As an online course creator, your business is mostly dependent on marketing funnels.
Even if you have the greatest course and the greatest offer… if you don’t have an effective system for putting it out there, no one will know about it. You’re the world’s best kept secret.
That’s why it’s important to get your marketing right with effective funnels.
As someone who’s studied I’ve studied under the 2022 Digital Marketer of The Year, Alex Cattoni, here is what I have learned from her about effective funnels.
So if you’re wondering how it works, the process is broken down into 3 steps!
But before we get into that…
What is a funnel?
In short, a funnel is a system that turns your prospects into buyers.
It’s a process where they see your ads, receive emails, and receive offers. It’s almost like the process of turning your crush into your spouse.
What do I mean by that? Let me show you…
1. The Attention Stage
You’re at a party and you notice someone attractive sitting across the room. You wanna approach this person. So how do you do it?
Do you go up to them and…
a )Ask them to marry you
b) Immediately tell them why you’re so great
c) Immediately ask for their phone #
d) Say hi, introduce yourself, and build some rapport
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If you really know what you’re doing, you should have picked d). I mean, it should be obvious right?
We know that a), b), and c) would likely make the other person feel annoyed and want to ignore you.
But here’s the funny thing…
A lot of entrepreneurs are doing a), b), and c) in their marketing. That’s why their ads are getting ignored by prospects. Surprisingly, there’s actually a lot of similarities between dating and business. The parallels are shocking.
So if you think about selling your products like you’re dating your customers, the first step we need to do is d).
You need to be smooth, indirect, and catch the attention of cold leads who have never heard of you before.
But how do you do that?
At the attention stage, you start by running ads
But don’t sell your product to them right away! That is the equivalent of immediately asking them to be your partner. You’ve known each other for 30 seconds and now you’re asking for commitment. They’re not ready for it and they don’t trust you yet.
Instead, why don’t you start off by giving them something for free? Like a free guide, webinar, masterclass, blog posts, Youtube videos etc…
You’re not asking for much commitment yet. You’re just keeping things light for now. And you start off by getting their attention with compelling headlines and eye-catching creatives in your ads to promote free valuable content.
Here’s an example of that from Digital Marketer promoting a blog post.
As you can see, it’s very light. No pressure. Just building rapport through a blog post.
Eventually if things go well, the post will get the reader to sign up for a free resource at the end in exchange for their name and email address. Like here…
It’s kinda like asking for a girl’s phone number after a conversation. Can you see the similarities?
2. Building Trust and Relationship
Once you get someone’s phone number, what do you do?
You nurture a relationship with them.
Maybe the next day or a few days later, text the person. Offer to go on a date. Get to know each other a little more.
It’s the same thing with your leads. Once they give you their email, they’re gonna be part of your email list. You need to nurture your brand’s relationship with your email list.
Start by providing some more free valuable resources. Empathize with them. Share stories. Tell them how you can help them. Tell them about your brand’s mission. Then after some time, you can slowly start showing them your offers. They’ll slowly become more ready to say “yes” to being your customer.
And even after they become a customer, you would still nurture the relationship with them through email. Keep providing value and stories and offers etc…
Here are some snippets of the first email I received from a Copywriting coaching brand after I signed up for their email list.
The great thing is, this allowed me to get to know their brand a little more through their emails and content. It built trust, interest, and desire in me.
And after a few more emails, they eventually sent me an email with an offer. That was around 1 week later. It looked something like this…
I was very interested to buy it, by the way. And I did buy it.
3. Getting a “YES!”
After you go on a few dates with someone and develop feelings for each other, what do you do?
You ask them for commitment to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Over time, you eventually take your commitment to the next level of engagement. Then later on, marriage.
It’s the same process in the marketing funnel. After some time nurturing a relationship through emails, you offer your leads a lower priced product to start. It can range from $50-500. But usually, most brands do $100.
At this point, the prospect would receive sales emails that all point to the sales page. Then, at the sales page, this is where the money is actually made. Here is a sample sales page if you’re not familiar with it –> [Click Here]
The sales page would basically convince them to buy the product through various psychological conversion triggers. And after that, the prospect has officially been turned into a customer.
Then as you keep nurturing the relationship through emails, you could offer them higher-priced products. For example, after they bought the $100 product, the next offer could be $300. Then later on, the next one could be over $1000. And the process just repeats again and again as they go deep with your brand.
Final thoughts
So this is a simplified example of how a marketing funnel works. But that really covers the whole process. You have ads that catch the attention of cold leads. They sign up for your email list. They receive indoctrination and sales emails. Then they eventually buy from you more and more.
And I believe it’s very helpful to look at it from a dating perspective. The reason why is because we want to know how to be effective and not sleazy or salesy. So it’s great to know as a course creator because your business seriously depends on funnels everyday.
Anyways, I hoped this was helpful and enjoyable to read. If you want to know more about the first step of the funnel, check out this article here –> [Click Here]