Having a million-dollar marketing funnel is nothing to scoff at. 

It’s a huge accomplishment that deserves its’ kudos. There’s a lot of automation, dedication, and ideation that goes into making something like that happen.

It’s the type of benchmark that says, “Hey, I was a serious business owner at 6-figures. But now? I turned my serious business into an EMPIRE.”

So listen, if you already have one: congrats, I commend you for the hard work. Feel free to kick back, put your feet up, and hang out.

For anyone looking to scale their funnel to that million-dollar benchmark, you’ll want to take a couple of notes.

But before I get into that, let’s talk about me real quick—just to make sure you know I’m not some random schlub pretending to know a thing or two about marketing.

My name’s Yogev Almog, I’m a marketing consultant and copywriting strategist for 6, 7, and 8-figure brands. 

I’ve written for and consulted on funnels ranging from fitness, coaching, eCommerce, business automation, CPG, financial institutions, telehealth services, done-for-you businesses, chiropractors—name an industry and I’ve likely written something or at the very least given some advice on it. 

And just to put the cherry on top, my work has been a direct contribution to a handful of million dollar funnels. 

So, now that you know a little about me and my credibility, I feel pretty comfortable saying this next part:

If your end goal is simply “The Million-Dollar Funnel,” everything I’m about to say is probably going to upset you. 

In fact, it definitely will. And you know who I’m going to upset the most today? Ad experts. 

Dearest ad expert friends of mine: I love you, truly, I do. I promise this isn’t a shot at you. 

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The thing is, entrepreneurs are especially obsessed with social media ads right now.

There’s this instant gratification that comes with an ad campaign because you can pretty easily track where a sale is coming from.

“Person sees ad. Person clicks on ad. Person spends time on site. Person buys.”

You can see how it might get addicting to watch as your phone blows up with sales confirmations but what people tend to be super quiet about is: 

1. The amount of ad budget you need to kickstart a campaign
2. All the creative you constantly need to test (Both the visual and written) 
3. Following community guidelines to make sure your account doesn’t get shut down for saying the wrong thing
4. The inevitable upward trend of ad spend due to market saturation

Talking about this often makes me think of a conversation I had with a client. 

On a call, she mentioned a competitor of hers in the coaching space who paraded around their million-dollar funnel. 

What’s important to note is this competitor went on a podcast talking about the $1.2 million they made that year but admitted to spending over a million on just ads alone…

…yea, that’s not what you want. 

Don’t get me wrong, loss leaders can be helpful in business, and turning a $200,000 profit is nothing to be ashamed of but the fact of the matter is that’s not $200,000 in profit. 

They still had to pay out employees, cover operating expenses, and ONLY THEN could they pay themselves out…  

…That’s a lot of work just to say you have a million-dollar funnel. 

Still, we see a few industry leaders truly killing it with Meta and Google Ads and all of a sudden that means everyone flocks to it as “the way” for every business to grow. 

Listen, there’s some truth to this. Ads can definitely grow your business and reach audiences you wouldn’t typically have access to. 

And sure, taking a loss on the frontend makes plenty of sense if you’re re-engaging repeat customers or people who didn’t initially buy on the backend—but how many people actually have that dialed? 

How many have figured out exactly what their ideal customer wants with organic traffic before putting money behind paid traffic? 

Ads are great, but only when they’re used the right way and only when you’re ready. 

(There’s nothing wrong with messy action, but if you’re not careful messy can become a disaster.)

And the only way you’re able to do that is if you recognize what is objective truth: ads aren’t THE answer, ads are just a tool—a piece of the bigger picture. 

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Once you see that, you’re able to use them more effectively, efficiently, and you put power back into your hands. 

Because when you rely solely on social media ads as your lead and revenue generator, you basically are at the mercy of Meta and how they want to run things. 

So how do you put that power back into your hands and build a business not dependent on ads? You take a step back and look at all the pieces that make a successful million-dollar funnel. 

There Are 3 Key Components To Any Successful Million-Dollar Funnel:

1. Attention
2. Affection
3. Retention 

I can dig deeper into each one of these in a later post but for now let’s just focus on the general idea.  

Attention is simply getting people to notice you. You’re creating awareness of something interesting or important. 

Typically this is where ads come into play but this can also be featured content, affiliate email programs, podcasts, you get the picture. 

Affection is what happens after you’ve grabbed their attention. The goal here is to connect with the audience and create a relationship that makes them want to buy from you.

This shows up as sales pages, email sequences, and even your everyday content on your social platforms but the bottom line is that you’re nurturing these people.

The last part is retention.

Now, whether or not this person has bought from you, they expressed interest in some form and you want to keep that person around. 

Why? 

Well, buyers will tell people how great your stuff is and anyone who didn’t buy might just need a little more time to think before they decide to buy from you. 

And again, even if they NEVER buy, best case they refer someone to you, worst case it doesn’t hurt to have one other person that likes you.

This piece also is largely working in your email and in the content you’re pushing out through your other channels. (Facebook, Instagram, podcast, blog, etc.) 

