This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's listener is thinking about funnels. Do you like funnels? Remember going to the fairground and you go up to that little food cart and you're like, "I would like a funnel cake." And it tastes delicious. Listeners, if you have never been to a festival or a state fair or somewhere else where you can get funnel cake, you are missing out. Although I don't think I've actually had one as an adult.
It's more of a childhood memory. Before I go down that road too far, it's actually not funnel cake that we're talking about. It's the classic marketing funnel where you're trying to bring people into your empire selling something, okay? There are a couple of different ways this phrase marketing funnel is used. One of them is thinking about psychology and someone's needs and how do you make them aware of a need or a problem that they're experiencing or remind them of a problem and then kind of introduce them to the solution which conveniently you are providing, et cetera.
The other way a funnel process is described is in terms of products, products or services where typically there is an entry-level product, there's a medium price product, then there's an expensive one and all along the way you're trying to move people through this customer journey which is another phrase that's used. So I'll talk a bit more about it after the question and there's a bit more to it but let's hear that from, I believe it is Chelsea and then we'll talk it out. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Chelsea and I've been following the show for a while now and I've been wondering something. Every marketer I know talks about the importance of having a funnel where you have a free incentive on the bottom to get people interested, then a low price product, then a medium price product and then some type of high end product or personalized consulting. It seems very effective but also if everyone is doing it this way, does it really work?
And do you have a funnel? From what I can tell, you don't really sell anything at all besides books. Looking forward to hearing from you, thanks. [Music]
Chelsea, great question, thank you for asking it. First, let's just explain a bit more for listeners who aren't aware of this term, the funnel, the marketing funnel.
I mentioned it a bit in the introduction but let's say for example's sake, you have a $1,000 product you want to sell, some kind of expensive coaching or some kind of actual physical product that costs $1,000 and you could just start randomly calling people, hoping to reach the right ones but that would be most likely ineffective and frustrating. So instead, you spend some time creating free content that draws in some of the ideal market. You think about the pain that your ideal customer is going through, you think about how you can begin relieving some of that pain, providing solutions and perhaps you make some videos or you make a white paper or a PDF, some kind of downloadable guide or it could be something totally different but you've got this free content and so then you're building an audience of people who are interested in this particular topic, they're looking to you as the expert and then you think maybe instead of trying to sell them that $1,000 product right away, you'll sell them a $25 product which is of course a much easier commitment and then from the group of people who buys the $25 product, they're already primed to buy something else whether it is the $1,000 product or perhaps something in the middle. So those numbers are just examples. There are countless variations of this.
The key point is that you're providing a series of stages or touch points for customers to go through on their journey. So to come to Chelsea's question, she says, does it work? Absolutely, it works for sure. If it's so easy, why doesn't everybody do it or I forget how she phrased it, if everybody's doing it, how can it still be effective? The thing is it works as long as a few other conditions are met and these are not small conditions.
The most important is do you have the right product? A funnel is only good as every part of it and just think about it if you can't get traffic to your website in the first place, you won't get very far. It doesn't matter how awesome whatever your offering is or if you can convert people to the $25 product in that example, but if they don't love it, they're not gonna spend $1,000, right? So the point is yes, it works but as you can probably tell already, this is a lot of work to do properly. So that's where the win is.
The win is in the implementation and the execution of the plan. So does it work? Yes, and why don't I have a funnel? I guess the first thing is I'm just much more motivated to create things than I am to sell them and I'm happy to reach more people for free through the podcast or through the books, which are very low priced. That for me is my goal.
My goal is impact. That's not to say I couldn't do that if I wasn't selling other stuff, but I also don't wanna hire a big team to support all the stages of the funnel. So for me, it's mostly just a matter of personal choice. This is what works for me. We have certainly seen in many of the stories that some type of funnel system can definitely work very well.
So I hope that gets you thinking, Chelsea and anybody else, what can you do to create interest? How can you create that low price product? And hopefully just lead to more and more sophisticated solutions for your customers. Okay, listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll continue making this program every single day.
I'm so glad you're out there. Thank you for all your support. Thank you for sharing the show, by the way, even though I don't have thousands of dollars of products for sale, I do very much appreciate when people recommend the podcast or my books. So thank you for that. You can subscribe or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Site Us All School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
