So you’re ready to become a master funnel builder? Awesome! This guide is going to go through EVERYTHING you need to know to excel in this field.

First off, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that our FG Society is our premier Funnel Building Certification program for those that want to become certified master marketers. This post will essentially take you through the process we walk our students through!

One of the major questions people ask us all the time is,

“How do you really guarantee a funnel will work?”

That’s like asking us how to win Black Jack every time you sit down at the table in Vegas. No one is going to win 100% of the time, but the people who know this, who continue to play and work at their craft, will be heads and tails better than those who just walk away when they lose their first hand.

Obviously gambling analogy does fall short a bit because well..it’s gambling. But swap out Stock Market and it still works…

No one will get their funnels right 100% of the time, but those that get them right 75%-80% of the time, know something the rest of the world does not.

Funnels have THREE core elements – nail one or two, you might have a working funnel. Nail all three and you’ve now just exponentially increased your chances of success.

So what are those three elements?

• Offer
• Copy
• Design

In one of our intro courses, Funnel Rx Module 1, we talk about the perfect funnel as the bullseye between these three components…

… because by blending them together, you create irresistibility, positioning, and trust.

If you want to become a master funnel builder, these are the three things you need to study. And lots of people are really good at one of three, and that’s okay. But this is why we know our funnels have done so well – because we’ve dedicated ourselves to blending them all.

So let’s dive into them in more detail.

OFFER

What is an offer? An offer is the combination of products, pricing, and packaging you put together to create an irresistible bundle that a potential customer can’t refuse.

The offer includes the following pieces…

1. The individual products
2. The individual bonuses
3. The visual display of those products
4. The price
5. The conditions (limited time, sale, etc.)

So if you’re selling a course on how to become great at watercolor painting, the offer might look like this…

• Watercolor Masterclass 101
• A set of beginner brushes
• One 9×11 canvas
• Bonus: Turning Your Watercolor Into Everyday Greeting Cards
• Bonus: Framing Techniques
• Bonus: Getting Started Selling Your Art

The price is $97 for a limited time (normally $147).

You’d also make sure to have a really great visual representation of the masterclass, the brush, the canvas, and the bonus materials.

Together, that makes an offer.

In order to get really good at building offers, there are a few things you need to master.

It all starts with the human. The customer. Who are they and what is their problem? How are you the solution?

Once you’ve identified that, the next step is to ask, “What about my solution is unique or different? How does it go against the grain of all the other products out there?”

Next, you want to figure out how this offer works in tandem with your other products and services in your company. Is this something people would buy first when getting to know you? Or is it an offer that requires a lot of trust and education before they can get the best benefit out of it.

Lastly, what kind of sales funnel will you use to sell it? Some sales funnels have extra products tucked inside (in the form of order bumps and upsells). Others are sold off a webinar or through a recurring subscription.

All of this strategizing and planning leads to the next element of funnelbuilding….copy.

COPY

Copy is simply the words you use to sell your offer. In a sales funnel, you might have to write some of all of these types of copy…

• Sales Copy
• Webinar Copy
• Email Copy
• Ad Copy

Each type has different nuances and tactics that you can use, but they all rest on one skill – direct response sales copy.

What is direct response?

In order to answer that, we have to compare it to traditional brand advertising.

Traditional brand advertising separates the marketing + selling.

1. You see an ad for Coke. It’s a marketing video. It’s meant to create demand and make you feel good.
2. But you can’t actually buy Coke right as you watch the commercial or the ad.
3. The next time you go to the store, the packaging and placement of the product will SELL and the advertising you saw prior to that will have done the “marketing” part. It will have already created demand.

Direct response interrupts the prospect and combines the marketing + selling into one funnel or campaign.

1. You see an ad for a software. It’s a marketing video. It’s meant to create demand and make you feel good.
2. You click on the ad. The sales page has a marketing argument that does the heavy lifting of creating demand and presenting the unique selling proposition.
3. The second half of the sales page (the selling) then persuades you intellectually that this is a smart decision and compels you to action.

What the marketing part of the copy does is to transform the desire for a
result to a desire for the product.

What the selling part of the copy does is to intellectually persuade (the logic) the prospect that the product is a sound decision that will get them the result.

So what are the core pieces of great sales copy?

• Headline – This is the hook. The way that you capture attention and show your prospect that you understand their pain.
• Problem – In this section, you are outlining the problem your prospect has. Getting in their head.
• Solution – In this section, you announce your unique selling proposition. What solution did you discover that made all the difference?
• Rapport – Here you want to establish rapport. It’s the “Why should I trust you?” section.
• Announcement – Now we are about 1/3 to 1/2 a ways down the page. This is where you finally announce your offer. What you’re selling.
• Features – This is the brochure section of the page. It’s the nuts and bolts of what’s included.
• Benefits – Here you describe why those features matter. What benefits do these features offer to your prospect?
• Scarcity + Urgency – Humans need a reason to act. Using scarcity and urgency, you can compel them to see why NOW is the right time.
• Guarantee – This is more than just a refund policy, this is the chance to do a risk reversal. Take away all the risk from the prospect so they feel safe enough to whip out their credit card.
• Testimonials – Why should they believe you? Well, because it works for others too. Testimonials allow other people to sell the product for you, which is always twice as effective.
• Close – Pull everything together with a strong argument that leads to action.
• Stack – This is the part of the sales page that summarizes the offer in a quick snapshot so people can see at a glance what they are about to buy.
• CTA – This stands for Call To Action. Usually on a piece of sales copy, you will see CTA’s as buttons on the page that lead to the checkout area.

