Hey there, welcome back or welcome if you're new.
Today, we're continuing the conversation on online business with
a little chat about sales funnels.
I'm going to be honest,
when I first started my online business, I had no idea what a sales funnel was.
I thought that it was some type of tool or technology that people were using,
and there are tools and technologies you can use to actually map out
your sales funnel in a visual way.
We're also going to talk about some lead generation tools and some email drip
tools, but in short, what a sales funnel really is, is just a representation of
how you get people from the top of the marketing funnel, AKA the awareness stage
down to the conversion or the point of purchase and actually becoming a customer.
It's important that you're moving your customers, clients, students, through
a sales funnel and understanding that sales process, because let's be honest,
nobody just stumbles upon a course or a social media manager or a graphic designer
out of the blue and clicks on purchase.
That is very, very far and few between that, that actually happens.
In most cases, you are really having to move people through to different stages
of the funnel to kind of warm them up to you, to educate them on what it is
that you do and what your offer is.
And it's really important that you're able to do that in a strategic way.
So you're not disappointed, so you can better predict your launches.
So you can be building a sustainable business in a way that, you know, these
steps are actually repeatable for you.
So you can launch other products and other services in the same way.
Okay, so the beginning of the marketing funnel or a sales funnel is going
to start with the awareness phase.
And if we think of a marketing funnel, what it typically looks
like it's an upside down triangle.
The top of that is bigger, obviously, than the bottom so this means that a lot
of people, hopefully, are going to get into this awareness stage of your funnel.
So if we equate this to dating or making a friend, which is very, very,
like building a business, truthfuly.
This is a stage where you go to the party and you introduce yourself
to every potential person you would want to be friends with,
or you might want to go on a date with.
You walk up to them and you say, Hey, what's up I'm going
to Latasha, nice to meet you.
Cool outfit, how are you enjoying the party so far?
Same thing for online business.
So this might mean content marketing, where you are creating
podcasts, blog posts, YouTube videos that proactively kind of get
into your ideal customer's head.
So let me give you an example.
If I am a life coach or a, let's say a relationship coach, I'm going
to make some YouTube videos about how to handle disagreements in a
marriage or a new relationship.
I might write a blog post about how to find your dream
person, your soulmate, whatever.
These are things that people who are in my ideal client base are probably going to
be Googling for, are probably going to be searching YouTube or podcasting platforms
for, they might stumble upon me and say, Hey, Latasha, that relationship coach
she knows what she's talking about, I'm really interested.
She is really fun to listen to, she gives a lot of good value away, I am
now going to maybe subscribe to her podcast, subscribe to her YouTube
channel, visit her website over and over again, to see new updates
on her blog and things like that.
This might also take place through paid advertising, maybe this same
relationship coach launches some Facebook ads targeted towards people who are
newly engaged and offers them some type of a free course or some way to sort
of learn about whatever this subject matter is that they are an expert at.
Now content is a good way to hook people in, like YouTube content,
blog, content, podcast, content, et cetera, but the second thing that I
just mentioned, maybe a free course, a free download, something like that.
That's also a really great way to hook people in and get people
onto the next stage of the funnel.
That free course is what we refer to as a lead magnet.
So it's a way to attract those people who are in your ideal client base and get them
to connect with you through an email list.
And email lists are very powerful when we talk about the sales funnel,
because you can automate them and you can really help build that relationship
in a format that really makes sense.
People don't usually buy from YouTube, right?
People look at YouTube as a free platform.
It's very hard to get people to actually convert and pay for content on a platform
that they're used to being free, but if you can get them onto an email list and
then sell to them, that tends to be a better way to actually make conversions.
Once you get them into an email list, or maybe let's say they followed
your podcast on Spotify, they subscribe to your YouTube channel.
Now they're in, what's considered the engagement phase or the
nurture phase of the sales funnel.
At this point, it's your job to really prove that you are the one for them.
You are going to continue to deliver value, add value to their lives, whether
that is through organic content, whether that's through follow-up ads that provide
additional context and maybe that free lead magnet that they downloaded, you
are going to stay connected with them through newsletters or email campaigns.
And maybe you might also offer them some additional freebie or a first
freebie if you haven't given one in that first lead magnet stage.
Now at the end of this video, I'm actually going to show you how to
use my email platform of choice to not only host a lead magnet and get
that deployed to people, but also how to set up some follow-up emails
so you can set them on autopilot and sort of let them do their thing.
The basic idea is that once you deliver that first freebie, that first download
free course, whatever that might be, you then follow up maybe with some additional
context, maybe a fun little assignment for them, or a bit more value in some way.
Maybe it's just a nicely written email that provides some additional context.
And you're going to continue to do that for a couple of emails.
