12 Types Of Sales Funnels For Digital Marketing Success

At some point, every marketer will rely on well-planned sales funnels to generate leads and revenue.

But sales funnels come by the dozen. Each type serves a specific purpose for businesses to capture interest and nurture prospects into satisfied, paying customers.

And while tools like OptimizePress help you build your sales funnel strategy, you’ll still need to know what sales funnel will benefit you the most before adopting any tools.

So, let’s take a deep look at some leading types of sales funnels and how they work.

A sales funnel is a term used to describe the customer journey from initial awareness to becoming a paying customer.

To get there, you’ll be going through multiple touchpoints and value exchanges to guide the prospect into and through the customer lifecycle, converting them into buyers, and ultimately into promoters of your brand.

However, there’s no one way of doing it. Companies deploy different types of sales funnels to lead to different results. Knowing which sales funnel strategy to choose really depends on what your primary goal is.

Regardless of which types of sales funnels we’re looking at, there is a clear journey your targets will take every time:

Research shows that up to 72% of company revenue stems from existing customers, almost twice more than what you’d get from a new pipeline.

This is because there’s a direct relationship between the success of your customer journey and business revenue.

If the sales funnel fails somewhere down the line, you’ll experience less revenue. Do everything by the book, and you’ll be able to convert even the most sceptical customer into loyal brand promoters.

Depending on your offering, you’ll want to choose a specific type of sales funnel to best guide your customers.

For example, our all-in-one platform comes with a variety of tools, which is why we find our webinar funnel so important. 

The interactive screen-sharing calls allow prospects to see the software customised to their needs, motivating any purchase decisions. It’s the best way for us to showcase our platform's capabilities without pressure.

Some elements are necessary for any funnel, like a squeeze page to capture leads, designated traffic sources, and an email autoresponder to send reminders and follow-ups automatically. 

However, every sales funnel needs a unique strategy and selection of tools to guarantee it works flawlessly.

With that said, here are some of the best types of sales funnels you can adopt for your business.

A squeeze page funnel is a two-page process meant to “squeeze” out a visitor’s contact information in exchange for something of value. Essentially, you're guiding your visitors through from a landing page to a thank you page, which could include pop-ups or in-content forms.

For instance, if you are a freelance web designer or digital marketer, you could create a lead magnet like "10 Ways to Increase Conversions for Your Website" as a downloadable PDF guide. 

This will lead your visitors to a squeeze page offering that free guide in exchange for their email address, which will then automatically deliver the PDF and add them to your email list as a prospective lead for your services.

This type of funnel is often used as a front-end offer to build a list of subscribers or leads quickly, but there is a greater risk of lower quality leads or conversion rates if you don’t have strong headlines, persuasive copy, and a clear call-to-action (CTA).

A reverse squeeze page funnel flips the typical squeeze page model on its head. Instead of requiring visitors to give their email to access a lead magnet, you provide immense value upfront. Then, once trust is built, you ask for their email address.

For example, let’s imagine you run a marketing blog:

1. You'd first start off by publishing an incredibly in-depth, high-quality blog post on a popular topic.
2. Follow this up by including downloadable resources like checklists or templates within the post itself.
3. Once the reader consumes all that valuable content, you'd have a simple opt-in form to join your email newsletter for even more tips.
4. Because you’ve built a sense of trust and authority, you can now recommend paid products or services to that engaged audience.

It sounds counterintuitive at first, but this type of sales funnel can raise conversions by up to 85% for those who adopt it.

The main goal of a lead magnet funnel is to gather contact information in exchange for an offering. It’s directly modelled after the funnel stages: awareness, interest, consideration, and decision. 

At each stage, you want to provide relevant and valuable content to engage the audience and move them further down the funnel. The end goal? Capture as many potential leads as possible.

