We've all heard that most businesses fail in the first few years…

The thing is, this statistic accounts for ALL businesses…

From businesses that are started from some hair-brained idea or because the owner likes to bake/fish/collect stamps/etc. These businesses are typically doomed to fail because they're building a hobby, opposed to an actual business.

Compare that to businesses that are well thought out, planned, and follow proven business models and strategies. For obvious reasons, these businesses have a much higher success rate.

Going into 2019, my question to you is…

Do you want to build a hobby or a business?

This post is going to give you a proven system for starting a successful business in 2019 and beyond!

Step 1: Pick Your Market/Niche/Avatar

This first step is probably the most important step; however, it's often overlooked as people typically jump to Step 2.

But, here's the deal, you're going to be spending A LOT of time thinking about this topic and working with this group of people… you want to make sure it's something you like and that these are people you actually want to hang around with!

I've seen too many people try to chase the money and wind up miserable because they wind up hating the topic and/or their customer.

There Are 3 Profitable Markets

I'll be referencing Russell Brunson's book, Expert Secrets in this section.

Russell states there are 3 profitable markets:

1. Health – everyone wants to be healthier, live longer, etc.
2. Wealth – everyone wants enough money to be secure, some people want more than that.
3. Relationships – everyone wants to have great relationships; marriage, love, friends, etc.

These 3 markets have dozens of sub-markets:

1. Health – diet, nutrition, strength training, weight loss, etc.
2. Wealth – business, investing, real estate, sales, etc.
3. Relationships – love, dating advice, marriage, parenting, etc.

Then, if you go another level deeper, you have niches… and, this is what you want to figure out.

• Health –> Nutrition –> High Fat Diets
• Health –> Weight Loss –> Weight Loss For College Students
• Wealth –> Real Estate –> Flipping Houses On eBay
• Wealth –> Online Business –> Facebook Traffic For eCommerce Stores
• Relationships –> Parenting –> Dealing With Teenagers
• Relationships –> Dating –> How To Recover After A Breakup

Got a niche?

Cool, now let's figure out who your customers are!

Construct Your Customer Avatar

Your objective is to answer all of the questions below. Doing so will help with targeting your audience and with your messaging.

Some of these questions are pulled from the Customer Avatar Worksheet available from DigitalMarketer.com.

Demographics

• Name
• Age
• Gender
• Marital Status
• #/Ages Of Children
• Location
• Occupation
• Job Title
• Annual Income
• Level Of Education

Interests

• Celebrities/Gurus
• Causes
• Organizations
• Websites
• Apps
• TV Shows
• Clothing
• Musicians
• Books
• Magazines
• Movies

The 3 Whys

Go through the Demographics and Interests you came up with, asking “why” three times to uncover the individual's psyche.

Once you understand their psyche, you'll be better able to answer these questions as they pertain to your market/niche/business:

• Goals and Values
• Challenges and Pain Points
• Objections and Roles

How To Create Your Customer Avatar Quickly With Facebook's Audience Insights Tool

• Audience Insights Tool
• Avatar Sheet, Blank (file, make a copy)
• Avatar Sheet, Filled Out Example
• Expert Secrets Book
• Digital Marketer's Avatar Worksheet

Step 2: Figure Out What To Sell Them

Hopefully you've completed Step 1 and have a Niche and a Customer Avatar. If not, go do that first!

Now that you have your customer and you know their goals and values, challenges and pain points, and objections and roles… it's time to figure out how to help them!

Help them?

Yes! What you sell to people should help them… otherwise, why would they buy it?

So, with your helpful and caring mindset, it's time to go looking for products and services to sell.

But, where do you start?

5 Types Of Products You Can Start Selling Online TODAY!

Alternatively, if you don't want to watch another video, you can check out this blog post here.

To recap the video and blog post, here are the 5 types of products:

1. Dropshipping
2. Print on Demand
3. PLR/MRR
4. Productized Services
5. Sell Other Businesses' Products

Finally, you don't have to use one of aforementioned product types if you don't want to. If you want to create something from scratch or you already have products you want to sell – that's great, do that!

This list is simply for those that are stuck and don't know what to do.

Come Up With 3-5 Things To Sell

Your goal now is to come up with 3-5 products or services to sell.

JUST 3-5!

Yes, you can probably find thousands of options, but we want to get some momentum first. You can always expand your product line later.

If you try too many products at once, you'll spread yourself too thin and nothing will work out for you…

And, believe it or not, customers don't want a million options either…

Ever been to a restaurant that has a million items on the menu? How long did it take you or your significant other to make a decision? I bet one of you took “forever”!

Start simple. Give your products/services a fair shot. Adjust from there.

Uncover The Features & Benefits Of Your Product/Service

You've probably hard the saying, “people don't want a drill, they want a hole.”

You can take it a step further, “people don't want holes, they want to hang their shelves.”

And, further… “people don't want shelves, they want a place to store their extra stuff.”

(the 3 why's ringing any bells here?!)

The point is, people aren't buying a product/service… they're buying the result.

You need to take the 3-5 products/services you've come up with and merge the result they produce with the goals and values, challenges and pain points, and objections and roles your customers are facing.

An easy way to merge all of this is with feature/benefit bullet points.

Which feature of your product/service helps with…

• The goal(s) they're trying to accomplish
• The value(s) they hold dear
• The challenge(s) they're facing
• The pain(s) they're feeling
• The objection(s) they have
• The role(s) they play

What you may find, after doing this, is that the product/service you're selling is underwhelming.

Or, maybe there are too many objections or you're not directly addressing the decision maker.

This happens, and it's OK.

Everything you sell isn't going to change someone's life…

But, everything you sell can (and should) be of great perceived value!

“Offeratize” Your Products And Services

Your products and services are NOT offers…

While an offer includes a product/service and its features, benefits, and advantages… it also includes all the other bells and whistles:

• Bonuses (HUGE!)
  • This is how you increase the perceived value of your regular ol' product!
• Money Back Guarantees
• Pricing Terms (payment plans)
• Risk Reversal (how are you going to ensure they don’t waste time, money, etc. this includes your money back guarantee)

I recommend listening to Todd Brown’s “The Marketer’s Mind” episode 20 for this, click here for it.

Also, take a look at what your competition is offering. Are they selling products and services or are they selling offers? How can you offer more?!

The point is, you can take your underwhelming product/service that's facing too many objections and “soup it up” to make it irresistible!

An Example

Let's take Josh from our avatar example discussed in the video above – 35 year old male, interested in Keto Diets, in the military, etc.

After asking the 3 why questions, we know he's interested in enhancing his performance, in order to perform his job well. He's willing to workout hard, eat right, and even take supplements. (note: we've uncovered 3 categories of products we can sell our avatar: exercise stuff, nutrition stuff, and supplement stuff)

We decide to work with a white label supplement manufacturer to produce a performance enhancing supplement…

Pretty cool looking container, right?!

Of course, I'm being sarcastic… it's a lame looking container, but you get the idea. It's a performance enhancing supplement designed specifically for our customer avatar!

Now, let's extract the features and benefits of our product by comparing it to…

• Goals: Optimal performance on the job
  • Get Some! has a sustained release, ensuring you're performing your best all day without any ups, downs, or crashes!
• Values: Eating healthy foods, ketosis
  • Get Some! contains 100% organic ingredients and is the only FDA approved performance enhancer on the market!
  • Get Some! contains no sugars or fillers that hinder ketosis!
• Challenges: Works a lot, limited time, sometimes has to eat MREs (unhealthy Army food)
  • You'll feel the power of Get Some! within 5 minutes of ingestion! Our fast action formula makes sure you feel good when you need it most!
  • Get Some! contains Exogenous Ketones which have been proven to offset the negative effects of sugar and other high carb foods!
• Pains: Worried about being off his game when it's time to make hard, on-the-job decisions
  • After 2 years and 10,000 scientific tests, Get Some! is proven 100% effective for maximizing the decision making part of the brain! (lateral frontal cortex)
  • Doctors and scientist everywhere are calling it “The Limitless Pill” because it unlocks your whole brain!
• Objections: Has tried performance enhancing supplements before, they don't work
  • Get Some! contains a brand new, proprietary blend of ingredients never before released on the market, until today!
• Roles: Key decision maker
  • Take control of your performance with Get Some!

We now have some features and benefit bullets for our product that align with our Customer Avatar.

Now, it's time to offeratize our product!

