What is a lead funnel? The ultimate guide and examples

Lead Funnel is a popular and effective method that helps your business convert web visitors into leads and become customers.

Understanding the processes and stages inside can help you build your brand, trust, and relationship with prospects and increase your conversion rates to convince them from visitors to leads and become a customer.

In this guild, I will share with you

• The benefits of the lead funnel for your business
• How to create one that converts
• and real examples, so you could learn ideas from them

Let get started!

What Is Lead Funnel?​

Lead Funnel (someone called it lead generation funnel or lead magnet funnel) is a sales funnel strategy. It not only helps you generate leads but also builds brand, create trust, and build relationships. From there, convert visitors into leads and become customers through 5 parts:

1. Lead Magnet
2. Squeeze Page
3. Thank You Page
4. Sales Page
5. Follow up Funnel

Why Lead Funnel Important?

The funnel works well with cold traffic helps you collect email lists, connect, and build relationships with your potential customers online.

After subscribers go through the lead funnel, we can drive them into the Buyer Funnel a few days later (or immediately from the Thank You page) and start making money.

How Lead Funnel Work In Your Business?

Types Of Lead Generation Funnel

1. Squeeze Page Funnel

A special type of lead funnel using a squeeze page solves the problems that pop-up ads encounter and works better because each funnel stage is designed with a unique goal. Potential customers will not be distracted and confused by many links (menu, Category, another post, anchor text, link footer, …)

2. Survey Funnel

Generate leads by using a quiz.

Through a quick survey, you can separate your visitors into a different group. So you can speak a directly specific message and offer it to them based on who they are.

3. Bridge Funnel

The Bridge Funnel has a page that call Bridge page, where you will instruct them the steps necessary to do or explain essential concepts before getting into the funnel

Lead Funnel Stages

There are many different lead funnel framework and variations, but they have 4 stages in common.

1. Squeeze Page

The squeeze page is a landing page that helps you generate leads, where you exchange your lead magnet for a name, email address, phone number,…

The goal is to make an offer good enough to attract your audience and convince them to trade their contact information to get what you offer.

Once we have their contact details, we can start a lead nurturing sequence and build the relationship, educate, and offer products or services in the future.

2. Thank You Page

On the thank you page, you build trust with your prospective customers by giving them what you said you’d give them. You fulfill your promise.

Now, you should introduce your product or another funnel here. Some people will buy it and help you break even.

If this is your first funnel, it’s ok!

This time to start building a relationship through email marketing. After you create your next funnel, you can go back and put the link on the thank you page.

3. Sales Page

This time to make money by selling proposition and your top benefits. Your prospect will come to your sales page (and start buying journey) from the thank-you page or email.

A sales page is a standalone page created for one goal that is sales your products or services.

When I start your first business online, I didn’t have money to pay for ads.

So I start writing a blog. Traffic comes with me for free by inbound marketing efforts.

I push people to get my lead magnet so I can start building a relationship with them. But, in the long run, I want to be able to buy ads, I should make money quickly to break even. The sales page can help me do that.

If you haven’t a product yet, It’s also a good idea to become an affiliate and promote other products.

4. Follow Up Funnel

As I said above, the Lead Generation Funnel has 2 goals:

• Build list through a squeeze page
• Nurturing relationship, brand, and trust

You can do this by Follow up Funnel. Based on the contact details they give, there are many tools to help you follow up with customers, such as Facebook chatbot, SMS, desktop notification, etc., instead of only through email marketing.

Therefore you have more chances to interact with customers.

When prospects subscribed to your mailing list, you will initially send a follow-up email series. Now everything is automated by tools like Clickfunnels, Getresponse, Active Campaign, Aweber, etc.

You can write an email and schedule, add tags to optimize the personal experience…You just set it once and never do it again (don’t forget A/B testing)

After the first email series, you will bring them to another list. 

Here you can send broadcast emails to introduce new articles on your blog, videos on Youtube, Case study, Podcast… To build followers on social networking platforms and promote other products on the value ladder.

Now, I am going to show you my best practices about how to create a Lead Funnel.

How To Create Your Lead Funnel

As mentioned above, there are many different types of lead funnel. However, I will show you how to create the most basic sales funnel using the lead magnet.