The process is usually split across these three main categories:

• TOFU (Top of the Funnel): Potential customers become aware of your product or service through marketing efforts like advertising, social media, or content marketing.
• MOFU (Middle of the Funnel): Interested prospects actively engage with your brand, seeking more information and considering your offering. This typically means activities like webinars, demos, or nurturing campaigns.
• BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel): Prospects are ready to make a purchasing decision, which could involve direct sales interactions, proposals, or trials to convert them into customers

Webinars involve a live or pre-recorded video that provides valuable information to a given target audience. It could be a virtual workshop, a discussion with thought leaders, or a live demonstration of your product or service. 

In any case, in exchange for registering for the webinar, attendees provide their contact information. 

This gives you the opportunity to nurture your prospective customers further and eventually convert them into paying customers.

In action, this is how the typical webinar funnel attracts potential customers:

1. A stunning landing page shines the spotlight on your upcoming online event.
2. Visitors go through a seamless registration form with a confirmation page and reminder emails leading up to the live webinar.
3. Use your webinar to share any valuable information and showcase your offerings.
4. Finally, follow-up emails to keep attendees engaged and eventually present sales opportunities.

A survey funnel is a series of survey pages and follow-up content used to engage website visitors, gain market research insights, and collect lead data. 

All the information you want to gather needs to be detailed and accurate, so focus on targeted questions that filter out unqualified or irrelevant respondents. 

Doing so nets you deeper insights into your audience’s preferences, behaviours, and opinions before offering something of value.

To get started, you’ll need a nifty survey toolset, like OptimizePress, Google Forms or Survey Monkey, as well as a few other components to shape your funnel:

• Landing Page: Introduces the survey topic and any potential benefits for taking it on.
• Incentive Offer Page: After completing the survey, visitors might receive promised offers like a free handbook or a product discount code.
• Follow-Up Content: Additional valuable info and offers emailed to survey takers to build relationships is always a plus.

Nothing brings a sense of urgency like a limited time offer sales funnel. Here, you’ll be using persuasive messaging around temporary discounts, bonuses, or giveaways to motivate action and purchases from website visitors during a short promotional period.

However, there’s one common mistake that happens often, and it’s when marketers end up extending the offer for too long. 

It’s undeniably tempting to do so in the hopes you draw in more leads. But the longer it goes, the less urgency there is. Your best bet is to keep it truly limited.

This type of sales funnel will usually include some, if not all, of these components:

• Pre-Launch Teaser Content: Early content mentions upcoming special deals to pique curiosity.
  
• Squeeze Page: Visitors can opt-in to be notified of upcoming limited-time details.
  
• Countdown Page: Purely optional, but a visible countdown clock or limited quantity stock adds to your scarcity build-up.
  
• Sales Page: Here is where you’ll emphasise urgent action required due to the impending deadline.

This type of sales funnel is a quick mover, offering a deeply discounted product or service for a limited time – typically 24-48 hours. 

The goal is to attract a large number of customers through an irresistible offer and then upsell them to higher-priced products or services.

In action, think of a company like Groupon. They partner with local businesses to offer steeply discounted deals for a limited time, which creates a flood of new customer acquisitions. 

Over time, those discount buyers turn into full-paying customers by simply providing an amazing experience. It's a win-win scenario.

Similar to a product launch funnel, it uses scarcity and urgency as the key drivers for impulse purchases. 

And because of it, you’ll have many upsell and downsell opportunities, along with the possibility of maximising the lifetime value of your customers by exposing them to higher-priced products or services.

This type of sales funnel involves releasing a sequence of content, such as videos or previews, to introduce a new product to the market and generate excitement for sales. 

The actual product is then made available to buy for a limited period, capitalising on the built-up excitement and perceived value. 

Your greatest allies here? 

Urgency and scarcity – these will feed your product launch funnel in unimaginable ways.

To guide visitors through, take your time to devise pre-launch content that hooks your visitors, introducing the problem and the solution. This will get them onto your waitlist page to join the mailing list, and your landing page to motivate purchases.

A tripwire funnel uses irresistible low-cost, high-value offers – the “tripwire” - to entice consumer purchase, gather data, and begin a relationship of trust that allows for selling complementary products over time.