• Bonuses
  • Waterproof pill container so they are with you on the go
  • Mobile app with 5 minute puzzles that activate certain parts of your brain so you can prepare for what's ahead
  • 31 day workout program for increasing day-to-day performance (PDF and Video)
  • 31 quick recipes for increasing day-to-day performance (PDF and Video)
• Money Back Guarantee
  • If you don't feel a significant difference in your performance within 30 days, you let us know and we'll refund your payment AND give you a $100 Amazon Gift Card for wasting your time!
• Pricing Terms (payment plans)
  • Free Shipping on all orders
  • Buy 2, save 10%
  • Buy 3, save 20%

Step 3: Build Micro Sales Funnels To Sell Your Offers

You should have a couple offers created for your customer avatar.

Now you need a way to display your offer and collect money from your customer.

The best way to do this is with a Micro Sales Funnel.

What is a Micro Sales Funnel?

It's a collection of web pages, engagements (email, text messages, phone calls, etc.), and retargeting ads that act like a digital sales rep that works for you 24/7/365!

Think about ordering food at McDonalds. You order a burger, then the cashier asks, “Would you like fries with that?” Then, they offer a drink, the chance to Super Size it, etc. Instead of spending $4, you've spent $14. That's a Micro Sales Funnel.

Here's an example:

Micro Sales Funnels come in all shapes and sizes, depending on what you're trying to sell and who you're trying to sell it to. If you'd like to learn more about the various models, I recommend checking out this post: What Kind Of Sales Funnel Should I Build?

The example funnel above is what I call a “Classic” Micro Sales Funnel. Here's a breakdown of the funnel:

• Opt-in: An individual enters their contact information in exchange for a Lead Magnet. A Lead Magnet is simply a freebie offer someone wants, like a coupon, checklist, video training, trial, etc.
• Welcome & Pre-sell: After the individual has given you their contact information, they land on a Welcome & Pre-sell page that tells them the Lead Magnet they requested is on its way and while they wait, here's some info about our company and how we can best serve them!
• Sales Page: This is the page that's selling one of your offers.
• OTO #: Stands for One-Time-Offer. These are typically 1-click upsell offers, where the individual can add additional offers to their order with 1-click.
• Downsell: These are pages shown to individuals that turn down the OTO. Usually, you try to sell your OTO again; however, this time you incentivize it by including some bonuses, a discount, or payment plan.
• Order Confirmation: This is the final page of the Micro Sales Funnel that confirms the individuals order and may also link to other, complementary offer funnels.
• Engagements: These are emails, text messages, Facebook Messages, ringless voicemails, phone calls, direct mail, etc. that is typically automated and designed to help pull your customers through your funnel.
• Retargeting Ads: These are advertisements that follow individuals around the web, advertising your business and offers again and again, in an effort to drive more sales.

All of the pages, engagements, and ads are specifically designed to help you sell your offers.

You're not simply building a random website with some products on it and hoping someone buys something.

Everything you do with a funnel needs to be calculated and methodical.

Of course, it's going to take you some time to understand how these things work. It's going to take time to understand psychology and marketing…

But, it's all worth it because as Russell Brunson, founder of ClickFunnels, always says, “You're only one funnel away!”

Your goal: Build a Micro Sales Funnel for every. single. offer.

Watch Me Build A Micro Sales Funnel Quickly

• Get the Micro Sales Funnel I built off of in the video

Step 4: Connect Your Micro Sales Funnels With Marketing Automation

Let's recap everything you should have right now:

1. Your niche and a customer avatar
2. 3-5 different offers
3. 3-5 Micro Sales Funnels (1 for each offer)

For step 4, you want to connect all of your Micros Sales Funnels with marketing automation.

What's marketing automation?

Emails, text messages, ringless voicemail, direct mail, Facebook Messenger… any type of communication and engagement that can be automated, leaving you with something that looks like this…

Pretty cool, right?

Note: Even though the diagram above only shows emails, you can use other mediums like text messages, Facebook Messenger, ringless voicemail, direct mail, and more to connect your Micro Sales Funnels together.

What Do You Send To People?

We could spend months, if not years discussing this topic, so I'm going to keep it pretty high level for this post.

Your audience and customers go through a journey, right?

The “Customer Journey”:

1. Awareness: of pain, of need, of solution, of your business
2. Interest: they start conducting research
3. Evaluation: they’re going to buy something, but they want to make sure they get the “best” one
4. Decision: they buy
5. Retention: keep them happy, sell more
6. Advocacy: they tell everyone about your business

Depending on where they are in this journey will dictate the type of content you send them.

With that said, there's two types of content you will need to send to people:

1. Relationship Content
2. Action Content

Relationship Content

Relationship content, you guessed it… builds a relationship!

It's content that's educational and/or entertaining. Content people enjoy consuming.

This can include helpful how-to tutorials, funny stories, deep data analysis, back & forth communication, and so on.

You're also using this content to gauge your audience members' interests… what topics are they clicking on and viewing?

Are they interested in Keto recipes? Keto supps? Lifting heavy weights? All of the above?

While you're building a relationship, you're figuring out what the person is interested in so when it's time to sell them something, you can recommend a product or service they're most likely to actually buy!

Action Content

Action content drives the person to take action, ie. buy something, come visit your store, give you a call, etc.

You've spent time building a relationship while simultaneously figuring out their interests…

Now, it's time to recommend a product or service to them!

One of the simplest action pieces you can deliver to someone is one that highlights a sale or special promotion: “1 day only, get 30% off our Get Some! supplement… click here!”

Simple enough, right?!

Of course, you can get fancier by using copywriting formulas like the Problem-Agitate-Solve formula, or the Before-After-Bridge formula… but, typically, what I've found is that if you've spent the time establishing the relationship FIRST and then place a really attractive offer in front of them… you don't need to try and mind-hack them or anything!

You can be a normal person (a friend or trusted adviser) recommending a product/service to another normal person!

This is why it's critically important to take the time to understand your audience's needs, wants, and desires AND to craft super-awesome-amazing offers! It saves you so much time later on.

Watch Me Integrate My Micro Sales Funnel With Marketing Automation

• Get ClickFunnels
• Get ActiveCampaign

Step 5: Fill Your Sales Funnel With Traffic

By now, you should have…

1. Your audience/niche figured out. You know where they hangout and you're ready to approach them!
2. Your irresistible offers developed for your audience members.
3. A few Micro Sales Funnels setup to actually sell your irresistible offers.
4. Those Micro Sales Funnels interconnected with Marketing Automation that builds a relationship, gauges interests, and then promotes your irresistible offers.

Got all that?

Great! Now, lets fill your system up!

Introducing “The Triple Threat Strategy”

The Triple Threat Strategy is comprised of three parts:

• Acquisition: Convert cold traffic (people that don't know about you or your business) into warm traffic (people that know about you and/or your business)
• Direct: Convert cold traffic into hot traffic (leads and buyers)
• Retarget: Convert warm traffic into hot traffic

Also, notice how it's a funnel a giant funnel, just like the Customer Journey funnel displayed above… same exact concept here!

Acquisition Campaign

The main goal of the Acquisition Campaign is to convert cold traffic into warm traffic. (ie. grow your Custom Audiences [retargeting audiences])

This is accomplished by producing great pieces of content that connect with your prospects and helps them establish rapport with your business.

You want the prospect to know, like, and trust you at this stage.

Here are a couple Acquisition Ad examples…

This first one is a video. Videos work great as acquisition ads because you can build Custom Audiences (used for retargeting later) based upon how much of a video an individual watches. For example, 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 25%, 50%, etc.

It's typically a lot easier to get someone to watch 10 seconds to 25% of a video on Facebook than it is to get them to click away from Facebook to visit your site. Thus, you're able to grow your Custom Audiences for pennies on the dollar!

The second ad is an image ad that links to a high quality blog post…

Those are examples of Acquisition Ads.

As you can see, they're pure content and goodwill. Nothing for sale (at least not directly) in either of them!

Direct Campaign

There are two goals for the Direct Campaigns:

1. Convert cold traffic directly into a lead or customer. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't… but, it's usually worth giving it a shot.
2. Convert cold traffic into warm traffic. Introduce your business and what you have to offer.

Here are a couple Direct Ad examples…

This first one is a “direct to offer” ad where I'm trying to convince cold traffic to claim a “free” dog training clicker.