And then at some point, you're going to want to go ahead and make the ask.
Again, think of this like making a new friend, like dating, at some point, you
have to ask the person out on the date that you are talking to at the party
if you want the relationship to go any further.
Same thing for friends.
So somewhere in that email sequence, you're going to want to drive people
towards a conversion, towards a sale.
In most cases, if you have some type of, sort of micro product to offer
first, that's a good way to test it.
Again, I'm probably not going to ask somebody out on
you know, five course meal date, because that's just a little intense
or a vacation away a weekend away.
But I might ask someone out to coffee if I want to hang out with them, or
I want to go on a date with them.
So use the same way of thinking when you are funneling people
down to the conversion.
Offer them a low price product or a special flash sale, or a
coupon code for your email list
only.
Since you've already built up that value by keeping them on your email list
and keeping them engaged and informed.
This part will probably be a no brainer for them.
And for the people who don't go ahead and bite, you can either purge them from
your list after a couple of attempts in order to keep your email list
pretty full of prospects and people who might actually want to buy your stuff.
Or you can just keep them on your email list and continue to send them content
if you're posting YouTube content or blog content, because a lot
of times, those people may end up becoming super fans who really helped
share your content and keep those algorithms liking us, even if they're
not going to go ahead and purchase.
So we're going to head over to my computer now, and I'm going to show you Flodesk.
Flodesk is a tool that I choose to use for my email campaigns,
as well as my lead magnets.
It enables you to host any lead magnet, meaning a download, a
video, anything like that, really.
And send it out to people on autopilot, so I'm not manually having to send people
something through my own email inbox.
We'll hop over, I'll show you how that works.
So this is Flodesk, if we head over to the forms tab, you'll see that I have a
couple of forms that are already active.
And if we want to take a look at what those look like, they allow
you to have space for an image, for some headline and body text.
And most importantly, allow you to collect email addresses so
that people can get your download, or sign up for your email list.
In both of these examples, we are using these forms as opt-ins
for freebies or downloads.
This one is an actual starter kit, so kind of like a mini ebook, and this one is
an opt-in for an email list for a course that's going to be going on sale soon.
So to do something similar, you would just click on new form and
you can choose either a pop-up, in line or a full page form.
These examples that I just showed are full page forms, and there are
a few different options here, as you can see, so you can make them really
visually compelling if you'd like to.
And just click on customize, choose a segment, so this will be an email segment.
We'll just call this our test segment here for the sake of this video, but
this is going to be an identifier when you're sending out future email campaigns
so you know who to send which emails to.
And then Flodesk is pretty straightforward, you simply click on
the areas that you'd like to edit.
You can change fonts and pretty much any other option here, then you can
edit any of these options here as well, or even delete options if you prefer.
Now heading into the workflow section, this is how you're actually going
to deliver a freebie or deliver a welcome email once someone signs
up using one of those forms.
So click on new workflow and again, Flodesk is pretty great
because they have all of these templates already created for you.
If you are delivering a lead magnet, just click on view details, and
you'll be able to start customizing your workflow as you see fit.
Uploading your lead magnet right in here where it says click to download.
So all they have to do is open the email and click and open it up.
And you can also choose to add additional emails to the sequence.
Maybe you follow up with them three days after delivery of the lead magnet
to see how they liked it and so on.
So we're going to choose the trigger here, which is going to be when a
subscriber is added to a segment.
And we'll use that test segment here.
So whenever somebody submits that form they automatically
get added to this segment and in turn, get added to this workflow.
Then you'll go ahead and just customize the email by clicking on
it, clicking on edit, double clicking on any text that you want to change.
You can add logos and again, you can just upload your lead magnet using a link.
And to get a preview, you can click on desktop or phone, which
I definitely recommend doing.
You always want to keep in mind that a lot of people opening up your emails
are going to be doing so on mobile.
So you want to make sure that it's still easy to understand and
looks good on a phone as well.
Okay, so in the next episode, that's going to be hosted on Friday we're going
to talk about actually launching your online business, but in between now
and then, think about what type of lead magnet you can offer for your business.
If you are a yoga instructor, can you maybe offer some type of
a free exercise or free download with a few of your favorite poses?
If you are a nutrition coach, maybe you can offer a free recipe
in a nicely designed document.
If it's just a download that you're looking to offer I
really love Canva for that.
If you're looking to offer some type of a free video training,
I have a ton of videos on this channel all about video creation.
So I will link a pretty in-depth one up here for you and leave me a comment down
below and let me know what you learned from this episode or what type of lead
magnet you're thinking of creating.
I'm really curious to know, and of course, please be sure to subscribe
to the channel, click the bell notification so you are the first to
know when I upload the last part of this series, I will see you on Friday.