How to create a real marketing funnel.
If you Google the words “how to create a marketing funnel,” the top sites seem to send you down the same street. In other words, using your phone and computer to create yet again ANOTHER GRAPHIC.
If your creation of a marketing funnel involves another graphic, you are either trying to sell a totally web based product or going down the wrong street. What could be better than simply using Google Analytics? This is why we use it. It is totally soup-to-nuts along with tutorials and easy free interfaces.
But in the world of real business, that is not what a marketing funnel is.
The Google analytics marketing funnel is for web-based contacts. 99% of the businesses in the world may USE the web, but their selling is not web based. Even Google knows that in the real-world people are not clicks. They buy things because they want or need them.
What a marketing funnel does is help them find YOU when they want something.
Here is a simple marketing funnel.
1) You get a big sign and put it in front of your business.
2) Thousands of people drive by every day.
3) Hundreds notice it.
4) 15 stop in.
All a selling funnel is, is a pathway your customer takes between his initial contact and the sale.
Here is an example of a more sophisticated selling funnel. Medical sales.
The pharma company makes a list of all the doctors they can sell to.
They make a list of key employees in the office including desk clerks’ and office managers.
They make list of the doctors’ background, education, alma matter, habits, days off, and 100 other things.
Educational seminars are set up with dinners as well as a guest speakers from major medical schools or companies.
After the seminars, they set up meeting to educate the doctors on how their products work. They greet the office staff by name, bring gifts, food, and office nick knacks with their logos.
This is a simplified version of their selling funnel!
Step one in creating a marketing funnel is to ask a question.
Who are my best customers and why would they want my product?
Let me give you a quick example to step outside the marketing “box.”
We had a client many years ago that owned a corner bar in a small near suburb of a small city. His neighborhood was blue collar. We were there to value the business for gift purposes. The bar did about $400,000 in sales and generated $150,000 in net pretax profit which is a MONSTER profit margin for a tiny food and drink business.
Our conversation went something like this.
Owner: When I bought this bar, it was closed. I had just retired and was bored. I was driving my wife crazy being around the house all day, so she sent me out to find something to do.
Us: Why did you pick this bar?
Owner: I knew the neighborhood. I knew the people.
Us: And?
Owner. I fixed it up a bit. New siding, a resealed parking lot. In the inside, I mostly just painted the place and cleaned it up. We have a simple menu. Fish Fries, meatloaf, spaghetti, things like that. It is what the neighborhood wants. We have a few different beers, nothing fancy.
We have mostly an early dinner crowd. Older people. It starts at 4 and winds down around 9. We close by 11, sometimes a little later on weekends, but we do not want the late-night drunks. Too many headaches. (Imagine a bar that DOES NOT WANT DRUNKS!)
Us: How do you pick employees?
Owner: The bartenders are all retired like me with nothing to do. Their friends come in in the afternoons. The waitresses are mostly local kids. The cooks we pay pretty well, but they are full time.
Us: How do you avoid shrink? (Shrink is a huge problem in bars, mostly giving away drinks.)
Owner: Every bar tender is required to inventory everything in the bar at the end of the shift. They count the beers and the levels of the liquor. But we do not have any problems there. We charge $2.00 for a beer. It works. I have been here ten years and have watched bars come and go. This is what the neighborhood wants.
Are you thinking “what does this have to do with a selling funnel?”
A selling funnel is about the value of knowing your customer. If you do not know your customer, how can you possibly know where they are? How do you price the product? How do you market?
If you own a local bar, people in your neighborhood are going to stop in. The question is, will they come back? In many businesses, they GIVE AWAY the product and make a profit on repeat customers. This is their marketing funnel.
You can create customized graphics of selling funnels until the cows come home, but if you cannot feed customers in, what good are they?/
Often, when I ask a new business owner who they are typical customer is, they say “anybody who wants…”
Your customer is not an anybody. He or she is a person. You know them far better than a guy selling online marketing funnels. They are your current customers.
Step 2: Write a narrative of your “best” customer.
The narrative, which should be a few very specific paragraphs should include…
What is the customer demographic? Single or family? Rich or middle class. Where do they live. What are their habits.
How am I most likely to find them? Art show, athletic event, (High school basketball game) charity 5k, newspaper, swap sheet, TV commercial.
What was their pain point? (Sick puppy, squeaky brakes, child with tummy ache.) You can read about triggers and pain points by clicking here)
What caused them to think of you in the past? For repeat customers.
What process did they use to find you? (Phone book, Google Maps, web search, were driving by, friend, current customer)
Why do you believe they thought you are the best person to call? A good way to think of this is to ask the question “why” a few times.) “Why did they call me?
Because their puppy was in pain.
“Yes, but their kids are in pain.”
Their puppy was in pain and could not tell them why.
“Okay, their puppy was in pain. Why did they call me?”
You will learn more about this in the section on triggers and pain points.
For a reference on narratives, a genius at this is the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. Dorsey obsesses with customer narratives.
Step 3: From here you design your marketing funnel(s).
The problem with thinking of a marketing funnel as a glorified meat grinder is that all you end up with is hamburger.
In Google analytics, you can see that the prospective customer clicked on A, then B, then C. That is fine if all they are doing is surfing the web. But what if you are giving outdoor magnets and water bottles, and getting back email addresses? In analytics you would test which pages work best.
In a marketing funnel it is the same. What events generate the most giveaways? Which giveaways generate the most emails. Etc. Keep in mind, many companies have ONE funnel which generates a single pathway.
