What is a Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel is a journey your prospective client takes from awareness to purchase. There are multiple stages to a marketing funnel including awareness, interest, action, loyalty, and advocacy. It takes your prospects through each stage quickly and efficiently. It’s also the perfect way to start building a relationship with a new prospect.
5 Kinds of Marketing Funnels
Email Marketing Funnel – A good email funnel contains a series of emails arranged together with a particular set of goals in mind. It can be as simple as a few messages designed to sell a product or service. These emails are designed to build relationships, provide educational information, and encourage them to make a purchase or contact you.
Your email marketing funnel starts with a good landing page that includes an opt-in form. It should offer something of value in exchange for their contact information. Once they fill out the form, they will be added to your funnel.
Create a series of emails. The first message in your series should be all about offering value to your new subscriber by delivering what you promised them when they opted on to your list. It should also include a little bit about your business and what it has to offer. The second email should establish authority by providing them with more information about what your business can do for them. Include a case study built around a client success story. The third email should be about education. Let them know you understand what they are going through by addressing their concerns and showing them how you can help. Your fourth email is a call to action. You’ve delivered value and positioned yourself as the authority. Now it’s time to ask for the sale. Be direct with your offer and clearly state the benefits they’ll receive when they make a purchase.
Social Media Marketing Funnel – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others generate massive amounts of traffic every day. They play an important part in your overall marketing strategy. This method is slower and more difficult than other marketing methods but it can be done effectively.
Send the traffic you receive on social sites into your other funnels by directing them to specific landing pages. Capture their contact information and follow up with them consistently as they move through the buying process.
When it comes to using social media marketing effectively, more isn’t always better. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be on every available platform to get noticed. Instead focus on two or three channels that connect with your target audience and grow your presence there, before expanding to more.
People need to be intrigued enough to follow, like, and share the content you post. The more you can get them involved in the conversations the better chance you’ll have of getting them to take the next step; visiting your website, joining your mailing list, or setting up an appointment.
Use Facebook Live to connect with them personally and answer questions about the products and services you offer. Post surveys and polls to find out what interests them, what they are looking for, and what their problems are. Post free educational content. Post teaser text to your blog and include the post’s direct link. Run contents. Add tons of eye-catching graphics and videos.
Once you have their attention it’s all about engagement, relationship building, and getting them to respond to your offers. The objective is to get them to take some type of action like signing up for your newsletter, taking a free trial, downloading a free report, or making a purchase.
Survey Marketing Funnels
A survey funnel serves two purposes. The first is to encourage visitor interaction. Because they are required to answer questions and invest time to move forward they become more invested in what you have to offer. The second is market research.
Surveys don’t have to be complex to be effective. They can be as simple as asking a few key questions via email and giving people a good reason to respond. The main objective is to send them to a dedicated landing page and get them to commit to giving you their contact information. You will follow up with them after they’ve completed the survey.
Build a survey on your website using basic forms. Host it on an external site like Survey Monkey or with Google Forms. Share the link to take the survey with your website visitors, email subscribers, and social followers. You can also use the built-in tools available on most social platforms to make a quick poll or quiz.
Think about who your survey audience is. Are the people you plan to target with paid advertising? Or are they previous customers who already know what your business has to offer? The questions you ask will vary depending on who you are trying to reach.
Podcast Marketing Funnels
Podcasts are extremely popular and relatively easy to create. As a lead generation strategy, they are a great way to connect with a large audience of people eager to hear what you have to say. Tie that in with a well thought out sales funnel and it’s a little bit like striking gold.
Good equipment, software, and a place to host your podcast are a must. You will also need a place to host your podcast. You can host them on your own domain, but as you create more episodes be aware the files will take up a lot of room and require a lot of bandwidth as your audience grows. It can become costly if you don’t monitor it closely. Alternatively, you can use dedicated hosting on a site like Amazon S3. iTunes and other directories. They have the benefit of a large number of people browsing content and subscribing to your podcast.
Planning and commitment are required for success. Focus on interesting topics that will garner the most listeners. Tie in your products and services within your recordings. Listen to a few other similar podcasts to get a feel for what works. See how they open, speak, and close their shows.
Your podcast marketing funnel needs to have a dedicated landing page with a strong call to action (CTA). Capture the contact information of your subscribers, so you can get them into your funnel.
Some of your listeners won’t stick around until the end of your podcast episode. Include your CTA’s briefly in your introduction and throughout your content in order to increase the number of leads you get from those who tune in.
Webinar and Video Marketing Funnels
This is where “evergreen” material comes into play. Evergreen means that the material doesn’t expire. The topic will be fresh for a long period of time. Webinars and video funnels are perfect for cultivating new leads and turning them into customers.
It all starts with a good landing page and an opt-in form. Whether you’re creating a short video series or a full-blown webinar you must be collecting leads. On that page, you need a clear and compelling headline that immediately grabs the viewers’ attention. Include a list of benefits and show them what they have to gain by signing up. Use a strong CTA that stands out and draws attention to your opt-in form. Make it compelling enough to convince them to give you their contact info.
When using webinars and videos for lead generation position yourself as an authority in the eyes of your consumer. Your content should educate viewers and present them with the benefits of your product or service. If you can help people see how what you have to offer solves their problems, you will see much higher conversions overall.
Marketing funnels can be used in a variety of ways. Choose the option that you’re most comfortable with. Be authentic. Be professional. Be consistent.
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