The tactic behind this ad is to make the offer soooo good, it's impossible to refuse. Basically, I'm looking for impulse buys…

The second Direct Ad brings people to an opt-in page where they can request my Lead Magnet: 100 Dog Training Tips.

The purpose is to convert cold traffic into leads that I can follow up later with email and retargeting.

Those are a couple Direct Ad examples.

As you can see, they bring people directly from Facebook to an offer… whether it's for a product or a just a lead magnet.

Retargeting Campaign

The main goal of the Retargeting Campaign is to take your warm traffic and convert them into leads, customers, and repeat buyers.

By this time, you will have warm audiences either from people engaging with your Acquisition or Direct Ads…

They know about your business and what you offer…

It's now time to promote offers to convert individuals into leads, customers, and repeat buyers!

Here's an example Retargeting Ad…

Since Retargeting Ads are used on warm audiences, you can make “bigger” offers. Basically, you don't have to try and sell some cheap product in order to attract impulse buyers.

Often, you'll lose money on the Direct Ads, but make up for it 10 fold during the retargeting phase!

How To Execute The Triple Threat Strategy

We've uncovered the Triple Threat Strategy and the 3 core campaigns…

But, how do you actually execute it?

How do you know when an ad is working? How do you know when it's not?

Don't worry, I have a flowchart to answer all of these questions and more!

Yup, she's a doozy!

Now, I'm not going to explain this whole thing right now since it would take hours…

But, hopefully it gives you some perspective of how that funnel diagram translates into real life actions you can take to execute the strategy!

Here's How To Launch A Facebook Ad

Links Mentioned:

• FB Pixel on WordPress
• FB Pixel on ClickFunnels
• FB Pixel on Kartra
• Facebook Ad Copy 101
• Facebook Campaign Objectives

Are You Ready To Make 2019 YOUR Year?!

This post has outlined an ENTIRE game plan for you from start to finish!

You now know what you have to do…

• Identify your audience/niche
• Develop your offers
• Build Micro Sales Funnels to sell your offers
• Connect your Micro Sales Funnels with Marketing Automation
• Fill your entire sales system with traffic

This is your chance to start that side hustle to get some extra cash flow or to even replace your 9-5!

People are making money every day with sales funnels, marketing automation, and traffic generation… why shouldn't you be able to make it work?

2 Reasons These 5 Steps Won't Work For You

1. You don't actually do anything with them. You keep doing what you're doing.
2. You do them halfway. Maybe you get overwhelmed by the technical stuff, so you quit. Or maybe you bounce over to some shiny object. Whatever the reason, you do things half-assed (excuse my french!)

The point is, if you do everything outlined in this post…

You avoid excuses…

And, you put in the time to make it happen…

I guarantee you'll be successful!

Finally…

I have a full blown training program that teaches you the nitty-gritty details of EVERYTHING outlined in this post.

Click here if you're ready to DOMINATE 2019!

I failed you.

Somewhere along the way, I led you astray.

Unintentionally, I made it sound like all you had to do was build a random sales funnel, throw $10 at it, and you would become rich.

Allow me to clarify, THIS ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN!!

You will NOT get rich sending some traffic to a sales funnel you put together in an hour.

IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

Even if you spend 10 hours of your life building sales funnels and spend some money on traffic… you STILL WON'T get rich!

While technically, this sales funnel “stuff” is as easy as its ever been…

It's still, strategically and executionally, VERY DIFFICULT!

By building random sales funnels with very little rhyme or reason other than thinking the product will sell…

YOU WILL FAIL 99% OF THE TIME!

YOU WILL FAIL 99% OF THE TIME!

Yes, I typed it twice because you need to see that stat.

That's what you have to look forward to when you spray and pray funnels across the web.

Scary, right?

If a 99% failure rate doesn't scare the crap out of you, then I think you should leave my site because you're not going to “get” what I'm about to share with you.

What I'm about to unveil is how you can decrease your chance of failure from 99% to say 20%… and, that's only if you stop trying.

If you do not give up, success in some form or another is imminent.

To quote the great Albert Einstein…

Mindset: I'm Building A Business, Not Funnels

Some people get this, some don't… and it's OK if you don't.

You hear sales funnels are freakin' awesome, which is totally true… so, you hop in without much clue. (hey, that rhymes!)

As addressed in the intro, building random sales funnels rarely ever works.

You need a plan. You need to be methodical. You need to see the bigger picture.

The bigger picture? You are going to build a business.

A business, for all intents and purposes, consists of two things:

• Products and/or services to sell
• Someone to buy those products/services, ie. customers

That's it.

Sales funnels then, are simply a means to connect your customers with your products/services.

Sales funnels are just a tool. If you don't have something to sell and someone to buy what you're selling, things aren't going to work out very well.

The question you should always be trying to answer is: “How can I best serve my customers?” (ie. what can I sell to my customers that will help them)

Once you have that answer, and only once you have that answer, can you ask yourself, “What funnel should I build?”

I'm Prepared To Invest Money & Time

Since you're building a business, you can expect to invest money and time.

It's not much money. You don't have to purchase a building. You don't have to hire employees. You don't have to buy inventory.

All you need are a few tools and money for ads. You're looking at about $500/mo to start.

Regarding time, it's going to take, at minimum, an hour or two a day, 6-7 days a week.

You will need to spend time learning the tools of the trade. You will need to spend time building funnels, running ads, and developing advanced automations. You will need to test and tweak, and test and tweak, and test and tweak… forever.

This is a commitment.

As I said in the intro, you're not going to be able to spend an hour building a funnel, and get rich. It doesn't happen that way.

With all that being said, are you prepared to invest the money ($500+/mo) and time (1-2 hours/day) required to find success?

• No? – You can stop reading this post and don't fret, there are a million business models out there and I'm confident one will be a good fit for you.
• Yes! – Read on…

Step 1: Pick Your Audience/Niche

I see most failure occur right here at Step 1.

And, if you fail this step, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail all subsequent steps too.

Obviously, this makes this step incredibly important.

#1 Reason For Failure?

Why are so many people failing this step?

Because, they're not doing it!

It's as simple as that.

Instead of picking an audience/niche first, they're picking products/services first… which is the wrong order! (you need to be able to build your lists (see next section))

Please take this step seriously!

What Makes This Step Important?

One word, lists.

You've heard having an email list is important because you “own” that list and you can reach out to your leads and customers whenever you want.

But, there are other lists besides email lists…

There are audience or retargeting lists, phone lists, Facebook Messenger lists, and direct mail lists that you can take advantage of as well.

By having a defined audience/niche, you can grow these lists and make different offers to them time and again.

Whereas, if you don't have a defined audience/niche, your lists won't have any pattern or consistency which makes it incredibly hard to follow up with other offers.

How To Pick Your Audience/Niche

There are a bunch of ways to do this and I don't care how you do it, just so long as you pick one.

This is how I do it… I pick a topic/niche I am personally interested in and that I've purchased products for. That's it.

I figure, if it's something I care about and buy stuff for, there's gotta be at least 1,000 other people in this country/world that also care and buy stuff. And, you can make good money off of only 1,000 people.

Step 2: Build A Break Even Funnel

This is the hardest part.

You need to get ONE funnel that allows you to acquire new customers for free, ie. you put $1 in and get $1+ back out.

There are many methods and funnel models you can use to accomplish this. This post goes into detail on how to select the right funnel: What Kind Of Sales Funnel Should I Build?

If you don't want to read that post right now, the bottom line is this – you can build a break even funnel with a Front-End or Trip Wire Funnel, Webinar Funnel, Product Launch Funnel, Application Funnel, etc… any funnel model can be used to create a break even funnel. It all comes down to what you're offering and who you're offering it to.

For example, you could have a front-end/tripwire funnel where you give away your book for free and the customer pays for shipping. You then “beef up” the offer with an order bump and One-Time-Offers (OTO) for an audio version and complementary training. This way, you can cover the costs to print the book and acquire the customer (ad spend). Russell Brunson is a master of the book funnel.

Or, you can have a webinar that converts cold traffic into buyers of your $500+ offer. Dan Henry started with a webinar funnel which turned into a million dollar business in less than 5 months.

Or, you can drive massive amounts of people to your physical location with a simple 2-Step funnel.

The point is, all the funnel models can work as your initial break even funnel. You simply have to figure out which model works for your audience and offer and make it happen.

Really Freakin' Close…

Depending on your audience/niche/offerings, it can be really hard to build a break even funnel.