Okay, so remember when I said that entrepreneurs are addicted to ads? What I mean is, they’re so hyper-focused on making sure that Attention works that there’s little to no thought put into Affection or Retention—which is a problem. 

Those last 2 pieces of a successful million-dollar funnel can take time to build but are what can save you SOOOOO much time and money on cold ads and retargeting. 

Plus, if you set them up and automate the processes correctly, they account for the highest ROI in any successful business. (And I mean ANY.)

What really stops entrepreneurs from focusing on these areas is pretty simple: 

1. It’s harder to track exactly where a sale came from
2. It takes more time to see the results
3. It’s really not sexy

And I sympathize with you, really, I do. 

I want my results on demand like everyone else does. 

The thing is, that’s not how you build a million-dollar funnel. 

You have to be willing to put in the time and effort to make it work. Not only that, you need a strategy that makes sense within your business that can effectively scale as you do. (Because trust me, that million-dollar funnel is NOT a one-person operation.) 

SO am I saying don’t use ads? Absolutely not. (My ad expert friends would kill me if I did.) 

Ads are an important piece of a flourishing market strategy. 

But remember, that’s exactly what they are: a piece. 

And when you go back to edit or build your funnel, you should treat them as such—just a piece of the bigger picture.

The post Million-Dollar Funnels Aren’t Made With Ads appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

As advertisers, we focus a lot of our energy on ensuring our ad campaigns are performing and converting as best as they possibly can.

But that’s only one part of the equation. 

What happens after the click is just as important (if not more important!)

You can have the most incredible ad campaign set-up, but if the funnel you’re sending traffic to doesn’t convert, it doesn’t matter how great your campaign is – you simply won’t see the results you desire.

And so, in this article, I’m going to share 7 ways you can improve the conversion rate of your funnel, leading to better overall performance and results. 

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1. Include the 3 Argument Types on Each Page

Whenever someone makes a buying decision, they use two different parts of their brain. 

There’s the emotional part (the limbic brain) and the logical part (the frontal lobe). It’s important to understand this because it plays a big role in how we structure the pages in our funnel.

When humans make a purchasing decision, it’s mainly an emotional reaction. A study by a Harvard School of Business Professor, Gerald Zaltman, concluded that 95% of purchase decisions are made by the limbic system (the emotional part).

We see something, like it and decide we want it. Once we’ve decided we want something, the frontal lobe then helps sway us on whether we actually buy the thing by processing it logically. 

Think about someone buying their dream house. 

They go to view the house and fall in love with it instantly and decide they want to buy it – that’s the limbic brain. It’s only when they get home and start looking at things like the area, electricity bills, neighbourhood and all the other bits that they start thinking about the purchase logically. 

And so, when it comes to our marketing (and our funnel specifically), we need to understand this as it impacts how we should structure the pages.

Regardless of the type of page you’re sending people to (whether it’s a lead gen funnel or e-commerce) you need to be making three types of arguments:

Emotional arguments

Logical arguments

Urgency

And we want to make them in this order too – since that’s the order in which someone makes a purchasing decision. 

Have your emotional arguments at the top of the page, above the fold. What are the emotional reasons someone would purchase your product? It can often be as simple as saving time, stress or money. 

As you move down the page, you can start talking about the logical arguments. These are often features and benefits. What would someone need to know/understand in order to purchase the product or service?

And lastly, for good measure – always include urgency in your messaging to further push those people to take action. There are people out there that simply won’t take action unless you give them a reason to take it now. Some good ways to do this are: Give them a certain timeframe, warn them about limited stock or simply talk about why it’s so important they take action now.

By doing this you’re structuring the pages in a way that flows with how we make purchasing decisions as human beings – setting you up for the best chance of success. 

2. Benefits > Features

There’s a common saying in the copywriting world: “features tell, benefits sell.”

However, when most come to write copy for their product/service, they write about all the features without explaining the benefits. 

Features focus on the product/service itself. Such as what you receive, what it does or how it works. 

Some examples of features are:

• Storage up to 1TB
• Access to a free Facebook group
• Latest waterproof technology

Those things are great, but they don’t tell the end consumer the benefit to them, which makes it less compelling. 

Benefits focus on the outcome of the product/service, telling the customer exactly what the feature will mean for them. Bringing it back to the first point – this is how we start to build emotion into our copy.

By telling people what a feature means to them, they start to visualise themselves using it – which creates the emotional reaction we need.

Luckily for you, I’ve got a super simple way to turn your features into benefits.

The “So That” Statement

This is a tactic I use every single time I write copy. 

If you’re like most people and tend to write about the features, simply add the words “so that” to the end of your sentence. This forces you to explain the benefit that’s tied to the feature, making your copy much more hard-hitting.

The formula you can use is: 

If ___ so that you can ___.

Let’s take our examples from above.

• Storage up to 1TB so that you can save all your files without ever worrying about running out of space.
• Get access to our free Facebook group so that you can network with like-minded individuals. 
• The latest waterproof technology so that you can hike out in the rain for longer without getting wet feet.

Review all your copy and ensure every feature is combined with the real benefit. This will make your copy much more emotionally driven and compelling to anyone that’s reading it.

