Creating A Marketing Funnel - Level 1

In our most recent blog, we explained the concept of an effective marketing funnel. If you have not yet read the most recent blog, you can do so here.
A marketing funnel enables you to identify your ideal clients, engage in a conversation with them, to build up a relationship. Once a relationship based on trust has been built, a good proportion of these people will become clients.
Creating a marketing funnel is a very effective form of marketing but is a lot of work initially. Therefore, we are breaking down the steps across several posts. In this one we will cover identifying your ideal customer, creating your freebie (or hook) and creating a landing page.
The first step is to identify your ideal client. Look through your previous clients and find out who your typical client is.

• Where do they live?

• What presenting issue do they come to see you about?

• What age are your typical clients?

• Do you tend to see predominantly men or women or is it equal?

• What are their hobbies and interests? 

• Do they have children?
   

Once you have pinpointed these details about your ideal client, you can target your marketing specifically for them.

The next step is to create a freebie, which is relevant to your therapy. This is something, you can easily distribute online and is a big enough incentive for the potential client to take the time to fill in a form. Some examples could be:

• A free diet plan if you are a personal trainer

• A hypnosis MP3 if you are a hypnotherapist

• A video of exercises for back strength if you are a physiotherapist 

• An e-book or article

 When the funnel is set up, you will target adverts to your ideal client, offering them the freebie. Both Google AdWords and Facebook advertising work well for this. However, we recommend starting with Facebook advertising as it is more user friendly, easier to target and easier to control spending, when you are starting out. We’ll go through creating the advert in more detail in the next module.
 
The idea is that a Facebook ad will appear targeted to your ideal customers. They will see the advert, want the freebie and click on the ad. This will them bring them through to a landing page. The landing page is the page which will collect their email address and distribute the freebie to them. There are many landing page services available but the one we usually use is Leadpages.net.
 
Here is a typical landing page. As you can see, the landing page gives some information about your business, reminds the potential client of the freebie and has a button for them to click.

Once the button is clicked they are brought through to a form.


When selecting which template to use, select an Opt In Template. This style of template contains the functionality to capture email addresses.

Research shows that the fewer fields there are on the form, the more likely potential clients are to fill it out. Therefore limit the fields to only ‘First Name’ and ‘Email Address.’

Leadpages can be integrated with email systems such as Mailchimp and Aweber, so that any new signups are automatically added to a list. Alternatively you can set up your landing page to send you an email when a new prospect signs up for your freebie.
 
Another great feature of a landing page is that you can set it up to automatically send an email to the new client containing the freebie. It’s important to do this. People will expect to receive their freebie immediately. If they don’t, you risk destroying any trust. So, if it’s a recipe, video or MP3, you can send this immediately by email when the potential new client signs up on the landing page.

We’ve gone through creating your landing page, characterizing your ideal client and designing your freebie. Once you have these three steps completed, you are ready to create and run adverts. In the next installment we’ll go through the advert creation and testing. 

Are You An Artist Or An Entrepreneur?

What was your dream, when you started your therapy business?

• Was it to do work you love?
• Was it to engage with people on a one to one basis.
• Was it to make a dramatic and positive change in people's lives?
• Was it to have the freedom and flexibility of being your own boss?

These great, highly motivating reasons, are some of the most common for setting up therapy businesses. Unfortunately, many  talented therapists don't live their dream, because they cannot make enough money to pay the bills.  

This pathway from dream to Artist back to employee is very typical.
What do we mean by Artist?

Well, many therapists fall into the Artist category. We have a craft we are passionate about. We care deeply about our work. We feel personally responsible for our client's satisfaction. It is these traits that make therapists wonderful at what they do.
In contrast to an Artist, the Manager is someone who likes systems and structures. They like fixed ways of doing things and can identify the most efficient ways of performing a task. They also tend to be great communicators and people managers. The Manager is brilliant at managing a department in a corporate environment and is often the type of person that Artists (such as therapists) would want to employ to manage the day to day running of their business.
The third type of person is The Entrepreneur. The Entrepreneur can be defined as a successful business person, who understand the needs of the client. The Entrepreneur also understands the resistance of potential clients to buying. They know how to speak to clients through their marketing, to overcome this resistance.

As therapists we need to be both The Entrepreneur and The Artist. The Entrepreneur gets clients in the door, the
Artist treats them.
Often therapists focus all of their energy on developing their Artist skills. They will often invest all of their personal development budget for the year on gaining further qualifications in their field of therapy.
How much have you spent this year on developing your therapy skills? And how much have you spent on developing your skills as an Entrepreneur?
As therapy business owners we must develop both skills.
We must attract new clients to be able to use and develop our therapy skills. As we attract more clients and treat more people, our therapy, or artist skills will  improve with practice.

So we can see that we need be both the Artist and Entrepreneur to have a thriving practice and truly live the dream. We also need the skills of the Manager but we can outsource a great deal of those tasks.

So, how can we do this? How can we build up our entrepreneur muscle? Michael Gerber's book, The E-Myth, covers this topic in great detail. It is a fantastic business book for any business owner.


Here at The Therapists' Business School, we can also help you to grow and develop your business skills. Our 4 week Business Success Course teaches you how to achieve a business mind set and how to market your business successfully.

As therapists, we are always encouraging our clients to invest in themselves. It is so important to also invest in yourself.