Video Transcript: Conversion Funnels - part 1

So welcome to our final module in the marketing class here at the Christian  Leadership Institute. And in this particular module, we're going to take all of the  fundamental concepts about marketing. We're going to take a lot of the different  marketing strategies that we've been talking about relative to search marketing  or social media management or email marketing, we're going to take all of that  together, and we're going to spend some time talking about a topic called  conversion funnels. In a nutshell, conversion funnels, we're going to kind of get  down to street level here, and we're going to talk about specific things. How you  set up a system that will pretty much automatically just collect people and run  them through your conversion funnel, so to speak, and create customers for  you, it is almost like a machine. And we're going to talk about creating  predictable selling systems that transform strangers into very passionate buyers. So here's what we're going to talk about. Here's what you should expect out of  this next learning module that we've got here. There's a couple of lectures that  we have about customer value optimization, some of the different terminology  relative to conversion funnels and automated lead generation systems. We're  going to take a look, look at the and talk about the metrics that you should be  paying attention to to make sure that you're being successful, that you're  generating the kind of results that you need to see. And we're going to talk a  little bit about what the rest of the people in your organization need to know  about how these automated systems function, generating more business for you or more activity for your nonprofit agency. So the method, the principles of a well executed conversion funnel. What does that look like? There's actually  something that I personally call the business success formula. This actually gets kind of deep, and it's almost somewhat irrelevant to the purpose of this  conversation. But what you're looking at here is a very simple formula that very  succinctly describes business success, and it's L x C x M x F = GP. So there you go, take that and run with it and go collect your million dollars for and look like  you're really smart. But what it really is talking about here is the number of leads you are collecting on a regular basis, times the number of customers that you  have at any given moment, times the average margin sales, the gross margin  that your business is making on every transaction, times the frequency at which  your customers come back and reorder from you, all adds up to equal gross  profit. And you know, a lot of people that are in business think, well, in order for  me to double the size of my business, I need twice as many customers, I need  to get twice as many orders, or whatever, in order to double the size of my  business. And one of the things that I teach in my consulting practice is that for  each one of these four factors that you see here, the L and the C and the margin and F for frequency, all you need to do is to make small, incremental changes,  very intentional, deliberate changes to each one of these factors to yield very  large, powerful changes on the right hand side of this math formula, which is  your gross profit. So there's some very powerful stuff that this formula illustrates 

on a business context. So step one of a conversion funnel. Let's we need, you  need to talk. Pay attention to product market fit. And in other words, does our  market, the people that we, that our business interacts with, do they even want  what you're selling? So in other words, if you're selling candy. Maybe you don't  want to be selling dental supplies, or maybe you would want to sell dental  supplies, or have another business that sold dental supplies. But the point here  is, whatever it is, if you're selling sleeping bags, for example, maybe you should  be selling tents. Maybe you should be selling other camping gear or  backpacking equipment, that type of thing. So that's that's what we're talking  about here with product market fit the stuff that you're the product that you're  looking at needs to somehow complement what you're already doing. The one  big thing you're always kind of looking for, that one big thing, everyone is always buying It's easier to deal with it than coming up with something brand new,  because then you're doing all the educational marketing. You got to teach  people what your product is all about. But the big concept when you're working  with a conversion funnel, the big concept is the concept of transformation.  People are existing without your product, without your service now, and along  comes your product or your service, and all of a sudden, the end result is they're living a much more enriched life. They're a lot happier. Things are so much  better. And what you need to communicate throughout your conversion funnel is  that process, that iteration of transformation, what that does for people, and  here's we'll talk a little bit here about what I'm talking about, the before phase a  great sales message Simply is going to articulate the shift from where you were  before, from the before state, to the very happily ever after state. So let's just  take a real quick look at some examples, and I'll show you how this works. So  you got this one here, you can see where you've got a new iPad or iPod or  whatever it is, some sort of electronic device and people, obviously, there's a  couple of people on here that obviously very happy with their new source of  music and information. You have another one here where it's very clearly shows  the after state. You have so much more time on your hands, so much so far less stress in your life, because you never have to write a check again. You have a  very contented look on this person's face, as opposed to a before state, which  you might be communicating stress or frustration. It's easy to double your sales,  and you know exactly what your customers want. And it shows a picture of a  young lady looking at a computer screen and thinking, oh my goodness, I sold  how much. Goodbye, junk. Hello, relief. It's communicating the fact that when  you have a lot less clutter around your living space, again, it's just life is just so  much more grand. So here's an example of a grid that we will use when we're  starting to communicate a before and an after trans transformation here on the  left hand side, you see different spaces on here for describing specifically the  emotions that people are feeling, that they're coping with, that they're you know,  the problems that they're having. And then you'll want to describe the specific 