3. Split Test All Pages

The key to success in any advertising campaign is comprehensive testing. Testing images, copy, creative types and audiences. But the importance of testing doesn’t stop at the advertising campaign – it’s just as important to continuously test the pages in your sales funnel. 

You should test at least 2 variants of every page in your sales funnel. Tests can be big or small, from having completely different designs to changing the colours of a button. It doesn’t matter what you test so much. The most important thing is just that you are testing… because that allows you to learn what works and what doesn’t. 

And like all great marketers do: do more of what works and do less of what doesn’t. 

Things You Can Test at Each Stage of the Sales Funnel

• Headline/Subtitle – this is arguably the most important thing to test because it’s the first thing people see and read when they land on a page. Little changes in a headline can have a huge impact on conversion rates. The headline is where you want your biggest emotional argument on the page.
• Main Image/Video – most funnel pages will have imagery or videos on them. This is another key thing to test out. Try different styles of images and videos to see which ones perform better, such as professionally designed images vs iPhone shot photos.
• Sales Copy – try testing different features and benefits. Even testing the order in which you share the features can make a difference. If you’re listing benefits in bullet point format, the first and last bullets are the most important.
• Call to Action – the copy you use on the button can make a huge impact on performance. Try ditching the boring “Learn more” and try something more unique such as “Get Started – See How 97% Lose Weight In Just 30 Days”

Upsells/Cross-sells – test different offers throughout your funnel to see which products/offerings people find more compelling.

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4. Improve Average Order Value with Offers

The success of a campaign isn’t always just based on the conversion rate of the campaigns and funnels. Sometimes it can come down to how much money people are spending on your funnel.

You can have a funnel that converts, but if the money being made isn’t providing good levels of profit on top of ad spend, you have a problem. 

We recently worked with an e-commerce store that sold home gifts. We managed to optimise the campaigns so successfully that we were able to get our cost per sale down to less than £5. However, because the average order value of the site was only £15, the ROAS wasn’t sustainable. 

In order for us to make the campaigns successful overall, we had to improve the conversion rate of the site – specifically focussing on increasing the Average Order Value (how much someone spends per transaction, on averageGavin Bel). 

To do this, we added in what is called order bumps and one-time offers.

An order bump is an offer made at the checkout, right before someone hits the pay button. A common order bump might be to “supersize” the order for a reduced rate or to get another product at a low price. These convert extremely well.

A one-time offer is what it says on the tin.

Once someone has made a purchase, another offer appears on the screen inviting them to purchase a related product at a discounted price.

Adding both of these increased the AOV of our client’s site by 20%, vastly improving the campaign’s overall effectiveness. Even if AOV isn’t a problem for you, look at adding these two tactics to improve it.

By not doing it, you’re essentially leaving money on the table!

5. Improve the Quality of Traffic on the Page

If your funnel isn’t converting, it might simply be because you’re attracting the wrong people in the first place.

You can have the best funnel and offer in the world, but if the people visiting it aren’t relevant, it’ll never convert. This is why it’s so important to ensure you’re performing lots of campaign tests – testing which audiences work and which ones don’t. 

With all of the advertising platforms, it’s very easy to see which audiences are bringing in the best returns. And like I mentioned earlier, simply do more of what’s working and turn off what’s not.

There is one fool-proof way of ensuring you’re only getting the highest quality people to your sales funnel: content creation.

Creating content is one of the most effective ways to attract an audience of people who definitely have an interest in what you offer and it’s something we advise every single client to do – either in written or video format. 

The biggest objection we face is “but I don’t know what to write about?!”

And so if that’s you, I’ve got you covered. 

The simplest way to start creating effective content is to simply answer the questions, objections and queries your customers have. 

Here’s how to approach it:

1. Create a list of all the questions you’re asked as a business (get your team involved in this)
2. Turn those questions into eye-catching headlines
3. Sit down in front of a camera and record the answers (or write them up)

This is so effective for two reasons:

1. Only people who are genuinely interested in what you do will consume the content
2. When you promote the content through advertising, it’s super cheap because you’re not selling anything, you’re providing value. 

Pretty quickly,  you start to build a large audience of people who have an interest in your offering.

Let’s say you’re a physiotherapist. You could film a 60s video titled “5 reasons you have back pain”. You could then set up a basic ad campaign targeting people in your local area (that fit your basic customer avatar).

Who’s going to watch that video? 

People in the local area who have back pain!

Which, for a physiotherapist, is the perfect audience. What’s better is, these people are qualified AND educated. They know who the physiotherapist is already (building trust) and making them much more likely to take action and convert.

And to supercharge this strategy, you could run retargeting ads to the people who watched the video, pushing them to your sales funnel.

6. Increase or Decrease form Friction

When it comes to lead generation funnels, there’s a fine line between lead quantity and lead quality.

It’s not hard to generate lots of leads at a low cost, but it is difficult to generate lots of QUALIFIED leads at a low cost. 

It’s a constant balancing act, ensuring that you have both quality and quantity. 

The best way to strike the balance is to simply increase or decrease the fields you have in the form. 

This increases or decreases the friction that someone has to go through in order to convert. The more questions/fields, the higher the friction. The fewer fields, the lower the friction. 

