You’ve gotten crystal clear on your audience and mapped out your offer strategy, now it’s time to build out the funnel that will help sell your digital product! 

Except, you’re not quite sure what type of funnel you should build. 

There’s webinar funnels, quiz funnels, summit funnels…

How in the world are you supposed to know the best option to run with? 

Well, first, it helps to start with the big picture. 

In this episode of our Season 1 Compel & Convert series all about sales funnels, I’m covering the top 3 core types of funnels from a categorical perspective so you can see what types of funnels are going to be best suited for where your ideal customer is at in their journey and how to move them closer to purchasing your product. 

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

• The three primary categories or buckets that funnels can fall into and how they can work independently or together depending on your goals
• The nuances and purposes of the three types of funnels and distinctions on why they should be tailored to fit your ideal customer and your offer 
• What types of niche funnels fall within the three main funnel categories 

Read the Transcript for Season 1, Episode 4 – 3 Types of Funnels You Can Build Around Your Offer 

Hey there and welcome to episode four of the Compel and Convert podcast. Not going to lie. This is like my third time doing this intro because I can’t get the name of my own podcast correctly. And it’s not even a Monday. It’s a Tuesday.

I have no excuse, except I did not get great sleep last night because of my kid. So I’ll just blame him. If you’re a mum, you understand. So let’s dive into this week’s episode, which is the three top types of funnels that you can build. And like a broken record.

If you have not listened to the other episodes of the season, go listen to those because they will help you with understanding what I’m going to talk about today. Each episode kind of builds on itself through this season where I’m focusing solely on funnels so that we can do a super deep dive into this world of digital product funnels and marketing funnels and all these wonderful things you hear about funnels because even though they are truly wonderful, they’re not always easy. 

So I want to give you the foundation and just the complete full picture of what funnels encompasses. That way you can make an informed decision for yourself as to whether you even want to build one of these things, because maybe you have an interest in creating your own digital product and maybe that sounds super exciting. But when you look into what you have to do to get that going, you might go, that’s actually not for me.

Or you might be like, this is totally what I needed to understand how to do this. I am ready to go. I hope it’s the latter. But you can make that decision for yourself. And I just am here to be your guide.

So for this episode, I want to kind of cover well, first let me preface by saying there are countless types of funnels that you can do. I can easily name 20 off the top of my head, and a lot of them can be very similar. And you’re talking about just a very small tweak in what’s included in the funnel to make it a different type of funnel. 

But overall, I would say most funnels, and especially for you, a beauty or wellness expert, this is going to be one of the three categories in which you’re going to start with when it comes to building out a funnel. So the first big category is a lead funnel.

So pretty much every business needs to have this to a certain extent, even if you’re not doing any sort of digital product offer, even like Brick and Mortar spas, Brick and Mortar Studios, they all should have some sort of lead funnel. 

Typically, this will be something like a free week of membership or a free week of yoga classes or a single free class. Or if you’re in a salon or a spa, maybe it’s an upgrade with your first service or a 15% off your first service and your clients only that kind of thing. But in the digital product world, you will want to have some sort of a lead funnel that is also digital. And this can be something that is like a downloadable PDF, a checklist.

Another popular option is a quiz. And this is a good example of how I said there’s so many different types of funnels. A quiz funnel is a type of lead funnel. So a quiz funnel has very nuanced things that go into it. A quiz is very differently structured than, say, a single PDF page that you’re giving someone as a downloadable.

A quiz funnel requires audience segmenting. It requires another tech tool. It requires a variety of emails on the back end. So some lead funnels are a little bit more complex than others, but generally they have the same goal, which is capturing the lead, getting someone onto your email list so that they can then be marketed to in the future. And typically you will provide them with some sort of a nurture sequence on the back end of the lead funnel that drives them into your sales funnel.

Which brings me to step number two, or I should say core type of funnel, number two, which is a straight sales funnel. So a straight sales funnel is where you have an offer on a sales page. It’s straightforward. It’s there for someone to buy immediately, and then they go through the process of an order page and then a thank you page. 

And this is where kind of circling back go listen to episode two if you didn’t already, because that explains the five key components of a sales funnel. So that’s really important for you to know what goes into a sales funnel to ensure that it converts properly and that it flows properly.

