If you’re new to online marketing, odds are that you’ve heard the word “funnels” but you don’t really know what it is or you know what funnels are but you don’t understand how to use them in your online business.
… It’s a good thing you’re reading this.
In this article, I’ll tell you what funnels are in online business and also show you a simple funnel that you can implement in your business to make a profit.
Let’s get started…
What Is A Funnel?
A funnel is the set of steps a visitor needs to go through before they can be said to have reached conversion… conversion depends on you & what you want it to be – It can be form signups, product purchase, webinar registration etc…
There are a lot of things that happen before a person buys a product from you – from the time that person discovers your business down to when they make a purchase (or form sign-up), the entire journey is what we call a FUNNEL.
Why is it called a Funnel?
Let’s say you have a website where you sell gadgets… at the initial stage, you have thousands of people coming from different places on the internet (Ad campaigns, SEO, referrals, viral campaigns, social media etc), and they all land on your site… then as they continue along & take different steps, some of them will leave and the size of people drops or narrows down until the final stage of the purchase.
Some common types of funnels are;
- Squeeze Page Funnel
- Membership Funnel
- Tripwire Funnel
- Webinar Funnel
- Live Demo Funnel
From here, we’ll be looking at the Tripwire Funnel, why it’s important and how you can use it in your online business.
What Is A Tripwire Funnel?
A tripwire is an irresistible, low priced offer that’s sole purpose is to convert an audience into customers… It’s a simple funnel, usually 2 step or 3 steps that are carefully designed to get new subscribers to buy your product.
When new members subscribe to your list, they are usually not interested in buying any product from you, even if the product contains so much value… Reasons could be because they are yet to trust your brand or because your product is expensive.
This is where the Tripwire Funnel comes in.
By setting the price of your offer low, it encourages them to take action & buy what you’re offering since it’s affordable… Now they’ve become buyers and are likely to buy more products from you.
According to Ryan Deiss, Cofounder of DigitalMarketer.com, he says, “People who purchased tripwires were 10 times more likely to purchase their core offer.”
This is why the Tripwire funnel is commonly used in many marketing campaigns… It’s a simple funnel, but top marketers like Russel Brunson, Ryan Deiss still use it because it always works.
That’s an example of a Tripwire Funnel… It’s a simple 2 step funnel that starts with the low ticket, tripwire offer first, then from there, you send your audience to a 1 click upsell page containing your main offer with a higher price.
You can modify the Tripwire funnel to be 3 steps… First, you send your audience to an opt-in page and get them to subscribe to your list, from there you send them to the tripwire offer.
Examples of A Tripwire Funnel In Action
Example #1 – Dotcom Secrets
In Russell Brunson’s DotCom Secret sales funnel, the tripwire low ticket offer is the DotComSecrets Physical book which they give out for FREE, you only cover the shipping fee for $19
Example #2 – Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer
In this Tripwire funnel example, Ryan Deiss who is co-founder of a digital marketer is offering a physical book at a special low price of just $9
Example #3 – Software products
A common tripwire example is with software products. They will usually offer you a free trial for a period of 14 or 30 days as a low ticket offer. When the trial period is over, they will automatically upgrade you to get an upsell (If they have your credit card details), If not, they will send a mail urging to upgrade to an upsell.
How to Create a Tripwire Funnel?
I’ll break this part into 2 steps;
- Creating the irresistible low ticket offer
- Building a follow-up one-click upsell.
So let’s start with the first part – creating the irresistible low ticket offer…
Assuming your main offer is an info marketing video course, you can take out 1 or 2 chapters of that course, make it a product on its own and it becomes your tripwire low ticket offer.
Note that it’s important that your low ticket offer is of great & complete value to your subscribers… and the pricing should be low also ($7 – $30)…
For example, Ryan Deiss’ digitalmarketer.com sells access to their membership platform as their One Click Upsell (OCU), then as a tripwire offer, they grabbed a guide inside their membership platform and sold it at $7.