Obviously not all of these elements are in every type of funnel copy, but when you’re writing an ad or an email, you can try to hit most of these elements of a direct response sales… even if it’s just one well worded sentence that packs a punch.

In many ways, shortform copy is harder than longform because you have to pack so much into every word.

Once you have the offer and the copy, the next and final step is design. Putting it all together to create a beautiful high converting funnel!

DESIGN

Some people can get scared off at the mention of this word – but it’s nothing to fear, even if you never graduated from drawing stick figures.

Funnel Design is the final crucial element in this process, because it’s brings everything we worked so hard to create – all together in a visual package that buyers can understand and take action on.

Good funnel design can be learned, just like good offer strategy and conversion copywriting. Let’s go through the foundations that you’ll need to master in order to become an elite designer.

A successful launch will contain a lot of designed elements that will need to work in concert with each other – NOT just the funnel. Here are just a few of the different elements you’ll want to become a design master in…

• Developing a Design Style, Colors, Fonts
• Logo Design / Offer Branding
• Lead Magnet Design (the thing they download)
• Slidedeck Design (presentation design, usually webinar format)
• Offer Shot + Product Mockup Design
• Icons for Modules + Bonuses
• Offer Stack Area + Close
• Changing Funnel Types
• Design Updates

And there are a lot of different types of funnels, each have nuanced ways of presenting the information. One product can even be sold in different ways, in different funnels:

• Full Sales Page Design
• Lead Funnel Page Design
• Order Form Design/OTO Design
• Webinar Registration Page Design
• Summit Funnel Page Design
• Quiz Funnel Page Design
• Application Funnel Page Design

Key Design Ingredients to Master in Funnel Design

• Sales Objectives + Visual Structure – Form needs to follow function. This step identifies sales goals and purpose, i.e. what we are selling, to whom, and why. When the goals are established, you can organize the structure and present the information in the correct format.
• Copy Design + Creating Hierarchy – Now that you understand the goals, you will start Storyblocking – this is the term we came up with that means you block in the content so that it tells a story. You differentiate bold claims, headlines, and a-ha moments from tiny details read only by fine-print scourers.
• Color Theory – It’s critical to understand the visual cues your design is telling prospective buyers through color. Color can make or break a design. It’s also important to study color within the culture you are selling to.
• Typography – This is the study of typefaces – or more commonly referred to as fonts. Just like color can affect a mood positively or negatively, the fonts you choose has a big impact on how your information is received in the brain.
• Space Theory (vertical, negative, white) – Space between items is incredibly important to our brains to receive and understand information. Proper space is a skill to master – too little and the information gets overwhelming and cluttered – confusion happens. Too much space and it becomes disconnected and thoughts can break apart. Even a Desktop vs. Mobile experience uses space differently. It can tell us when to pause, and when to keep moving forward. It can group together like thoughts and give us a lot of hidden insights.
• Interactive Design + Suggestive Movement – Most sites on the web are not interactive – they are a grouping of photos, text, graphics and video. It lacks a lot from the real-world selling experience. We make up for this by including interactive design, and suggested motion wherever we can. It brings your design to life. Remember how in cartoons the character would run and we’d see their blurry legs underneath them? That is suggested movement – it’s a treatment of the drawing that our brains perceive as FAST MOVEMENT.
• Photo Relationships – Photos matter in funnel design. Use too many stock photos, and the funnel feels spammy and cold. Don’t use enough product mockups, and your offer can fall flat and be misunderstood. It’s important that photos enhance, not detract the story, and that the mockups bring forth the richness and full 3d value of the offer.
• Visual Shortcuts – Using icons or graphics to represent concepts will increase clarity on what could be complicated topics. Our brains understand a visual icon lightyears faster than reading text. Road signs are a good example of this – or even Female and Male bathroom symbols when you really have to go! 🙂
• Visual Variance – People get bored easily (especially online). It’s in our DNA to ignore too much of the same thing. Master funnel designers use a combination of familiar elements (things we have seen before, design conventions) and unique elements (brand new, exciting) to create a pace of excitement and keep our brains entertained and excited.

From Beginner to Master

Here’s the good news… you don’t have to go to school for years and years to become a master funnel builder.

A good teacher will help you learn through APPLIED theory. This is the idea that you learn the pieces you need to learn in order to create an amazing funnel, rather than learning the foundation of ALL design or ALL writing.

Inside of FG Society, we certify our marketers to become experts in applied copy and design and offers, so that you don’t have to worry about graphic design school or learning complicated programs in order to be a solid marketer.

And if this is all a bit overwhelming, we suggest you start with two simple products…

First, Offer Cure is like the “lite” version of becoming a master funnel builder.

• In Workshop 1, we give you the offer shortcut.
• In Workshop 2, we give you the copy shortcut.
• In Workshop 3, we give you the design shortcut.

Take that course, along with one of our templates, and you’re off to the races!