How Do You Fill Up Your Marketing Funnel?

by Wendy Burge

Many solo entrepreneurs that I meet often express the challenge of finding new ways to make passive revenue without having to find more clients or work more hours. Recently, I consulted a service professional who was interested in generating more money and business, but she was unsure how to develop a strategy to do this effectively. Her website was more like a brochure of her services posted online– people would read about them this way. Then, shortly into our conversation she admitted she had written a book. However, she had made little money selling it and wasn’ t sure what to do with it or if all her efforts had any relevance to our talk.

It was at that point that I shared the outline of a MARKETING FUNNEL. Imagine a funnel, like you’d find in your kitchen or garage, turned upside down with the widest opening on top and the tip narrowing at the bottom. Now imagine the larger opening at the top as the place where you will generate your most PROSPECTS possible. At the opposite end of the funnel, where it narrows to the tip you would be place your EXCLUSIVE, high-end services and products. The middle area would contain the other, varying levels of services priced accordingly from least at top to the more expensive flowing down to the bottom.

The whole idea of the MARKETING FUNNEL is to get people to move through your business by offering services/ products at different price points along the way. The further down into the funnel the higher the price points go. Think for a moment about going to your favourite ice cream store where they give you those little spoons to taste the ice cream. Once you find a flavour you like you get a scoop of it in a cup. The next week you go back because you liked the flavour so much that you are more than willing to get three scoops of it on a waffle cone. Then on your next visit into their store you decided to order that nice custom made ice cream cake with your new favourite flavour again. This is a sample of a Marketing Funnel at work. It’s a simple marketing strategy that pays off every time.

Going back to my client, her marketing funnel at this time had her book and her higher end services. There was nothing in the middle of her funnel. I see this often with service professionals too. They will have a free or low cost product or service and a larger, high-end service with nothing else to offer in the middle. Most prospects are not willing to jump from free to a high end services. This often leaves few client conversations for many solo professionals because they have too few choices in how someone can work with them.

How do you create a marketing funnel?

First get people into your funnel by having a FREE offer of a give-away item like a report, ezine, CD or maybe even a tele-class. PROSPECTS easily access the item by signing up on your website and giving their email or mailing address (or both) to you. This allows you to contact this prospect in the future.

Next, turn your knowledge into INFORMATION PRODUCTS. Info-products are a super way to let people get a taste of your expertise for a fraction of the cost. They also help fill in the middle section of your marketing funnel. By offering these products on your website, you now turn your site into a silent, sales force 24/7 –generating passive revenue for you without your working any harder.

Here are a few of the suggested types of information products you can make.

Books
E-Books
Special Reports
Manuals
Workbooks
Journals
Audio (digital downloads or CDs)
Video (digital downloads or DVDs)
Home Study Courses or Tutorials (usually a mix of media; written, audio, and visual)

As well, you may want to consider offering tele-classes, tele-seminars, and webinars online as a way to reach more prospects that may not typically be able to afford your high-end services at first. This maximizes your time and leverages your income by offering a lower priced service to more people all at once.

A Sample Marketing Funnel

In the end, a sample marketing funnel could look similar to this.
 
TOP OF THE FUNNEL:
Free e-zine or report

MIDDLE OF THE FUNNEL:
Book ($29)
Book with Workbook ($49)
Tele-seminar ($79)
2-CD audio program with Transcripts($97)
4-week tele-course ($249)
4-CD Box-set with Transcripts and Handouts ($497)

BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL:
One-hour private consultations ($250)
Specialty Service Package ($500)
2-day live workshop ($997)
One-to-One Live One Day Session ($1500)
Personal consulting/coaching/mentoring program ($3,000/mo.)

Now how will you fill in your Marketing Funnel?

Take some time and examine your current service and product offers. Where do they fit on your marketing funnel? Do you see where you can now add a few more items to help fill up your funnel? Consider where you can offer more value by adding your own information products so that your prospects can experience your expertise easier and be able to buy from you more often.

© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Radiant Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

Crafting a Lifestyle Business Blueprint as a Model for Success

by Wendy Burge

It used to be that if you wanted to start up a business a lot of planning was necessary to get the lending institution to finance the location, the over-head expenses as well employees, and the money to develop a marketing profile. This valuable process allowed businesses to establish an overall blueprint of their projected revenue and used it as a benchmark to mark their growth. Because there was a high amount of accountability to the lending institutions involved in the seed funding of their businesses the practicalities of this planning was essential.