But you can have a variety of different types of sales funnels because maybe you’re selling something that’s an online course and you want to launch that online course with a webinar. Now, I don’t want to get ahead of myself. A webinar falls into a different category, but technically the webinar feeds into the sales funnel.

And this is where we have a little bit more of an advanced concept, but I don’t think it’s too advanced for what we’re covering here, which is funnel stacking. So essentially you have one type of funnel that leads into a different type of funnel and then potentially leads to another funnel. So I don’t like funnels stacking too much because it can get a little bit like you’re in a never ending funnel. And I don’t think that feels good from a consumer perspective. There’s also some laws about that.

And actually, I forget what it’s called. But there is although this pertains more to like a singular funnel. And I’m sure some people, if you’ve been in the online entrepreneur space for a little bit, you’ve probably experienced this, but hopefully not because they are not a good practice, which is where you get into a sales funnel. 

And then it’s like you can’t get out of it because you keep getting offered more and more things. And then you eventually either just end up buying way more stuff than you needed or you just exited out of it because it’s such a horrible consumer experience.

So we don’t want to create that. But when I’m talking about funnel stacking, I’m talking about, let’s say you have a lead funnel where you are offering someone a digital download. Like maybe it’s a short little ebook that you’re offering for free, and that’s the incentive to get someone onto your email list. 

You’re going to deliver that little ebook and then you’re going to also deliver an email sequence that nurtures that person who is a new subscriber to your email list so that they feel welcome. They get to know you a little bit more.

You’re delivering more value. And in that nurture sequence, you are then passing them off into your sales funnel, where say you have the next step for them. So you want to create whatever your lead funnel is you want to create. It kind of based off of what your sales funnel is going to be about. Because you want someone who is going to download a freebie that pertains to something about your offer.

Because that just makes sense, right. It creates the clearest kind of pathway in line for someone to follow between here’s what this person can provide for me value wise, and here’s the offer that I can get from them that takes it to the next step. 

So, lead funnel is capturing the lead sales funnel is where you’re attempting to capture that sale and you’re doing it through clearly and just upfront presenting an offer. Now, like I mentioned, there’s a few different types of sales funnels and there’s a few different mechanisms in which you can launch the sales funnel. So you could be doing a free challenge that leads into a sales funnel.

You could be doing a webinar or a workshop that goes into a funnel, a sales funnel. You also could have something that’s called an Slo funnel, which is that stands for self liquidating offer. If you have seen any of these, $27, $37, basically anything under $100 low ticket items available and you’ve gotten Facebook ads for them. 

The whole idea is that someone is presenting a low ticket item to get you on their list and what they make off of your sale liquidates their ad cost. So essentially it’s kind of like they’re paying for people to be on their list, but you know that they’re high quality subscribers because they’ve bought something from you.

And then the whole idea is that that SLO funnel then feeds into a bigger sales funnel for a next level offer. I’ve actually done SLO funnels for my business, like, not studio clarity, but for my previous business and honestly, it kind of was a self liquidating offer, but not really because I did one single ad campaign to it and I was profitable. So it wasn’t like I just recouped my ad spend. I ended up making more off of that. And I also wasn’t driving people to a secondary offer.

It was just a low ticket offer that I wanted to sell and try. So you definitely can have a low ticket digital product offer and have it be profitable. It doesn’t have to be solely self liquidating, but you also have to have a bit of an audience built up before you do that and have it be profitable or you have to be very clear on it being an offer that people really want. And I had a little bit of a mixture of the two. I had an engaged email list that with a lot of people that I personally knew as well as I crafted an offer that was very much in demand at the moment, at that moment.

So it sold really well. Now, if I were trying to funnel stack, the best method would have been to have that SLO funnel, which falls under the sales funnel category and then lead that into some other type of high level funnel where maybe it was another sales funnel for a higher level offer or maybe an application funnel leading someone to my services, something like that. 

This is where you really have to understand your audience and also your offer. So going back to episode three, where I give you the ten different offer ideas that you can play between you really have to know your ideal client, what their transformation that they’re desiring and fitting the offer to fit their needs. And then once you’re really clear on that, then you can really think about, okay, what kind of funnel am I going to build around this offer that’s going to resonate most with my ideal clients?

