5 Reasons Why You Need A Marketing Funnel

Here’s the scoop.

Odds are overwhelmingly high that you already have a Marketing Funnel in your business, but you don’t know it.

Just take a step back for a moment and let’s go back to the basics.

Let’s talk about AIDA.

Attention | Information | Decision | Action

So the basics of marketing tell us to get someone’s attention, feed them with information about our product, get them to take a decision and then make a purchase which can be a desired action.

Some businesses have got billboards with a phone number on it. So they are using billboards to get Attention.

When customers call in, they are given more information about the product being sold and are prompted to take a decision to buy by the inbound sales team.

Many businesses are currently using this exact business model and that is their sales process or sales funnel.

Now according to Wikipedia;

Conversion funnel is a phrase used in e-commerce to describe the journey a consumer takes through an Internet advertising or search system, navigating an e-commerce website and finally converting to a sale

In my dictionary, a Marketing funnel is a set of assets that helps you remove all objections and convert a prospect into a buyer.

The role of each step in a funnel is to bring the prospect closer to the sale, in any type of funnel or business.

A step can be an email, a video on Youtube, a landing page, an enquiry form, a blog article or a LinkedIn article for that matter.

In this article, we’ll be talking about online marketing funnels.

To get started, let's take a look at a business selling information products.

In the old’en days of the interwebs, you would put up an eBook for sale on your website and stuff some keywords in there and do some SEO and wait for sales to start rolling in. Those were the golden days and they ain’t coming back.

Now in 2017, you need to have a well engineered marketing funnel to convert prospects into buyers.

In essence, a marketing funnel flows like this

1. Build a list
2. Nurture and build a relationship with that list
3. Sell a product to that list to separate the buyers from the freebie seekers
4. Upsell and cross sell to those buyers
5. Build a tribe of happy customers who will buy more from you and encourage other people to buy from you as well.

There you have it, your information product business marketing funnel flow.

One very important point to remember though is that a funnel is pretty useless if there no traffic being sent to it.

If you want to build a solid information based business, you need to use paid traffic. In other words, you need high quality, reliable and scale-able type of traffic.

You cannot rely on free traffic or organic Social Media traffic anymore.

I would go even further and say that you need multiple sources of traffic to be able to sustain-ably grow an information based business or any online business for that matter.

{{{ If you want to learn how to generate leads on demand, click HERE }}}

The main sources of high quality, reliable and scale-able traffic at the moment are Facebook, Google Adwords and Content Networks like Taboola etc.

Now let's come back to the reasons why you need a marketing funnel

1. To Control Your Buyer's Experience

When buyers or prospects come to your homepage, they look around, scroll, click on different pages and leave your site most of the time. ( at least 95% of people leave without buying after clicking on an Ad ) That’s a fact and I am sure if you look at your analytics, you’ll get confirmation of what I am saying. When you build a marketing funnel, you would generally use landing pages and show them one piece of content or one offer at a time.

One offer might have 3 options, but you need to make it easy for the buyer. The buying decision should be a no brainer for her or she will leave without taking the action you want her to take.

You should put one offer in front of your prospects and tell them this is the best offer money can ever buy.

Then once they’ve bought the first product, you present the next product as an upsell and so on. You’d want to get them to buy the cheapest product you have then move them up your value ladder.

Remember, a confused mind doesn’t do anything, so make it as simple as possible for your customers to buy.

2. To reduce customer acquisition costs

As I mentioned earlier in this article, when you have a funnel, your conversions rates go up as you’re able to control where you send the traffic, what the user sees and what they buy etc.

In other words, you’ll dramatically reduce your customer acquisition cost and you’ll make more profit altogether.

3. To be able to scale your business in a predictable manner

A funnel is like a profit spitting machine. You send traffic from one side and it spits out profits from the other side.

When you’re building a funnel, your first goal is to get a positive ROI. Once you get a baseline and you have your traffic source, funnel and conversion rates dialed in, it’s time to scale.

Put more traffic through the funnel and make more money, it’s that simple.

