One of the biggest shifts that came for me in building my own successful business was learning about – and implementing – what I call my Marketing & Product Funnel.
You know what a funnel looks like, right? It’s wide at the top and tapers down to a narrow opening. When your prospects enter your funnel through your ezine or other (usually) freebie offering, they are in the “getting to know you” level of the funnel.
Once they get to know you, like you and trust you, they likely will move down to the next level, which will include your for-fee products and services, your least expensive ones first, increasing in value and cost as they continue downwards, until they eventually get to hiring you one-on-one or to your other big ticket item. That’s basically how the funnel system of marketing works.
I see a lot of coaches and other solo service professionals offer a freebie at the top of their funnel, and then their one-on-one service packages at the bottom, with nothing in between. I made this mistake myself. It’s important to have offerings at each level of your marketing funnel so people can continue to get to know, like and trust you, as well as get to know, like and trust your products and services.
Implementing the Marketing & Product Funnel system is easy. Get started by attracting prospects into your funnel. Create a freebie offering (an ezine, mini ecourse, ebook, report, guide, checklist, etc.) and put a sign-up form ‘above the fold’ and prominently on your website. And add a link to your freebie offering in your email signature as well.
Once you have prospects in your funnel, find ways to give them more valuable content at increasingly higher prices as they go through the funnel.
For example, the second level of your funnel might offer an ebook for $27 or an ecourse for $39. The third level might have a home study course for $147 or a series of teleseminars for $77 each. The fourth level might offer a boot camp for $347, and the fifth level might offer your one-on-one services for $500.
Get the picture? By the way, when you offer your products and services at different price points, you are lowering the financial and emotional risk for your prospects. You are essentially making it impossible for them not to buy from you!
© 2007 Alicia M Forest and ClientAbundance.com
Your March Media & Marketing Host:
Alicia M Forest, MBA, Multiple Streams Queen & Coach, is an author, entrepreneur, and expert marketing coach to coaches, consultants and other solo professionals in over 40 countries. As the founder of Client Abundance, her mission is to be the lamplighter for other solopreneurs on the path to abundance in business and in life by leveraging the power of the Internet to make more money in a meaningful and sustainable way.
After struggling to attract an abundance of clients and customers to her own consulting business, Alicia immersed herself in learning how to attract an abundance of clients and customers, quickly and consistently, and now teaches other entrepreneurs how to achieve the same success in half the time.
Alicia teaches solopreneurs how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve through her one-on-one VIP mentoring, group coaching programs, and teleseminars, as well as through her best-selling 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success Systemâ„¢, the Search Engine Marketing Success System, and the forthcoming Ultimate Guide to Building Your Email List for Solopreneurs.
Alicia recently finished writing her first print book, 6 Steps to 6 Figures for the Solo Professional, which is slated for publication in early 2007.
Alicia lives in a converted barn overlooking a river with her husband James and daughter Chloe in Walden, New York, a tiny village about an hour north of NYC, where she loves her life, both online and off!
