Application Funnel – Growth Strategy For A High-Ticket Business in 2024

Collecting leads is crucial nowadays for any online business. While it’s true that the more leads you have, the higher results you will get, a more crucial fact to prioritize is the quality of the leads.

70% of business owners prefer the quality of leads more than an increased number of leads alone.

This is because running campaigns to larger lead lists may cost quite a lot. And if you do not have a curated way to collect targeted leads, this may result in lower ROI, especially when it comes to high ticket sales.

One of the best ways to avoid such loss is by using an application funnel.

An application funnel is an excellent method to qualify leads and ensure that you have the right customers lined up for your product offers. You won’t waste your customers’ time on services they don’t want, and unqualified prospects will not waste your time or resources as well.

Today, you will get a comprehensive guide on why you should use application funnels and how you can create one on WordPress.

After reading this article, you will learn

• how application funnel helps high-ticket businesses
• the structure of an application funnel
• step-by-step process of creating an application funnel
• and a few secret tips to turn cold traffic into warm sales

So let’s dive in.

Concept Of An Application Funnel

The main idea behind an application funnel is you convince your prospects to apply for a certain solution by answering a few questions. These questions will be carefully curated so that you know if these are the right clients for you.

Basically, you control the whole process. If the answers to the questions mean that your service is a good fit for a client, then you may schedule a meeting with him. Else, simply inform the user that this would probably not be the right fit for him. In case you have multiple tiers of services, the application form will help you identify which tier is good for the client. This means you will only be putting your effort into clients that are more likely to take your service and are willing to pay for a good high-ticket offer.

An application funnel usually consists of 3 steps –

1. Landing Page
   On this page, you will highlight the benefits of taking your service and convince your prospect to submit an application to request your service or proposal.
2. Application Page
   Here, you will create your application form and get your prospects’ input.
3. Thank You page
   Finally, thank your prospects and inform them that he/she will receive an email shortly.
4. Email Automation Follow-up
   Once a prospect has submitted the form, you may send an automated email based on the main qualifying questions. Or, you may simply send a confirmation email to let them know you received the application and that you will get back to them real soon with the next process. In this email, you may add links to a few resources for the prospect to check out.
5. Run an email sequence to convince the prospect.
   Apart from the initial email, you may choose to set up an email sequence with free valuable content, which will act as a lead nurturing series. It will help to make the user remember you when you get back to them with a proposal.

We will look at how you can create an Application funnel later on in this article.

How High-Ticket Businesses Can Benefit From Using Application Funnels

Normally, it’s quite difficult to connect with people that do not need your service. You may be able to convince someone to purchase a low-cost product even if they do not need it. In the case of high-ticket products, the investment is high, and people will think twice before spending on your service.

Think about it. You may try out a new flavored ice cream if the shop owner insists just because it doesn’t cost much. But you will probably not invest $500 or $1000 on high-ticket products/services, such as web development services or higher-priced health supplements if you don’t need it or if you do not find it suitable.

In that regard, If your acquisition cost and the cost of providing the service are high, you won’t be able to offer your service at a low price either.

And an application funnel is just what you may need to help you get highly-qualified leads that really need your service and are more likely to spend a good amount of money for it.

Here are some of the key benefits of using application funnels.

1. Craft the perfect offer for your high-ticket products/services

One of the important things that matter when it comes to selling high-ticket products or services is that you need to know exactly what your prospects are looking for.

The application funnel will allow you to collect extensive data on what the clients require and, in turn, will help you plan out the perfect offer for your clients.

It’s not just about offering a good discount and all; the details will let you personalize your pitch to the clients and increase your chances of closing the deal with the right demonstration and sales pitch.

For example, if you are a financial advisor and one of your clients shared that she is struggling with managing outgoing funds in his business, then you can focus on pitching the positive outcome she can achieve with your help.

2. Identify ideal customers to run more successful campaigns

As mentioned above, an application funnel will help you narrow down your audiences and focus on targetted prospects.

The data you collect via the application form helps you understand the requirements, pain points, and expectations of the prospects. It will help you find the right customers for the right offers and segment them for personalized campaigns in the future.

For example, if you have multiple fitness programs in your Gym, you could have potential clients submit an application to join the Gym at a discount while sharing what they want to achieve in terms of fitness. This will help you carefully make the right fitness programs for the right individuals and close more deals without any effort.

3. Collect crucial details for successful future promotional campaigns

Not everyone that submits the application will be going for your services right away. But the extra details you collect will help you plan promotional campaigns for them in the future.

For example, let’s say you offer digital marketing services. Now, suppose you received a lot of applications where prospects require Tik Tok Ads services, but you do not have that service available yet. You can save these leads with an appropriate tag. Then, in the future, when you launch the Tik Tok Ads service, you may email them directly with a handsome offer. Whether they take other services from you or not, the fact that they mentioned they require Tik Tok Ads makes them qualified for your promotions when you have the service available. And it will let you create personalized content for higher conversions.

4. Get ideas for future expansion of business

Unlike a quiz funnel, the application funnel allows prospects to expressively define what they are looking for. The amazing thing here is people will often ask for new innovations that are very relevant to your business, but you may not yet provide them.

In this case, if you see that you are getting a lot of requests for such features, you may decide to expand your horizon and bring in this new service. And the best part, you already have these qualified leads to get instant traction for your new service when you launch.