The tool I have used:

• Funnel builder software: Clickfunnels – Click here to trial 14 days for FREE
• Sending email: Active Campaign, Getresponse or Aweber, etc

Besides, you can learn more about other tools in the Sales Funnel Software article here.

Step 1: Create Your Lead Magnet

One of the essential factors to convince potential customers to exchange email addresses is the Lead magnet.

To be able to create a compelling lead magnet, you need to go through 3 steps:

1. Identify who you want to attract.
2. Create content
3. Design

Learn how to create a lead magnet step-by-step in this guide.

1. Identify Who You Want To Attract

In step one, you need to:

• Determine who your target is?
• What problem are they having?
• How do you help them solve that?

I know this is boring, but the conversion rate will be high if you do it well.

Most people who are new to online business, especially Affiliate marketers, don’t have products and don’t know who their customers are.

Think simple and write it down

Remember, the mission of an entrepreneur is not focus on sales products; they solve problems of the market.

For examples, I sales product that helps marketer increase traffic to the website.

Target audience: People who want to increase the followers on Instagram

First, I need to determine does anyone is interested in this topic. If you’re familiar with SEO ( Search Engine Optimization), you will know there are many tools out there that could help.

In this case, I will use Ubersuggest (because it’s free)

The result returned has 1300 searches per month. So, we have people care about this topic. Next, I think I’ll provide Instagram Tips e-book to help people build their followers.

So I had the idea to start my lead magnet and be able to answer questions.

• My dream customers are: People who want to increase website traffic through Instagram
• Their problem is: They want to learn how to build more followers on Instagram
• I can help them by creating an ebook about Instagram tips

2. Create Content For Lead Magnet

There are 3 common ways that you can apply to create content.

Do It Yourself

You will build the content for the lead magnet yourself.

Pros

• You can write with your voice and your own story
• Unique content, positioning you as an expert in the field.

Cons

• Waste your time.
• Difficult for those who are not good at content marketing
• If you are a beginner and not experienced, creating quality content is almost impossible

PRL (Private Label Rights)

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. Did you know there’s a whole market of people who hire ghostwriters to write books and then sell the rights to the books?

If you go to Google right now and type in PLR Instagram or private label rights Instagram, there are probably a dozen Instagram products out there for sale.

You pay $12 or $15 and you get the rights to the product.

Pros:

• Save time.
• Initial costs are cheap.
• You can test the lead magnet quickly to see will people want to receive it or not.

Cons:

Currently, most of the content inside PLRs ​​are outdated. Therefore, it can adversely affect your brand, breaking the trust of potential customers after they finish watching.

Hire Someone Do It For You

Pros:

• You don’t have to do it yourself
• Save time
• Quality guaranteed

Cons:

• The cost of hiring a good copywriter can be a bit high. It’s not suitable for beginners or people who just start an online business
• Hard to find freelancers who have good skills and fit your requirement.

Lead Magnet Creation Tips

If you use PLR, you should put together many products and then edit the content to fit the current trend. In case you do it yourself or outsource; follow these steps:

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a tool that gives you content ideas that more engagement, like, share on social media. I use this tool to understand my target audience and search intent.

Now I will enter the keyword “Instagram Tips”.

The post has 40.2K engagement, 10.3K, and 9.8K on Facebook. This proves that content is excellent and much loved.

1. Outline Content

Now that you have the reference content that has more people engagements and loved. You’ll want to take a look at the content and synthesize the best knowledge of every page and outline the content you need.

2. Content Creation

You can use content in PLR and combination with the top 10 Google search results and your personal experience.

In other cases, you can also hire freelancers and send outlines to them. I usually hire a copywriter on Fiverr.com or Upwork

I recommend hiring the Philippines people because their English skills are relatively good, but the cost is also much cheaper.

3. Lead Magnet Design

If your team has a designer using Photoshop or illustrator, this is quite simple.

However, the majority of Funnel Secrets readers are mostly beginners, small businesses, or Affiliates. Therefore, this is also a challenge.

There are 2 methods that I often use when creating book cover

Canva.Com

This is one of the big platforms for the design that marketers often use (even your design skills terrible). With powerful features, an extensive template library, and over 1 million images for you to use, this is a useful tool that you should use in your business.