If you’re struggling with lead quality, try and add some more fields to the form, specifically around the main reason your quality is low. For example, if you find the people you speak to aren’t motivated, add a “how motivated are you?” question. 

If you’re not getting enough leads, try reducing the number of questions in the form and monitor what impact that has. 

Whenever we’re starting a new campaign, we will always start with fewer fields to make sure we generate as many leads as possible. And then if we feel like we need to improve the quality of the leads, we’ll start slowly adding more fields to the form.

7. Include Social Proof Throughout

If there’s one thing that stops people from converting in a funnel, it’s a lack of trust. 

A lack of trust in the people behind the funnel, the offer itself or the promise the funnel is making. 

So, how do you build trust with people? How do you show them that your offer is legitimate and will have an impact on their lives?

Show the results that other people have achieved. 

Everyone in the world has problems. And they have desired results. 

Your job as a marketer is to show people how your product/service is a bridge from their problems to their desired results.

And the most effective way to do that is by showing the stories of others who have successfully achieved that with your product/service.

Social proof can take the form of: case studies, testimonials and even quotes from previous customers and people who have already converted through the funnel. The more you can share, the better. 

Even better – if you can have your social proof cover the main objections you know people have when converting, your social proof will do some of the selling for you!

Wrapping Up…

Improving the funnel conversion rate can have a drastic effect on the performance of your overall campaigns and business. If you’re able to get your funnel and ad campaigns to a point where they are profitable, you can scale your spend quickly. 

Start implementing some of these strategies and I guarantee that you’ll see improvements in your overall results.

Let me know – have you tried any of these? Which was the most effective for you?

The post 7 Ways To Improve The Conversion Rate Of Your Funnel appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

For every 100 people in your sales funnel, 97 won’t buy a darn thing from you. This isn’t an inflated statistic. In fact, 3% is considered a decent conversion rate. But what can you do about those 97 people who ended up in your funnel?

Are you going to just let them sit there without buying anything? 

If 3% of people are buying your offer, I bet you could sell more. 

The key to making more sales is to optimize your sales funnel. Internet marketing isn’t about plugging away at your laptop. It’s about locating bottlenecks in your funnel, testing your copywriting, and understanding conversion optimization. 

You shouldn’t chase new customers until you’ve already optimized everything you can inside your sales funnel. 

You’ve already done the hard work of attracting these people. Now let’s work on getting them to buy. 

This article will give you 3 steps (plus one BONUS tip) to optimize your sales funnel, increase your conversions, and sell your products. 

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is the experience your audience has with your brand. This journey takes them from being a reader or follower to becoming a paying, happy customer, and eventually someone who promotes your product for you. It’s their entire customer journey. 

The goal of conversion optimization is understanding the customer journey and giving your audience what they need to move closer to buying.

Your job is two-fold. First know what your customer expects. Second, deliver. 

If a visitor clicks through to a landing page, you’d expect the landing page copy to match wherever they’ve just clicked from, like a Facebook ad. 

A typical sales funnel will start with an opt-in (also known as a lead magnet). Then you send emails to nurture your audience before offering them a paid product or service. 

An example sales funnel inside Funnelytics. Nicola Moors Ⓒ

Now I’ll show you how to optimize your funnels by mixing a little bit of copywriting know-how with data and analytics.

Step 1: Understand your target audience 

Your customer is not a lifeless avatar. They’re a real-life human with beliefs and values. 

In fact, you can highlight a shared value you have to create a deeper connection because you’re showing your prospect that you care about what they care about. As an example, innocent drinks (a UK-based brand) isn’t just selling smoothies. They’re selling a better future. 

They’re not selling you a drink. In their copy, they highlight that by buying their products, you’re contributing to a better world. 

Your sales copy should sell the promise of how much better your customers’ lives will be once your product is in it. 

That’s because transformation sells. 

Pioneering neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and fellow researchers at the University of Iowa, discovered in an experiment named the Iowa Gambling Task, that patients with damage to the part of the prefrontal cortex that processes emotions often struggle with decision-making. This tells us that emotion drives decisions. 

So by treating your target audience as a 2D persona, you’re missing out the reasoning behind the decisions they make. 

Take the emotion from your copy and you’re likely missing out on conversions. 

The number one rule of customer research is to never assume. 

Throw out everything you think you know about your audience. Let your research and data do the talking. 

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How Do You Research Your Target Audience? 

Here are the top ways you can dig into your audiences’ values, beliefs and emotions. 

Research Option 1: Surveys

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”Surveys are easier and faster for customers to quickly provide feedback,” according to Easy Digital Downloads. 

In my experience, people love being asked for their opinion. So use this to your advantage by inviting your customers (and even people who haven’t bought from you) for their feedback. 

In fact, implementing this customer feedback loop is the easiest way to retain more customers. 

Create automations and insert touch points that ask for intel at every stage of your customer journey. 

