At each stage of your Value Ladder, you have a different objective, and therefore the funnels you use will be of different types; the scripts in the funnels will also differ so that you can achieve each of the goals.
We are now going to look more closely at each step in your value ladder and help you to find the answers to these questions:
- What is the goal for this step of the Value Ladder?
- Which style of funnel should I be using to achieve that goal?
- What offers do I need?
- What script should I use?
I wanted to point out that this is a learning resource, and so once you have a handle on this, you will be able to personalise it to fit your business and personality. You will need to plug in your offers and scripts that reflect your objectives, culture and values. Of course, as a member, you also gain unlimited support and advice, and so help with all of these aspects is always to hand for you to use; you need only ask.
Front-End Lead Funnels
Initially, I learned from the experts on this subject, and then after that, I learned from my own experience that the best funnels to use for a new lead generation would fall to the Squeeze, Survey and Summit Funnels, and it is those that we will look at now. We are going to start at the front of the funnel, but I want to make the point that this is where you give away free stuff and or very low-priced items, and so this is not the best place to start in reality. I would suggest when building your business, start at the higher end and work down to this when you have some surplus cash to invest in getting it right. You will need this low end to grow new clients and feed your machine with fresh leads and build your list but start with your warm traffic and get some sales under your belt.
Our purpose here is to build our email list and engage with them so that we can start to build an enduring relationship with our dream clients. These are called lead funnels because their main function is to generate leads and then get them into your follow-up funnels so that you can communicate with them and demonstrate your magnetic character.
I believe the Squeeze, Survey and Summit Funnels are the most effective, and each has a similar goal to generate leads and build your lists for further marketing.
Lead Squeeze Funnels
Page 1 – The Landing Page
The aim here is to make an irresistible offer to your target market, something you know they will want, something that has value to them and something that they would be willing to receive from you in exchange for their ‘real’ email address. In marketing circles, this would be known as a lead magnet. A key point that I want you to give some thought to is that you want this to act as a magnet to those that you want to attract, your dream client but repel everyone else who is not on your radar.
If you get this right, your audience will remember you; they will remember the value and they will open your emails and will want to ascend your Value Ladder to gain even more value. This is all about value, not cost. The better your lead magnet, the more likely you will get their email. Here are a few examples:
- Download this free report on…
- Get your signed copy of my latest book; just pay the postage…
- Get my ultimate guide to great sales free…
- Download the definitive lead generation framework
The Hook, Story, Offer
The hook is the headline which immediately gains interest; this is a common feature on all Squeeze Pages of this kind, that is simply because they work. The more curiosity you can generate from your headline, the more likely you are to get the email address, and that is a fact that should be remembered.
If you feel your conversion rates are low, this will probably be related to the lead magnet not being good enough, or there you haven’t generated enough curiosity in the headline. We will look at this in more detail later in this program.
The Story on a traditional page of this sort will not be that long; it doesn’t need to be. In one of my recent campaigns, for example, the headline was ‘Building An Exceptional Business.’ That was the hook, and the story was no more than a subheading because that is all that was needed; it said, “Learn how we took our business from £0 to £1.3m in new sales per month in just 36months! Get your copy today.” Keeping the story short is a good idea in these funnels as you do not want to distract the prospect from the offer.
There are some occasions where you need to have a more lengthy explanation of the offer, in which case you could always consider the reverse squeeze page as an alternative. These do get fewer leads as a rule of thumb, but the leads they generate are often more highly qualified than the traditional page. In these versions, you will have a video rather than an image that tells the story and asks for the opt-in.
Page 2 The Thank you
Once a prospect has given you their email and submitted it on page 1, they will automatically be directed to page 2, the thank you page; here, you thank them and then give them the lead magnet you promised them on page 1. Here you can also direct them to other funnels you are running that may be relevant to them.
Now is the time to start the process of building a relationship with them through your sequence email series.
Survey Funnels
The Survey Funnel works best when you have a variety of different people that fit your service or product; for example, if you were offering a marketing service and there were specific adjustments made for specific trades and or styles of business, the Survey Funnel would work well giving the recipient the feeling you were talking directly to them with the specific results that accounted for their particular niche.
