Beginners marketing funnels are prone to mistakes. This is why so many online businesses fail, whether because of budding entrepreneurs who have a great product idea but no ability to generate leads and customers, affiliate marketers who want to make money online without the hassle of product creation and customer service, or network (multi-level) marketers who want a residual income from a team.
Why do they fail?
There are a number of reasons, but the simplest is because of their disastrous marketing plan. With no real marketing education, the steps most beginners make when they first create their product or sign up as an affiliate are these:
- 1. Get a link to your product or an affiliate link ready.
- 2. Spam influencers and other random people on social media.
- 3. Run Facebook ads.
- 4. Wonder why it’s not working.
Beginners Marketing Funnels
The first problem here is that no one likes to be spammed. Influencer marketing can be highly profitable, but not if you aren’t ready to make it worth their time, and everyone with a Facebook account is likely sick and tired of being randomly invited to join an MLM team by now. Learning some good people skills so you can reach out to others is a fantastic skill to develop.
However, the real problem here is the lack of a funnel. If you get influencers to promote your product or manage to persuade some of your social media friends to purchase, you have a number of one-time purchases, and they likely won’t cover the cost of what you paid the social media giants just to get that shout-out.
It’s a similar problem with Facebook ads. If you haven’t even the most basic funnel, you won’t be running them because Facebook won’t allow you to run ads that go directly to affiliate links in the first place. However, if you have a funnel that consists only of a landing page (to get Facebook to authorize your ad) that goes directly to the product, you still likely won’t make enough money to cover the ad expenditures.
A real marketing funnel, if you take your business seriously, is a bit more complicated, but if you use the right tools and work on developing your message and presentation, funnels will become second nature. They are the essential skill of all online marketers and business owners.
The only disclaimer here is that no one can guarantee you won’t lose money as you test funnels and develop your own marketing skills. Marketing doesn’t have to be too terribly costly, but not every funnel you build or email campaign you write will be the digital equivalent of striking gold.
So, beginners marketing funnels, what does a funnel look like?
Landing Page with Lead Magnet → Tripwire Product → High-Ticket Product
Of course, the landing page will branch off into the email marketing aspect of the funnel. A good autoresponder will allow you to send custom emails to your leads depending on their actions within a funnel. For example, if your customer nabs the lead magnet and then clicks away, you can send them emails you’ve designed to get them to purchase the tripwire product.
That’s a little more advanced, though, so let’s stick with building out the main funnel for now and go through each page in the funnel.
Beginners Marketing Funnels – Landing Page
You can’t run ads that go straight to an affiliate link in affiliate marketing, and you shouldn’t just be sending your affiliate link or main product link, for those who are product creators, to anyone. The goal of the landing page is to keep people in your catalog, so to speak, as leads. That’s the purpose of a landing page, and it should be the first thing anyone sees.
Landing pages are usually short and simple, although they can include a brief sales letter. The main attraction of a landing page is the giveaway, however. Most successful marketers don’t actually market their core products directly when fishing for cold leads, which are merely people who haven’t encountered you before and don’t have a previous customer relationship with you. You start the process of warming them up by offering them something free and valuable enough to establish trust.
What you offer for free is called a lead magnet. It can be an ebook (or a physical book, if you can afford it), report, cheat sheet, video, webinar, or anything else. The only requirement is that it be valuable because if it’s not, your lead won’t be impressed and the effect of the rest of the funnel will be dampened. It’s also difficult to run ads for a product that looks, say, like something copy-and-pasted off the Internet.
Beginners Marketing Funnels – Tripwire Product
Once your prospect becomes a lead, they should next be brought to a page that offers them a low-cost product called a tripwire product. This is a marketing tool used to cover your advertising costs, so don’t expect to profit from it. It should be around $7-$12, so nothing expensive. It also has the added effect of allowing you to create a buyers’ list.
Remember a little earlier when you read that a good autoresponder can change based on a particular lead’s actions? An easy way to weed out the freebie seekers is to put anyone who buys the tripwire product on a different list so you’ll know who is willing to spend money. That doesn’t mean you should give up on those who were only interested in whatever you were giving away; you should continue to promote other products to them.
Beginners Marketing Funnels – Core Products
Once your lead becomes a customer, whether they buy the tripwire
immediately or eventually warm up to it through an email marketing campaign, or
even after they’ve joined your list regardless of further purchases, you can lead them
to one of your core products, or your flagship products. You may only have
one product at this point, and that’s okay, too.
This is where you pull out the big guns and start really convincing your customer or lead to purchase a higher-priced item. This can be anywhere from $100 to many thousands of dollars in price, and it’s the purchases made here that make up your profits. This is why so few marketing tactics involve jumping straight
to the core product, as you don’t want the money made from here to
cover advertising
expenses, nor do you want the price tag to immediately scare off prospects.
If you have multiple high-ticket products, it’s recommended that you don’t make an extra-long funnel to cram all of them in. Rather, you should create different funnels for different products and introduce people to your other products
through either great website content or through email marketing.
What Should Every Page of Your Funnel Have?
Now that you have the framework for your funnel laid out, you’ll need to
know how to make each page attractive. There are many different things that marketers throw onto these pages, but some things are universal.
1. A Headline — Every single page of your funnel needs to have its own headline, and it should grab your prospects’ attention.
Calling out the prospect by name (i.e., ‘Affiliates, If You’re Tired of
Dead-Beat Leads, This Book is For You!’), drawing attention to a
pain point (a problem that your offer solves), or promising
to help them achieve some goal or dream are all excellent ways to craft a headline.
2. A Sales Letter — While your lead magnet won’t need a lengthy sales letter, as what you’re offering is free, any page in your funnel that requires a purchase should need a convincing sales letter. There are many perspectives on what makes a converting sales letter, but all of them focus on first highlighting problems your prospect is facing and then promising to eliminate them.
Bullet points should be included at some point, as people’s attention spans are so low nowadays, and some
marketers use sales videos in addition to letters.
3. A Call-to-Action (CTA) — Don’t assume that your prospect will get to
the end of your letter or video and click the big “Buy Now” button; you have to
urge them along. It may seem silly, but customers are more likely to buy if they’re
encouraged, just as blog posts usually end by inviting readers to post comments
and YouTube videos ask watchers to subscribe to their channels at the end.
That’s the anatomy of a funnel, so now you’ll have a much better idea
of what it takes to succeed in your marketing endeavours.