Maybe you're able to build one where every dollar you put in, you get $0.90 back.

This might be OK.

You're still acquiring customers. You're still building your lists. You're still growing your business.

You simply have to make up the difference on the backend – ie. you have to sell to them again, and again, and again.

A Funnel A Day For 2 Weeks

To give you an idea of the intensity it can take to build a break even funnel…

While building AliExpress sales funnels…

I once spent 2 weeks straight, 14 days, launching a funnel a day… I did not sleep until I launched my funnel for the day…

• 7 of them completely failed, 0 sales.
• 6 of them made some sales, nothing significant.
• 1 hit. That's a 7% success rate.

To clarify, this wasn't a “million dollar funnel” hit… it was a “just above break even” hit ($1 in, $1.20ish out).

During this testing phase, I spent about $1,200 on ad spend and made about $550 back… I “lost” $650 doing this, but gained a break even funnel, found 6 funnels that kinda worked, and grew my audience and email lists in the process. (why it's important to decide on one audience/niche)

I took the 6 funnels that made some sales, tweaked them a little bit, and put them into the back-end of my break even funnel, ie. I retargeted my audience and pushed people to those funnels via email automation.

I've since launched other funnels/offers to this audience. Some have done well, others have failed entirely – but, it's been much cheaper to test these new funnels because I have my own audiences now!

By showing you this example, I'm hoping you can see that this is going to take time, money, methodical testing and tweaking, and that it's not as simple as launching a few random funnels in random niches and throwing $20 at some ads… it can take a lot of work… but, once you have it… man, it is worth it!

Step 3: Scale

Once you have your first break even funnel, it's time to scale!

There are several ways to scale and I'll outline a few here.

Scale Wide

I alluded to this scaling strategy in the “A Funnel A Day For 2 Weeks” section above.

It works by making more similar offers with similar funnels. Basically, you clone the funnel, swap out the products, and hit publish.

You typically scale wide with front-end/tripwire funnels that sell cheaper products, but you can also scale wide with lead gen funnels where you have multiple services you want people to see.

Scale Deep

To scale deep, you need different products and services at differing price points and value.

Scaling deep will also require multiple funnel models. For example:

• You may have a front-end/tripwire funnel that sells a book for $7.95 and a few digital resources for between $10-$300. Let's say this is your break even funnel.
• Then, you may have a webinar funnel that sells a $2,500 master class.
• Finally, you may have an application funnel that sells access to a $10,000 mastermind.

This is what's called a Value Ladder and I highly recommend you read this post about them: How To Create A value Ladder For Your Business

Scale Wide & Deep

Scaling both wide (multiple products on the same tier/same funnel model) and deep (multiple tiers of products/different funnel models) is the optimal scenario; however, you're not going to get there in one day…

It will take months, if not years to truly build out your business.

However, ultimately – this is what you're going for.

Retargeting & Automations

I want to quickly point out that no matter how you scale, you need to connect ALL your funnels together via retargeting and automations.

You should be building a HUGE “macro” sales funnel that brings people in, builds a relationship, and makes multiple, different offers to them… mostly on autopilot.

I call my “macro” sales funnel strategy – The Interest Driven Sales Funnel. (<< blog post series I highly recommend reading)

Step 4: Build A Brand-Brand

This is optional.

If you have several sales funnels that are all sustaining themselves and turning a profit… congrats! You've done it!

However, if you want to turn your sales funnels into something more, then you may want to build a brand-brand around them.

What do I mean by brand-brand?

Well, you should have a “brand” when you start… logo, color scheme, personality, etc. This way, everything is uniform. However, I don't consider that a brand-brand.

A true brand is known.

Think about Nike, everyone knows what they represent – sports.

Conversely, think about the last blanket you purchased. Unless you know things about blanket brands… you probably have no idea who made it even though they have a logo and color scheme.

How To Build A Brand-Brand

This is a massive topic that I can't possibly cover here or we'd be here for years.

However, for the 30,000 ft view of how to build a brand-brand, you need to gain authority.

How do you gain authority?

Amazing “content”.

This “content” can be in the form of blog posts or videos or podcasts or even the products/services themselves.

You have to become the G.O.A.T. in your niche. (Greatest Of All Time)

It can take years to become the G.O.A.T., but if you're able to get there, your organic sales, reach, growth, and value will increase exponentially!

Summary

• You will not get rich by building one random funnel and sending traffic to it
• You will likely fail if you only build random funnels without having a plan
• You need to be prepared to spend both time and money to have success
• The first thing you must do is pick your audience/niche
• The second, and hardest thing you must do is build a break even funnel ($1 out, $1+ in)
• The third thing you need to do is scale by going wide, deep, or both
• Finally, if you want to build a business that will be around for many years to come, you need to build a brand-brand

This post is the first in a series of posts entitled, “Digital Marketing Strategy For Startups, Small Businesses, and Entrepreneurs“.

Traffic. The lifeblood of your digital marketing efforts. Without it – you have nothing.

There are a million ways to generate traffic and every minute someone is coming out with a new, “best” way to do it.

Here's the deal, you only need to focus on two sources of traffic:

1. One organic “free” source
2. One paid source

Before we get into which sources you should use and why, we need to talk about the #1 rule of traffic.

The #1 Rule Of Traffic

As I said earlier, there are a million ways to generate traffic … so, there are a lot of shiny objects, a lot of people pushing which traffic generation method is “best”.

It can be very tempting to get sucked into whatever they're offering … and, you know what, usually, what they're offering isn't half bad EXCEPT

1. It takes you away from what you need to focus on
2. It likely breaks the #1 rule of traffic

So, what is the #1 rule?

You need to be where your customers are.

Duh.

But, this rule gets broken all the time because someone creates this juicy concept/tool and you grab it because it promises easy traffic.

Next thing you know, you're posting 50 times a day on Pinterest trying to attract 30 year old males. (there are very few 30 year old males on Pinterest … and yes, that's from a past experience …)

Or, you launched a Snapchat profile and story aimed at attracting 60 year old women. (there are few 60 year olds on Snapchat)

So, do yourself a favor … the next time you're getting persuaded to buy some fancy new tool to drive traffic, I urge you not to buy it until you read this full post. At the very least, make sure it will actually reach your audience.

Organic “Free” Traffic

Moving forward, you will have ONE source for organic traffic and ONE source for paid traffic. (More on paid traffic in the next section)

So, what is organic traffic? Organic traffic is the traffic that naturally finds your content and your business.

Some people call organic traffic, “free” traffic, because it doesn't cost money; however, it certainly costs time.

Here are a few organic traffic sources so you understand what I mean:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – blogging
• Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Musical.ly
• Video – YouTube
• Podcasts – iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud

Here's The 411…

If you read the intro, you may recall that I gave “awareness” and “branding” a hard time because it's neither specific nor measurable.

Ok, for the most part, the results from your organic traffic efforts will be hard to quantify accurately.

You can track as much as possible by using site tracking tools like Google Analytics and link tracking tools like bit.ly and Pretty Link, but – at the end of the day, you're at the mercy of the environment you choose to operate in.

My point is, since it's hard to accurately measure your efforts already, organic traffic is the place to grow “awareness” and “branding”!

This is your chance to be your weird, funky self and show people who you and your business are!

* Note: just because organic traffic can be hard to track and you get to be your weird, funky self – it doesn’t mean you should create content willy-nilly. Everything you create still needs to serve a purpose and be as specific and measurable as possible.

The Organic Traffic Strategy

This is important.

Only pick ONE organic traffic source to focus 100% of your efforts.

That's right, if you choose Instagram … that's ALL you're going to focus on. Yes, I know, it seems “logical” to do Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr too since you can post to all those networks at the same time you post to Instagram … and by having more content in more places you “should” reach more eyes … right? WRONG!

Each platform has its own set of “rules” whether by design or via social norms.

By “bulk” posting, you will spread yourself too thin and possibly alienate different platforms … which, you don't want to do.

Instead, you focus only on ONE source. 100% of your focus is on growing that channel until you have a significant following.

The size of a “significant following” will vary tremendously based on a number of variables like market size. For example, if you're a brick & mortar business and there are 2,000 ideal customers in a 25 mile radius from your store and 1,500 of them follow you on Instagram … you're doing pretty freakin' good!

You also need to take into account engagement. Who cares if you have 10k followers on Instagram if you only get 100 likes/comments when you post? The “real” size of your following is much closer to 100 than that inflated 10k number.

