Do you think marketers are getting carried away with sales funnels?

Sounds like you are explaining a transaction process and not a sales funnel.

A sales funnel is more of a business model.

It's the latest fad in Internet Marketing. I have to agree with you on it being annoying. I have seen it a lot here on the Warrior forum with many of the latest WSOs released.

Not to hijack your thread, but what I also find annoying are all the OTOs. It's ridiculous sometimes and let's not forget all of the worthless bonuses too and last but not least, all of the affiliates / JVs jumping on the same offers and filling your inbox with the exact same copy from the product developer's swipe files for the offers.

Jeez! At least take a minute to put your own spin on the swipe email or better yet actually, heaven forbid, give a real review of the product.

The idea is very simple: keep offering them more products if they are agreeing to buy them. If they are willing to spend more money with you, then let them. Once they say no, you stop offering (well, there's a last ditch downsell tossed in).

When Launch Tree came out, they had several case studies showing conversion rates at the various points/steps of this -and it was very compelling.

My question to you will be: Do you think McDonald's are getting carried away with asking questions like "Would you like to upgrade a set meal?", "How about fries to go with it?", etc.

I think that people in the IM space are more used to seeing this process because we probably (no stats to back up this statement!) buy more than the average Joe. The reason it's used is because it works. The great thing is that there is a button at the bottom that says "no thanks". This transaction process is an accelerated sales funnel.

Would you like to try our new CBO?
No? Ok, would you like fries with that?
Anything to drink?
How about a fresh apple pie?

I do believe in offering your customer an extra package if they bought the last one... ahem (this is called marketing)

i find it fascinating that some marketers complain about being marketed to lol

we are marketers and we market our products, skills and services

if you went into a bike shop and purchased a bicycle would you complain if the guy in the store said to you "would you like to include a full set of protective clothing with your order sir" before you got to the checkout?

just think how many times this happens in stores, it happens all the time but we just never think about it

i will admit that some people online do go over the top and have like 9 exit pop ups etc, i mean that is pretty insane but at the end of the day if it's working for them then that's cool

Well, it does work... Almost every vendor does it

The concept of sales funnels is a bit annoying but at times you may find what you may have been looking for. In case you don't want to buy you can always say no thanks.

My take on this new sales funnel is just be upfront about your offers. Many WSO's that I have seen lately the product creator seems to want to hold you in suspense and not reveal their OTO's in their sales copy and then their sales funnel seems more like a trap and a maze.

Once you purchase the original offer then here's something else to buy and if you don't then you will have to do all this work by hand but with the new wiz bang gizmo software it automates the process. So you don't want to do all the tedious work by hand do you? For just $X you buy the wiz bang gizmo software.

Now you're thinking ok, I'm done with the OTO's, but wait, not so fast...The wiz bang gizmo software only does XYZ, if you don't want to manually have to do all that other stuff manually you need wiz bang gizmo on steroids. So now you get wiz bang gizmo on steroids because who wants to do all that other XYZ stuff manually. So you buy OTO2 for even more $$$.

Now you're for sure your done and heading to checkout...But not so fast there Spanky... No, no, no...Now that you have the original product, plus upsell 1 and upsell 2, now if you want to know how to put all this stuff together and really make it work, you need our personal one on one Skype group membership for a monthly fee of $XX / month. Oh and don't forget to sign up for our webinar where we're going to try and sell some other crap loosly related to this offer so we can wring even more $$$ out of you under the ruse of an information packed webinar.

We all have seen it and some of us have done it. Then people have buyers remorse after all that nonsense when they realize they just purchased a whole bunch of stuff that they have no clue how to use and then they see the overwhelming volume of PDF's and videos and all the FREE bonuses and their heads are spinning and they realize that they would have to lock themselves away for at least a month to comprehend all the stuff they just bought and get overwhelmed.

Now you have the product creators and JV's wondering what went wrong and why is the refund rate so high? DUH!!! You just created your own mess.

I say why be sneaky? Present the customer with all the facts in the sale page and then letting them decide if they need and want all the OTO's. I don't know about you guys, but when I've experienced crap like the above scenario I feel like I've just been had and when I read a lot of the WSO threads I'm not alone.

I don't get the need to be sneaky with your sales funnel. Why not put it out there upfront? If they're good products then why wait and spring it on people during the buying process? I know I prefer to purchase the front end and choose the upsell products I see as necessary, rather than being made to feel like a sucker through all the upsells, down sells, cross sells etc. The maze and trap approach IMHO SUCKS!

All of you who want to come back with these sales statistics telling me how much better this process works show me the stats on a more open process as I describe as well. My thoughts on statistics are, Figures don't lie, but liars can figure.

Of course some marketers are getting carried away with their sales funnels. There are some out there that implement a sales funnel and they don't really test their results. They see money come in and to them that means that it's working.

And of course, some are not. The bottomline for me is, who really cares?

While it's a good idea to watch what others are doing, what's more important is to test out your own sales funnels, obtain feedback from your customers, and focus on the overall customer experience and not just your conversions.

Also bear in mind that some marketers out there do a lot of testing and they have very intriticate funnels for a reason. Those are usually very seamless because they know what they're doing. The ones that don't do any real testing is usually pretty obvious because they aren't seamless.

I was in a sales funnel last week where the guy set up 6-7 different pop-ups and their stupid script asked me several times if I REALLY wanted to leave his website. I'm never doing business with that guy, unless he cleans up his act.

I'd say in some cases it's not an ego trip, but more likely it's just bad marketing.

RoD

In regards to most big product launches, the sales funnel has been tested, tweaked, optimised, tested, tweaked and then optimised again before the "general public" see it.

