It’s not exactly a secret that I love, love, love marketing funnels. So knowing this, it wouldn’t be surprising to anyone that one of the questions I answer the most is:

What’s a funnel?

I like the Kissmetrics definition, “A funnel is the set of steps a visitor needs to go through before they can reach the conversion.” It’s a bunch of gates or touch-points before you reach the ultimate journey. Now, a conversion is the end result, but it is business-specific what the touch-points are that take you to get there.

That’s a mouthful, so let’s break this down for us because often people get sidetracked by what tech to use or how to make this all tricked out. 

Let’s be honest here: Sales don’t just magically happen the moment someone discovers your business — especially in the online world. I don’t know anyone who hangs a virtual shingle with a “Buy Now” button because they know they wouldn’t get any sales. It takes a lot more effort than that! 

That’s kinda like putting up a tinder profile with ‘Let’s get married.’ No one would swipe right on your picture because they’re not ready for that commitment. 

Instead, you need to take your visitors on a journey, which some online marketers call a sales funnel, marketing funnel, or just plain old funnel.

​​In your funnel, it’s really important to lead your visitors through four stages before asking them to decide to buy from you. And each of these stages is as important as the other.

So fasten your seat-belt because we’re about to look at each part of this journey together, so you'll then be able to turn your online visitors into longtime customers!

Biggest Show Takeaways:

The 4 Stages of a Marketing Funnel

• Marketing Funnel Stage 1: Attract Your Audience
  • • If you don't attract the right audience into your lead magnet or anything else that comes after that, it does not matter how brilliant of a marketer you are — they're not going to buy. 
    • A great marketing approach for your marketing funnel is to start off by attracting your actual audience, and this takes some focus. 
    • If you're not clear on the problem that you're solving for your audience, if you're not clear on where your audience is already at with talking about that problem, you're going to have a really hard time attracting the right people. 
    • If you don't know what problem you're solving, start there. When I see people having a hard time with their marketing, this is always the number one thing that I go to. What's the problem your audience has, how do they describe it, and how do you solve it in a way that really is interesting to them? Is it faster? Is it cheaper? Is it a different approach? Do you get different kinds of results? What is the problem that you solve? And then attract the audience that wants to solve that problem. 
• Marketing Funnel Stage 2: Create Desire to Know More
  • • When you're going out and attracting people, you're usually creating free content. You're attracting them through blogs, podcasts, videos, speaking, etc.
    • This is where your lead magnet comes in. If you have a great lead magnet that you've put out there, and people just aren't biting, either you're not in front of the right audience, or you haven't created enough of a desire for them to know more about what's in that lead magnet or what you have to offer. 
• Marketing Funnel Stage 3: Make an Offer
  • • Between marketing funnel stage two and marketing funnel stage three, you're warming them up. You're setting the stage for your offer. You're helping them understand why you're the person they should listen to, why your offer is different than other offers out there, and why now is the time to really make a decision. 
    • When you enter stage three, this is where you say: “And here's my offer, tada.” 
    • Then you also say, “And here are some people who've taken me up on my offer and here are their great success stories. Here are some ways that I'm going to make sure that you're really, really supported and that this is unlike any other offer out there. Here's my guarantee.” 
• Marketing Funnel Stage 4: Purchase Your Offer
• Congratulations! Your funnel successfully achieved your objective, and now a purchase is being made.
• When creating a funnel, here’s what often trips up a lot of people: It doesn’t have to be hard, super techy, or overwhelming; it just needs to be FOCUSED on serving your audience. 
• Become super aware of how these stages work on YOU. Think about the last product, program, or service you purchased for yourself or your business. 
  • • What steps did YOU go through to make your decision? 
    • What questions did you have? 
    • What was interesting and/or intriguing to you? 
    • What got you to say YES and buy? 
• To create an effective funnel you’ve got to help your audience with the seven keys we talked about:
  • • What is it you will eventually sell? 
    • Why would someone want to buy that product, class, experience, program, or service? 
    • What problem are you solving? 
    • Where are the people who have that problem hanging out? 
    • Why is your offer better than anyone else’s?
    • Why should they buy it from you? 
    • Why should they buy it now? 
• Create Profit Without Worry — one system at a time. I’ll show you how to attract a steady flow of buyers without all the hustle with this free download →  5 Steps to Profit Without Worry.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• • • Kissmetrics
    • FREE DOWNLOAD: 5 Steps To Profit Without Worry 
    • Connect on Facebook
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    • Connect on Instagram
    • Create Profit Without Worry — one system at a time with this free download →  5 Steps to Profit Without Worry.