My favorite places to ask for feedback in my funnels are: 

• Adding a question on your lead magnet’s thank-you page to ask visitors why they downloaded it
• Asking for feedback before you launch a new product to uncover your audiences’ beliefs and objections to that particular topic (great for creating pre-launch content)
• Asking new students or buyers to give insights on why they bought from you so you can attract more people like them 
• Requesting feedback from non-buyers to find out how else they’ll solve their problems uncover the hidden competitors you might not know about 

All of the above can be created and added in so you can collect intel automatically at each stage of the customer journey. 

An example survey question I love to ask buyers. Nicola Moors Ⓒ

Research Option 2: Interviews 

Remember we want to uncover our target audience’s emotions. And while surveys are great for quantitative data, it’s really difficult to go deep. So I use customer interviews to ask follow-up questions and really dig into the heart of what’s really going on inside your customer’s head. 

We want to uncover the insights that they might not even tell their friends about. 

So if I was to interview the person who responded to my survey question above, I would want to know the following: 

• Explain what you mean by “nebulous idea”?
• How had you gotten your information on brand voice previously? 
• What type of things were you Googling? 
• What information were you specifically looking for? 
• It feels like the idea of brand voice was confusing to you and your clients. Is that accurate? 
• Now you’ve used this product, how do you feel about brand voice? 

Other things you might want to know: 

1. What problems does your target audience have?
2. What are their goals? 
3. What do they want to achieve by solving this problem or hitting this goal?
4. What is driving their decision making?
5. What’s holding them back from buying? 
6. How else are they solving this problem? 
7. Who else do they look to for support with this problem?

Research Option 3: Review Mining 

Mining through online reviews is an incredibly insightful way to get even more intel on your audience. In fact, it’s my favorite way. 

Look for the places your audience hangs out. 

That could be: 

• Social media – for example Facebook groups 
• Reddit 
• Quora 
• Amazon reviews
• Social proof – review your testimonials and see what language is being used

And look at what they’re saying about your topic or product. 

Search for keywords that will help you find out their problems, hesitations, and desires. 

All of the above will help you get closer to understanding your audience and getting your message right.

Step 2: Optimize Your Product

Once you understand your target audience, you can use the intel to craft the perfect offer for them. 

In marketing, the key to creating high-converting funnels and selling your products isn’t to find an audience for your offer. You design the offer for your audience. 

The audience always comes first.

Never create a product just because you want to. Make sure there is a need in the market for it. (What we like to call proof of concept.) Your audience will crave your optimized offer because it solves a need for them. 

How Do You Design the Perfect Offer and Optimize It?

Or how do you optimize what you’ve already got?

Even if your offer is already selling, go back to your research and look at the following: 

Problems

What problems does your audience actually want to solve? How can your offer solve that?

Goals

How does your product help your customer achieve their goals? Remember your job is to show how their life will be easier with your product in it. 

Hesitations

What could be holding your audience back from buying? If the cost is holding them back, could you offer payment plans or free delivery? I’m sure I don’t need to go into the enormous success of Amazon Prime.

If time is their hesitation, could you make the content in bite-sized videos or offer transcripts so they quickly read the content instead of watching a long video. If they’re unsure the product will work for them, could you offer a video demo or a money-back guarantee?

Competitors

Compare yourself with the competition before your visitors do, according to CXL. What makes your product different? How can you position this? If your product is more expensive then you can explain why and how the benefits are worth the extra cost. 

Questions

What’s your audience asking about your topic? For example, when building my digital product helping copywriters nail their brand voice, I saw they were asking what went into a brand voice guide. So I added a template and real-life example of a brand voice guide so they could see it in action. This made the product a no-brainer for them because they were already seeking this information. 

Urgency or Scarcity

Why does your audience need your product right now? 

Will the price increase? 

Does the bonus run out after a time? 

Social Proof

Social proof comes in many forms. If this is the first time you’ve launched this offer, you might not have testimonials from happy customers. That’s okay! Try adding logos of your customers to the page. You could also add stats, like Justin Welsh did here when he added, “Join 26k+ subscribers.”

Image source

Risk-reversal

Your audience needs to believe your offer is the next best step in their journey for them. Common objections might be:

• “Is this right for me?”
• “Is this worth the cost?” 

Things like social proof, sales calls, providing your mobile number (if applicable) and behind-the-scenes demos can all help to increase your conversion rate.

A brilliant example of how to use social proof to build credibility with your prospect from Content Bistro.

Step 3: Craft the Perfect Message

Now your task is to craft the right message. 

Getting deep on the right message is the fastest way I’ve increased conversions. But you don’t need to be a copywriter to write high-converting copy. 

Luckily you’ve already done the hard work. 

Effective copywriting is based on understanding your audience and re-using their language. You’re going to use the feedback you’ve gathered from your audience to write sales copy that converts. 

Based on the problems and goals of your audience, what is the transformation you promise your customers?

The promise has to be accurate. Don’t inflate your promise or you risk losing customers—because you can’t follow through on the deliverables. 

Use your target audience’s exact language so the copy resonates with them. Highlight the benefits of the offer in your copywriting so your audience can see how it will help them. 

There are so many copywriting formulas out there and I think following Eugene Schwartz’ five stages of awareness is effective. 