Don't get me wrong, getting a funnel to convert and give you a positive ROI is no easy job. You need to get the right audience, the right offer, the message, the right traffic, the right flow etc. If you get one single piece of the puzzle wrong, you'll will struggle to make it work.

{ If you want a funnel Done For You, I recommend you check these guys HERE }

4.To be able to make maximum profit out of every prospect

This is where your value ladder comes into place. You probably heard this a lot but the money is in the backend.

Once you have a customer, you can upsell, cross sell and get them to buy as many products as you can offer.

It can be your own offers or affiliate offers.

5. To be able to automate your business.

You can have as many funnels as you want in your business to perform different goals.

A funnel to acquire customers, another one to upsell, another one to cross-sell etc. All that can be automated in such a way that your funnels are constantly working your client up the value ladder without your intervention.

From a technical perspective, you can define your funnel through a bunch of landing pages, follow up emails, order forms, sales pages, confirmation pages and so on.

My favorite funnel application to build funnels is Clickfunnels, you can try it out for free HERE.

Whatever type of business you're in, a funnel can help you grow it.

 Whether you're a real estate agent, an author, a coach or financial advisor, a funnel will always perform better than your traditional website.

You also need to have a normal website in your online ecosystem, but a funnel will put your sales on steroids.

You must have figured this out by now, but we build Marketing and Sales Funnels for a living so feel free to book a strategy session HERE

Rajeev Kistoo

Founder

MyFunnelTeam.com

Ps: Like this article? Share the Love.

How To Advertise On Google, Facebook Or LinkedIn

I come across this mistake quite often so I thought I would share my thoughts on this.

You cannot use the same Ad Copy/Language you’re using on Google Search & Facebook Advertising…

Let me expand on this…

On Google, people are actively looking for information or solutions

When your prospect is at the top of the funnel…

She is looking for information

She is getting familiar with the subject

Let’s say she has back pain issues

She’ll go and type back pain

or

lower back pain

At this moment, her searches are very broad and vague.

Your Ad on Google Adwords could then say

Get Rid Of Back Pain Today - Call Chiropractor On 1 800 230 5000

That could be a local Ad… targeting searches in a specific region

She might or might not be ready to talk to a Chiropractor yet, but she will definitely consider it.

Now if the same person is more “aware “ and has already done some research

she knows exactly what her symptoms are and is in deep pain

she will type chiropractor Houston or Chiropractor { insert town}

Now the Ad could say

Houston Chiropractor - Same Day Consultations

Or something more promotional the point is that the prospect is “actively” looking for a solution

They are in pain you offer a painkiller

YOU GO FOR THE KILL

it’s not more complicated than this…

Some people call that Inbound Marketing

When it’s search based…

Whether you’re doing Adwords or SEO...

But on LinkedIn or Facebook…

It’s a totally different ball game…

People aren't actively looking for a product, service or solution.

They are your potential clients, but not in a state of mind to buy.

They don't have their credit cards out.

They are not in the state of mind like they would be on Amazon.

Think about it...

On the other extreme

Think about the mindset of all your prospects who are on Social Media.

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Intagram etc...

They certainly don't have their credit card at hand

And they are not here looking for information about something in particular

They are not actively searching for anything...

But they might Click on an ad or post that pique their interest.

Now in a very crowded and dynamic Facebook Newsfeed, your ad needs to STAND OUT to get attention.

With so much going on, you need hack your way to get attention.

Once you get someone's attention with a compelling image, you need to get a click.

Now bear in mind

The goal of your ad should be to get a click

Not to see whole your product line

You can use your ad to qualify or disqualify your prospect

So while we're at it, here's a formula I use to write my ads

Get Attention

Ask A Question

Build Rapport/Educate/Sell Benefits

Get A Click

Now once you get a click, you need to get their name and email address so that you can market and sell to them through email.

The chances that you sell your product at the first click are really low unless you're into ecommerce and sell products lower than $50.

Even in the ecommerce niche ( physical goods ), a typical conversion rate is around 2%.

It means that 98% of money spent on traffic is being lost.

This is why adding a funnel in the mix helps