Your goal with this variation is to ask your visitors a few questions that will get them engaged in the process. In reality, there is one key question that will determine what version of the output your prospect will receive; this is sometimes referred to as the “bucket question.” How this question is answered will determine what landing page they are directed to once the survey is completed.
While researching the various versions of the Survey Funnel, it became apparent that the majority of surveys will follow this basic model:
- Self Identifying questions (Gender, age, etc.)
- Self Identifying questions based on the subject.
- Self-declare levels of skill and knowledge
- Self-declare is the biggest challenge with the subject.
- Educate and clarify
- Curiosity based question
One of these questions will become the bucket question that you will later assign different results pages to based on which answer they gave in the survey.
Page 2 The Squeeze
Once the visitor has completed the survey, they are directed to a calculating pop-up that explains their results are being calculated. It is worth noting this page is not essential, but according to experts in the field, this page can have a positive impact on conversion. I guess it helps to generate some confidence. Based on their answer to the bucket question, they will then see a case study or something of value to them.
Page 3 The Results
Once the email is submitted, they are directed to the results page, where they can be shown the case study of other material that is generated from the survey they have just taken. This is followed by an offer that is relevant to them and this entire exercise. Results can be delivered in many ways. The method is less important than making sure the content is relevant. It is worthy of note that the more you customise each of the results pages, the higher the conversion will be, and so it is well worth investing time in this part of the process.
Summit Funnels
The Summit Funnel comprises a registration page, a special offer page and then your broadcast pages to deliver the content to those who have registered. While this is another type of lead funnel, it is one of my favourites mainly because it allows the user of this model to leverage the audience and followers of those they choose to invite to take on speaking slots within the summit event. This funnel is strategically designed to let you leverage other people’s traffic and co-brand yourself to build your authority in your market.
The Summit Funnel is designed to be a free online virtual conference; it can also be used as a ticketed item, but in this context, we are using it to build our all-important email list. When this is organised and executed correctly, which is not as easy as it may sound, but then again, nothing worthwhile is ever easy, it can be a truly effective business growth strategy. This model requires zero ad spend, making it particularly attractive for start-ups looking to propel their business quickly. The virtual summit allows you to partner with dozens of other established businesses in your niche, driving targeted traffic from their list into your funnel to grow your own list, all in a matter of weeks if done well with planning and thought.
How does a virtual summit work?
Invitations – The person organising the summit, in this case, you, will be known as the host. It will be your responsibility to make sure that you invite as many people to the event as possible. Encourage those you invite to invite others too; the more, the better in this regard. Remember, your objective other than to help and educate is to build your email list. Before you do this, you will also want to invite those that you wish to interview or introduce as the content providers. It is important to take time to plan your speakers, and if you can get some with a degree of celebrity status, all the better. When selecting your speakers or guests for the interview, there are three things you will want to consider, they are:
- Do they have the expertise and skill to add value to the event and make it more memorable?
- Do they have their own list, and will they be willing to use it to invite people who would be your ideal client to the event?
- Does their content enhance your offering and or support it?
I would say a good size summit would have between 15 and 30 speakers or people to interview on the subjects that you want to cover with your summit. Don’t forget people will let you down and some will change their mind, and so with your speakers, you will need to invite more than you will need to cater for this.
Interviews – Once you have your lineup, you can begin the process of recording the interviews and sessions. Once you have all of these, the event will be broadcast online for a limited amount of time during the summit event.
Promotion – In the ideal world, those that you are interviewing will be motivated to join you in promoting the event in advance of the interviews being broadcast. This is one of the keys to the potential success of this type of funnel. When your guest promotes the event, a proportion of those they invite will join your own email list, which is how you grow your list to further promote your offerings to your target market.