And I’ll give a few examples here at the end, once I’ve gone through all three. So the third final type of core funnel that you can build is an event funnel. And I’ve already alluded to this a little bit. So an event funnel could be something like a webinar or a virtual workshop or a summit. Some sort of online event could also be in person.

But I think I’m going to stick strictly to the digital realm for right now. Essentially you have some sort of digital event that leads into your sales funnel. The event itself could also be the thing that you are trying to the event itself could be the offer. 

So for instance, you could have, say, a workshop that you’re wanting to offer. I would argue if it’s the actual workshop that’s the offer, you need to have some other type of lead funnel leading into the paid workshop versus making a free webinar or even a small fee workshop, be the lead in to a larger sales funnel.

So this kind of I don’t want to get too in the weeds where you’re like, wait a minute, now I’m lost. Like, I can do free workshops or I can do paid workshops. What’s the offer? What’s the Lead Magnet? Essentially, this goes back to what I said at the beginning, which you can structure funnels so many different ways.

Let me give you a couple of examples of different types of funnels. So, for instance, I actually have an audio series Funnel, which if you go to the Show Notes for this episode or any past episodes, you can experience it for yourself and see how it works. 

But essentially, my audio series is a Lead Magnet. It’s a private podcast feed with five episodes in it, I think five or six. And that serves my customer or my ideal client well, because I know my people and they don’t have time to read a 30 page ebook.

What they do have time for is to listen to about a ten minute podcast episode while they’re driving to the grocery store or picking up their kids from school or cleaning dishes at the end of the night. That’s what my ideal client has time for. So know your audience. And in the follow up, the email nurture sequence. After someone opts in for the audio series, I’m giving them more value sharing a little bit more about myself.

And then I’m inviting them to book a call. Now, again, you have to know your audience. I know that the majority of people who opt in for my audio series, Lead Magnet, do not book a call with me the minute that I give them the link to book a call with me. Sometimes it will take up to a year, sometimes even two years for people to be on my list, and then they will come back and book a call with me. I have a very long runway for leads, and that’s because I’m a service provider and because of the nature of the services I offer.

For someone who’s offering a digital product, depending on what level of digital product you’re offering, is it a relatively low ticket offer, like $100 or less? Or do you have a membership program that’s maybe $30 a month versus, say, a higher level coaching program you want to do or a group coaching container that’s going to be $500 a month? 

You have to really look at okay, what is my offer and how can I structure the entry point into getting someone onto my email list to align with where I’m eventually going to take them when I present them the offer via the sales funnel. So audio series is in best service to my ideal customer. I recently went through a funnel, and this is where it’s almost like the Matrix, where it’s like once you’ve taken the red pill, like you see everything.

Once you understand how funnels work, you will see when you are in one all the time, and it’s totally fine. As long as you’re doing funnel practice like best practices, you don’t have to worry about a funnel feeling icky because like I talked about in episode one, a funnel is just a pathway for your customer to follow because otherwise it’s really hard for people to especially in today’s marketplace where things are we have a lot of options. We have a lot of vendors. We can go to a lot of experts, a lot of different products to buy. You’ve got to show your ideal customer the pathway.

And you kind of have to guide and lead them toward what it is you want them to buy. And you have to trust that by presenting all the information, by giving them a lot of value, they are going to make the right decision for themselves, whether that means they’re going to purchase your offer or they’re not. 

So the funnel is simply there to act as a little bit of a customer service tool as well as a sales person tool, and it’s there to be their guide. And when structuring your funnel, whether it’s simply a lead funnel or a lead funnel that then flows into a sales funnel, find that mechanism, whether it be the digital downloadable quiz, webinar or something like that, that’s going to be in best service to your type of ideal client. And what’s also going to work best for the offer?

A high ticket type of offer. And when I say high ticket, that usually means anything $1,000 or more in the online space, typically it could be $500 or more. It depends, again, on your audience. If you’re a B to C brand, meaning you’re marketing to consumers and not other business owners or experts or professionals, a high ticket offer would definitely be something that’s like $100 or more. If you’re talking to professionals, anything that’s like $500 to $1,000 or more is going to be more high ticket.

