Developing a Marketing Funnel
The reason I explore a lot of these topics is because as I was learning about them and hearing them being talked about, it all sounded like a foreign language to me. I thought to myself, I work with a small business and these things are for the big corporate companies or I don’t need this stuff. As I started to learn more about it, and understand more about it and be a part of these conversations, I realized how incredibly wrong I was. But I discovered I was wrong, they are just presented in a way to make the presenter sound smart and get that next big marketing gig. In reality, these things like, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), CPCs (Cost Per Clicks), CX (Customer Experience), Marketing Funnels are just ways for “Marketing Experts” to break down how to market your business and be successful.
I brought this topic up in Google v Facebook ads discussion where we were discussing how to design the appropriate ads by determining what areas of our marketing funnel needed more volume. So what is a Marketing Funnel?
It is called a marketing funnel because in picture form it looks like a funnel (See image below)
The reason to look at your marketing like this is to give you a way to better figure out where your efforts need to be right now for your business. Do you need to find new customers? Do you have a ton of leads, but not many of them are becoming customers (Build more trust). Do you need to work on the offering and process for placing an order? How easy is it for your customers to come back? It costs us less to do business with current customers, so why charge art fees or screen fees for returning customers? Just breaking these things down into little bite sized chunks that we can work on.
I want to go through each one of these specifically a little bit more for us.
Segment 1-Connect, also known as Awareness. Good example is using Google Ads. How do we get our first impression? Things we think of as cold call type marketing. We want to work on this segment so we make sure that we’re attracting the right kinds of people.
Segment 2-Inform or how we gain trust with our customers by providing value without expecting a return. Maybe that’s through a blog or White Paper, or a (Landing Page). You are not selling here in this segment.
Segment 3-Drive Action – This is the part of our funnel where we’re presenting with an offer. Having a Call to Action and giving them a Limited Time offer. You are wanting this part to be really clear for your customers.
Segment 4-Gain Sales – Once we’ve given that action, now we need to make sure we have all the details. This is where we are doing some upsizing, where we are adding more options possibly to their current order. Or down size. Maybe they have an abandoned cart, they didn’t complete the purchase because they’re having sticker shock over shipping costs or other fees so maybe we downsize the offer with a discount or offer to bundle something.
Segment 5-Repeat Business. You’ll notice our funnel doesn’t stop there. This is where we start getting repeat business. We pamper our customers or we reward them. We help them make their next purchase. Don’t give them a reason to go shop elsewhere. This is where you become really customer centric.It’s a lot less expensive and less time consuming to do business with people who already understand your process, already do things well with you and it just becomes easier. This step is the most forgotten part! Many people get caught up in getting new customers and then they stop at this point.
Segment 6-Create Advocates. The final segment of the funnel is really the gravy. We want to create advocates! These are the people who are posting for you, they are sharing their great experiences and posting pictures of them and your products. This part can actually make the top part of the funnel almost unnecessary if you have enough advocates. Those advocates can actually help drive all the other segments. If you go back to the podcast of the “Two Regular Guys” that we did with Allison Prince, she talked about influencers. Influencers or advocates, it does the same thing. She talks about Rachel vs. Ross for any of you who have watched the show “Friends”. Rachel had a birthday party and everybody wanted to be there, she was the life of the party. And then it was Ross’s birthday and he was having a hard time even trying to get his mom to show up. So Rachel was the influencer. You’re wanting to find the Rachels to be your advocates for your business. Alison describes this analogy much better than I do. You can check out that episode on our podcast from our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/page/390165874411987/search?q=prince) We want to give those Rachels’ the platform to be a partner in your why.
So again, just a tool and a way of explaining and breaking down the areas to focus on to get from point A to point B. You can’t do it all, all of the time, so viewing your process in this way allows you to streamline and improve bit by bit.
Shoutout to Cindi Miles – Suggestion for a future show of Small Business Saturdays, which is a great suggestion on managing the shipping. To get products out to people many of us have to ship and the shipping companies have a monopoly and seem to change their rates all the time and ding us for amazon’s sins.
(Get Connected) Sign Up for email – It is going out SOON, so don’t miss it. (Spoiler Alert – There will be links to 3 great blogs about this topic in the email update/ Only way to get them)
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245730
https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-build-a-conversion-funnel-that-will-triple-your-profits/
https://teachable.com/blog/marketing-funnel
(Business Plan) Reminder – still planning to give away an Echo Dot, and all you have to do is work on your business plan. What a win win! If you finish all 5 homework assignments from my Developing a Business Plan Series before the end of the year, you will be entered to win a random drawing to get a brand new Echo Dot shipped to you .I’ll choose a winner and announce them the first week of 2019.
My email is aaron@montcoconsulting.com