Creating A Marketing Funnel - Level 2

A marketing funnel is the most valuable marketing strategy your business can have. Although it is time consuming to set up, once done, it will run itself and generate lots of new leads. In our previous post, on creating a marketing funnel, we discussed landing pages, email capture, hooks and identifying your ideal client. If you have not yet read the first email you can do so here.

Assuming you have now identified your ideal clients and have your landing page ready to go, let's move on. It's important to get these stages done first, so, if necessary, go back to the previous post.

Your next step is to set up your ads. You can do these on a variety of platforms. However, for today, we will focus on Facebook.

The first step is to open up the Facebook page which is specific to your business. If you don't have that, please set up a business Facebook page before anything else. It really is important to be prominent on social media.

On Facebook start by creating a normal post.


First of all choose an image, which correctly represents the freebie you are giving away. Make sure the image is clear and the correct size. If there are people in the image, then aim to make them the same age and gender as your ideal clients.

Now for the copy. The text on the ad (or copy) needs to be snappy and appealing. Through a lot of testing, we have found the best format for copy is to state three problems that really resonate with the client, and express these as questions, then to offer your freebie and finish with a call to action.

For example:
Do you dread big social occasions?
Do you get nervous when meeting new people?
Do you worry about what other people think of you?
Then download your free hypnosis for confidence MP3 here.

The reason for asking three questions is to create something called a "Yes Set." Once someone has answered yes three times they are likely to also agree to the call to action.

The word "here" should contain a link which will bring the potential client through to your landing page, where they can enter their details and automatically receive the freebie.

Now to target your advert. In the previous blog post we talked about identifying the characteristics of your ideal client. Now we put this into practice.

Once you have created your advert, it is time to boost it. Boosting it means that you pay and the advert will be shown to people who fit your target demographic but do not necessarily like your page.

Click on boost at the bottom of the post and you will be brought through to this screen.


You are given a few options in which to boost the post. We recommend targeting to a specific audience.

Now target to the specific ideal customer you identified. Target based on age, location, gender and interests. For example, you might know that most of your clients are women between the ages of 50 and 70, living in the local area who enjoy travel, specifically cruises, and reading. Facebook is wonderful because you can be so specific.

Now it is time to set a budget. We recommend starting small so you can test what does and does not work.


Getting the advert right takes a lot of trial and error. A/B testing is very important in all areas of your marketing and luckily Facebook makes A/B testing very simple. A/B testing is when you test 2 posts against each other. You change just one thing about the post, for example the image or the copy, and run it at the same time as the first post you created.

At the end of the campaign, Facebook will tell you which post had more interaction. The best post will have the lowest cost per click. You can view this is Ads Manager.

By constantly performing A/B testing you can create the most effective advert.

Now you've learned how to create your advert, you can just relax and wait for new email addresses to come in.

In the next Marketing Funnel email we'll talk about how to convert those email addresses into clients.

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.