Thus, when you purchase the product, the sales funnel you see is the one that converted the best. Basic marketing, if you have something that converts higher than the other, that contains several up-sells, downsells and exit scripts you'd be stupid not to use it, since the test results have already confirmed that it converts.

In regards the upsell process, the up-sells (usually) are either a continuation of the main process, further work on the main process, or some sort of way to make your life easier by following the method you've just purchased such as software.

Now, if we have two upsells priced at $197 and $147 with the original product costing $49, that gives us a total of $393.

If instead of offering the upsells, we create a product that includes the main product and both upsells, we will then have to price it at $393 - which for many buyers is priced to high, not to mention if the buyer see's that price they will most likely run a mile (unless of course your selling via a webinar and so on).

So to sum up - the upsells are added as a way of getting the main product out there to the public, with two upsells aimed at people who are either A) more serious or B) want results quicker/further training from the upsells.

Plus as others have already said, upsells help create a higher EPC which is what the product creator wants so that he can get several JV partners and affiliates based on his high EPC. Who would want to work with someone who has a 0.50 EPC and so on? That means the sales funnel is not converting how it should be.

Very simple, sales funnels and pathways are big sources of money if you do them right.

Lets look at this made up but possible example:

10% purchase your $9.99 product
4% purchase an upsell of $19.99
than out of those who purchase 1% purchase yet another product for $19.99
those that do not purchase the first upsell, 3% purchase a downsell of $4.99

If you send 1000 visitors to your page with just the first product you make: $999
With the same 1000 visitors and your additional funnel you make: 999 + 79.96 + 14.97 which is ~$95 more! So its like 9-10% more money for you! That is a big difference for your ROI! Plus some people are doing this very very well, far surpassing my example, just FYI!

Honestly for me the sales funnels work, but many people make it too complex. If you use only about a few levels of the funnel into your business, you will be fine.

I don't mind an OTO. But I bought a $7 report the other day. I had never read anything from this individual so I was intrigued about one statement made on the sales page. It was well worth the like $7.52 I paid for it. Taught me something worth much more that I had NO Knowledge of.

But he sent me through like 5 other different Upsales Downsales.......a little bit extreme.

Just my 2 cents..........

What!? Marketers complaining about funnels, upsells, OTOs, etc? say it aint so!

There are good and bad ways to implement sales funnels, but if you're a marketers of any sort (online or offline) you MUST implement some sort of upsell process in your sales flow.

Perhaps people skeptical about funnels should go by a domain from godaddy or buy something from amazon.

Or you can just ask them how much extra money they make with their funnels.

Perhaps people skeptical about funnels should go by a domain from godaddy or buy something from amazon.

Or you can just ask them how much extra money they make with their funnels.

Marketers complaining about funnels, upsells, downsells, corsssells!!

And yes! When you buy a front end product, you will ask to purchase other products to earn real money and get commissions. It's a trick of marketing products.

Better find out something which have not any such type of funnel that make you confuse.

The sales funnel is an art form in itself. Getting your buyers list and selling them a higher end product is how top marketers make top money.

As for OTO's.. I think every product should be aloud a max of 1 oto and it should not be needed to complete the course

OTO's and downsells are getting out of hand. I don't mind a OTO as long as it's really one time. One downsell afterwards is not excessive. However, these offers seem to go on forever. "When will I get to my freebie or product"? The download page is also getting ridiculous. Most know how it works. Can't afford the 1st price, what about cutting it in half, ok...lets trim out another 10 bucks. But wait - it continues...you can join or get it for 1 dollar.

This is not marketing it is excessive force down your throat tactics. When people go to MacDonald's they know what they want. Asking "do u want fries with that one time is ok" but it will get annoying if the cashier tells it to you 4-5-6 times.

I've never understood why people on here and other places will complain about sales funnels, I'm also not sure why people feel it's 100% necessary to know what the one time offer/upsell/downsell is up front.

If you get to it and don't want it... just pass it. I don't even think about the backend offers as long as a front end offer salescopy grabs my attention, and if it turns out the backend offer is a MUST to use the front end offer... well then I just learned to avoid that specific seller because of their tactics.

Someone earlier brought up about marketers complaining about sales funnels, I think the honest thing is that the people complaining about them aren't necessarily marketers, just folks trying to make money who don't fully understand the concept of marketing who happen to be on an "internet marketing" forum to fuel their need for making money.

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I believe it's all about how "sharp" your salesprocess is. A good marketer/salesperson will know that not all the people that come to his/her website will respond the same way. So when you have different ways to convert different types of people your sales conversions will increase.

If your salesprocess can fly without all that sophistication that's fantastic but chances are if you just throw traffic at a site not much of it will convert and your site will eventually crash & burn.

Reality is that no one knows what your customer wants. Yes they may have visited your site, but you may not be offering what they really want, so the funnel as we call it should reach further than just upsells and downsells... how about follow up emails recommending other products???

I love the customers who complain about having upsells and one time offers yet if marketers didn't use them and you just had to pay the once price up front, you'd all say the product was way too overpriced.

Upsells and OTO's allow many customers that could never afford the whole product to still get a piece of the product at a reasonable price. No one is forcing you to buy any upsells or OTO's so if you don't want them, just ignore them.

Complaining about OTO's and upsells is like going to the shop to buy a carton of milk and complaining about all the other products they put in the shop. You don't need to buy them but you can if you want.

I agree some people go a little overboard with their upsells processes but again, you can always just say no. The only reason they keep doing them is because a large enough percentage of people say yes and buy them. So why wouldn't they keep on doing them?

It's trying to get the marketing optimal, if it would make you money would you do it?