Your funnel will have multiple pathways, much like those in Google Analytics which is tied to a web page. In Analytics a landing page is tied to another page (or multiple pages) which leads to a selling page. Your “landing pages” could be events, ads, mailers, brochures…
Let me give you another example of my own funnel from years ago.
I was selling software packages to senior executives of fortune 500 companies. They are notoriously hard to get ahold of. So, I made a list of all the executives I could find that worked with overseas affiliates.
I then called them in their offices between 6AM and 8AM.
Why? Because that is when they were in their offices waiting for calls from Europe. They would give me appointments just to get me off the phone.
Who was I marketing to? CEO level executives
What was their demographic? Aggressive, decision makers.
Where could I find them? In their offices at 6AM.
If I called at 9, their secretaries would have answered and screened my calls.
Once you have determined SOME IDEAS on where that best customer might be, (there are an almost unlimited number of places.) prioritize just a few.
These are your funnel landing pages.
Some examples are…
A flier you send to their home.
A free sample tent you put up at an art festival.
A sponsorship for a charity.
A reusable bag giveaway at a farmer’s market.
Your business.
A Meetup club you started.
An introductory phone call.
Keep in mind, if you sell $10,000 wristwatches, your best customer probably will not be at a bus terminal. On the other hand, if you are a car repair shop, they probably will not be at an art festival. Go where they are most likely to be.
Also keep in mind these events are not for selling. They are for collecting lists of possible customers.
Step 4 is to set up a link between these potential customers and your office.
This might be a phone number, an email address, a door magnet, or anything that triggers a communication between you and the customer. But preferably, it should be something you control.
This is critical. This could be a cell phone number, an email address, or a physical location.
If you have followed this so far, you should be thinking…
Okay, I am a veterinarian who cares deeply about my customers pets because to them, their pets are their relatives. Many of them come to me because they know and trust me. When they think of my service, they are at home with a sick pet and worried stiff. They are worried about.
The health of the pet.
Whether you are the right person to help.
What I charge and how I will bill them.
So, ONE of your selling funnels might be…
I’m going to get a tent and give away free snacks at the Run for Roswell. (A cancer research facility in Buffalo) In addition, I’m going to give them something that they keep. That might be a door magnet with a cute saying and your name, or a calendar of pet events, but it must come with an email or text message signup.
The single most important aspect of a selling funnel is being proactive which leads us to the next step.
Create your marketing calendar.
This process may seem complicated, but it isn’t. It’s not only the simplest marketing system you’ll ever find but also the least expensive.
Imagine you’re the veterinarian. You’ve already created your footprint, had an event and collected 300 email addresses. Added to that, when a customer comes into your location, you get their email address.
In this step, you send out informational emails to the pet owner. For every 7 informational messages, (text or email) send one “friendly reminder.” (Sales ad) These are designed to be informational. Hints about pet health, stories of people and their pets, plenty of photo’s, etc. They should have images of your shop, video’s, and stories. Add a share link so they can send it to a friend.
These emails are designed to build credibility and trust, not sell. But most importantly, these emails must address the customers pain points. You must not only solve their problem but get to the real reason why they will use you.
You may very well sell products through the emails, but do not be too aggressive. People like to buy but hate being sold to. Also, if something is an informational email, keep it that way. If you try to sell too many times, they will stop opening the email.
Another point on this is, it is often said among seasoned salespeople that it takes 7 customer contacts to make a sale. Think of people as if they are browsing. Let them browse. One of the most successful furniture salesmen I ever knew used to tell the customer to go home and think about it! His repeat business was amazing!
Why is this the most important thing you will ever do?
When I started selling to C level executives, I was young. The other people who sold the same product were at least 20 years older, but I was the top seller.
Why? Because I only targeted the best customers. I had clients that ran major corporations worldwide. The general gist was to sell to C-Level executives you must be “like them.” Same gray hair, $3,000 suit and Rolex.
Do you really think a man who has climbed the mount Everest of corporations and controls thousands of employees thinks a software salesman is a peer because they wear the same suit? These people are typically the oldest people in the company. They would do anything to meet a young aggressive person with a great idea.
So, your marketing funnel should target the best customer for you.
Anybody can fill a basket with new customers, but are they best customers?
Best customers are people that you can service most efficiently, most competently and most profitably. This is why doctors specialize.
I’d suggest that at first you keep your marketing funnels simple because even in a small or medium business, marketing funnels can be insanely complex. That complexity can be so overwhelming that you end up with a maze of tools and no new sales.
Finally, any system implemented into a small or medium business should be, in our opinion, user friendly.
It should integrate into your processes without too much (or any) additional employee resources. The reason is, if you do not, there is a chance it’ll never make it off the back burner.
A few years ago, I met a man who ran a chain of auto shops in the city of Boston. Our process is to go through the laundry list of things you will read on the gig2big website.
I went through finance, marketing, banking, and workflow, step by step. Every single step he had right. I could not get even a toe into his business.
This was the only small business I have ever seen like this!!!!!!
And believe me, we work and have worked with HUNDREDS!!! This guy would have made less money if he was a counterfeiter! This is why he was swimming in cash flow and his businesses were always at 90% efficiency, which is crazy in an auto shop.
My point is the things you learn on this website are golden. Small businesses may do one or two, but even then, they do not operate efficiently.
Like we say, it is not hard, you just have to commit to it.