Nowadays, with a bit of ingenuity and time someone can start up a business with little relative cost involved in location, over-head expense, or for employees. All they really need is a computer and internet access. This has opened up new opportunities for solo-professionals, service providers, and even product-based businesses to work ‘virtually’– leveraged by help of the internet. The value of this model has been the freedom to allow more people to look at the option of becoming a small business entrepreneur and to step into the ownership role without having to develop huge strategy planning, funding or extra support from employees. The basis of this business model is focused on the lifestyle-flexibility being built into the structure.
 
Although this has been a true gift by offering more people the opportunity to run their own businesses without all the costly over-head, a lifestyle business model must be adopted to set the benchmark for obtaining constant growth and profitability with the focus on flexibility and the needs of the owner.
 
Investing in a business and marketing coach who works to develop a system exclusively serving you and your business can be the best strategy in designing a custom fit blueprint and structure to create a lifestyle business model. The objective focus of an outside source–such as a small business and marketing coach-is to specialize in this ability to build a bridge between personal happiness and professional success with strategies to support three areas primary to the overall business structure.

Market Position
 
It is common practice, initially, for young, small businesses to cater to the needs of their clients. As with any venture there is an excitement to see a profitable transaction as quickly as possible after start-up. While it is important to offer good client and customer services, it can also be taxing on a small business to adapt to each specific need of their client. Additionally, it makes it difficult to clearly direct the right clients to your door if there is no clear distinction as to what makes your business different although offering similar services or products to that of your competitors. By clearly creating a targeted customer niche, small businesses can hone in on who they serve best easily and more effectively, especially now with the help of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This market position then allows them to dictate how each product and service offered fits into their “marketing funnel” of how best to serve the niche and remain profitable.

Additionally it is much easier to attract the right kind of clients, those ready and willing to use your service, because every offer provided by your business is created to support the success and happiness of your clients. Case in point, a hairstylist who creates a small shop out of their home would be more successful declaring a market position based on their specialty let’s say, long-hair styling and care; cut, colour, and conditioning. By targeting this specific type of client to work with they are more successful in attracting that client which allows them to specialize and offer service just to that niche with whom they enjoy working with rather than just handing out business cards with the word “hairstylist for women.”
 
System Leverage
 
The largest challenge for small business owners is to not get easily overwhelmed by the amount of operational and administration duties necessary in maintaining their business. They spend more time working in their business than on its growth plans. Developing systemized plans which create an “office bible” of how every task necessary is performed becomes critical for a number of reasons. First it creates consistency in the daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly actions necessary to operate the business and provide the best client experience. Second, it provides insight into areas where delegation of a task would better be served by outsourcing it to a virtual team member or employee. Third, this allows the business owner to focus more on higher pay-off and profitable activities in their business-which they usually prefer to do anyway.

Systemizing a lifestyle business further provides long-term business strategies by leveraging web-base software, marketing automation tools, and social network media which then allow a more flexible “built to go” business that can be operated from home or on travel without a lot of complication or disruption.
 
Money Making Activities
 
Traditionally, most people were employees before they stepped into the world of entrepreneurism. It was common for them to have a salary component or sales target which meant there was consistency in income on a biweekly basis. Unfortunately, this comfortable flow of money coming-in takes strategy to “turn on” again when they go into business for themselves. The reality hits that there are only ’24 hours’ in a day in which to handle all aspects to the administration and operation, including networking, service, and sales, within the business so focusing on higher pay-off money making tasks is essential to turning on their money tap. A business clearly needs creative ways to generate revenue with the limited time an entrepreneur usually has then. Selling a service on a client to client basis may be beneficial at first, but it’s virtually impossible to generate high revenues that way. Let’s say that you are a massage therapist or specialized service provider where time is a factor in the transaction with the client. 

Assessing how to develop packages, cross-promotions, and ‘up-sells’ will be but a few of the ways to leverage more money in the time you have with clients. Additionally, it may be that your services or products can be repackaged and sold as information products or digital training courses in order to reach a larger audience online through specialized websites. Again, these are only a few of the multitude of ways to generate additional income streams online which would allow a small business to leverage time by being ‘open 24 hours a day’ on the internet to people around the world now who may find their information beneficial.
 
The focus on money making activities falls into the idea of a ‘marketing funnel’ as well  because it gives small business owners the ability to capitalize on creating better service offers and products to meet the needs of their clients. It’s a known fact that when a customer has a good experience with a business, their lifetime value to that business has a huge impact on the growth of the business because it is easier to re-sell to existing, happier clients than it is to convince new, potential clients to do business with you–(but then again that is why you create your targeted niche market!).
 
The success of any business is based on its planning, marketing, and ability to take effective action for growth. If your lifestyle based business is starting to become “the job you never wanted”, then it’s time to take action and hire a business and marketing coach to restructure your business for success.