• Unaware: Has no idea they’ve got a problem. Push marketing drives awareness.
• Problem aware: Copy should talk about the problem your audience has and how it affects them.
• Solution aware: Show them the transformation they can expect. What would life look like if their problem was solved? 
• Product aware: Introduce your offer and the benefits.
• Most aware: Use social proof and any risk reversals—like a guarantee or time-limited bonus—and give them an option to buy.

Following this outline will guide your copywriting so that you give your audience all the information they need. If done properly, you’ll have built enough rapport with them so that the logical decision is to buy from you. 

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Bonus Step: Map Out Your Lead Strategy 

The number one mistake business owners make after creating a sales funnel is forgetting to create a strategy to generate leads. 

You have a crave-worthy, optimized offer, with a killer message. But if no-one is reading your sales copywriting, then no-one will buy. 

It’s that simple. 

After you create the funnel, you have to create a plan to generate leads—AKA your lead strategy.

Here’s an example from one of my recent clients. This client hired me to write the sales page copy and email marketing sequence for a course launch. Mid-launch, my client was concerned that they weren’t hitting their goals. After analyzing the data, I spotted that the sales page was converting at 7.12%. 

The real problem? They weren’t getting enough leads through the funnel. 

The best copy in the world won’t sell if people aren’t seeing it. You need to invest in a lead generation strategy. 

Now this doesn’t mean you need to get as many eyeballs on your funnel as possible. That won’t necessarily translate into higher revenue. 

There should be a balance between generating quality leads and generating a quantity of leads. 

Quality leads are people who are likely to buy your product. This is why customer research is key. When you understand your audience, you’re more likely to attract the right people into your sales funnel. 

The next step in generating quality leads is to look at which channels your target audience is spending time on. 

Examples of channels might be: 

• Social media such as Instagram, LinkedIn, or Pinterest
• Blog posts 
• Paid advertising like Google or Facebook 
• Direct traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) 
• Email marketing 

You can use a mixture of paid and organic marketing to get in front of customers. 

Organic marketing—search engine optimization, content marketing, social media marketing, etc.—is a long-term strategy, but one you need to use for sustainable business growth. 

Content marketing is pull marketing where you create valuable content that pulls your audience away from the search engine results page and onto your website.

And content marketing is an easy way to inform your target audience and funnel them towards being ready to buy. You can even embed opt-ins inside your blog post to move them into your email marketing campaign. 

You can also use paid marketing, like running a Facebook ad to your newest blog post. This is push marketing. You push your content onto the platforms your audience is most likely to hang out on to interrupt their scroll and get them thinking and hopefully clicking.

As long as the blog post is written to meet your audience’s expectations, then it will funnel them closer to clicking the buy button. 

So consider writing blog posts optimized with SEO copywriting, which will inform and nurture your prospect. 

Conversion optimization and copywriting is so much more than just writing copy. Effective marketers test and tweak their copy to make sure it’s always converting as best it can.

Hopefully you feel confident in optimizing your marketing funnel, writing more effective copy, and increasing your revenue.

The post 3 Copywriting Tips To Optimize Your Sales Funnel appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

ATTN: Agency owners and marketing freelancers! Where should you start when you’re looking to build clients, a specific campaign, or even your business portfolio?

Jenna Apgar from LeadFlow 360 dives into the 5 business success tips she shares with her clients. She’s helped other agency owners and marketing freelancers develop campaigns that generated six figures in just 90 days. 

LeadFlow365 is the best cold lead application to help you Find, Research, Contact, AND Close Marketing Agency Leads in 3 Easy Steps

Watch to learn her non-negotiables for running a successful agency.

In this video:

• The secret sauce to getting consistent results in business. 00:30 – 00:50
• How to avoid the typical feast or famine roller coaster. 1:22 – 1:50
• The ONE trick to saving time reaching your sales goals. 1:50 – 2:17
• The best questions to ask to learn more about your ideal customer. 3:15 – 3:46
• The trick NO ONE ELSE IS USING to get new clients that works like crazy. 4:57 – 5:05

Hire Jenna to Help You Generate Leads for Your Agency https://www.digitalmarketer.com/certified-partners/leadflow365/

Learn more about the Customer Value Journey Jenna uses to attract new clients https://www.digitalmarketer.com/customer-value-journey/

Become a Certified Partner like Jenna and grow your business with DigitalMarketer’s proven frameworks and processes https://www.digitalmarketer.com/lp/4-step-agency-growth-funnel-b/

The post 5 Tips for Agency Owners to Win with Cold Leads appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Email fatigue is a real thing, especially with the continuing pandemic.

Email marketing is far from dead, but it is getting harder and harder to get your branded emails opened and clicked.

What is Email Fatigue?

As the name suggests, email fatigue is when a person doesn’t want to read emails and feels more willing to delete, unsubscribe or send emails to spam.

Email fatigue is something just about anyone feels from time to time.

Gone are the days when people would diligently click each and every unread email in their inbox to read what is inside.

Gone are the days when people would actually be looking forward to receiving a new email.

These days a full inbox is nothing new or exciting. And it has been getting worse.

Back in 2017, two thirds of Americans felt overwhelmed by the number of email messages they received on a daily basis.

And who can blame them?

Same year, 85% of emails were found useless.

