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

How to Eat a Marketing Elephant!

By Wendy Burge

A big challenge for small businesses is often having the time to stay on top of their marketing; the planning, prep time, and implementation. Marketing can be the white elephant in a business that needs to be addressed because it has the largest impact on the growth of the business. However, like the old saying goes, to eat an elephant you take one bite at a time. So, how do you eat a “marketing elephant”? By breaking it down into bite-size pieces to allow for more efficient and effective marketing strategies without overwhelm. The following steps will help you capture, tame, and maintain the marketing elephant in your business.
 
Bite 1. Commit to the end goal

What kind of growth do you want to achieve over a calendar year within your business?
Your objective will directly impact how and why you are developing a marketing plan. If you are in a start-up phase it may be as simple as acquiring a certain number of new clients, addition of client resources and services, and a specific dollar figure that gets you up and running. If you have been in business for a while, your goals may focus on higher profit -margins, positioning yourself as an expert within your industry, and leveraging your time more effectively. Understanding your goals also allows you to track and monitor how effective your marketing is in helping you reach them. Knowing what you want and, more importantly, why you want it, will increase your personal investment into making it happen.

Bite 2. Break it into quarters

How do you want to achieve your goals for each 90-day period? Once you know what you want, it’s just a matter of working backwards at making it happen. Take a 12 month wall calendar and break it into quarters; within each quarter work on a specific goal. If you want to increase your client volume early in the year, then over a 90-day period all your marketing focus can be on targeting this goal with special incentives, offers, and referral programs. Maybe you want an infusion of cash in your business at specific times of a year because your work is seasonal. Determining which quarter to focus your marketing to do this is, now, defined and, again, all efforts are then focused on making profits grow during a specific period of time. Working this way also allows you to be flexible and able to insert special announcements or last minute sales to increase your quarterly profits. As well, extending the launch time of a special marketing campaign can grow the anticipation and excitement of your customers about the upcoming promotion or special sale item which planning like this can create. Whatever your goal, you now have more power in making it happen when you take each quarter to develop, launch, and track your marketing efforts.

Bite 3. Map out notable events, holidays, and specials

Mapping out when to schedule events and sales promotions proves to be more effective when you plan ahead of time what you will need to create a ‘rolling’ campaign for an annual or semi-annual event. Furthermore, every quarter is filled with all kinds of marketing opportunities which you can take advantage of. The most obvious are seasonal holidays where marketing can be easily tied into the collective consciousness of the season. However, what if there are special events or days that are relevant to your industry? You can now build them into your marketing campaigns to help support your overall objective. Let’s say you have a chiropractic office and you know that in September the profession celebrates it’s ‘birthday’. This can create a great educational opportunity, as well as, a profitable one if leveraged as a special birthday savings to patients which schedule appointments on that day. Great days to honour for your business would be business opening anniversaries, owner or employee birthdays, special days important to your industry, and current or annual events that happen in your community. Have fun and get creative when it comes to making your marketing map!

Bite 4. Build in multiple contact channels

Knowing what kind of marketing campaign you are going to host and when it will occur over a quarter, now maximizes your marketing prep time. Instead of rushing last minute to pull something together, you can plan out a series of email, direct mailers, and phone or social network announcements ahead of time. This is where saving time and money becomes possible because you now have time working on your side. Direct mail pieces can be put together for the quarter by having them printed, labelled, and stamped ahead of time. As well, email marketing can be programmed ahead of time to automatically go out on specific times and dates which can co-ordinate with the direct-mail marketing pieces. If your marketing plan includes social network marketing there are applications that can now be used to schedule posting on your selected sites ahead of time, too. Leveraging time like this allows you to create more ways to get your message across effectively– instead of a one-time hit at the last minute. Furthermore, the more ways you can reach people and stand out in their busy lives the more success you will have with your campaigns.

 © 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

Getting Paid What You Are Worth

As an entrepreneur one of the hardest places to establish a set value is around being paid what you are worth. Taking the step into business for yourself means it is up to you to determine the value you have in people’s lives through the service you provide. But how do you know what that value is? How do you determine if you are charging the amount that is best for you not what an industry standard may be? The topic of money triggers all kinds of emotion and psychological responses when it comes to determining your worth, asking to be paid for your service, and evaluating the real value it creating. 

However, the topic of money is essential because you are in business and the whole point about being in business is to make a profit not merely float through life in survival mode.  A true shift in one’s thinking about money is necessary for any entrepreneur to grow a thriving business and increase their value so they are being paid what they are worth. Distinctions need to be made between some very core concepts in order to fully embrace the topic of being paid what you are worth by the people who value your service. 