Once you have a significant following on one source THEN you open the next source and “feed” it with the following you built on your original source.

A good percentage of people will make the jump because most people are on multiple platforms and they can follow you elsewhere with a click or tap.

So, that's how you do it. Focus 100% of your efforts on ONE source. Take courses on how to become “good” at that source. Get yourself some fancy tools if you want. Do whatever it takes to really grow that ONE source. Once the first one is rockin' & rollin', add another source and jump start it by sending your audience over to it.

How Do You Pick Your ONE Source?

How you pick your ONE source is pretty simple…

• It must follow the #1 rule – you need to be where your customers are
• It must be something you like doing

That's it!

If you like writing and your audience likes reading … start a blog.

If you like taking photos and sharing inspirational quotes and your audience likes looking at photos and quotes … start an Instagram profile.

If you like talking and your audience likes to listen … start a podcast.

My one piece of advice is this, NEVER do something you don't like doing because you won't stick with it.

For example, I've tried a dozen times to focus on growing my Facebook following because I know my audience is there and it's a good place to generate traffic. However, after 3 days I quit because … you know what … I'm an introvert and being “social” is something I'm just not comfortable with or naturally good at doing.

However, I enjoy writing and blogging. As such, I have a blog and attract visitors through Google and other search engines.

Paid Traffic

It's been said, “You don't have a business until you can convert paid traffic.”

Here's the deal – you don't control organic traffic.

Let me say it again – YOU DON'T CONTROL ORGANIC TRAFFIC!

Platforms change. Algorithms change. Markets change.

With organic traffic, you're at the mercy of the platform you've chosen to pursue.

For example, 90% of our business on Crazy Eye Marketing comes from Google and YouTube.

If Google decides to drop Crazy Eye Marketing in the search results … our business could vanish … except, we know how to send paid traffic 😉

Once you're able to take $1, put it into an advertising campaign and get that $1 and more back … you're unstoppable.

Paid traffic also makes it very easy to define specific goals and measure the results.

So, why do I keep it at 90% organic and 10% paid? Because it's working and organic traffic is “free” … my customer acquisition costs are essentially zero beyond the time I spend developing content, which is, at this point, a sunk cost.

But, if Google decides to drop the hammer, we'll flip on our paid campaigns and keep trucking right along!

My point is, you need to know how to pay for traffic.

Before You Start Spending Money!

If you've ever “tried” paid advertising before and been astonished by how much it can cost to get someone to click your ad and wondered how it could possibly be viable … it's because you didn't have a Micro Sales Funnel in place.

Before you spend a dime on paid advertising, you need to have a Micro Sales Funnel setup and ready to go.

While I'm going to cover Micro Sales Funnels in detail in part 6 of this blog series, the simple definition of a Micro Sales Funnel is a system specifically designed to acquire leads and rapidly convert them into customers.

For example, Nathan is surfing Facebook when he sees an ad for the Top 10 Facebook Ads of 2016. Nathan clicks the ad and lands on a page that requests his name and email (a squeeze page) in exchange for the top 10 ads. Immediately after entering his contact info, he's greeted with an offer to get the top 15 WORST Facebook Ads of 2016 for only $7. Nathan thinks, “Shoot, I don't want to make the same mistakes as them, let me grab that!” and he spends $7. Immediately after purchasing the 15 worst ads, he's made an offer to join a course on Facebook Ad Optimization so he can create great ads for only $97. Nathan grabs it. Immediately afterwards, he's presented yet another offer for a training course on creating high converting sales pages for $297. He turns it down because he's a marketing genius and doesn't need help building landing pages.

All told, Nathan spends $104. Some people spend $0. And others spend $401.

All of a sudden, the average order size per click is $3. So, if the business can spend less than $3 per click, they're essentially printing money!

That's how paid advertising works.

You absolutely, positively, need a way to make your money back ASAP!

Of course there's the whole long game where your customers' lifetime value should increase over time … but, the goal is an immediate return on your investment.

If you can lock that down, you'll be unstoppable!

Paid Traffic Fundamentals

As with organic traffic, you're only going to focus on ONE source of paid traffic.

For the sake of moving forward and making progress, there are only two paid traffic sources you should consider:

1. Facebook Ads Manager
2. Google Adwords

That's it. At least a fraction of your customers are on Facebook and/or using Google.

If your audience is not on either of those platforms … they're not online and you shouldn't be focusing on digital marketing.

So, pick one or the other and let's move on!

After making your decision, you need to immerse yourself in the platform. Take courses, listen to podcasts, read blog posts and articles … become a beast on that particular platform.

What You Need To Pay Attention To

While you're immersing yourself in the ad platform of your choosing, there are a few key elements you really need to pay attention to.

These elements are often overlooked by small business owners and entrepreneurs when they launch paid advertising campaigns.

I really want to emphasize their importance here because they're the difference between success and failure.

Also note, the two aforementioned advertising platforms want you to be successful. Because, if you're successful, you'll keep spending money … so, they give you a lot of tools to help you out.

The key elements you need to know about and implement are:

• Micro Sales Funnels – Already mentioned a bunch of times, so DO IT or you're going to fail or, at the very least, have meager results. [see part 6]
• Conversion Tracking – There are pieces of code called “pixels” that you will need to place on your website that communicate with the advertising platform and can signal when conversions (ie. leads and sales) take place. You need this so you know what is/isn't working and it helps the advertising platform auto-optimize your campaigns for better results.
• Audiences – Both platforms allow you to create audiences in a variety of ways. Everything from being able to upload customer email addresses, your email lists' email addresses, website visitors, lookalike audiences, custom audiences, smart audiences, and beyond. You need to understand the various audience types and how you can take advantage of them because they can make or break your campaigns.

Summary

That's traffic generation in a nutshell.

The key things to remember are …

• Focus on ONE source of organic traffic and
• ONE source of paid traffic

Once you nail the one source of each down, you can branch out by using the audience and systems you've built with your first sources.

Click here to continue to Part 2: How To Capture More Leads The Right Way

Digital marketing can be a trip, yo!

There are a bajillion tools and a gazillion gurus spouting their wisdom on how to do it best.

There's so much information coming at you, it's hard to know where to focus.

Here's the deal, I'm not a guru and I don't believe in using a bajillion tools …

But, I've been using digital marketing to sell my products (both physical and digital), services, and coaching for the last 4+ years …

This post serves as the intro & table of contents for a series of posts that will show you how I think about digital marketing while teaching you the strategy and tactics so you can be successful as well!

MINDSET: “I Am A Direct Response Marketer”

Before getting into all the strategic and tactical stuff, we need to get on the same page with regard to mindset.

If you don't have the same mindset as me, you might as well stop reading … because, you're not going to “get it”.

Mindset is important because it pre-frames how you're going to use digital marketing to grow your business.

You need to have the mindset that you are a direct response marketer.

Every action you perform needs to focus on eliciting a specific, measured response from your visitor/customer/client/etc.

Everything you do needs to have a clear Call To Action (CTA).

For example, when you launch an ad, it needs to have a specific, measurable purpose, ie. to get email subscribers or to sell product X.

You do NOT launch an ad to “build awareness”. WTF is “awareness”? You made people “aware” of what? Your business? What does that mean? Did they buy something? Did they become a lead? Pointless.

Another example, when you produce a piece of content, whether it's a blog post, video, podcast, etc, it needs to have a specific and measurable purpose. Who are you trying to attract? What action are you trying to get them to take? When you present your call to action (CTA), make sure you use a tracking link so you can measure your results.

Until you have money flowing out of every orifice or loads of time, every bit of marketing/advertising you do needs to have a specific and measurable goal – ie. leads & sales.

All that “awareness” and “branding” stuff will come over time as you grow your business … but, when you're a startup or a small business, these are very vague goals and will lead to meager results. You need to make everything you do count.

Does that make sense?

I hope so, and I hope we are in agreement because, if not … save yourself some time and stop reading now.

Lay Your Groundwork

Before moving on to marketing, you need to have your business fundamentals down first.

Customers

You need to know who your customers are, their pain points, where they congregate online, etc.

If you don't know who you're trying to reach, it's going to be mighty hard to market to them.

If you don't know who your customers are, click here.

Business

Obviously, you need a business with products and/or services before you can market it. But there's a good chance you haven't put much thought into the “structure” of what you have to offer.

