Your Marketing Funnel: A Key To More Sales Leads

Your Marketing Funnel: A Key To More Sales Leads

A past client of mine, whom I’ll call “Brian,” is a business coach and a excellent one.  

He’d had a web site for several years that pretty much served as an online brochure for his company. When Brian came to me, he was looking for a way to convert more people from qualified prospects to happy purchasers of one of his coaching programs.

The problem?

He was attracting people to his web site and getting them sign up for a free coaching session. But when they discovered at the end of the introductory session that his coaching programs cost several thousand dollars, many ended up thanking him and going on their way.

They simply weren’t ready to plunk down that kind of money so early in the relationship.

After learning about the problem, I asked Brian what he was doing with the people who didn’t decide to invest in his coaching program.

I can still remember the frustration in his voice when he told me that there was really nothing he could do at that point. He didn’t have an answer. Which, for Brian, was a real dilemma because, like most us, he has a genuine passion for wanting to help people.

So I introduced him to the strategy of using a marketing funnel. If you picture a funnel, you know it’s wide and open at the top, and narrow at the bottom. At the top of the funnel, where you offer free stuff, is where most of your prospects will enter. At the bottom of the funnel is your HIGHEST PRICED service or product. The middle should offer in-between levels of services/products and prices.

The idea is to create a marketing funnel that gives your prospects the option of jumping in where they want, and then move them along so they can benefit from your higher priced products and services.

In Brian’s case, he had three things in his funnel: his free coaching session, a hardcover book that was priced about $300 and his coaching programs that ranged from $4,000 – $10,000.

He had the first step down pat: Get your prospect IN the funnel.

Offering something FREE is the ideal way to get lots of people into your funnel. Most business owners collect prospects by giving away something free, suchas a report, an ezine, or a teleclass. When people sign up for these valuable giveaways, you get their names and e-mail addresses, allowing you to contact them again.

At the top of Brian’s funnel was his offer of a free exploratory coaching session. And at the bottom were his pricey coaching programs. But there was really nothing in the middle.

Many self-employed professionals, such as coaches and consultants, fall into this trap. There’s either free or high-fee. This is the reason many of them have so muchtrouble converting prospects — people usually aren’t ready to make that big jump from $0 to several thousand dollars.

Without a less expensive way for prospects to sample the value Brian had to offer, the prospects simply fell by the way side.

I recommended he create several information products (“info-products”) along with a home study coaching program for do-it-yourselfers that would allow him togo back to those who weren’t ready to jump into a coaching program and offer them a less expensive way to get started.

It has expanded his marketing funnel and created a passive income stream he didn’t have before.

You can do the same thing.

By packaging your knowledge into info-products, you give your prospects the chance to “sample” you at a lower price, filling the middle of your funnel.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

* Books
* E-Books
* Special Reports
* Manuals
* Workbooks
* Audio downloads, CDs
* Video downloads, DVDs
* Home Study Courses

Creating and selling these products on your web site gives you passive income which means you aren’t trading time for money.

But most importantly, it gives you a practical means of converting interested prospects into lifelong clients instead of having to turn them away because you don’t have a less-intimidating way they can test the waters.

Take some time now and see where your marketing funnel could be adjusted so that it’s easier for your prospects to sample your expertise and buy from you.

Gerry Black is a marketing writer based in Toronto, Canada who works with clients in the U.S. and Canada.