Youâre building out a marketing strategy for your business. But what is necessary and whatâs just extra? Does it make your head spin when someone talks about marketing funnels? Donât worry, Iâve got you covered.
At Maggie Writes Copy, I specialize in complete marketing funnels to build up your business and get you results. Letâs begin with a few of the more common funnel types.
There isnât just one way to do things. That’s why marketing can be so tricky. What works for one niche may not work for others.
Thatâs where marketing funnels come into play. A marketing funnel is several different steps that your customer goes through. This then leads to an action or actions.
At the top of the funnel, there will be a lot of people who enter. As you move through the funnel, more and more of your audience will drop out until only your target audience is left. This smaller audience is who you are targeting to buy your product.
While this seems like a simple concept, driving results takes trial and error. Learning from real-time metrics to make strategic marketing choices is key to success.
Letâs talk about a couple of different types of funnels you can use.
A list-building funnel is important for a startup company, especially if you donât have leads and need to generate them fast.
Email lists are important because they allow you to enter your customer’s virtual living room. In fact, not only are you âallowedâ to enter â youâve been invited in! Your customer has said, âHey, I think I want what you have to offer.â
Now your job is to deliver the offer that they want. This could be a:
But list-building funnels are just one of many funnels to use in your marketing.
Sometimes marketing funnels are built to bring in an audience and learn about them. Information is priceless. It should be what drives your marketing strategy.
Self-liquidating offers pay for themselves but donât bring in extra money. So if they arenât making you money, then why create one? Because leads are valuable. Here are a couple of statistics to prove it.1
In 2023:
These are just a few eye-opening statistics about lead generation that you maybe didnât know about.
With that in mind, creating a SLO marketing campaign makes a lot more sense. Putting lead generation into your funnel and not having it cost you anything can be a crucial element to success. When done right, youâll add some upsells to your offer and youâll also retarget that customer for future sales.
One last thought to leave your head spinning about lead generation. A repeat customer is 60-70% more likely to buy from you. Getting a new customer to buy from you only has a 20% success rate.2
These numbers are huge. And so many companies neglect to reach out to their previous customers, thinking the product will âspeak for itselfâ. This is a huge misstep on their part and a missed opportunity.
These arenât the only types of funnels out there. Marketing funnels are as varied as the companies that use them. But there is one thing that they all need to have in common if you are going to succeed with them: They have to be full of great copy to compel your audience to turn into your customers.
Your whole marketing funnel should be filled with marketing copywriting to take your ideal customer on a journey from start to finish. Ideally, your copy will be cohesive and spread the same message throughout.
Letâs start with the beginning of the funnel. Building awareness in your audience. There are three different ways your funnel can start and weâll cover them all.
The paid method of starting your funnel is through the use of ads. This can be the quickest way to gain traction, especially if you donât have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) figured out on your website yet. This method often includes:
There are others, but these are some of the most common. If you write a strong enough hook, youâll get enough people to click on your ad.
Your funnel has to start as wide as possible to get a measurable number of people to reach the end of your funnel. Leads who come from ads are often âcold leadsâ. They sometimes require a longer funnel to end in a sale.
Another way to get people to enter your funnel is through web copy. This is a more organic approach and often means that you have built up your SEO well enough to get a decent amount of traffic to your site.
Web copy often involves an opt-in or offer. This helps you collect your potential customerâs email addresses to add them to your list. I cannot stress enough how important building your email list is.
You can build your email list before you ever have a product to sell. And you should be if you want to have a successful product launch.
Chances are, if people made it to your site and gave you their email, they are your target audience. This makes them a âwarm leadâ. And it will require less work to convert them to a buyer.
Finally, you have blog copy. People who wind up on your blog are generally looking for answers to questions. Itâs important that you deliver those answers and offer your potential customers lots of value.
But if you arenât including a call to action in your blog then you are missing the mark. While people donât often think of blogs and sales in the same sentence, when done right they can be your ticket to lots of pockets.
Connecting with your audience, offering value, and then providing a clear call to action can often warm up your customers and lead them straight to the sale.
Some things blogs do for your business:
Are you sensing a theme in this article yet? Build your list!