market segments, like new mothers, for example. Or you could describe people  who, people who, any, well, any target demographic you could describe here,  and then they define the specific product, the specific service that you're offering here. And then on the right hand column, you describe how that product, how  that service is going to take them, what life is going to be like after they use  product, service as compared to the before. So it really just almost functions as  a cheat sheet. So the 30 second sales pitch, in other words, it's a statement of  value, you know how. And then you fill in the blank the emotion, how frustrating  it is when whatever, whatever I've been there, we hear you. We found the same  to be true, yada yada yada. And that's why I and we and our company did this,  and we insert a product name or a service, and then you imply the ownership  once you have it, and it sort of implies, again, it implies the ownership once you  have it, when you've completed this as a client of ours, as a member, yada  yada, you're going to and then you insert the after effect, and you can refer back to that cheat sheet that we were just showing you here a moment ago. You  know how emotion it is when insert before empathize, and that's why so same  slide, so then, so that kind of completed that whole process you go through and  you complete those statements, and that'll give you a very clear transformation  of the problem that you're solving for people, and it really starts to help you to  articulate the value that your product, that your service, that your business or  your ministry or your nonprofit is delivering to people who you think need to  know about you. So step two on the conversion funnel thing. How do you  optimize a lead we're assuming you're going to be using a lead magnet. How do you optimize that? What does that process look like? Most sales aren't going to  occur on the first visit, and there's almost a direct relationship between price and how many sales will or won't occur on the first visit. So generally speaking, the  more expensive your product, the more expensive your service, the more  energy, the more resources you'll have to dedicate to a conversion funnel to  convert a visitor into a subscriber or a buyer. So you're going to have to pay  attention to that. If it's just a freebie, or if it's a a low cost item, it'll you typically  don't need to do a whole lot. You just put a page on here, sign up here and for  $7.95 I'll send you this or whatever. So most sales, however, tend to get more  expensive, and they're not always going to occur on the first visit, so just be  aware of that. And another important point here, another important tip, is that  you really need to speak to a specific problem and a desired end result. So you  got to talk to them, and so they got to make that connection between I have this  problem that describes me, and then you say, well, here, if you use this, that will  solve that problem. So you don't want to do this. You don't want to give some  generic introductory guides. You don't want to do a free update kind of a thing.  These are all sort of generic. There's no real compelling reason for downloading  any of these lead magnets or getting that specific report or that case study. But  what you want to do is you want to generate a lead magnet that makes specific 

promises. You want to use specific examples, real life examples, almost to the  extent that they're a testimonial. You're going to offer a specific shortcut answer  a specific question and then deliver a specific discount. So specific, specific,  specific, right down a list very, very targeted information that you're going to  deliver here, promises, examples, shortcuts, questions and discounts, and  you're going to make a specific promise here, grow enough feed to feed a family of four in just four square feet of space, even if you don't have a yard, you can't  get a whole lot. More specific than that, enough food to feed a family of four.  Give a specific example, we generated 250 leads from Facebook in 18 hours  without spending a dime on advertising, offer a specific shortcut, the ultimate  social media swipe file, complete my blueprint for importing from China, answer  a specific question. And you can see that on here, where you can provide a  catalog of specific information, deliver a specific discount, 75% off, 20% off,  whatever. So that kind of completes an introduction to conversion funnels. So  we have some more information that's going to be coming through in our next  couple of lectures.