So, assuming your low ticket offer is ready, the next step is to build a sales page for your low ticket offer…
You can use page builders like ClickFunnels, Elementor, Thrive Architect etc…
If you’re sending cold traffic straight to your low ticket sales page, it’s best to not reveal the price of your offer on the sales page, the price should be on the order page instead. Then you can put an opt-in form as a bridge between the sales page & order page. A one-click opt-in form preferably.
So this is what happens – You send traffic to your sales page first, they go through the offer and they are hooked to the value you’re giving away but since the price is not on the sales page, they will be prompted to click on the button on your sales page so they can get more details about the offer.
On clicking the button, it’s meant to take them to the order page, but an opt-in form pops up from the button to collect the names & email address of your audience, from there it automatically redirects to the sales page where the low ticket price is visible & your audience can make purchases.
Doing this automatically qualifies your audience… separating the ones who are interested in your product from those who are not.
So those who leave without clicking any button on the sales page to get to the next page are obviously not interested in what your offer is.
Getting the email address of your audience before sending them to the order page will allow you to still communicate with those that won’t buy what you’re offering immediately… You can always send them a mail to grab your offer.
If you’re using ClickFunnels, you don’t have to build an opt-in form or a separate order page… It comes with a 2 step order form feature that you can add on your sales page. Everything is on one page.
The first step of the order form is to collect the personal information of your audience, the next step will show the price of the product plus a debit card form to make payment.
Another way to do this… If you’re running a list building campaign, after your audience subscribes to your list you redirect them to your tripwire offer instead of a thank-you page…
A few of your subscribers will grab the offer, then others will ignore it… the good thing is that you have their email address, so you can always contact them again.
However, take note that if you’re doing this, the lead magnet you’re giving out to your subscribers must be related to the tripwire offer in terms of value… this is the only way it will work.
If you already have a list of subscribers, but they’ve not purchased any product from you before… You can send them straight to your tripwire low ticket offer (No lead magnet, No opt-in form), as soon as they buy the low ticket offer, they become your buyers… and this opens them to buy more products from you in the future.
… It’s a good way to convert your leads to customers fast…
Now we move to the 2nd part of the tripwire funnel which is – the one-click upsell.
The money you make from selling your low ticket offer will be likely small since the pricing is low, so it’s meant to balance what you spend to get traffic… Your upsell offer is where the real money is.
After a person buys the tripwire low ticket offer, ideally they are meant to be taken to a “thank-you page” where they get details about the product they purchased from you… In the tripwire funnel, instead of the “thank-you page”, you redirect them to your upsell page, allowing that person to buy again from you and get more value.
There’s a psychology behind this – When someone spends money with you, even if it’s just $1 they’re much more likely to do it again and again. This is because it’s 10X easier to sell a product to an existing customer than it is to someone who’s never bought anything from you.
So, as soon as a person is done buying the low ticket offer, the next page the person is taken to is the one-click upsell page… You must ensure that what you offer as upsell is related to the low ticket offer.
This is why it’s best to first create your core product, then take a part of the core product & make it your low ticket offer (It’s called a splinter offer), then your core product is the upsell… Your customers know they are getting more value when they buy the upsell, so there’s a high chance that they will purchase it.
If your low ticket offer is a $1 trial for a software product, you can stop at just giving your customers the low ticket offer, no need building an upsell page… When their trial period is over, you can upgrade them to the upsell automatically.
Here are samples of an upsell page;
After the upsell, customers will be taken to the thank you/confirmation page… this is where the funnel ends.
Note that you can add as many upsells as you want to the funnel, you just have to ensure that each upsell is related & offers more value to your audience.
Conclusion.
It’s advisable to always keep things simple. It’s not about how complex or big the funnel is, what matters is that you’re getting results and making a profit.
The tripwire funnel is a basic funnel and it’s proven to always work, It’s why you’ll usually see top marketers like Russel Brunson & Ryan Deiss’ use it in their business.
It works in any business online and you can use it to sell both low & high ticket offers, convert cold traffic to customers.
