Your Marketing Funnel, that clever email series designed to increase your income, build your business, and to see if someone qualifies to join your business.
Is it really doing it's job? Or is it in reality slowing you down?
At the top of your funnel is where people find you, your blog, an article, a lead capture page, something that gets them on your list.
You then establish your value to them and proceed to offer products and services with ever increasing price points.
What's Wrong With That Picture?
If they are on your list they already know you have value. They want your free report or whatever you're offering for their name and email.
Value Established. Continue to give valuable information, just don't beat a dead horse.
Give them something to listen to, don't keep on telling them why they should listen.
Assuming (I hate that word, but nothing else fits) that they are building a business there are some tools they are going to need.
Offer them, from your link of course.
But think about this, They are looking for a way to make more money, not more ways to spend it.
Are your Prospects dropping out of your funnel before you talk about your Opportunity?
This picture is a pretty popular one of a Marketing Funnel, yet nowhere do I see, "Offer Your Opportunity."
What is the "Contact Cost?" With an auto-responder the cost of one name is almost nothing.
I'm currently taking a class on building a Marketing Funnel. The classes are set about a month apart to allow for other things going on in your business and for implementation.
The ten or twelve classes are going to be sold as a $1,000 product when finished. The third class was gold.
The first two classes were mostly about why you need the course.
I don't know about you but if I pay a thousand dollars for a course I'm pretty damn sure why I need it.
I don't want two months of, "This is powerful stuff, do you understand the value of it?" With maybe 15% of real actionable content.
If the third class was more of the same I would have said something Very Rude and left.
Don't just talk about your value, show it.
Is the light going on yet?
People are on your list to learn how to make money,
THEY ALREADY KNOW HOW TO SPEND IT!
You already know that ninety-five percent won't join anyway. Why not find the five percent that will, fast?
Then train them to do the same.
Do Not Be Denied,
Mike
Do you use a long complicated funnel to pre-screen for your Opportunity? How's that working for you? Leave a comment.
Mike good post your right I think we become so politically correct with attraction marketing we have forgotten what it was intended for. Introduce people to your primary opportunity. The right people granted but still your right somebody needs to take the “funnel” and carve “primary opportunity whenever the time is right” and let’s be a little more open with it.
Steve Shoemaker
Steve Shoemaker´s last [type] ..Social Marketing Strategies And How
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Michael Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 5:20 am
Hi Steve,
What we have to realise with today’s economy is that people are hurting financially right now. They don’t have the luxury of waiting three or four weeks for a solution.
When people are in need it takes the focus off of you. It may not enter their heads that you might need them also.
Offering your Opportunity up front doesn’ make you appear ‘needy’.
It makes you their “Answer Man.”
Mike
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by steve shoemaker. steve shoemaker said: How's Your Marketing Funnel? Or Is It a Sieve? | Michael Cole's Internet Network Marketing http://bit.ly/brBTUd [...]
Hi Mike,
$1000 and the first two months wasted on why you need it??? Not cool…you know why otherwise you wouldn’t have forked over a grand for it!
I’m beginning to see the trend of offering your oppportunity up front followed by the smaller affiliate sales. Reverse as to what has been drilled in our heads.
That’s the reason I would get on people’s list to begin with when I left the party plan business model and was looking for something else. Instead I got e-mail after e-mail of selling and often never found out what the person did. Guess they missed a new recurit!!
Great post!
Twila
Twila Jacobs´s last [type] ..How To Handle The Objection “I’m Not Interested”
[Reply]
Michael Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 3:38 am
Hey Twila,
I’m not paying for the class, it was grandfathered in as part of continuity program I’m already in.
I joined Willie Crawford’s list looking for some copywriting tips, wasn’t even offered a course, at any price. A world famous copywriter that doesn’t talk about copywritting? Go Figure.
We’re on the same page joining other people’s lists, I wanted to see how other people were handling their opportunities, and they weren’t.
It’s sort of funny when you think about it, instead of trying to cram an Opp down someone’s throat people started to get subtle, then got so subtle they forgot to send the message. Like their business is pretending to not be in business.
Mike
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Great post, Michael – honest and to the point.
Funny, I read something similar today at Chris Owen’s blog.
I am not big on “inspiring” people; there are plenty of blogs out there that do that and that’s all they do.
I am all about showing you the “how”; looks like we are on the same page here.
~Ana Hoffman
PS Have I invited you to my private blog commenting group? Would love to have you:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=300451417921
Ana | Traffic Generation Cafe´s last [type] ..7 Can’t Miss Ways to Kick-Start Better Traffic Conversion
[Reply]
Michael Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 3:52 am
Hi Ana,
I think I need to get to Chris’s blog more often.
Inspiring people? That’s Old School Network Maketing. Rah, Rah meetings for an emotional high, followed by a deep, ‘down in the dumps’ depression, until the next rah, rah fix.
If someone doesn’t have a reason, a WHY, to build their dreams, niether I nor anyone else can give it to them. It has to come from within. Or you are constantly trying to fill up a sieve, not going to happen.
Mike
PS Yes, I will join soon, promise.
[Reply]
You make many provoking observations which work well at inviting comments!!
You ask a loaded question at the end about pre-screening for your opportunity. I don’t look at the funnel that way. If I was going to put an MLM biz opportunity into the funnel, the funnel’s purpose would not be exactly (or just) to prescreen. More like prepare. To present the opportunity when it made the most sense. Congruent sense.
In any case, it’s a question I hope you get some real answers to as opposed to speculators like myself!
Well and, don’t forget that you can make money online selling a lot of things and it doesn’t have to be an MLM Opportunity. Many useful funnels have no MLM at the front OR back. The one I am building will not have an MLM opportunity attached. Period. Will there be people who drop out of a funnel before getting to the MLM pitch (if there is one)? Some will, some won’t….. (You know the rest).
There are many online businesses besides “how to do internet marketing.” They need funnels as well. With respect to the class you and I are taking, at least 35% (I am not privy to the actual numbers but I was in Portland to actually rub shoulders with those attending) are other types of businesses including coaching, art sales, photography, retail clothing, corporate consulting, and more.
One thing I have observed in my many years as a trainer is how different students value diff things. Example, I can see how you might describe your reaction to the first two classes as you did. On the other hand, I got a heck of a lot of information and value from the first two and less so from the third. It can have so much to do with where any individual student is and what they need at any given moment.
Fun post!
Richard Goutal´s last [type] ..A Startling Discovery While at the No Excuses Summit
[Reply]
Michael Reply:
July 16th, 2010 at 1:23 am
Hi Richard,
Pleased to met you. And I like speculators, they make me think. Not always a good thing.
I found your take on the three classes interesting, it reminds me that we all find our information in a different order. The third class I kept rewinding to catch something I missed. I can hardly wait for the fourth. Being filmed in Europe, should make for some interesting asides.
Mike
PS My loaded question got a great reply out of you.
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