In 2020 email fatigue grew exponentially and for an obvious reason: Most consumers were locked at home and all the brands started relying on email marketing as the prime (and often the only) way to keep in touch with them.

Obviously, we were all overwhelmed in 2020 and it isn’t much easier in 2021.

Yet, email marketing remains one of the most effective marketing tactics.

Customers who buy products after clicking links in an email tend to spend almost 140% more than an average customer. As many as 50% of marketers claim that email marketing is more effective than social media.

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Here’s how you can overcome email fatigue and boost your email marketing strategy:

1. Send a Welcome Email

This one may be a no-brainer but lots of brands still fail to do that. Welcome emails still work, mostly thanks to the factor of recency. Your customers have just interacted with your brand, so they will likely engage with and locate your email right away.

Welcome emails are highly effective: studies claim that welcome emails bring 320% more revenue than any other promotional emails.

2. Take Advantage of Marketing Personalization

It is astounding how many promotional emails I still receive that don’t even include my first name.

Yet, even the most basic personalization helps. Greet your customers with their name and you’ll find them much more willing to give your message a try.

Go a step further and personalize your email by including products they viewed or added to a shopping cart, and you will see even better results.

Case studies show that personalized campaigns bring almost twice as many opens and clicks as non-segmented ones.

Of course, this depends on how well personalization is done, so that per cent may even be higher. How well you do personalization obviously depends on your marketing partner or platform.

With Wix’s email marketing services you can personalized your emails in a meaningful way, for example, by using your customer’s name or previously purchased products:

3. Treat Emails as Any Content Campaign

Any email marketing blueprint will recommend you sending great emails so that your subscribers would look forward to your next one.

Obviously, it is easier said than done.

However it may doable if you change your mindset: Treat each campaign as any content marketing asset out there. Talk to your customers’ needs, pains and interests. Research what triggers their interactions and find content ideas that would spur their curiosity.

Asking a good question in an email subject and then answering it in your email is one of the most effective ways to generate more email opens. I often turn to Text Optimizer’s question research section to pick up a good question to discuss in my upcoming email marketing campaign:

Text Optimizer uses semantic research to identify angles that customers expect to read, so it is a good tool for both topic and audience research.

4. Make Use of Video Content (But Don’t Overuse)

Another marketing trick that tends to work in content marketing is using video content. Like any form of visual content, videos combine the best features of two worlds: It makes information easier to process while being entertaining.

Videos work wonders when placed on landing pages, and they do help emails to get noticed.

It is a well-known trick that including in an email subject tends to drive more opens and reads. Obviously, you cannot overuse this tactic but sending a happy birthday video email or sharing an occasional video tutorial may do wonders to your open rate.

5. Set up Meaningful Email Triggers

Quite obviously, email fatigue is triggered by too many emails. So do your best to avoid hitting your subscribers’ limits.

It is a fine line between not letting your customers forget about you and being too aggressive with reminding them of your brand.

Normally, the following a routine helps build recognizability without irritating:

• A promotional email once a month
• A special occasion email (like “Happy birthday” message which was mentioned above)
• Automatic email reminding customers of an abandoned cart or a failed payment.

Just about any email automation software will help you set these up pretty easily. Just don’t overdo!

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• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 1

6. Be Really Empathic and Genuine

While empathy has always been a good idea (not unique for marketing), these days it is more of a necessity than a recommendation.

And don’t try to fake it. During these trying times, your customers are more sensitive than ever. They will smell fakeness right away!

Maxwell Hertan of Megaphone Marketing put it best:

Depending on your business it also might be 100% necessary to address the elephant in the room. COVID-19 is on the minds of all of us, it’s okay to touch on the subject just don’t exploit the situation!

7. Keep an Eye on Your Landing Page Performance

It would be quite disappointing if after all that strategic planning you lose a subscriber to a broken link or a slow landing page. These days consumers have no patience to wait for a page to load. They are also less forgiving when it comes to interrupted browsing due to broken links or images.

With that in mind, make sure to click all the links in your email to ensure they work. Or better yet, check that link on a mobile device (which is where most emails are read and most emailed links are clicked).

And if you are inclined to be really thorough, run a quick on-page analysis to make sure there are no broken links or images on that page, as well as no performance issues. Site Checker gives you an option to run quick on-page audits for free and see if there’s anything wrong with the page:

8. Keep Looking at Your Stats

Most email marketing solutions include analytics in some sort or another. More often than not, you will see which campaign was a success in terms of clicks and opens and which one appeared to get trapped by spam filters. After a few days of sending an email blast, check out those numbers to get some actionable insights for your next campaign.

Your on-site analytics will be a great help here as well. You will be able to see which campaign drove the most conversions and which one failed to deliver any tangible results.

Finteza is one analytics solution that delivers most actionable insights helping you understand what has worked and how well any traffic source performed in terms of sending those site visitors down your sales funnel:

Conclusion

Email marketing may be much more challenging than what it was a decade ago but just about any marketing tactic has been going through transformation over the years, and more so most recently.