You need to think about how your offerings provide value to your customers.

What are your up-sells, down-sells, and cross-sells?

How do you “ascend”  your customers to give them more value while your business generates more money?

If you just kinda “sell some stuff” and there's no real rhyme, reason, or flow between what you sell …

I highly recommend you focus on establishing your value ladder before moving on.

Even if your offerings are structured in a way to “ascend” people, I still recommend checking out the value ladder article … as it will serve as a good refresher.

Delivery

The final piece of groundwork you need in place before moving on is a way to deliver your offerings.

Maybe you have a brick & mortar business, or an ecommerce store, or maybe you have a membership portal … whatever the way, it doesn't matter.

The point is, you need to have a way to collect money and deliver the goods.

And, 9 times out of 10 … the way you currently collect money and deliver your offerings is sub par, but it's OK. We're going to optimize the heck out of it when we get to the Point Of Sale Optimization segment!

The Sales Funnel Concept

Moving forward, you need to think of your digital marketing efforts like a funnel …

There's a big world out there with over 7 billion people on it.

Some of them need what you have, but most people don't.

We call the people that need what you offer your ideal customer, marketing persona, or avatar.

You attract this individual through advertising.

There are many ways to advertise and we'll get into them in another part, but all advertising needs to have the specific and measurable goal of acquiring leads.

When you have leads, you're able to use marketing automation to develop a relationship with them and build rapport.

These relationships help you convert leads into paying customers.

And, when you have a paying customer, you want to make sure you're offering them as much value as possible for days/weeks/months/years to come.

Fortunately, much of this can also be accomplished with the help of marketing automation.

And that, my friend, is the sales funnel concept.

Of course, there are a lot of moving parts inside of it (we'll be getting to them), but that's the big picture.

Moving On!

If you've made it this far, it's because you have taken on the mindset of a direct response marketer, have your business fundamentals in place, and have a general understanding of the sales funnel concept.

Now, it's time to get into the nitty-gritty digital marketing strategy and tactics!

Moving on, this post will be updated with links to complementary articles that show you how to effectively grow your business with digital marketing.

Continue Your Digital Marketing Journey…

Below, you'll find the continuation articles that deep dive into the specific areas of the digital marketing strategy and tactics that will help propel your business!

Top

1) How To Drive High Quality Traffic To Your Business

2) How To Capture More Leads The Right Way

Middle

3) How To Use Marketing Automation To Generate Sales

4) How To Use Retargeting To Generate Sales

Bottom

5) How To Optimize Your Point Of Sale To Instantly Increase Revenue

6) How To Use Micro Sales Funnels To Convert More Leads Into Customers While Increasing CLV

If you're a coach, consultant, and/or service-based business – this post is for you!

Likewise, speakers, authors, teachers, and entrepreneurs in the business of selling themselves can also glean insights from this post!

Finally, if you sell digital or info products and professional services – this post will show you how to make the most of what you offer!

It's the most comprehensive marketing strategy post you'll find on the Internet, I guarantee it.

Whether you're trying to develop your marketing strategy or you feel like you've got things figured out, I recommend giving this post a gander. I'm sure I'll shed some light on areas you haven't even considered.

To help assist you, I've put together a fill-in-the-blank document that can be downloaded by clicking the link below:

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

Let's get started.

The Master Plan

This is the master blueprint we'll be following to build your marketing strategy.

I urge you not to skip ahead to the “cool” stuff that involves automation, tracking, and other nifty tools. Yes, that stuff is fun; however, if you don’t build a solid foundation, you’ll wind up spinning in circles and produce minimal results.

So, please, take the 60 minutes to define your customer and your business before moving forward!

Scenarios

I'll be using a couple model businesses in order to provide examples:

• Business #1 – Offers digital products, coaching, consulting, and services – ie. Crazy Eye Marketing
• Business #2 – Offers digital products and services – ie. a financial advisor
• Business #3 – Only offers services – ie. a dentist

As we get into the “Business” section, I'll discuss the particular offerings of each model business.

Customers

If you've read anything on marketing strategy in the past, you've likely come across articles about your customer and the importance of “defining” your customer.

This makes sense. If you're not sure who your business is for … then, what are you doing?

More than likely, you already know who your ideal customer is; however, you probably haven't truly defined them.

I understand, it can take a lot of time to develop a full fledged customer avatar or marketing persona … and, quite frankly, it sounds kinda boring, especially when there are a bunch of tools and fancy automations to get to!

But, here's the deal – having a more defined ideal customer does two things:

1. Helps you find them
2. Helps you connect with them

Two really important factors that help alleviate potentially HUGE problems!

If you can't find your ideal customer, you won't be able to attract them.

If you can't connect with your ideal customer, you won't be able to do business with them. People they know, like, and trust. If you can't get people to know, like, and trust you – your business will struggle.

To save you the time of going and filling out a customer avatar worksheet, simply answer these 5 questions:

• What’s your ideal customer’s name? You need to give them a name!
  • Dave
  • Marshall
  • Jenna
• Where do they hangout? / How can you get in front of them? Online, offline, particular websites, forums, Facebook groups, etc.
  • Facebook groups, forums, marketing/small business websites
  • Newspaper, home, travel websites
  • 15 mile radius, schools, libraries, grocery stores
• Where are they in the journey of life? Baseline demographics, thoughts, desires, fears, etc.
  • 30ish years old, young family, starting a small service-based business, trying to make things work, wants to support their family.
  • Retirement age, ready to stop working, wants to travel the world, wants to maximize time with family and friends.
  • Stay at home mom with young children, wants to take care of her kid's health.
• How do they see themselves? / How do they present themselves?
  • I'm relatively smart and hardworking – more so than the average Joe. Can do anything I put my mind to, sky's the limit!
  • I've done my time, I'm now a world renowned adventurer ready to conquer anything!
  • A good mother, first and foremost. I'm the caretaker of my family.
• How well do they know your products and industry? Do they “live” it, are they “new” to this world, etc.?
  • Semi-new to the business of digital marketing (~ 6 months). Has some basic concepts down, but hasn't quite pieced it all together yet.
  • Understands the very basics of wealth management. Put money into their 401k their whole life, has invested some on their own.
  • They know about teeth cleaning and basic dentistry work as they've been going to the dentist their whole life.

See, it doesn't have to be too difficult! Your answers should simply be a stream of thought.

Just by going through this process you'll develop a new frame to look through as you produce your content and message.

Customer FAQ:

Q: I have more than one ideal customer, how should I handle this?

A: Yes, you likely do have more than one ideal customer which is great. Ask yourself the same questions for each customer. However, I have two recommendations:

1) Make sure they’re uniquely different. Make sure where they hangout is different, where they are in the journey of life is different, and how they see themselves is different.

2) Start with your top 1 or 2 ideal customers – 80% of your business. You can always add more “ideal customers” later on, and I recommend getting the low hanging, obvious fruit first.

To Do

Answer the questions above.

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

Business

There are three core aspects of your business to define before moving forward:

1. Why you do what you do
2. Who you/your business are/is
3. How you help your customers (products and/or services) / What you do

If you're well-established, you can likely easily answer these questions; however, you probably haven't really “defined” them and mapped them out. I urge you to take the time to do this as it'll make the sales funnel development much simpler.

Why You Do What You Do

Why do you do what you do?

What's your mission?

Most people don't start a coaching, consulting, or service-based business accidentally.

What makes you leap out of bed in the morning? Is it to talk to clients? Help people? Make money? Is it creating or building?

What is it?

This doesn't have to be an official statement that you're going to put on your website. No one else is ever going to see it (unless you want them to).

It simply serves as a reminder when times get tough and helps you make decisions that align with your purpose.

It makes life easier.

Who You/Your Business Are/Is

There are other people and businesses that do what you do.

This is a good thing. If other people are having success doing what you're doing – that means you can too.

It also means you have competition and need to figure out a way to stand out.

The best way to stand out? Your personality or persona.

Being generic will not work in this day and age.

“Different is BETTER than better” – Sally Hogshead

Where Will This Persona Be Used?

This persona will be used in the content you produce, the correspondence you send, and across your entire business.

If your persona is fun and outgoing – everything about your business should be fun and outgoing.

This persona will be the “face” of your business.

How To Figure Out Your Business's Persona

If you're a solopreneur, this is an easy one – you are the persona.

Being a coach, consultant, service-based business, speaker, author, etc. – people need to know, like, and trust you.

