Sell your Digital Product with a Tripwire Funnel

This week, I want to share a spark to help you build a simple tripwire funnel so you can easily sell digital products without feeling sleazy.

You want to sell digital products, but it's all so overwhelming.

Selling digital products can be a great way to make money online, but it can be overwhelming if you're unsure where to start.

You can host your products in online stores, such as Etsy or Creative Market, but they own the customer base, and you have no way of upselling people to higher ticket items later. It's also easy to get lost in a sea of sameness and lose potential customers to other sellers.

Funnels are confusing, and marketing is sleazy.

Funnels are a standard tool used in marketing to guide potential customers through a series of steps, from initial awareness to purchase. They can be used to promote and sell products or services effectively, but they can be difficult to build if you are cobbling a collection of free tools together—which is why I use an all-in-one solution like Kajabi.

There is also the potential for sales and marketing techniques to be used in a way that feels sleazy or icky, so many creatives avoid using these tactics, which is a real shame.

"A tripwire is a tiny offer presented straight after a freebie"—Sujay Pawar

A tripwire funnel is easy to set up and only sells to interested people.

The tripwire offer is designed to be a super low-priced, "no-brainer" purchase and is presented to potential customers after they have opted into your freebie.

One of the key benefits of a tripwire funnel is that it only sells to people who are already interested in the product or service and, therefore, are more likely to purchase without you having to "sell" to them directly.

Once you launch your tripwire, you focus on giving away the freebie.

By focusing on giving away the freebie, you attract interested and engaged potential customers who are more likely to make a purchase when offered the tripwire.

In addition, it takes the pressure off you having to sell anything directly because the entry point to your tripwire funnel is a valuable freebie.

You "sell" the freebie and let the funnel sell the product. 

Here's the step-by-step breakdown of the process

Step 1: Create and host your low-cost digital product.

Most creatives have a range of unused digital products on their hard drives. Templates, eBooks, iPad brushes, and fonts are all great low-cost digital products to start with.

A tripwire product should be priced between $7 and $47 so that it's effectively an impulse purchase and provide more value than the price would suggest so that it's a "no-brainer" impulse purchase.

My example below is the Content Genie. It is a suite of digital tools that save you hours each week and only costs $27. I have the "offer" hosted inside Kajabi.

Step 2: Create a free lead magnet that leads to the paid offer.

The key to a successful tripwire funnel is to offer something of value for free that leads directly to the next problem that your low-cost offer solves.

For example, my freebie is a monthly content strategy planner. It helps content creators struggling to keep up with their blogs and socials every week.

Once they've solved their schedule problem for free using my tool, the next logical step is to create and repurpose their weekly content in a shorter time, and the Content Genie does that for just $27. A no-brainer purchase for the right person.

Step 3: Set up your autoresponder to deliver the lead magnet.

We covered this topic in this Creative Spark, but even the most basic email service providers (ESP) can send an automated email to anyone who opts in for your freebie.

Your delivery email might have a download link inside the email if it is a PDF, or you might send people to a download page if it's a tool. Either way, the autoresponder is an essential part of the process and if your ESP can't do it, find a different ESP.

Step 4: Set up your opt-in page.

An opt-in page is where potential customers will sign up for your freebie. On this page, you make no mention of the tripwire. Instead, this funnel's first page is about "selling" the freebie.

Ensure your opt-in page has a strong headline, a brief description of the freebie, the benefits of downloading and using it, maybe a picture of the freebie, and a form for collecting names and email addresses. Include nothing else on this page.

Step 5: Set up your tripwire sales page.

This page should be presented after someone has opted-in for your freebie and essentially replaces the traditional thank you page. At the top of the page, it should say something like "thank you for downloading the freebie. Check your inbox in the next 5-10-minutes, but while you wait, scroll down to see ... " and then build a standard online sales page below it.

Some key elements to include on your tripwire sales page are a clear and compelling headline, a detailed product description, high-quality images or videos of the product, social proof (such as customer reviews), and a strong call-to-action (CTA) that encourages visitors to take the next step and make a purchase.

Click here to view the full tripwire sales page.

Step 6: Connect your opt-in and offer pages to the tripwire sales page.

Once you have a hosted digital product, an offer, a lead magnet, email sequences, an opt-in page, and a tripwire sales page, you need to connect them.

The first page in your tripwire funnel is the opt-in page, where you will drive all your traffic. Once they sign up, trigger the delivery email and take them to the tripwire sales "thank you" page. Next, connect the tripwire sales page to the offer and, finally, connect the offer to the product.

Here's what the full tripwire funnel looks like when planned on paper.

Takeaways

1. Tripwire funnels allow you to generate revenue quickly and automatically
2. Tripwire offers are only presented to people once they have opted in for a freebie
3. Your tripwire freebie and paid offer should directly relate to each other
4. Tripwire offers should be an impulse purchase, priced between $7 and $47
5. Your tripwire offer should be a scalable digital product, not a service
6. Tripwires are passive selling because you promote the freebie and the funnel sells the offer.

⚡ I hope this sparked for you why you should start selling digital products with a simple tripwire funnel.

Please tag me on Instagram and let me know if you found this helpful.

Sign up for my free content planner to see a tripwire funnel in action.