Last week I started a series on where I reveal some of my favorite and top-performing sales funnels. We started off with the Free Gift Funnel. If you missed that one, you can catch up here.

This week we’re going to talk about the next layer to add to your offer stack.

I made you a quick little drawing of an example offer stack for my business.

Today, we’re going to talk about the Tripwire Funnel.

A tripwire or entry offer is a low-cost product that turns a lead into a customer.

You may have seen others teaching this as a way to recover ad costs or get money flowing into your business…and sometimes they do….but the primary goal of this funnel is to convert leads into customers. Whether you break even or make a return on your investment is irrelevant here. Consider it part of your cost of acquiring a client. It’s all about getting that lead to take the next step with you. This is so important when it comes to sales later on down the road.

You may be tempted to skip this step. You may feel it’s sleazy or demeaning to you to have a low-cost offer. I get it. But give it a try. It will make a difference in your conversion numbers in the long term. And as long as the offers are congruent…there’s no need to feel sleazy. This a great opportunity to give your leads a taste of how awesome it would be to work with you!

Here are 4 Ways to Create Your Tripwire Offer

Take a look at all of your offers. Which one pops out to you as the one that you know in your gut will sell well? Make that your entry offer. You may feel a little resistance here because you’ll feel like you’re giving away too much. Ignore that feeling. The key is to give amazing value and let their first impression of you be a home run!

Take a look at all of the pieces of a core offer and pick one to package into an entry offer. This is definitely the easiest way to create a tripwire offer! Make sure this piece can stand on its own and will actually solve a problem for your customer. In the example in the image above, my free offer is a launch checklist. A checklist is great to start off with, it gives you an idea of the elements involved, but it doesn’t have the detail, milestones, timeline, etc of a full-on Launch Project Plan. That would be the next thing someone interested in launching would want and they can very easily, take the project plan and run with it as a complete product.

Look for a gap in your client’s journey. What does your ideal client need BEFORE they need your core offer?

Is there a way to make a paid version of your free offer? I recently saw Emily Hirsh do this for a webinar. When you signed up for her LIVE webinar, you were taken to a thank you page that offered a pre-recorded version of the webinar for $9. A great option for people looking for that instant gratification and for $9, an easy yes.

Here’s a little outline of what this funnel will look like.

If you’ve already got a congruent free gift funnel, it’s just a matter of adding in a couple of pages and few more emails. It’s one more layer that will get your leads one step closer to your core offer. You’ll have a segment of ‘buyers’ who will more easily convert into your core offers later on. Speaking of conversions….next week we’ll be talking about our highest converting funnel so stay tuned. And in the meantime…get your tripwire funnel in place!