Discover Why Both Are Vital To Running A Digital Business, & How To Get The Most From Each
If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably already familiar with a website and funnels. Somehow you made it into this little corner of the Internet, read a few things that sounded good, and made it to this blog post. As far as websites go, it has done exactly what it was designed to: provide you with great content so we can start an honest, open dialogue.
That’s why you need a website. Anything more than that and you’re just wasting your time. Don’t do that.
What about a funnel? Well, a funnel is just the new way to say “sales campaign”. When you launch a sales campaign it’s typically focused on selling one thing, correct? If you’re having a garage sale the point is to get rid of all the older stuff in your house you no longer need. Maybe you’re a fitness coach selling a 10-day, 10-pound weight loss program? Are you a chiro? Offer the first alignment to get them in the door, and more wellness options on the back end.
Either way, you’re setting up a sales campaign that focuses on selling the heck out of one thing. That’s what a funnel is, and that’s why you need a funnel.
Website = Content
Funnel = Sales
Let’s dive in a little deeper into each, and why they are both necessary for your success.
A Deeper Dive Into Websites
First, let’s take a look at websites and why they suck at selling anything. The reason websites can’t be useful sales tools anymore is they don’t have any focus. Take my website for example. In the header alone there are 5 calls to action…
From left to right there’s a Facebook button telling you to go and se some of our social content. Then, in the middle is a shout out to our “Blog”, the option to learn more “About Us”, or Take The “Challenge”, and finally another shout out to the Blog with the offer to “Start Reading”.
Continue scrolling through the homepage and more options become available. Lots of “Start Reading” buttons, plus a host of other paths laid out in the Footer. What are your visitors supposed to do? Well, the main thing I’d like visitors to do on my site is read the blog, but that’s not clear given the many other options available. Ironically, this is what almost all businesses do, and then wonder why they aren’t seeing sales.
This is where a funnel comes in. A funnel gives visitors a single, specific path to follow to success. Once they’ve bought the first item, then the next logical, more expensive item is presented and so on. A typical sales funnel consists of 4 steps visitors will see, like this…
- Initial offer: Download a low-priced brochure, book, or buy something small to whet their appetite.
- Order bump: If they bought a physical book for $5, maybe offer them the audiobook for $17 more?
- One-time Offer (OTO): Now that they have the book and audio version, offer them a course or software for $99[per month].
- Downsell: If they said no to the $99 offer, let them know there’s a 3-month payment plan version for $35/mo.
Why are pretty much all funnels structured like this? Because it’s a proven path to increasing your average order value. Look at where it started – a $5 book offer. I wrote a book and I know for a fact that selling them for $5 each is a loss.
By the time you ad up the cost of writing, getting the book published, printed, shipped, and advertising the book, a $5 sale price is a loss. However, When you add up all of the upsells delivered in the funnel, the total amount that’s possibly made becomes ($5 + $17 + $99) $121. That’s 24 times as much as the initial $5 offer.
Take a look at your business’ current bottom line. Now, imagine multiplying that by 24!
Ok, don’t get me wrong, not everyone is going to buy all of your upsells. The point is, by giving your customers a deliberate path to follow in a funnel, you open the flood gates to new revenue for your business.
Why do funnels work?
Because humans are all the same. Tonight I want you to stay up late and watch some TV. That sounds like a weird request, but take a couple of hours out of your nightly routine and watch as many infomercials as you can.
Don’t want to do that? I get that. No worries. Just know that all of these informercials follow The. Exact. Same. Format. Every. Single. Time.
- There’s a problem that the average person is sick and tired of dealing with. Some Flinging, Flanging pain in the butt issue we’re all frustrated with.
- For the first time ever, someone (usually Jack LaLanne) has created a device that allows you to overcome this obstacle easily. Need to cook a frozen turkey on Thanksgiving in 20 minutes? Done, using our new infrared easy-bake oven!
- But wait, there’s more (bump)! The offer is sweetened with even more cool goodies that compliment the new device, plus free shipping when you pay a small handling fee (OTO).
That right there is a funnel, and all you need to beat the competition.
While your competitors are busy building fancy websites with thousands of paths to fumble down, you’ll be focusing on creating a clean website that delivers amazingly valuable content, and a funnel that gives them a clear path the success.
Like I said before, anything more than that and you’re wasting your time. Don’t do that.
I want to swing back around to websites for a second, and what kind of content you should be putting out. We’ll talk more about this in a later post, but regularly publishing content is the best way to both set yourself up as an expert in your field, and appease the SEO Gods (Google).
SEO may sound like a scary, mystical term, but all it really amounts to is 3 main things:
- Optimizing your site’s metadata: headlines, keywords, etc. using programs like Yoast SEO
- Delivering useful content that’s FREE – stop selling, start informing
- Link profile: Get other sites to link back to yours (it’s a popularity contest for Domain Authority)
That’s it. Master those 3 things and you’ll have a killer website, tons of organic (free) traffic, and a fatter wallet in no time.
How do you manage metadata?
Just make sure the first block of text on your pages is marked as an H1, and relates to the rest of the site. Also, make sure that the page descriptions are aligned with the rest of the page so Google knows what’s what.
Need ideas for content creation? Ask your audience what questions they have, then answer them in detail.
Need more backlinks to improve your popularity? Jump on some podcast interviews, write a guest blog post, or line up a guest appearance on someone’s YouTube Channel. Eventually, the backlinks will grow, as will your SEO ranking, audience membership, and wallet.
So, at the end of the day, which do you think you need – a Website, a Funnel, both? I guess the answer lies in what your actual goals are. If you simply want to inform the world of what’s rattling around in your head, a website will do. If you’d like to sell some stuff, you’d be crazy not to have a funnel. The real masters of their universe though have a mix of both.
Where do you want to land?
Talk again soon,
Thomas Buttino, Content Creator, Funnel Builder
