You have more than likely heard the term ‘marketing funnels’ and have a basic understanding. I did not fully understand many of these terms until years into my business. A marketing funnel often refers to the customer journey to get to you. Understanding different types of marketing funnels and how your prospective client can arrive as a client to your business is crucial. This is why I wanted to share 7 marketing funnels that work.
“A marketing funnel, or marketing sales funnel, is a model for understanding the process of turning leads into customers.”
–Alexa
Marketing Funnels That Work To Keep Clients Funneling Into Your Business
Free Offer Marketing Funnels
1. Free Offers Are A Must In Marketing Funnels
Creating and sharing a free offer or opt-in is a must for any business. I can tell you email marketing is not dead but very much alive and a big reason why so many businesses do so well. Making a free offer that will attract your ideal audience and entice them to give you their email in exchange for your creation, filled with value, is a crucial marketing funnel.
Your free offer can help you in a number of ways.
- Build Your Email Marketing Lists
- Attracts the Right Audience
- Showcase Your Expertise
- Helps Establish You As An Expert In Your Industry or Niche
- To Grow Your Audience
I’m sure there are more ways a free offer will benefit you but most of all it will build your email list. Free offers help to build you a warm audience. A warm audience is one who is already interested in what you provide.
What Should I Offer?
Free offers range from a simple ‘free consultation’ (I do not recommend this alone) to workshops, ebooks, and more. I do not recommend just offering a free consultation because, in order to book one, the person/business has to already know who you are, have a limited amount of trust in you, and be willing to share some facts about their business. Although for clients only starting their website and online presence putting up a sign up for a free consult is something rather than none at all to begin collecting email addresses. You can add another free offer later after you have time to prepare a better free offer.
I suggest offering free checklists, ebooks, workbooks, webinars, etc. Offers that encompass some of what you offer to clients. For example, a free email marketing checklist is great for you if you offer email marketing services for your clients. It will give them enough information to get started when they must do it themselves, yet they will remember you when you are they are ready to outsource this task. Create a list in your email marketing program and connect it to your free offer so that the person who signs up will automatically be placed on this list.
Email Marketing Funnel
2. Email Marketing Is A Crucial Funnel
Email marketing is crucial and still one of the best ways to build your client base. Sending emails to your warm audience is a wonderful way to stay in front of those who are already interested in your services or products. If you are not doing this, stop right after reading this article and put a sign-up (pop-up) on your website to begin collecting email addresses right away! Most email lists are built from your free offer(s). There are, however, a number of other ways to build your lists.
What Should I Offer?
Free Offers – as indicated this is one of the ways most businesses grow their email lists.
1. Blog Articles – have them sign up to be notified when you post a new article.
2. Conventions, Conferences, and Summits – can be a great source if you like to speak at these events. Make sure the intended audience is your targeted audience as well.
3. Free Newsletter – have them sign up to receive your newsletter regularly. You can have a simple pop-up sign-up form on your website offering this if you choose.
4. Webinars – I have had incredible success building my email lists through doing online webinars with partners. I’ve been able to offer SCORE a few different webinars to help new and growing entrepreneurs with their businesses. This boosted my email lists significantly. I continue to gain clients from these lists.
5. Website – if you do not have a free offer or any of the other possible ways to build a list you can simply add a pop-up or form at bottom of your website pages for others to sign up for your special offers, programs, newsletters, etc.
6. Workshops – Offering a workshop can also grow your list by having those who want to attend sign-up and give you their email address.
Search Engine Optimization On Your Website
3. Website SEO & CTA Funnels
A must for any website is to use proper search engine optimization (SEO). I highly recommend using YoastSEO Plugin to help you. It will give you the ability to easily add your keywords or keyword phrases, and meta description, and tell you what you can change to have a better SEO for your page.
Also, remember to add a call to action on every page (CTA). The CTA is extremely important to be able to follow your funnels. Be clear on what action you want the person viewing each page to take before they exit your website page.
What Should I Offer?
You can offer a number CTAs including:
SEO Blogging Funnels
4. SEO Blogging Can Attract Visitors
A great way to boost your reach to help your website rank higher on Google and other search engines is to blog (write articles) on your website. Specifically, SEO Blogging makes use of keywords that clients may use in searching for providers just like you.
The Yoast Plugin is great in assisting you with every article you write. Yoast will not only assist with your SEO, by prompting you with fill-ins for specific SEO needs but also provides writing pointers. It will grade the writing and SEO and show you where improvements can be made. It is had helped me become a better writer for my audiences.
Which Funnel Would I Recommend Most?
I would recommend trying SEO Blogging as your first funnel if you are just starting with your marketing funnels. This is one of the number one ways I helped our clients (in my boutique digital marketing agency) move up in SEO ranking. It is one of the quickest ways to make a difference in reaching others.
