It’s no secret that in today’s online marketing world, having a funnel can make the difference between a successful campaign, and an underutilized marketing budget. With service-based businesses, however, often times completing a sale is not as simple as pointing someone to your website.

To bridge the gap between prospect and client/customer, a useful step is to begin collecting leads that are interested in your service offering. With lead generation marketing you can begin to build a list of your potential clients & customers, to whom you can complete sales, or further you marketing at little to no cost.

In this article I’m going to break down a simple lead generation funnel is responsible for at least 100s of thousands of revenue in our clients business, that you can use too.

What exactly is this funnel? It looks like this

(Shout out to Mikael Dia for his awesome software, Funnelytics)

There are 5 things you need to make this work. Let’s break down the funnel.

Your Lead Magnet (Your Offer)

Before you can begin collecting leads, you need to offer something in exchange. For someone to give you their contact information you must offer them some sort of ‘ethical bribe’ in exchange. This will act as the ‘magnet’ for you leads.

For your lead magnet or offer, you want to select something they can consume immediately or something with a high perceived value. Some common examples are:

• Ebook or PDF Download

• Coupon for Services

• Certificate towards services

• Registration for a Free event (online or in person)

• An add-on service or product

In most cases with our clients, we offer either a coupon (i.e. 50% off) or a certificate (i.e. $25) towards a service.

When you’re coming up with your offer or lead magnet think about a few things:

• Who is the perfect person to use my service?

• What benefit will they receive from using my service?

• What is something my ideal client would love to have?

It’s best to keep it simple if you’re unsure and use a discount offer or add-on service.Facebook Ad

Now that you have your lead magnet created, it’s time to be to plug this into a Facebook Ad.

Facebook Ads have 3 main components:

The Campaign — What marketing goal you will select for your ads.

The Adset — Who you will target, and how much you will spend

The Ad — The actual ad(s) themselves.

For your campaign, chose the traffic objective. (If you have advanced knowledge of Facebook ads you can use the Conversion objective)

For your adset, you will select your target audience. Remember when creating the offer asking, “Who is the perfect person to use my service?”. Use these demographics and interest to select your targeting in Facebook.

Lastly, it’s time to create the ad itself. First, select an image that captures attention and aligns with your service or offer. (i.e. if you’re a dentist, your image likely shouldn’t be of race cars).

State your offer in the headline section of your ad. (i.e. Sign Up Today To Save 50% on [Service]!)

Put the rest of the text in your ad copy. This is where you will go on to describe the offer, the benefits someone will get from using your service, and how the offer will get someone their desired result faster, better or cheaper by choosing you.

If you’re selling a more expensive service you’ll likely need some longer sales copy. You may need several paragraphs to persuade someone to take your offer. For less expensive services, simply stating the offer and the benefits in a few sentences will likely suffice.

Make sure to end your ad with a call to action. For example:

“Click below to schedule your free consultation and take 1 step closer towards the home of your dreams”

“Get your 25% off coupon using the link below”

Link this ad to your funnel or landing page, as you’re almost ready to start collecting leads.

Landing Page

The landing page of your funnel is where you will actually collect your leads contact information. You can use any tools such as ClickFunnels, Leadpages, or one of the many Wordpress plugins.

For the design of the landing page, simple often is the best. Our best converting landing pages have only:

• A Headline

• A Sub Headline

• A Form (For collecting name, phone, and email)

• And a Button (to submit the form)

In your headline, restate the offer or benefit. You can usually use the exact same headline as your Facebook ad. For your sub-headline, describe the offer, benefits, and or conditions in 2–3 sentences. Your form should ask for at the minimum an email, but typically a name, email, and phone number. Lastly, the button to submit the form should have a call to action. Choose something like “Submit”, “Get this Offer”, “Send this to me” etc.

Thank You Page

Now that you have the lead, it’s time to take them to action. On the thank you page you should do 3 main things:

• Confirm that they signed up

• Give them what they asked for (or deliver it via email)

• Tell them what will happen next.

At this point, you should point them towards your core service offering. If they signed up for a coupon, give them a link on this page to book their appointment or your sales page.

If you put a second offer on this page, you can drive more people to take action quicker. For example, ‘take an additional 5% off when you call today!’ or a similar bonus offer.

Close The Sale

Service-based business varies in how they make their sales. While some do it online, others prefer to do so on the phone. The last step of the funnel is to follow up with your lead if they haven’t already booked their appointment, consultation, or other service offerings.

You can use tools like Actionetics in ClickFunnels, or another email provider to help you automate some of your follow up the process. Email is practically free, so make sure to email along with your phone call follow-ups to help you close the sale.

What you can expect…

Congrats! You’ve built out a funnel to create your endless supply of new clients. What should you expect?Every industry is going to be different but aims for between a 10–20% opt-in rate or the percent of people who visit your page that actually signs up for your offer. If it’s higher, you’re doing great. If it’s lower, then consider making some changes to make the landing page more clear, or more similar to the ad.

When you get leads coming in through your funnel, it’s not uncommon to have them across a spectrum. On average, 20% are great and ready to buy, 20% are unqualified or unready, and the reaming 60% are in the middle. That’s why it’s important to follow up.

Final Tips

Here are a couple of final tips, and things to consider about your lead generation funnel.

How much you should and will pay for lead will vary greatly with every industry. What is most important is that your funnel is profitable.

If in the end your funnel still isn’t bringing you leads, or it the price isn’t right, take a step back. You need to get the right offer, in front of the right people, at the right time. One of those variables needs to change. Perhaps a different target audience, a different offer, or giving them more context before making an offer.

Lastly, take action, learn, and modify as needed. A lot of funnels don’t work exactly right the first time, but you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t start. 1 complete funnel will beat out a half complete funnel, or just an idea, any day. As Russell Brunson says ‘You’re Just One Funnel Away’