5. Refine marketing materials for higher conversions

An application funnel can help you collect valuable data to identify patterns and trends among your prospects, allowing you to adjust your marketing efforts and improve your copies & sales pitch. For instance, if you notice that people are more excited about a certain feature that you didn’t highlight too much in your initial marketing content, you may then refine your marketing approaches and change your focus on what’s on the trend (much like how everyone is focusing more on ChatGPT nowadays).

How To Create An Application Funnel To Collect Highly Qualified Leads?

By now, you already have a good idea of why you should use an application funnel. Now, we will create one using a basic example.

Imagine you are a counselor who is selling an “Educational Counseling Programme” as the main product for $1200. As a counselor, you only need prospects who are looking for help with their education. You don’t want to market among the people who don’t have a budget or a relevant goal.

For this, we will use the following basic steps:

There are three basic steps involved in an application funnel:

1. A Landing Page
   This will be in the form of a reverse squeeze page. On this page, the prospects will learn about your product, and you will offer a lead magnet. Now, even if you are hooking the user with a lead magnet, you will also discuss your main offer here. Once the user submits the form, redirect him to the next step of your funnel.
2. The Application page
   Here, you will initially insist that direct counseling can ensure the best possible outcome. Ask the user to fill out a form and see what sort of results he can achieve – free of cost. And then, he can decide if he wants to go for counseling or not.
3. Thank you page
   After the form submission, thank the prospect and inform him that you will get back to him in a couple of days with the right instructions and counseling offers.

The application form should have a few questions with multiple answers to choose from and a few questions that the prospect has to answer elaborately.
One of the multiple-choice questions should be about the budget of the prospect. If you know how much the prospect is willing to spend, you will be able to decide if you want to serve this client. If the budget is low, you may reject the client and inform him of the minimum budget he should have. There could be other qualifying factors, such as location, current educational achievements, etc.

4. Automated Confirmation Email
   Right after the submission, set up an automation so that if the prospect fails the initial qualification requirements, he will get an email stating that you can’t help him and inform him what is required to be able to proceed with his educational goals. But if he passes, you simply send an email that you received the submission and add this prospect to a particular list.
5. Lead Nurturing Sequence
   Now, depending on how many submissions you get, you will need time to review the ones that are worth your time. During this time, you may send out an email sequence to the ones that passed the initial qualification criteria. These could be a series of 3 emails with instructions and tips that are relevant to your service and helpful for the prospect. This will ensure the prospect remembers you when you get back to them.
6. Send Out Your Offers
   Once you have reviewed your potential prospects, separate them into two lists – one for the ones that you are willing to offer your service and another that may not be the ideal clients to work with. For the ones that are good send them an email with the benefits they will get with your service and invite them to a no-cost video call. For the rest, you may simply inform them via emails of the shortcomings for which you cannot help them and give an idea of which situation you can help them with.
7. Close Your Deal
   The ones that accepted your video call invitation are highly qualified leads. Your next task is to close the deal by showing off your expertise to the prospect on the call.

Remember, all of these are now your leads, and you can run email campaigns for future offers to these prospects.

Now, let us look at how you can create an application funnel.

Create An Application Funnels Real Quick

You may use any funnel-building tool to pull this off. In this article, we will use WPFunnels and Mail Mint. And in the funnel, I will be using WPForms to create the application form.

Step 1: Create funnel steps

Go to WPFunnels & create a three-step funnel (Landing> Custom> Thank You). Here, You can customize your landing page design, and content from their different templates according to your requirement.

Step 2: Prepare the reverse squeeze page

As a counselor, you only need prospects who are looking for such programs. That’s why on the reverse squeeze page you can add your success stories or career tips upfront to hook the interested leads to leaving their emails.

So, on the landing step, prepare the reverse squeeze page & attach a checklist of “Things to consider before choosing a subject for higher study” as an upfront lead magnet. Give an engaging CTA such as “Learn More”.

Those who are not interested will move away on their own. And the interested ones will click on the CTA to know more.

Step 3: Prepare an application form

After clicking on the CTA, the lead will enter the application page, where you will use an application form asking for details information. Add some qualifying questions to categorize leads if they are ideal or not.

As qualifying questions on the application form, ask about the educational level, academic goals, budget for education, and so on. Those who have fixed goals with the right educational level & have a sufficient budget will be considered qualified leads. Having a lack of any of the options are the leads that need nurturing. Those will be disqualified who don’t have goals, budget & right educational level.

You can use WPForms to create the application form with a CTA & then embed the form into the Custom step.

Step 4: Edit the Thank You page

After submitting the details & their answers to the application form on the custom step, the leads will be directed to the Thank You step. Here, you will thank them for submitting the form & inform them of when you will reach them again.

That’s how you can create an application funnel using WPFunnels & WPForms.

Now you will work on those who submitted the form to make the application funnel work. After defining the qualified lead, Create another sales funnel for the main product with a specialized offer to entice them to buy since you know they need your product or service.

But, what about others who filled out the forms? Let’s talk about some amazing tricks-

Final Thoughts

Thus an application funnel can be an effective strategy for avoiding losses when running campaigns to larger lead lists. By using a curated approach to collect targeted leads, you can increase your chances of achieving higher ROI, particularly for high ticket sales. Screen potential leads based on their qualifications and level of interest, and focus your marketing efforts on individuals who are more likely to convert. This can lead to more efficient use of your marketing resources, ultimately resulting in higher profits and a more successful business overall.

With WPFunnels and Mailmint, you can easily create and customize your sales funnels, making it easier to engage, nurture, and convert leads.

Get WPFunnels+ Mail Mint now!