The main reason this helps you rank higher on search engines is that if you do it right you will have titles that your target audience will search about in search engines. In turn, search engines, like Google reward you by showing your articles to more people. This also helps your overall SEO. Remember to ask readers to sign up to be notified of new articles. You can do this by adding a CTA button at the bottom of your blogs. This will begin to help you develop another funnel, your email marketing funnel.
What Should I Offer?
Offer your audience authentic content that speaks from your heart and knowledge. Like attracts like. If you want to attract clients that you will enjoy your blogs just be you. Include keywords and terms that prospective clients will use when they need information. Speak to your readers directly giving them the information they are in need of at the time. This will build your authenticity, and expertise (in their eyes), and establish trust.
Organic Social Media Funnels
5. Organically Grown Social Media
As you know, Social Media is no longer optional but necessary for any business today. It takes time, usually 6 to 18 months, to grow an authentic, organic audience on social media. The idea is to share content from your authentic voice in posts on your social channels that will reach your ideal prospective clients. How can you do this?
What Should I Offer?
Some of the best techniques are to share tips and how-to’s directed to your prospective client and those looking for these tips and answers. Those looking for these answers can also become prospective clients.
Social media is second only to search engines where people go to find information on companies. Mix in quotes and some curated content (articles from other non-competitor sources) and you will have a well-rounded content mix for your social media. Remember to also share your free offers and pages from your website from time to time.
Social Media Ads As Marketing Funnels
6. Ads On Social Media
In today’s social media it is necessary to run social media ads to gain more followers in order to build an audience. It also is helpful to obtain more visitors to your website.
Running marketing ads on social media platforms can be a useful marketing funnel as well. You must remember to be specific in your desired outcome.
What Should I Offer?
What you should offer depends on what you want the result to be from the ad? There are a number of possible desired results including:
- More Followers on Your Business Page
- Email Addresses for Your Free Offer
- Attendees for an Event, Webinar, or Workshop
- Promotion of Your Website
There are more possible results, however, these will serve as a basic overview for us right now. Social Media Marketing or Ads can be very useful in helping grow your audience and promote specific items. This is especially true when promoting an event and/or a free offer(s). I highly recommend trying in small ad dollar amounts at first and if able to do some A/B Testing, changing only one aspect of the ad (font, word, graphic, etc.) to see what gets a better response.
Referral & Strategic Partners Funnels
7. Referral & Strategic Partnerships
Referral and Strategic Partnerships can be advantageous when done properly. The basic principle is that you will reward those who send clients to you and you, in turn, will also send clients to them and be rewarded as well. These reward those who send clients your way. Often referral partners are current or past clients, colleagues (old & current), and possibly family or friends.
Strategic Partnerships
In a strategic partnership, the key is to work with someone who provides a service or product you do not (& do not plan to provide). The same should be true of your strategic partner, in that you do not provide any of the services they provide. Often our clients will ask us if we can provide another service they need and if we do not clients like quality recommendations. Even though you do not provide these services you can benefit from sending them to someone else you trust. Also, remember that it must be someone you know who will provide good work. Their quality will end up reflecting upon you & your business. Your ability to provide clients with good sources also helps clients trust you more.
While strategic partnerships are more about teaming with a business (or person) who will send others to you and you send clients to them as well. It is more of a symbiotic relationship involving both businesses. Keep in mind that most only form a few strategic partnerships, limiting the type of services or products to one per partner. Such as one strategic partner who provides website design, one who can provide email marketing, etc. You should only choose one highly trusted or built relationship to form a strategic partnership with at a time.
Referral Partners
Referral partners work a little differently in that it can be anyone, including family & friends (if you wanted to include them) who you pay a small reward or fee for sending potential clients to you. You can determine the terms, but it is usually a small percentage of the revenue amount generated. Most pay only when the person becomes a client. There are a few who will pay just for adding them to their list. This can also be similar to Affiliate marketing.
In a referral partnership, you may have multiple providers in any one service. This gives your client options to choose from but all are vetted & highly recommended by you. You may refer to a few freelancers for your client to choose from for email marketing, as an example. You have a pre-arranged agreement with all that they will reward you with a percentage of the revenue generated should your client also become their client. There is, however, no symbiotic relationship, in that you do not expect the referral partner to send clients to you as well.
What Should I Offer?
What you offer to your strategic and referral partners is usually a percentage of the sale. There are instances where some may trade in services or products needed as well.
This is your business, you set terms and amounts. You will soon find out if these terms and amounts are agreeable with prospective partners.
Marketing Needs To Continue To Flow
These 7 Marketing Funnels That Work should help you build out your own funnels. These are only the beginning of each type of funnel. Of course, there are many more marketing funnels you can develop. I hope this will get you started or add to what you are doing already.
It is important to create a continual marketing flow from various sources if you wish to continually attract clients to your business.
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