Blogs definitely shouldnât be all about the sale. They should also be about the whole customer journey and should be geared toward helping more than selling. But good blog copy can definitely do both.
If you implement any of these types of copywriting correctly, then youâll send a huge amount of traffic into the middle of your funnel.
Youâve got one of the hard parts over with. Getting that initial click takes work. But now you have to hold your audienceâs attention by sparking interest and desire. There are a few different ways to do this.
Including compelling copy on your opt-in pages is a no-brainer. If you have a product that you know your customer needs, make sure they know it too. Your opt-in should clearly demonstrate your product’s worth to your target audience.
One way to do this is to provide a sneak peek in the form of a freebie.
If youâre offering a freebie you need to make sure it clearly demonstrates the value of your product to your audience. Maybe a freebie doesnât quite line up with a physical product you sell.
Instead, you could offer a guarantee or free returns with no questions asked. If you believe in your product, itâs more likely that your customers will too. And letâs face it, if you donât believe in your product, you shouldnât be selling it.
But how do you make sure your leads know about your freebies?
If your lead successfully opted-in on your copywritten opt-in page, then you can meet them in their own homes. Email sequences are important tools to really drive home the value that your product has.
While social media is useful for marketing, you have very little control over who sees your organic posts. And even if youâve figured out the algorithm today, it can change tomorrow.3
Email marketing is effective because it shows up in your lead’s inboxes regardless of what Metaâs algorithm is doing. If you have a good copywriter you can even control whether it makes it into spam, junk, promotions, or their actual inbox.
Through emails, youâll bring value, offer insight into your company, make small asks of your audience, and finally â go for the sale. This helps you warm up cold leads and create more conversions.
But what are the last steps of the marketing funnel that leads to the sale?
The last step of the marketing funnel is to seal the deal with the sale. This means requesting an action by your lead.
Landing pages are dedicated pages that your funnel takes your leads to, that have âdirect copyâ to compel a sale. These pages require a lot of know-how and skill to write correctly.
The copywriter has to touch on key points that directly affect the customer’s quality of life. This leads to the highest conversion rate possible. And while all sales pages are landing pages, landing pages arenât necessarily sales pages.
Landing pages could be towards the start of the funnel as well:
Meanwhile, a sales page is always looking to close the funnel and get the sale. A sales page should be optimized to make it as easy as possible for the customer to buy.
The fewer clicks a customer has to make to buy the product, the more likely they are to complete the purchase. This is why a sales page should go directly to the product page.
The last thing that a customer sees before inputting credit card information is the product page. This is why a good product page should dispel any last-second doubts your customer may have. They shouldnât have to click on any other page for information about the product.
While you may think your product will sell itself, youâll want to think twice about that. Make sure you have covered any question or fear your customer may have in order to make the sale an easier choice for them. Or no choice at all.
Now that youâve made the sale, youâre funnel is done right?
Not so fast. I talked about the product pages as the last step. But in reality, they shouldnât be.
Remember how we talked about the difficulty of finding new leads vs. leveraging existing leads? This is where you capitalize on customers you already have.
Giving your customers preferential treatment after the sale will return dividends on your investments. Social proof is a huge aspect of getting your products to new leads. And it isnât as hard to do this as you might assume.
Not to mention, generating new leads costs you 5-25% more than it costs to keep your current clients. 4 This makes it quadruply important to treat your current customers well. Even if it costs you some of your profits.
Speaking of moneyâŚ
Marketing isnât cheap. It takes money in, to get money out of a business. While every marketing funnel will be unique and different, copywriting is a very valuable skill and tool. Being willing to invest in the best will take your business to the next level.
You can expect to pay a couple of thousands of dollars for just one funnel. And that doesnât include implementing it. Tracking metrics, making changes, and retargeting take lots of skill and lots of hours.
This is the last piece of the puzzle. Do you want data-driven results that are custom-tailored to drive sales for your company?
I can offer that and more. Book a call to get the process started. Letâs chat about possible funnels. Weâll set them up specifically for your company and your audience. Letâs drive results.
1 Lead Generation Statistics â Salesmate
2 Customer Retention Marketing â Outbound Engine
3 Organic vs Paid Social Media â Sprinklr
4 The Value of Keeping the Right Customers â Harvard Business Review
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