With Canva, you don’t need to have much knowledge of design skills.

They also provide you the templates and tools so you can create your eye-catching Images just by dragging and dropping simply.

Funnel Rolodex

Funnel Rolodex is a platform created to assist you in building a funnel. Here, you can hire freelancers related to content marketing, page builder, funnel optimization, Ads service, Designer, and more.

With Canva, you don’t need to have much knowledge of design skills.

They also provide you the templates and tools so you can create your eye-catching Images just by dragging and dropping simply.

This is where I usually hire designers for ebook cover with relatively cheap price from 15-20 $

And this is the result.

Thus the ebook has been completed.

Next, we will go into the next step to create a lead funnel. The first is to create a Squeeze page.

Step 2: Build Your Squeeze Page To Exchange Email Rolodex

If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results. – Tony Robbins

It’s true when you build your funnel.

Instead of spending a lot of time designing your squeeze page, you can learn it from people who have been successful and have high conversion rates.

Some people call it “Spy,” and others call it “Funnel Hack.” It consists of 3 main steps:

1. Figure out a successful funnel
2. Learn their framework, page design, headline…
3. Model it

Remember, “model” and “copy” are completely different.

For example: Here is the Marketing Secrets Blackbook funnel

Official website: https://marketingsecrets.com/blackbook

Then I use Clickfunnels to clone this page (If you are using WordPress you can also use Thrive Architect or Elementor Pro instead)

In this case, I click on Classic funnel builder and choose Collect Email

Create a name and tags then click on “Build Funnel”

Clickfunnels has many funnel templates for you. In this case, because I would like to design like Marketing Secrets Blackbook funnel, so I pick a blank page.

I analyze the funnel and sketch layout.

Then I build it inside Clickfunnels and add elements

And this is the final result

You can see this page at https://www.go.funnelsecrets.us/igsecrets

Download IG secrets ebook share funnel free here to get started!

As you can see, the two pages are almost the same. But the fact is that I didn’t copy anything. In case you created your own lead generation page, here are some tips to remember:

• The landing page needs to be simple: Most of my landing pages only have a headline, an image, and an opt-in box. Oftentimes, a landing page might not convert because it’s too complex; there’s too much stuff happening on it, and it’s confusing your visitor.
• The headline should be engaging and curious to pay visitors attention: Most of the high bounce rates or low conversion are due to the headline not curious enough.

In case you are not good at copywriting, you can use Funnel Scripts (The software helps you create your headline, sales scripts, email scripts, Ads scripts, and more in less than 5 minutes. You fill the blanks and answer some questions).

To learn more about this tool, you can watch the webinar demo here: Funnelscripts.com

Besides, they also have a trial version that helps you create the headline for free. Click here to try it out.

Step 3: Build Your Thank You Page

Thank you page is also built similar to the squeeze page, need to ensure 3 elements:

• Simple
• Curiosity
• Tell people what they should to do

In thank-you page you have 2 main parts:

Step 1: Fulfill the previous promise; provide links and showing people how to get a lead magnet.

Step 2: Introduce your first offer or other funnels (help you break even)

If you don’t have a product, you can invite customers to follow you on the social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube

You can see this page at http://www.go.funnelsecrets.us/igsecrets

Download IG secrets ebook share funnel free here

Step 4: Build A Relationship Through Follow Up Funnel

The final step is to build a follow-up funnel.

Note that the Follow-up funnel is not an email campaign. This is a period of building relationships with subscribers and converting them into customers through communication tools such as Email, Facebook messenger, SMS, desktop notification …

The most popular method that marketers use today is email marketing. After they have opt-in you will add them to the email list and start sending something.

• I usually will send one email per day for the first five days to introduce myself and my business.
• How my business can bring value and solve their problems?
• And introduce the first offer.

After five days, they will be transferred to another list (or tagged) where I send daily email templates: Notify new blog posts, upload Youtube videos, new podcasts, product launch, and sell different products on the value ladder.

Now create your first follow-ups funnel. It can be a Facebook chatbot or email autoresponder (because it’s popular and straightforward to install)