TT#017 - 3 must haves in your marketing funnel
Every solopreneur looking for great clients online needs a simple, effective marketing funnel.
Why?
Because a well designed marketing funnel is like having a sales & marketing person working for you while you focus on other things - like delivering great work for clients.
The problem is, marketing funnels are often misunderstood, made unnecessarily complex, and intimidating to someone that's relatively new to marketing themselves online.
This week, I'm going to break down the critical functions your marketing funnel needs to perform - and - share some examples of specific things you can do to start building a pipeline of prospective clients right now.
The 3 Critical Functions of Your Marketing Funnel
When it comes to marketing funnels for a solopreneur, simple is the name of the game.
That means designing your funnel to perform the essentials at the start, then optimizing it over time.
I group the key functions your funnel needs to perform into 3 primary categories:
New: Bring new people into your ecosystem so that you can market to them.
Nurture: Deliver relevant content to educate them about what you do.
Need: Guide people that want to buy your services to your sales process.
Let's take a look at each one in detail...
New
This is arguably the most important role of your funnel, because if no one's there to see your marketing content, it doesn't really matter what you’re saying.
The first step in bringing new people into your ecosystem is getting the attention of the prospects in your target market.
This is typically done in 1 of 3 ways:
Seeds: Word of mouth referrals, relationships, traditional networks.
Nets: Social media content, blogs, podcasts, paid ads, and other campaigns.
Spears: Targeted, outbound outreach to people in your target market.
Your funnel is responsible for capturing that attention and bringing people into your marketing ecosystem.
The simplest, most effective way to do this is to have a dedicated page to send people to with highly targeted messaging speaking to:
The problems your prospect has.
The pains those problems are causing.
The mistakes they are making trying to solve things on their own.
On that page, you can present an offer in exchange for an email to put them on your list.
Maybe that offer is a guide. Maybe it's an event. Maybe it's a free video training. Maybe it’s something else.
Whatever it is, it should be relevant and actually provide value. If it doesn't, the first impression you're making is a bait and switch.
Ultimately, your primary goals here are to start the relationship and build your list (which over time becomes the most important asset in your business).
Nurture
Now that you've captured the attention of your target market and started building your list, it's time to start nurturing those prospects with content.
This is where a lot of solopreneurs make 1 of 2 mistakes:
They blast people on their list with nothing but "buy my stuff" messages.
They send good content that never asks people to "buy my stuff."
It's important to balance your messaging between the 2.
Your goal with nurturing content is to educate your prospects about what you do, establish positioning that allows you to charge what you're worth, and present people with an opportunity to start the sales process when they're ready.
A simple way to do this is to create:
A 3-email sequence setup to reinforce the messaging from the dedicated page you send people to (above) after someone's given you their email.
You can set this up to go out automatically and generally, this can be a little more direct in asking the prospect to take an action, like booking a call with you.
A marketing asset you share on a regular schedule that offers insight and value for prospects while also reinforcing your credibility and authority.
This helps educate prospects and improves your chances of being in the "right place at the right time." These are frequently blogs, podcasts, or newsletters (like this one).
Need
The final piece of the puzzle is guiding prospects that are ready to buy to - and through - your sales process.
Your funnel’s job is to prompt prospects to take an action that initiates the sales process, like booking a call, and guide them through it with the highest probability of success.
What a lot of solopreneurs overlook in this part of the process, though, is that a few simple things can help:
Filter out unqualified prospects, so you aren't wasting your time.
Remind and prompt prospects to dramatically improve show-up rates.
Warm prospects up so they are more inclined to buy when they talk to you.
To set yourself up for the highest chance of success, make sure you have these 3 things in this part of your funnel:
Good questions when they book a call.
Surely you already know that your time is the most precious asset you have. You don't want to waste it talking to people who aren't qualified to buy, aren't ready to buy, or can't buy.
Requiring prospects to answer some intentional questions is a great way to ensure you're investing your time with people that are the best fit.
When this happens on my calendar, we send a polite email letting the person know we aren't the best fit, and why that is, and then invite them to check out some of our other resources.
A thank-you page that invites them to consume more content.
When someone books on your calendar, automatically direct them to a thank-you page with:
A video thanking them and reminding them to cancel if they can't make it.
Several sources of additional content they can consume before you meet.
The latter step helps further educate your prospects on who you are, what problems you solve, and why you are the best at solving them - before they talk to you.
Reminder emails/tests leading up to the call.
Once your prospect books a call with you, a few things should be automated to remind them about that call:
A confirmation email that lets them add the meeting to their calendar.
A reminder 24 hours before the call to remind them about the call.
An SMS reminder about 1 hour prior to the call.
You don't want to overdo this. If prospects are getting half a dozen reminders or overlapping messages, it's annoying and a bad look.
There you have it. The 3 things your marketing funnel has to help you do if you want to consistently land clients you like, doing work you love, at rates you deserve.