Pages in the funnel
Registration Page – The first page of the Summit Funnel is the registration page. The objective of this is to get the visitor to enter their email address and become a summit attendee in exchange for information on how to watch the free virtual summit event. As with all Funnels, it is important to have a good headline that hooks them in and creates curiosity. The registration page for these types of events will need to be longer than usual as they will need to include details of the summit, the content and mini guest profiles. The content relating to the speakers will encourage them to promote the event and, in particular, their slot.
Special Offer Page – Once the registration page is completed, the lead is taken to the second page, where details of the special offer are made clear. Traditionally this will take the form of an order form comprising three parts:
- Registration confirmation to reassure the lead that they have been successful in registering. Additionally, a confirmation email will be sent to their registered email address.
- The Offer – Access all areas pass is offered. The lead magnet registered and gain access to all the content for a limited amount of time. This offer gives unrestricted access through a membership area so they can view the content whenever they want to, and it is open forever; they can also get transcripts and bonus files.
- Order Form – Finally, the order form for the special offer allows the lead to make the purchase should they wish to.
The Broadcast Page – This is where you fulfil the promise of delivering a free virtual summit. This particular page is not shown immediately but is sent as an email with links to the event and dates that the content is available. The guest speakers are pre-recorded, but the event itself is a limited-time event held on specific days. So day one video are removed for day two and so on. Of course, this is not the case for those that have taken the special offer access to all areas pass.
Unboxing Funnels
The best of the bunch, in my view, are the book, cart and challenge funnels. Remember, the purpose behind the funnels that we advocate is to move away from the more traditional approach of selling the product or service and instead focus on creating offers for your ideal client to take advantage of. Funnels allow you, once you have a compelling offer, to find a range of ways to convert that offer into revenue and, at the same time, help those you are in business to serve.
The unboxing funnels are used for the lower to middle end of your value ladder. In this type of funnel, you take the whole offer, and instead of selling it in one go, using the higher up the value ladder presentation funnel, you break it down into a series of component parts, selling each part inside the funnel.
I can use the Seven C’s of Why Business Development Program as an example. I could sell the entire program for, say, £500 using a presentation style funnel. Maybe 100 people would explore this offer, and a few, say ten, would buy there and then, so I make gross sales of £5,000. But what about the other ninety? If I. used the unboxing funnel, I will still get the ten sales. Still, in addition, because I have split the offer into component parts, I am going to make another 50 sales with additional revenue and the opportunity to up sales too. The offer would be broken down in the following way:
Products I could put in my Unboxing Offer
- The 7C’s Framework
- The 7C’s Book
- The 7C’s Video Series
- The 7C’s Scripts
- The 7C’s Lessons
- The Full Program
By following the model and unboxing this offer into component parts, I can get significantly more people to become customers and then start to move them through and up the value ladder. One of the options I have used and continue to use is the offer that gives the customer a copy of one of my books in return for just covering the postage and packaging. Let me demonstrate what this can do for sales when it works well when the offer is right, and the content is effective:
The simple act of creating an offer and a funnel rather than just the traditional sale can increase your results with no significant effort or additional costs. Whichever way you look at this, it makes complete sense. The key to this is not to copy but to embrace the model and then experiment to find the best combination for your business. If your funnel is not getting you results, it will likely be the offer or the content that is letting you down and. not the model itself.
I want to just put a little more explanation behind the idea of charging postage and packaging rather than just giving something away. There is nothing wrong with giving digital products away, nothing at all, but when you do this, you give away the opportunity to quickly discover who your buyers are. If you just give it away, you lose the opportunity to qualify who your true buyers are. When your customer pays the postage and packaging cost, you know they are serious. Remember, the main purpose here is to use low-ticket items to get people into your funnels and get them to say yes once they have taken this step; the doors open to the higher levels and opportunities.
Order Form Offer (sometimes called the order form bump)
This has been proven many times by some of the most successful marketers to be very effective; this is nothing more than an additional offer made at the point of sale. It is a small checkbox on the order form after the credit card details are completed but before they click the submit button to complete the purchase. This checkbox offers another low ticket item. This has been likened to those last-minute low-ticket items you can add to your basket when you are standing in line at the checkout at your supermarket. The order bump is the digital version of this well-used retail strategy.
