One of the reasons that many businesses’ marketing doesn’t bring in the leads it should is because it is not a joined up, well planned journey, or a good marketing funnel. Let me give you an example. Emma spent a long time building a large LinkedIn following on her accountancy business page and for her account. All her posts got lots of views, likes and comments. But this didn’t translate into customers. Emma spent hours each day on LinkedIn, but this wasn’t translating into new business. Getting engaged followers on LinkedIn was a valuable part of Emma’s marketing, but it wasn’t everything. There was no clear plan for how her followers could become customers. This pattern is common across many businesses. They might be good at email marketing or cold calling, but all of these are parts of a bigger journey that is made by potential leads becoming leads and then customers. That journey needs to be carefully planned if it is to work and provide paying customers.
This journey has different names, the marketing funnel is a common one, but the key is that there is a plan for how you find potential leads, turn them into leads and nudge them gently into becoming a customer.
Planning the journey
The journey for someone to become a customer of yours needs to be carefully planned. There may be several different journeys within your business. This would be good, as simply relying on one source of leads is a high-risk strategy. But in this article, we are going to talk about planning a customer journey or marketing funnel. Just repeat for more funnels.
Levels.
Your leads will move through several levels before they become a lead and then a customer. I am going to give some examples here. The journey your leads take may be very different, but the principles remain the same.
The start of the journey, or top of the funnel, is all about attracting attention. It’s about making people who were not aware of you become aware of you. This doesn’t mean they become a lead; it simply means they move from someone who has never heard of you or your business to someone who has. It may simply be that they see a LinkedIn post of yours. Social media is one thing businesses have at the top of the funnel. Others may use Google Ads others cold calls, and others networking. The key is that there are people who have never heard of you and then become people who have heard of you. At this point, they enter your journey or funnel and are at the top.
Where do you want them to go next?
The first thing to think about is how big a jump are you asking people to make?
You can’t expect someone to go from seeing one of your social media posts to paying for a week’s retreat in Hawaii with you. You might manage a jump like this if you sell very low-value items, but if you do, this type of journey isn’t really for you. So, plan your levels carefully so that there is only ever a small step from one level to the next.
On that basis, a great next level would be them following you on social media or you being connected (connection, friend or follower depending on the platform and connection type).
Social media is a great marketing tool, but few people sell directly on social media; it is just the first level of their marketing journey. It is very hard to sell anything beyond low-value goods directly on social media.
The next level on the funnel could be a visit to your website. Here, they will read a blog or get a free download. They are there for something that benefits them.
The next level could be that they are subscribed to your newsletter. At this point, you now have direct access to them, and your messages go from being seen from time to time (as happens with social media posts) to being seen every time they are set (email marketing).
From email marketing, the next level could be them purchasing something low value from you or attending a free webinar.
As we are moving from one level to the next, a few things happen. Firstly, you lose people. This will always happen. There will always be more people at the top of the funnel than those who become customers at the bottom. There is a conversion rate for each level, how many move from one level to the next. There will always be people who drop out along the way, and this is a good thing. You will lose people who realise that they will never be able to afford your services. You will lose people who don’t think they want to work with you; you will lose people for whom your service is not relevant. On the whole, this is a good thing and filtering out the time wasters and those who would never want to use your services. If you are losing too many people along the way, then you will need to improve your funnel or journey, but do remember that some loss along the way is a good thing. Not everyone is your ideal customer.
After a free webinar, the next step would probably be the purchase of something, and your lead becoming a customer. However, often this is not the end of the journey. In many cases, this will be a discounted introductory offer to encourage people to make that step to part with their cash and working with you. But it could be a much higher value product or service that you really want to sell, and so your marketing funnel may continue even if they have become a customer. For now, we will stop on the journey here, and anything further will be explained the customer journey blog.
Moving between levels
Having these different levels, stages of the journey or parts of the funnel is very important. But just as important, and what many people don’t think about, is how you move those people from one level to the next. What are you going to do to nudge them along the way? Without these nudges and directions, how are they supposed to know where they could go next?
As I explained in the previous section, the jump from one level to the next must be small. If the jump is too big, you will lose too many people on the way. But, even if the jump is small, people will rarely make that jump themselves; they need gentle nudges and guidance.
In our example, we want to move people from having seen some of your posts or comments on social media to them becoming a connection (let’s presume we are talking about LinkedIn here). Most people won’t go around automatically connecting to everyone whose posts or comments they see. Maybe you do, but most people simply click like and move on with their lives. Even if the jump between your levels is small, you will still need to break down the jump to the next level into smaller steps. So, at this stage, you need to be looking out for those people viewing, commenting and interacting with your posts. Decide which ones you want to move to the next level. For example, there is no point working on connections from India if your business only works with those in the UK. For those you want to make that connection with, start with small steps. Start to like some of their posts (do this over time, don’t just like their last 10 posts and call it a day). Then start to comment on some of their posts, or the comments they have made on other posts. Perhaps move on to some comments being questions to encourage some form of interaction. Once you have some sort of connection to this person through your interactions on LinkedIn, send them a connection request. Make sure you send it with a note explaining why you are connecting, and relate it to something you have been talking about. It could be as simple as saying, “Thanks for sharing your thoughts about… on my posts that were interesting, I would love to connect”
The key is to mention something about your interactions on LinkedIn to remind them who you are. If they accept, you have managed to move them to the next level.
This does all sound very time-consuming and can be. But if you can systemise it and then dedicate a small amount of time to it, you can be very efficient. This should be achievable in ten minutes a day, or every couple of days, once you are organised. The key here is remaining focused on your goals and not being dragged into simply scrolling.
I’m not going to talk about moving through every level in the same level of detail. In most cases, moving from one level to the next is all about what’s in it for them, why should they? Let’s be honest, if someone says to you, “Would you like more newsletters in your inbox?” you would probably answer no. So, we have to tempt people to do this, find a reason for them to sign up or move to the next level. For example, when moving a social media follower to your website, a good approach would be to talk about a blog and what your followers could learn from reading it. If your post makes it sound interesting, then some people will move to your website to take a look. If you want someone to sign up for your newsletter, give them a reason to. It could be that what you share is so invaluable that they will want to, and you can get that across in a blog or social media post. But more likely is that you’ll need to give something away free, a download or a free call for example. As explained above, make sure you break the jump from one level to the next into small baby steps.
When moving people from one level to the next, presume they will move. Don’t talk as if they might move to the next level (or might not), talk about moving to the next level as if it’s simply the next natural step that “everyone” or, in the words of Seth Godin “People like us” takes. This is especially true in Webinars. Webinars can be a great marketing tool, and most people have the “big sell” at the end of the webinar. I think it’s not good to have the “big sell” explain more about what happens next. What happens next may be that they pay for your service. But the more you can make this the natural next step and what “most people” are doing, the more people will come along with you. If it’s seen as a big jump and big decision, you will lose more people.
Review and improve
Once you have the funnel in place, keep it running and regularly review it, and see what the conversion rate is between levels. If there is one level change with a poor conversion rate, take a look at it. Why is it so poor?
Is the jump from one level to the next too high?
Have you broken down the jump into small enough steps?
Are any automatic emails, etc, set up working?
Have you made the reason to jump from one level to the next compelling enough?
Make changes and keep monitoring to see if the changes work, or if you need to try something else.
If you ensure that you have a clear journey or funnel with small tempting steps along the way that you are monitoring and improving over time, then you will be ahead of 95% of your competitors and should be receiving a steady stream of leads. Remember, it’s good not to rely on only one of these in your business, no matter how well it is working.