To put it into context, if you were an online course creator, you could start by offering a trial period to your full program for just $1. 

This ultra low-friction tripwire virtually eliminates risk while providing immense value. Once new users get a taste through this initial bargain offer, you can follow up with one-time offers and order bumps to immediately monetize them further.

The beauty is how this funnel strategically under-prices the tripwire offer, almost giving it away for free. 

This makes it virtually irresistible while getting prospects to make that first critical purchase commitment with you. 

Then you can maximise customer lifetime value through additional monetization down the line.

A video sales letter funnel (VSL) takes full advantage of long-form video to sell a product or service. 

The video acts as a sales pitch that educates, persuades, and converts viewers into customers. But the best part is that it allows you to connect with sceptical audiences through storytelling.

Many SEO specialists like Julian Goldie and other solopreneurs often use VSL funnels to sell their services. And it would look something like this:

1. Start by driving cold traffic, often through paid ads or affiliate marketing, to a pre-sell video sales letter page introducing the offer.
2. The video follows a specific structure like the “Problem-Agitation-Solution” formula to engage viewers and convey credibility.
3. Viewers who make it through the entire video and remain interested can then click through to a products/services sales page for more details.
4. Additional videos and text reinforce the value proposition and overcome buyer objections before presenting a call-to-order.

It’s worth nothing that VSLs are best suited for high-ticket items or complex products that require a lot of explanation. For lower-priced items or simpler offerings, a traditional sales page may be more effective and less resource intensive.

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and that’s when a cancellation funnel steps in. 

This type of sales funnel is a last-ditch attempt at re-engaging clients who want to cancel an ongoing service. 

You want to uncover the reason, provide an incentive to retain them, and gather feedback to improve your offerings.

Granted, regaining interest is tough. It’s unlikely that you’ll successfully re-engage all your customers, but the main scope is to gather the necessary data to avoid as many future cancellations as possible. 

In the long-run, the knowledge you gain from this funnel will drastically reduce refunds.

Here’s how you go about it:

1. A client submits a cancellation request, often through a form on the consultant's website.
2. A short questionnaire identifies the primary reason for cancelling, such as pricing issues or a lack of results.
3. Based on the stated reason, you offer a personalised incentive to persuade them to stay, like a discount, extra services, or process changes.
4. If unsuccessful, the funnel requests constructive feedback on what could have made the experience better to inform improvement areas.

Leveraging live demos overcomes many hurdles you might face when selling complex products or services. 

This type of sales funnel is a real-time interactive production demonstration, and gives your leads the chance to experience first-hand what your offering does without needing an initial investment. 

It’s personalised, transparent, and invaluable for cultivating trusted relationships and answering questions before purchase.

SaaS companies and live demos go hand in hand. It’s the perfect way to showcase their platform's capabilities tailored to each prospect's unique use cases and objectives.

From start to finish, this is what a typical live demo funnel would look like:

1. Start with an opt-in registration page that captures lead details to schedule one-on-one video demo sessions.
2. This integrates with a calendar tool like Calendly that enables prospects to self-select convenient time slots.
3. During the meeting, the sales rep follows a structured script and presentation flow customised to that lead's needs – these are uncovered through pre-call discovery.
4. Because the demo is with a real person, the prospect has their questions answered in real-time while seeing actual use case implementations.

It’s safe to say that every type of sales funnel plays a critical part in a digital marketer’s strategy. 

They all aim to carry the customer journey from initial awareness to becoming loyal, repeat buyers. So, in reality, there is no competition or clear winner. 

The key is to adopt the sales funnel that will carry out the best results for your specific needs.

No matter which funnel type you choose, OptimizePress can help you build it out seamlessly. 

The platform has intuitive funnel building capabilities along with high-converting templates for each step like opt-in and product launch pages, sales pages and more. 

With in-depth tracking and analytics, you can continuously optimise your funnels for maximum conversions and ROI.

Interested? Take a look at our demo walkthrough here, or get in touch with us directly if you have any questions.

Here’s your take-home summary for every sales funnel: