When they first caught on, online lead funnels were used mainly by coaches and small businesses selling some kind of service or info product. But there's no reason enterprise brands shouldn't or couldn't get into the game.

Done right, automated lead funnels can be a key piece of your conversion engine.

In this article, I'll explain the nature of lead funnels, along with five steps to take to captivate viewers, drive conversions, and warm up qualified leads for your sales team.

What Is an Evergreen Sales Lead Funnel?

You've likely seen those ultra-sticky landing pages usually promoted via catchy social ads. Evergreen lead funnels guide prospects through a curated journey, escorting them toward a series of desired actions—maybe to grab a freebie lead magnet, buy a low-ticket front-end offer, and ultimately sign up for a call for some flagship offer.

Popularized by Russell Brunson at ClickFunnels, lead funnels can systematize multiple tactics you're already doing—e.g., paid ads, webinars, lead magnets, email, community building, and sales. That's what makes them so great.

These are the elements of an evergreen funnel I'll discuss in this article:

1. Sales webinar
2. Lead magnet (email capture)
3. Calendar scheduler for a call
4. Long video sales letter (VSL)
5. Follow-up email cadence

We'll dig deeper into each in a moment.

What Is the Purpose of a Lead Funnel?

The purpose of using a funnel is to sell your offer before your team ever gets on the phone with a prospect. You're priming prospects to make it easier for your sales team to make the close when it's time. Unlike traditional sales methods, these funnels are not about push; they're all pull.

Like a great blog post, funnels should be evergreen, which means they never go out of date. They are assets that will continue to work for you, requiring only minor optimizations over time. Once you set everything up, your funnel will basically work by itself.

For my most recent e-learning course, for example, I set up my funnel like this:

1. Prospects land on free autoplay webinar page.
2. Email capture >>> schedule a call directly or convert on exit intent popup.
1. If captured via lead magnet, contact is sent a five-touch email sequence.
2. If call is scheduled, contact is redirected to Calendly, then a longform video sales letter (VSL).
3. Once a call is scheduled, the contact is sent multiple confirmation emails.
4. On the VSL and via email, the contact is invited to join my free community.

The real benefit of funnels is how they bridge engagement with prospect education while letting you automate the entire thing, end to end.

Here's how I mapped out the process:

Here's what the experience itself looked like:

There's a lot of nuance to each of those pieces that you'll want to be sure to get right. The success of your funnel rests upon the details. Let's go through five steps to identify what some of those details are.

A Five-Step Guide to Building Your Lead Funnel

1. Nail the conversion webinar

An automated evergreen webinar builds significant interest and demand for your offer on the spot.

Most marketers are already running webinars, but they're usually standalone events with poor follow-up. Lead funnel webinars are different in the following ways:

• They include an irresistible pitch, but only after providing tangible value first.
• They're the front-end asset of a continued, cohesive experience.
• They can be much shorter (or longer) than a standard B2B webinar.

I've adapted what Brunson has described as "the perfect webinar":

1. The hook. Start by making a bold, counterintuitive claim that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. You want to create shock and awe. You want viewers saying "Wait, whaa, no... that can't really be possible... can it?!"
2. The promise. Share what viewers will learn by investing their time to stick around until the end of the webinar. The reward could be a set of steps, a few actionable strategies, or a freebie.
3. The story. The story is what qualifies you to share the insight that will follow. It answers the fundamental question: "Why should anyone listen to you?" The story should be personal. It should share your life-altering discovery and everything that led you to where you are now.
4. Future-projecting. Paint a brief picture of a better future with a short three- or five-step plan that shows how to solve for it. Here, you'll open the door and show viewers how to begin solving their pain points, convincing them that a new future is actually possible.
5. Value-stacking. After priming your audience, it's time to start encouraging them to take action. One great way to do that is value-stacking: laying out all of the benefits to moving forward versus the risks of the status quo. Make it seem as if the biggest risk of all is doing nothing. FOMO is the name of the game.
6. Call to action. The last step is fulfilling your promise made at the beginning of the webinar. Do this by throwing an irresistible CTA to conclude. Depending on your approach, your CTA could be the lead magnet (with the goal of enrolling them into your nurture sequence), a sales call, or a VIP invite to a members-only community.

Top-funnel webinar pages should not contain much more content than the video itself. Distracted viewers are confused viewers.

The end goal of your webinar is to convince your prospects that taking the next step is the best thing they can do. Ultimately, the goal of the webinar is to capture their contact info.

2. Capture the email

Most people are not warm enough to buy immediately. So, it makes sense to diversify your inbound avenues with low-barrier conversion points.

That is where a freebie or low-ticket offer comes in. It's an entry point that helps you capture emails if people do not schedule a call or go for the sale.

Funnel tools should include native lead magnet functionality and allow you to create beautiful opt-in experiences.

Examples of lead magnets that you could use for your freebie:

• An e-book
• A 14-day free trial
• A bonus checklist
• A limited-time offer (LTO)
• A free mini-program
• Scripts or templates