying customers.