Welcome back to The Consistency Corner Podcast today!! I'm super excited to jump into this conversation all about - what the F is a funnel. Because here's the thing:  marketers throw around industry jargon all the time! I'm sure you've heard the terms: click funnels, funnel systems, automated funnels, the sales funnel, the marketing funnel... it's all a bit much right?! Well today we're breaking it all down so I can show you that it's actually a pretty basic concept. 

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 So, why do I need to know what a funnel is? 

Because different funnels do different things and support your marketing efforts in different ways. Our marketing plan needs to attract, nurture, and convert our ideal clients consistently in order to build sustainable businesses. What do I mean when I say: attract, nurture and convert? 

ATTRACT: attract is simply getting people to know your business exists - making them aware of you and what you do. It's the top of the marketing funnel. It's also important to note that not everybody that knows about you and your business will become a customer and that's ok. The top of the funnel is always bigger than the bottom of the funnel!

This part of the funnel is also where your branding and messaging comes into play - consistency in your branding will help your attract strategies compound. People tell me all the time that when they see me post something on Instagram and it has pink & teal in it, that they know it's from me because it is my brand colors. Those colors have become synonymous with The Consistency Corner and I use them over & over again because that reinforces who my brand is and that is building trust with my ideal client. So, this attract phase is all about finding and attracting those ideal clients, being consistent so that they can get to know you and your business and brand - this is where our relationship first starts so let's set a strong foundation. 

Now, we need to consistently be filling the top of the funnel to have customers that enter the next stage of the marketing funnel - the nurture stage. 

NURTURE: nurture is where you really start to build trust and add value in that relationship. 

I've shared the analogy before of somebody meeting you at a coffee show and then 5 seconds later, you say, would you like to get married? No, it doesn't work like that does it. The same applies here. We are establishing authority with our potential customers by sharing our expertise. We're educating, we're adding value - we might be entertaining, inspiring or encouraging. We're adding value to the relationship with our ideal clients without expecting anything in return. 

The problem that a lot of business owners fall into most often with this part of the marketing funnel is either they skip it completely because it feels like it's not paying off or they get stuck in the nurture phase and we give and give and give - and then wonder why no one is buying from us! Sound familiar? If it does, we'll dig into that a bit more in the convert phase of the funnel. 

One thing to note about the nurture phase is that this is where most of our content is going to live. Long form content that establishes authority, answers questions, helps our customers see how we provide the solutions to their problems and what it is we actually do. Content that also validates who they are and what they are currently struggling with - it's all nurturing content! 

... and then we move them into the convert phase of the marketing funnel. 

This final part of the funnel is all about turning lookers into buyers and converting those relationships into trust. This is where our audience learns to trust us - they know us, they've decided they like us and now, they show that they trust us by converting into customers. By buying from us (or even giving us their email address, following us on social media - the 'convert' action can be another form of conversion, not necessarily a sale!) 

Now where I said that a lot of time business owners get stuck in the nurture phase is what they do is they help, they provide tips, they educate... but then what happens is they forget to say "Here's how you can work with me..." or "Here's the solution I offer and here's how to do it" or "Here's how to connect with me so that I can help you with the thing!" 

The conversion phase of the funnel very much is the selling phase. It might be selling from a discovery call. It might be selling in the DMs, it might be a nurture sequence or a sales sequence in email where you are literally saying if you are this, this and this, and you need help with X, Y and Z, I can help you. Sign up here, click here, enrol here, reply back to me to just schedule a call, whatever it is... but we've got to be asking for the sale to invite the ideal client to do the thing that we know we can help them with.

So where does content come into this marketing funnel? 

 I'm so glad you asked. 

Well, it's everywhere. We have to have content & platforms where we are attracting, where we are nurturing and where we are working on converting! So, when you are scrolling instagram or watching Youtube or reading a book - I want you to go back to your marketing strategy and ask yourself, what is my current strategy around?

- attracting

- nurturing or

- converting? 

Where am I showing up to do those three things?

What is the content that I'm creating or repurposing to facilitate those actions?

What are the benchmarks that I need to measure to know if I am attracting enough for the top of my marketing funnel? 

Is the nurturing actually working and am I converting and increasing my sales?

When we look at our sales goals, we have to work backwards on things like conversion rates, traffic, average order value and units per transaction. The best part though? All of these numbers can be influenced by different phases of the funnel. As a business owner, you already have so much to do so it's helpful for you to understand the marketing funnel and to know and understand where to spend your time and where to invest to get support! 

Because here's the thing about marketers. Marketers are experts at marketing, and there are specialists who are going to try to sell you a shiny object that they will claim will change your business overnight. But if you don't have the foundations in place, it's not going to work for you, at least not right now. You might be spending precious time, energy, and maybe even money on strategies that don't work with the strategies you've already implemented. This is one of the things that I talk a lot about when you look at your competition, if your competition has been in business a lot longer than you, they've built brand equity that you don't have yet. They can implement different strategies that will work faster or differently because they have the compound effect and the momentum from the things that they were doing in the past that you just don't have yet.

You'll get there, but it takes time, it takes consistency and it takes sticking to that process - attracting clients and nurturing those relationships before some of those conversion techniques work.

So if you're like, ok, I need some support. I know I need a tweak. My business is not getting me the sales that I want. I'm not getting clients consistently, but I don't know what I need, I don't know if I need new branding, I don't know if I need to tweak the messaging, I don't know if it's my marketing strategy, I don't know if it's my content - I don't know where to start.

I want to invite you to take a look at the Consistent Client accelerator which just opened its doors for the inaugural cohort. In this 12 week sprint, we are going to go through the marketing framework around branding, marketing, strategy, and content. We're going to build out a full funnel strategy for your business that you can actually be consistent with and help you figure out what to work on. Because there's so much to work on, we're going to put a strategy in place together so that you understand the basics and the foundation and what the F funnel actually is and what it's supposed to do. As the CEO of your business, you're going to be able to confidently decide where you need to outsource, where you need to get help and stop chasing shiny objects just because a slick marketer told you that this was the thing that was going to suddenly save your business.

I want you to build a lasting legacy brand.

I want you to be able to implement new streams of revenue in your business and attract new clients and new markets.

When your warm market has dried up, I want you to be able to have an idea to launch something and build out a launch plan that you can be excited about, NOT overwhelmed. Click here to check out the Consistent Client Accelerator- I'd love to welcome you!