Let your freak flag fly! You'll attract those that connect with you and repel those that don't.

If you're a business with multiple employees, there are a few ways to decide on your business's persona:

1. Assume the personality of the owner/founder/CEO
2. Develop a business persona that will connect with your ideal customer
3. Have multiple personas. It's certainly acceptable to have multiple personalities, especially if you operate with a large team. The overall “feel” should be similar; however, each team could have their own persona for how they connect with customers.

Your Products And Services

The products and services you sell essentially translate to, “How you help people”.

Knowing what products and services come next in your customers' lifetime will help you deliver more value, which means increased revenue for your business.

Most of the time, coaches, consultants, and service-based businesses offer a wide array of products and services. This is great because you have a lot to choose from; however, so do your customers and if they don't have a clear path toward success – they'll get confused and choose nothing.

You need to take the time to map out your products and services to give your customers a clear path to success.

The Value Ladder (“The Map”)

The concept and implementation of a Value Ladder is what propelled my personal coaching, consulting, and service-based business from break-even to profitable.

It's simple, but powerful.

The idea is to offer products and services at varying levels of price and value while having each tier lead into the next one. Thus, over the lifetime of a customer, they're “ascending” your Value Ladder and you always have something to sell them.

The break down:

• Lead Magnets are usually freebies (coupons, videos, checklists, etc.) that attract and qualify leads
• Initial Offers are lower-end products/services that are ideally “too good to refuse” and get people in the door
• 1st Tier Offers are usually your core product or service and bring in about 80% of your sales
• 2nd Tier Offers are the “next” level up from the 1st tier
• Top Tier Offers are the best you have to offer, the full shebang!

Being that most coaches, consultants, and service-based businesses offer a wide array of products and services – the Value Ladder will be a bit more “advanced”:

Yup, Value Ladders inside of Value Ladders!

This will be explained through several examples.

Crazy Eye Marketing (digital products, coaching, consulting, services)

• Digital Products
  • Lead Magnets: Checklists, videos, trials, discounts
  • Initial Offers: “Cheaper” products and courses
  • Top Tier: The Sales Funnel Training Vault
• Coaching (Group Setting, Recurring)
  • Initial Offer: Monthly package
  • 1st Tier: 6 month package
  • Top Tier: Lifetime coaching package
• Consulting (Private)
  • Initial Offer: 1 hour
  • 1st Tier: 4 hours
  • Top Tier: Custom
• Services (Done For You)
  • Initial Offer: Small, simple, one-off jobs
  • Top Tier: Custom

Financial Advisor (digital products, services)

• Digital Products (SaaS service similar to Mint and/or Wealthfront)
  • Lead Magnets: Trial
  • Initial Offer: Self managed
  • Top Tier: Professionally managed
• Services
  • Lead Magnet: 7 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Financial Advisor
  • Initial Offer: Free 15 minute Q&A
  • Top Tier: Investment management, retirement planning, college planning, estate planning, debt reduction strategy

Dentist (services)

• Services
  • Lead Magnet: Free teeth cleaning
  • Initial Offer: Teeth whitening
  • 1st Tier: Cavities, fillings, and other minor fixes
  • Top Tier: Braces
  • Recurring: 6 month appointments

As you can see in the examples above, some Value Ladders have several tiers while others only have a few.

The take away is you offer different products and services at different price points and value that ideally “ascend” individuals to the next thing you offer. However, there are instances where they may skip a tier or two in the process, for example with the dentist – a person doesn't need a cavity before they can get braces. Likewise, with Crazy Eye Marketing – someone doesn't need to hire me for coaching before I will do a custom job for them. That would be silly!

To Do

• Write down why you do what you do
• Write down Who you/your business are/is
• Map out your Value Ladder(s) – How you help your customers (products and/or services) / What you do

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

Delivery

The “Delivery” simply represents the way in which you deliver your products and services.

This obviously depends upon what you offer. For example, the dentist will need a place to see clients – he can't offer virtual root canals.

However, in this day and age, most coaching and consulting can be achieved over the Internet from the comfort of one's home.

So, it really depends – but you're an adult and I'm sure you know what you need in order to deliver what you offer.

Make Sure You Own It

I will say this – make sure you own your method of delivery.

For example, you wouldn't want to run your entire business off Facebook. What if Facebook decides you broke their terms of service and locks your account? What would you do then?

Another example, a lot of coaches run their business on Udemy. I'll agree, Udemy is convenient and brings in new customers; however, Udemy controls pricing and how you can engage with your customers. You can't email them whatever or whenever you want. You're at the mercy of the Udemy gods … which isn't a place you want to be.

A final example, many businesses are dependent upon Google and SEO to deliver their traffic. But, what happens if Google changes their algorithm and your business falls off the front page? Could you survive? Do you have a backup plan? If you own an email list, know how to grow it, and know how to sell to it – you won't need Google.

You need to have your own website, your own email list, your own setup. Something no one can take away from you.

Of course, use the other platforms and tools available in order to build your platform, but never be dependent upon them.

My Coaching, Consulting, and Services Setup

To give you an idea of how my business is setup, I've listed the key components below so you have some direction. If you'd like more details or specifics, please let me know.

• NameCheap: Domain registrar.
• a2Hosting: Managed VPS, Prestige+ package. Hosts my website.
• WordPress: Content Management System. “Is” my website. [/fusion_builder_column]
  [course]
• Avada Theme: Page builder and general look of my site.
• MemberMouse: Membership plugin that handles digital product delivery and coaching packages.
• Gravity Forms: “One off” payments and contact forms.
• ActiveCampaign: Email automation.
• Thrive Leads: Opt-in forms and lead capture.
• Stripe: Payment processing.
• Vimeo: Private, members only video hosting.

To Do

If you do not already have a method of delivery or you're too dependent on a 3rd party, take 10 minutes to think about your business and what you need to take control over how it's handled.

Write down your thoughts.

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

The “Meat”

The “Meat” is simply a fancy name I came up with to define all the content within your sales funnel. This includes everything:

• Sales pages to landing pages
• Ads to emails
• Blog posts to YouTube videos
• Social media shares to podcast interviews
• and beyond!

It's how you communicate with your customers.

While there are a million and one ways to strategize and handle all these aspects – they all have one thing in common, they need to drive action.

What do I mean by “action”? Mainly purchases, but this also includes things that lead up to the purchases like clicks, phone calls, foot traffic, etc.

All the things you need for your business to be successful.

Now for the question, “How does one drive action through their content?”

Copywriting.

You Must Learn Copywriting

What's copywriting? Well, this is probably the “most fun” explanation; however, it's a combination of art and science paired with the written word, video, images, etc. that motivates an individual to take action.

Being that it's both an art and a science, it takes years of dedicated study to fully master.

Having said that, I know you're a business owner and entrepreneur and likely lack the time required to fully master this skill; however, you should pursue every avenue possible to become a better copywriter.

Here are 4 tips that will make your copy better, instantly:

1) Write As Your Business's Persona

We talked about your business's persona above and hopefully you took the time to define it. That exercise will come in handy here.

Use pronouns like I, me, you, we, he, she, etc.

Use slang, jargon, market specific terminology, and inside jokes that your audience will connect with.

Write like you talk. Use bold, italic, and underline.

Remember, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. If you don't write like yourself, they'll never get to know you.

2) Write To Your Customer

Inline with tip #1 above – write to your customer.

Consider your writing a private letter to your ideal customer … a dear friend.

What would you tell them? How would you explain things?

Write like that.

3) Use Bullets and “Which Means”

People don't read on the web – they skim.

Bullets are easily skimmed and are therefore consumed much more easily and readily than paragraph content.

So, how do you write great bullets?

Simple, follow these steps:

1. Write down a feature of your product or service
2. Write the phrase “which means” directly after the feature
3. Tell the reader what that feature means to them
4. Repeat steps 2-3 until you have a few alternative definitions
5. Consolidate into 1 quickly consumable bullet

Example:

• Includes 9 fill-in-the-blank email series which means your email writing is essentially done for you which means you can implement autoresponder series faster which means you can make more money which means you'll live a great life!
• You'll start living the good life faster than ever before after implementing our 9 fill-in-the-blank email series!