Industry Pricing vs. Knowing Worth 

In the initial stages of opening a business it is easy to price your services based on the industry standards. While this may work initially people soon discover that they are trading their time for a standard set dollar amount as a general guideline, but, it just may not sustain them in the long run. If the services you offer are based on an hourly wage, you will never break through a glass ceiling that is limiting you.

However, if you know that the service you provide is worth much more than you are charging because you go beyond the typical standard, then, it is this value upon which you must base your fees. For example, if you are a book keeper who is experienced in retail and can help merchants make better choices in their spending, help them save on taxes, and show them where the money has been hiding in their business, you can provide greater value to that client  than someone who just “does the books”.  Once you determine what value your clients receive as a result of your services, then you can set your prices based on the value you offer.

Surviving Economy vs. Thriving Economy

The beauty of being an entrepreneur can be that you have to ability to create your own economy. However, once again, if you do not see the value you have to offer to clients then doing business means that you are constantly searching for the next new client to sell your services to. Unfortunately, this is the part that most people hate about their business– they do not like to feel as if they are selling, so they will under-cut their own rates and value. This is where the shift starts.

You must pinpoint exactly what you bring to the table to your clients as it relates to the business they do with you. When you have clarity about this, you can position your marketing message to directly demonstrate your value. This naturally attracts the right clients to your business and there is no need to run around trying to convince people why they should do business with you. You can clearly demonstrate this within your marketing and this then allows you to price your services higher—thus, creating a thriving economy.

Generalist vs. Specialist

The largest issue most new and some seasoned entrepreneurs have about restructuring their fees based on their worth is the fact that they have yet to claim their ‘gifts’ which only they possess and can offer. When an entrepreneur remains “general” in their services, they limit their ability to generate higher fees. However, let us stop a moment and take a look at what got them to this point. Did they up-grade skills at any point? Do they have any first-hand, personal experience in the solution offered to clients?

 Most entrepreneurs are experts at what they do and with a little ‘re-packaging’ those experiences allow them to be an industry specialist within a room of generalist. Think about this—if you were having specific health issues which involved your heart would you see a general practitioner or would you prefer to see a heart specialist? Exactly. Even if it meant you had to pay a top dollar for the specialist’s services, you just might find a way to pay for them—especially if you knew you were getting the best care from an industry expert. Remember people are paying as much for you and your knowledge as they are the technical service you offer.

Building a Business vs. Transforming Lives

Understanding the structure in which a business is created and, even more, why a business was started in the first place, is where this distinction must be addressed.  If a business was built to remove the conditions of working for others, then the point of building that business is based on the idea of “job creation”. In that situation, many of the same ‘rules’ will be applied because the only thing done was to replace the environment while maintaining the same familiar structure from the past work experience. 

Alternatively, if an entrepreneur spends the time to really evaluate the transformative value they can achieve being in service to share and, as well, to experience themselves through a lifestyle business model, then the value in the freedom it offers has a higher value.  There is then no need to compare your service with others as the more value you provide the more people will be willing to pay. Hiding behind old beliefs around your worth will only be damaging to your business growth. To ensure that you are charging in relation to the value you offer also means that you must invest in your own growth. The more you stretch your personal operating system with the help of therapists, coaches, mentors, and such, means you value growth in the process of your own business in relation to the transformations you experience, too.

Earn Money vs. Claim Money

This is the biggest shift for people to comprehend when it comes to charging what they are worth. Essentially, the majority of people have been conditioned to believe that we must be in the process of doing “work” to earn money. Our value is based on external feedback, opinions, and assessments of our worth by others. Often people feel inadequate or that they have not become enough yet to be paid for their worth in relation to what others project back to them.  People are in a constant state of competition to earn the right to make more, to have more—let alone receive praise and appreciation.

However, if you are authentically setting the wheels in motion to create a business that provides your service with intention to support and transform client’s lives then the issue is less about earning and more about knowing your value and worth. Furthermore, by setting fees that serve both the clients and you means you are so claiming this. If you are still operating from an ‘earn money’ belief and are not aware of this belief, it will trip you up as you will run around trying to create more value by doing more. You do not need to earn more credibility through certification to prove your worth. You will represent it with your gifts of service and knowledge in the value you have to offer others. Believe and know you are enough today!

Clarity between all the distinctions provided helps small business entrepreneurs build external structures in their business that supports their fees through the value, customer experience, and their overall knowledge. As well, increase the internal structure of confidence and self –worth which radiantly shines through their business and service.

© 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