So another example, I feel like I just went on a little bit of a tangent, but hopefully that all made sense. Another funnel that I recently went through is I signed up for a summit that a lot of times in the online space, a summit will be free, and then it will have options for paid upgrades. Like maybe there’s a bonus day that costs $50 to join, or maybe if you want to get the replays, you have to pay $97. But this is actually a summit, so that falls into the event funnel category. That was $27 just to get in on the summit.

So technically it was an event funnel mixed with a little bit of an Slo funnel because the woman who ran this summit was liquidating her ad spend by making the summit $27 to join. The other element of that was, is this summit was acting as a launch runway for her high ticket group coaching/mastermind program. I knew going into this summit that I was not going to sign up for the coaching/mastermind. So from her perspective, she’s looking at this funnel as anybody that I get in, I’m liquidating my ad spend. So it’s not costing me anything to run ads.

And I’m getting more highly qualified leads because anybody who’s willing to spend $27 just to attend a summit is going to be a higher quality lead. Now, of course, when you’re charging people to get into your funnel, essentially, you definitely want to make sure that you’re providing value. 

And I would argue whether you’re charging people or not, you always want to be offering extreme value because, I mean, that’s kind of the whole point, right? But in any case, she then offered after you sign up for the Summit, it was I’m trying to recall you got replay access to the recordings for up to ten days afterwards. Now, because I’m located in Japan, I knew that I was not going to be able to attend any of the live sessions.

I also kind of knew that ten days was not going to be enough time for me to realistically listen to all of the recordings. So I went ahead and took her upgrade, which at the time I believe it was like $47 if you bought the replays before the summit started. And then once the summit started, the replays became $97. 

So you can see here where you then are getting into more kind of advanced level strategies where you’ve got different price points and different tiers going into this funnel. She conducted the summit and then in the summit provided a ton of value with no pitching.

It was a two day summit, had multiple sessions during the day. I want to say there were a total of like eight or ten recordings at the end of it all. And then at the end, she had a single session that was purely a sales style type of session for people who are interested in going to the next step and joining her group coaching or mastermind program. Now, I knew I had no interest in that, so I didn’t join it. But here’s where from a consumer and funnel builder perspective, this still is a really good way to build a funnel.

I may want to join her coaching program or Mastermind in the future. Not this year, but maybe next year, or maybe even the year after that. It’s not where I’m at now, but I’m kind of shopping her out to see if she’s going to be the right coach for me when I’m ready to make this transformation that I am wanting to make in my business. 

And because I’ve already invested in her, she’s more at the top of my radar than someone who occasionally pops across my Instagram feed. Or maybe that I’ve downloaded a little ebook freebie from and then I’m on their email list, but maybe they don’t email super consistently.

So this is where it goes into consistent marketing as well but you can see here where funnels can really act as not solely the sales mechanism but they can also serve as the marketing driver, the sales driver, the nurturing driver.

It’s a really powerful thing to have working in your business even if it’s for a two day summit. She can repeat that summit over and over again. She now has the recordings for it so you can see where it’s like even just by building out a funnel you are building out this really helpful asset that your business then has in its back pocket that you can turn on and off, that you can move the pieces around to create something new and there’s limitless possibilities. 

So those are just a couple of examples of how different funnels can be structured and just do a quick recap three core types of funnels a lead funnel, a straight sales funnel or an event funnel. Sometimes they cross over, many times they lead into each other but those are the three core ones to keep in mind especially if you’re just starting with your first funnel and that is it for today.

I feel like I’ve covered a lot of ground. Hopefully I did not get to in the weeds. I want to keep things relatively high level but not too high level where you’re still not getting like enough juicy detail so hopefully it’s a little bit of a good mix of both. Definitely. Let me know.

The best way to do that is by leaving a review. Just go to if you’re listening on Apple podcasts just go to the podcast page, you’ll see a little section that says write a review, click the pencil icon and then you can leave me your honest feedback. I would love to hear it and otherwise you can get in touch with me over on my website at www.studioclary.com. You can also connect with me on Instagram @StudioClary and I hope to talk to you over there. 

Alright, see you in the next episode.