Marketing Funnels Are Not What You Think

Effective Marketing Funnels Can Help You Grow Your Business

When you hear the word "Marketing Funnel," what comes to mind?

Do you cringe? Or roll your eyes and shake your head a little? Maybe you think to yourself, "Ugh, not another icky marketing tactic." I'm willing to bet that if you're not a marketer by trade, the term likely doesn't spark any kind of joy or excitement.

I've found that most solopreneurs and small business owners who are familiar with the term "Marketing Funnel," also have negative associations with it. Many people think Marketing Funnels are:

• Long and elaborate

• Complicated  schemes

• Require a great deal of time, energy and budget to set up

• Cold and unpersonalized

• Highly transactional

• Feel like "icky" marketing that dehumanizes the end user.

Marketing Funnels get a bad rap, unfortunately.

As an established marketer, I’ve been using Marketing Funnels for over 10 years to help businesses grow by increasing awareness, driving lead generation, and effectively nurturing leads to become customers.

Because there’s so much unnecessary confusion about Marketing Funnels, I developed my own Marketing Funnel Framework to bring simplicity and clarity to such an effective marketing tactic.

1. Not all funnels are created equal. Other marketers may approach marketing funnels differently.

• Sometimes a marketing funnel is built very specifically to guide a customer through the buying process. Step A leads to Step B and so on. It's fixed and rigid and the goal is to produce more customers.

• Sometimes a Marketing Funnel is used to describe where a potential customer is in the buying process. Are they only aware of their problem? Are they aware of possible solutions? Are they in the process of evaluating their options?

  The fact that Marketing Funnels can be used in so many different ways contributes to general confusion and misconceptions about them.

2. An effective funnel is tailored to you and your business. There's no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to Marketing Funnels. The types of marketing activities that make sense for an online service provider can vary greatly from those for a brick and mortar store. A good marketing funnel takes into consideration important factors like:

• Your audience

• Your business

• Your offerings

3. Your funnel has to work for YOU. It's not going to look like everyone else's. I would never tell a client that they must be on a certain social media platform if they are totally averse to it (for good reasons).

4. My Marketing Funnel Framework can be used to guide your marketing strategy. I approach funnels a little differently. Rather than using the term to describe a concrete set of actions that will lead a person down a defined path to purchase from you, I like to use it as a general framework to guide your overall marketing strategy. Let me explain.

We can use the framework to think of your entire marketing strategy in terms of 4 key areas:

• Attracting new people to learn about your business

• Converting those people into leads (by getting their name and email)

• Nurturing those people over time (so they remember you)

• Closing the deal (turning those people into customers)

My Marketing Funnel Framework allows you to have differing activities happening for each of those 4 stages that make sense for your business. Think of these 4 key areas in terms of "buckets" of marketing tactics.

Proven Success Story Using My Marketing Funnel Framework

I recently worked with a talented woman running her own recruitment business based in Austin, Texas. She was already doing well in her business with most of her new clients coming from referrals and word-of-mouth. She knew in order to really take to the next level, she needed to take a proactive strategic approach with her marketing efforts.

We used my Marketing Funnel Framework to create her marketing strategy.

We worked together to create her marketing strategy, based on the Marketing Funnel Framework. She was already doing a great job getting in front of new people through various networking events, industry associations and business groups.

1. Attract - She had a website that (sort of) served its purpose but it wasn't anything she was excited to share with prospective clients, and it lacked any keyword optimization (SEO) or lead magnet to convert visitors to leads. She had also neglected her LinkedIn presence and needed a strategy of what to post and when.

2. Convert - We quickly identified that the conversion and nurture stages of her funnel were severely lacking. Once people got to know about her business, there was not a clear path for them to provide their name and email address so that she could stay in touch with them through email marketing.

We quickly got to work on my Content Strategy process and came up with a compelling idea for a downloadable resource - Your Guide to Attracting Better Candidates. It was super timely and relevant to her target audience who was struggling to find talent in the current job market.

3. Nurture - Then we created an automated email sequence (“drip campaign”) that would go out to new prospects to educate them about the experience of the company and the benefits of their services.

Creating a Nurture Sequence that Feels Aligned

This client wasn't a fan of creating an email newsletter every month because it felt a little boring to her, so we settled on a monthly market update instead. This was an effective Nurture tactic that felt aligned for the client. We also created a strategy and content plan for her LinkedIn presence in order to create some consistency that would reach more people, encourage them to download her lead magnet, and nurture them on an ongoing basis.

This is what my Marketing Funnel Framework looks like in action.

Every small business can tailor a funnel to their preferences and how they want to serve their markets. Anyone can use my framework to create a highly effective plan in order to:

• Increase visibility

• Generate more leads

• Convert new clients

Want to learn more about creating your own marketing funnel?

I can teach you the DIY route in my monthly masterclass or if you want more hands-on help, I can create a personalized plan for your business. You can book a discovery call to learn more.