It would be weird to expect email marketing to remain the same. But the good news is, marketing software has been evolving as well letting you keep up with change and get ahead of your competition. The key is to find a smart marketing solution, so hopefully the above recommendations will help!

The post How to Overcome Email Marketing Fatigue appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Digital marketing has evolved far beyond publishing regular blog posts and broadcasting them through brand-owned channels.

It used to work pretty well about a decade ago but it will hardly produce just about any results these days.

We live in the era of an always multitasking, ever-moving consumer who is hard to impress. These days most brands were forced to up their content creation game and start producing in-depth and interactive content, investing into video creation and designing original graphics.

However it is not enough. While content quality is fundamental, your content strategy will fail to have any impact on your company’s bottom line unless it is optimized for capturing and nurturing leads.

Step 1: Optimize for the Customers’ Journeys, not Just Keywords

Every content creator knows what keyword research is and how to find keywords for their next piece.

Well, this is no longer enough.

Instead of targeting keywords, target a customer’s experiences.

Behind each search query, there’s that searcher’s intent, i.e. what they are hoping to do when they see search results. As Lior Krolewicz of Yael Consulting, explains:

…purchasing intent is a measurement of the likelihood that a given individual will be purchasing specific goods or services at some point in the future. This is an incredibly powerful statistic, as it allows you to target people who are already in the market for what you are selling.

As buying journeys are becoming more and more complicated and unpredictable, you may adopt an even more robust approach.

In other words, for every content you are thinking to create next, identify:

1. Which keywords (and questions) your target reader is likely to type into the search box when looking for something your content is answering / solving
2. What may have brought them to search for those specific queries (Are they in the middle of the project? Are they in the process of buying something? Are they fighting a condition? etc.)
3. Create content that serves #2 in the best possible way. Provide directions and downloads which would match all possible scenarios that may have brought people to your site.

This is how you create the most useful and most engaging content: You give your site visitors exactly what they were looking for.

Google search may give you lots of clues as to those customer journeys you need to match through your content. For example, if you search for something like [brand kit], you will see Google suggesting that many of their users are interested in samples, mockups and psd files, so this is something that would be helpful:

If you are writing content on creating a brand kit, include various downloads for your readers to be able to grab and play with right away.

A semantic research tool called Text Optimizer will also help you identify those various helpful angles and assets that will make your content irresistible.

Text Optimizer analyzes search results for any given search query and extracts associated concepts to give you a better idea how to satisfy your target reader better. The more suggestions you implement in your content, the better job it is going to do at matching your content to various browsing journeys.

Semantic analysis is certainly not a new concept but too many brands are still not utilizing it (and even have no idea what it is), so that tool is a nice way to start.

Step 2: Hook up Your Optin Forms to a Customer Relationship Management Platform

Most websites are using optin forms to get those lurkers to subscribe to an email list for businesses and writers to be able to build some type of relationships with them (and probably convert them into buyers later).

Well, this tactic is getting old.

Firstly, people are less and less willing to give away their email addresses. Secondly, our email inboxes are so cluttered these days that it is next to impossible to get your marketing email noticed.

It is high time that we rethink our lead nurturing process. Two possible ways to try out are:

• Hook up your opt-in forms to a customer relationship management platform. Hubspot provides one for free, but there are more CRM options to consider. A CRM platform will help you organize your contacts and develop a more comprehensive strategy of reaching out to them. You can use social media, keep a detailed record of all your interactions and identify best ways to turn your readers into buyers.
• Use Facebook retargeting to be able to reach out to your content readers with personalized ads through the platform. This will allow you to get in touch with those people who chose not to subscribe to your list. Here’s how to install Facebook’s pixel on your site.

Both of these methods do not require any technical skills to implement while allowing for multiple cross-channel marketing opportunities. Capture your content readers’ attention around the web!

Step 3: Monitor and Re-Evaluate Your Conversion Funnel

Finally, changing the way you evaluate your content effectiveness is a must if you want to better understand which of those articles do the best job matching your customers’ journeys.

Google Analytics is the most obvious option here, only it is not easy to figure out. Finteza is another option, especially with their “Funnels” option allowing you to clearly see which pages “funnel” web users into becoming leads and buyers.

Creating a funnel is easy: Simply select your article URL and then any number of “desired” actions (clicks, form fills, etc.) you’d like your article readers to perform. Finteza will show just how many users proceed interacting with your site the way you have planned this out:

You can also slice and dice your data to see more detailed information. For example, you can evaluate how mobile users are converting on that page. Or you can even narrow it down to any specific mobile device model. This is very helpful in developing customer personas and adjusting your page elements to engage your users better.

It is also a smart idea to include this evaluation in your monthly website audit routine to ensure it is performed on a regular basis. This way your content and SEO strategies will be more integrated, and hence more effective.

There’s also no shortage of engagement tools allowing you to diversify your CTAs, personalize your message and follow your customers’ journeys around the web.

Conclusion

A content marketing strategy is ever evolving. There’s never a point where you can say “I have found the most effective way to create and market content”. It is never going to happen.

Hopefully, the three steps above will help you find a few new ideas to experiment with. Good luck!

The post How to Optimize Your Content Strategy for Lead Generation appeared first on DigitalMarketer.