 

© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Conscious Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

Leverage the Internet for More Freedom and Profitability in Your Business

by Wendy Burge
 
Whenever we start a new business there is a sense of excitement, maybe even a bit of fear, and always a massive learning curve.  All the new experiences of running a business can be taken in strife, as we tell ourselves, “This is just what it takes to get things rolling.” However, how long after starting your business did you begin to notice you were losing your days to working? Not just the stuff you did with your clients, but, all the other items that take time and are necessary for running a business?
 
I know from first-hand experience that it was not long after starting my business I realized I had not created a new business for myself, I had actually created multiple new jobs! My idealistic sense of entrepreneurial freedom was quickly vanquished by the on-going tasks of running my business-bookkeeping, administrative tasks, marketing, product and service development, and, networking-on top of working with my clients.  It was then I began to look for help as I just could not keep my head above everything.  Fortunately with some help, I discovered the power of leverage-the secret to freeing up time, getting more things done, and the key to making more money in business. The best tool available to do this in small business is the internet. Because of the internet small businesses have more resources at their finger tips with just the click of a button.
 
Here are three ways you can use the internet to help leverage your business in gaining business growth and keeping you sane as a small business owner:

1.      Outsourcing tasks to virtual team members has become the best trend in small business to happen in many years. Virtual professionals offer their services like an employee-but without the added cost. Through the help of the internet, email, virtual business tools, and communication technologies like Skype, it is easier to utilize the services of a well-qualified person to assist with your administrative duties, marketing, bookkeeping, customer service, and more. Solo-professionals can hire a VA (virtual assistant) by the hour or by the task to help free up time-consuming administrative duties which are taking much of their days. By identifying tasks that can be delegated to someone else, business owners can focus on higher pay-off activities like working with clients, developing products or services, or focusing on those things you love to do in your business. In Canada, associations like the Canadian Virtual Assistant Connections and Canadian Virtual Assistant Network are helping change the frontiers for small businesses by creating a resource hub for virtual assistants to connect with businesses in order to assist with their specialty services. (And for some of my readers in other countries, this holds true as well in your area, just Google virtual assistant associations in your country and you will find numerous resources.)
 
2.      People power is not the only gift with which the internet has blessed small businesses. There are numerous web-based tools allowing businesses to take advantage of programs that can put communication and marketing systems on auto-pilot. Tools like auto-responders can be programmed up to a year in advance with communication emails, online newsletters, and special announcements to prospects and clients. This can greatly help with marketing campaigns. Communicating with prospects and clients on a regular basis is easy to do with these types of programs. Best of all, once the content is in place and scheduled, you know they will get effective follow up in the marketing of your services with specific messages continuously strengthening your business position. These systems can be added to your website leveraging your sales message 24 hours a day, regardless, with programs like Getresponse orAweber.
 
Case in point, I was able to format my ezine and schedule it for mail out today – Wednesday March 18, yet, I am out of my office today while I spend some time with my boys this week for spring break. For the past 5 years, I have used an email marketing program called Constant Contact that has allowed me to provide consistent email campaigns with newsletters and event promos; I love that I can schedule items ahead at times when I want to take time off as well.
 
3.      Making money for your business on line, 24 hours a day, is also now possible by monetizing your websites with shopping carts and affiliate programs. Long gone are the days of websites as digital brochures. Nowadays, websites can act like your own personal sales force open to do business on your behalf 24/7/365 around the globe. Websites can inform people how you can help them with your services or products. Then, by leveraging this with a shopping cart feature, viewers can purchase right there and then online. Well known programs such as PayPal.com or 1Shoppingcart.com do great jobs in assisting this process. There are many other programs too, that also offer multiple functions to support shoppers as well.

Furthermore, you are not limited to selling your own services or products either. Many larger businesses, programs, and information marketers offer affiliate programs; these are referral programs.  If you feature their product on your site and someone chooses to purchase it, each sale pays out a commission. For example, let us say that you want to recommend books on your website. An affiliate account would be established with a company like Amazon.com. On your site you would place your book recommendation along with a link for the option to purchase the book through your site. The reader is taken to Amazon to purchase that item. For each sale a commission would be made.

There are thousands of products out there that are accessible for affiliate programs.  A well-known site called Clickbank is a hub for businesses and people offering affiliate programs for their services and products. If at all appropriate for your site, placing Google Adwords is also an option to monetize your website. Your site is used as a “billboard” of sort for ads related to your site’s content. Each time someone clicks through an ad, again, you gain a commission.
 
In the corporate world, leverage happens efficiently because of the vast resources they have to tap into helping move business growth quickly. Now, the power of leverage is no longer out of reach for small business owners anymore either, thanks to the help of the internet. Small businesses can leverage growth with great resources helping them bring more freedom and profitability to their owners.

 © 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Conscious Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com