Do you ever wonder how come certain things go out of fashion, and then come back years later?
I’m not talking about bellbottom jeans or patterned dresses, today, though.
I’m talking about the “business funnel”.
It’s really interesting for me to put on my observer glasses, and take a look back at my years in the online business space. When I first started my business, I read a lot of blogs (still do, but they’re slightly different blogs now!) and I kept hearing about this concept of the funnel.
With lots of diagrams of inverted pyramids, naturally.
The concept of the funnel is this: you want something that’s available for the masses at the top (something that doesn’t cost much or anything at all), and then progressively more expensive products as people move down toward your big ticket item.
A few years later: the funnel was dead.
The theory was that people don’t need to follow one step at a time, and that with online marketing someone might discover you from a random blog post, podcast episode, or video… and BAM sign up for your most expensive package!
In fact, I know several people who eschew funnels entirely in their teachings, and tell you to just create one big higher priced package and launch that.
But you might have also heard more people talking about “Facebook funnels” or other types of business funnels recently…
So what’s the current “right now” situation? Are funnels in or out and should you build one?
How To Design a Business Funnel Organically
You might have heard the term “funnel” before, and brushed it off because you don’t need one of those in your business.
But the reality is that whether you like it or not, you already have a business funnel in place. It just might not be working as well as you’d like, if you haven’t designed it intentionally.
So today we’re going to look at how to design an organic business funnel to help you sell more, naturally.
One thing to be aware of when it comes to business funnels is that you probably won’t just sit down and draw a bunch of boxes and come up with the perfect funnel that converts all your visitors to buyers.
Business is more iterative than that, and you need real world feedback to create something that works.
So my advice is about how you can let an organic funnel develop into your business over time.
The main components of a funnel:
- A page on your website asking someone to join your email list
- An immediate offer for a product or service
- An email sequence that offers value, and other products or services for sale
From there, you can add more products or services, more emails, or build different email starting points and follow up series.
Exercise: Design Your Funnel Now
So here’s what I want you to do right now: get a set of index cards and write down one product or service that you currently have available.
One offer per card, and include the price point on the card, too.
Next, order the cards by lowest price to highest priced. Do you see any sudden jumps or big gaps?
Refer to my post about pricing and the 80/20 principle to see if you might be missing an offer at an advantageous price point.
For example, you don’t want to have an ebook that sells for $10 followed by a 1-1 coaching service that costs $3000. I’m not saying that no one will take you up on your coaching, but some people will want something in between to get to know you better before they hire you.
Think about what programs and products you might want to add to fill in any price gaps. The same goes for if you only have low priced offerings, consider what you could offer on the higher end.
Now, take out a new index card for each of your free opt-in offers. Do these line up with your lower priced offerings? If not, consider how you might create a new opt-in offer that does.
At this point, you’ve designed most of your business funnel. It’s just a matter of filling in the marketing materials to guide people from one point to the next.
You can do that by writing an email autoresponder series, having a sales page or sales video that’s shown after someone buys your lower end offerings, or by following up with your customers personally to invite them to your other offers.
Now it’s time to put your funnel together and start testing! Take your time with this process, and allow yourself to be nimble. You’re essentially creating an evergreen launch campaign that takes people from one product or service to the next.
I’d love to know where you stand
Do you have mostly lower end products, higher end programs, and do they all fit together organically?
Comment below and let me know!