4) Use Copywriting Formulas And Frameworks

There are a lot of copywriting formulas and frameworks that can help you focus your efforts. Here are a few popular ones:

• PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solve): The problem defined. The feelings, emotions, pain, and agitation caused by the problem. How to solve the problem (your product/service).
• BAB (Before, After, Bridge): The individual's life before your product or service enters the picture. How great their life is after your product or service. The bridge (your product/service) that connects the before to the after.
• AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action): Grab the reader's attention, usually via the headline. Pull the reader in with an interesting story and connect with them on a deeper level, show them what's possible. Make them desire what you presented as the moral of your story by showing them they're capable of the same thing. Give them a place to take action and fulfill their desire (ie. a sales page or order form).
• Want more? Click here for 27 copywriting formulas.

The “Other” Stuff

If you learn how to write great copy, the “other” stuff (pages, forms, ads, emails, etc.) becomes technical constraints that can be easily overcome.

There are tools for everything imaginable with new ones coming all the time.

As long as you can master the creation of action driving content and develop a baseline understanding of the tools to facilitate the spread of that content – your business will thrive.

Learn everything you need to know about the “other” stuff by joining The Sales Funnel Training Vault!

To Do

Focus your efforts on developing great content that follows the art and science of copywriting.

Revisit your sales pages and offers. Are you using paragraphs in places you could be using bullets? Are you writing to your customers as yourself? Are you utilizing sound copywriting formulas and frameworks in your writing?

If not, launch a split test with your old page vs. your new one utilizing the copywriting techniques outlined above.

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

The “Simple” Sales Funnel

The “Simple” Sales Funnel, sometimes referred to as the “Straight Line Sales Funnel”, is simply a fancy way of saying email autoresponder series.

An email autoresponder series is a series of emails automatically sent to a subscriber.

While email autoresponder series and automations can be very complex, as you'll see in the “Advanced” Sales Funnel section, we're only going to talk about sending emails in a straight line, in this “Simple” section.

Here's an example:

The Purpose Of A “Simple” Sales Funnel

There are a few reasons for this “Simple” Sales Funnel's existence:

• This email series automatically builds and maintains a relationship with your leads and customers while simultaneously converting them to your way of thinking
• This serves as the backbone for more complex email automations we’ll later build on
• Your personal understanding. If you have trouble making emails trigger in a straight line, when we get into more advanced topics you’ll really struggle

How Many “Simple” Sales Funnels Should You Have?

Most of the time, you only need one. The type of content you send in this funnel is interesting to people interested in your type of business or industry.

For example:

• People who are interested digital marketing and sales funnels
• People who are interested in taking care of their personal finances
• People who are interested in maintaining their family's dental health

There are a few instances where you may need 2 or more, for example if you're a lawyer and you have two facets to your business: legal counsel for clients and consulting for other lawyers.

In this case, your customers are tremendously different. People seeking legal counsel have very different interests than other lawyers seeking advice. In this case, you would likely want 2 different “simple” sales funnels.

If you have more than one “Simple” Sales Funnel, you need to segment individuals at the very beginning by asking them “who” they are.

What Type Of Content Should You Send?

Remember, the point of this particular sales funnel is to build and maintain a relationship and convert them to your way of thinking.

To accomplish this, send 3 types of emails:

1. Educational – emails that teach people how to do something, about the market, about what’s happening, case studies, etc.
2. Entertaining – emails that are “fun” like stories, case studies, testimonials, inside jokes, critiques, events, etc.
3. Earning – emails that remind people you offer various products and services.

I’ve aptly named these emails the “3 E Emails”.

Now, this doesn’t mean an email can only be 1 of the Es at a time. Like, you can only send a boring how-to tutorial, or only send a silly cat video. That’s not what I mean. Your how-to tutorial should be entertaining and can even sell your product at the end. That’s like killing 3 birds with one stone!

However, each email should have 1 core focus.

Is the primary aim of the email to educate, entertain, or earn?

• Educational emails tend to build relationships while converting people to your way of thinking
• Entertaining emails tend to build and maintain relationships
• Earn emails tend to ring the cash register

Examples:

Crazy Eye Marketing

• Educational: Send a link to a video showing how to add an opt-in form to a website.
• Entertaining: Share a case study where we split tested several opt-in forms and were able to increase the conversion rate by 57%.
• Earn: Send a 10% off coupon for our optimization course tteaching, step-by-step, how to split test and optimize your opt-in forms.

Financial Advisor

• Educational: Explain the differences and how to get the most out of the various retirement income streams: annuities, social security, pensions, etc.
• Entertaining: Share the story of a successful client that has been with you for the last 10 years, gone through multiple trials and tribulations; however, finally retired and is now traveling the world!
• Earn: Click here to schedule a free consultation with me!

Dentist

• Educational: Share a list of 7 strategies for getting your children to brush their teeth for the appropriate amount of time.
• Entertaining: Send a cute video that shows various animals getting their teeth brushed and enjoying it (my son would love this!).
• Earn: Did you know? We offer free checkups for walk-ins? We do! Visit us today and make sure your mouth is in good shape!

Where Do You Get Content?

Being that you're a coach, consultant, or service-based business and people need to know, like, and trust you – you need to create your own content.

You can't outsource this.

Sure, there are people and businesses that can help you come up with a plan, piece it together, and write the “connecting” material (that's what I do 😉 ); however, the “real” content has to come from you and/or your business.

There's no other way around it.

Of course, this requires a blog or pages setup to present the content.

And remember, content doesn’t necessarily mean blogging. While you still want to display the content on your site to “bring people back”, it could be video, audio (podcasts), images, etc.

For example, if my brother is your target audience, blogging is a terrible idea. He doesn’t read anything and you need to draw him in with video.

HOWEVER, and it’s a pretty big one – Google can’t really “watch” videos. It won’t matter how good your video content is from a search engine perspective. Blogging is still the #1 way to rank in the search results.

The Most Epic Blogging Strategy Of All Time

Here's the best way I've found to approach your content creation strategy:

1. Write the most epic post for your ideal customer, as it relates to how they see themselves and how it relates to your business/industry. If that is too esoteric, think of it as, “How does your business help people go from point A (where they are now) to point B (where they want to be/how they see themselves).” (3,000+ words)
   • The Ultimate Guide To Marketing Strategy For Coaches, Consultants, & Service-Based Businesses
   • The Ultimate Guide To Retiring “Right” So You Can Travel The World
   • From Baby To Adult, How To Care For Your Child's Teeth
2. Write more in-depth articles for each individual section of your “epic” post. (500-1,000 words)
   • 3 Sales Page Formulas That Will Increase Your Conversion Rates
   • 5 Things To Do 3 Years Before You Retire
   • How To Get Your 2 Year Old To Brush All His Teeth (I need this one!)
3. Write case studies, testimonials, reviews, etc. and/or create videos and/or pdf checklists for each of the “more in-depth” articles. (500-1,000 words and/or 3-5 minute video and/or a 1 page checklist)
   • Share case studies of the sales page formulas
   • Go into even more depth on the 5 things you spoke about in the last article
   • 3 Toothbrushes That'll Make Your 2 Year Old Want To Brush Their Teeth!

Of course, you link your products and services as they “fit” the particular articles.

How Often Should You Email?

This answer varies from industry to industry; however, normally – two to four times a week. The first 3-5 emails are sent daily, no matter what, because this is when the lead is “hot”.

During the “Advanced” Sales Funnel portion, there will be more instances where you email daily because the lead will “tell” you they’re “hot” again.

To Do

• Write down 3 EPIC blog post ideas

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

Lead Magnets

A Lead Magnet can be best thought of as a freebie that motivates individuals to give you their contact information.

Upon receiving the individual's contact information, they're transformed into a lead and begin the journey down your sales funnel.

A few example Lead Magnets formats include coupons, checklists, videos, eBooks, webinars, mini-courses, trial, and other resources.

Beyond the format of the Lead Magnet, there's also the type:

1. General
2. Specific

General Lead Magnets

A General Lead Magnet is attractive to anyone who visits your website and is usually presented as a form on most pages of your site. The form can be a lightbox, landing mat, sidebar, bar/ribbon, slide-in, etc.

For example, this General Lead Magnet can be found in the side bar of most blog posts on Crazy Eye Marketing:

It's “general” in that nearly anyone that visits Crazy Eye Marketing for any reason will be interested in email marketing.

Specific Lead Magnets

A Specific Lead Magnet is attractive to individuals interested in a certain product/service or topic and many times is presented as a Squeeze Page (although, this isn't always the case).

What's a “Squeeze Page”?

A Squeeze Page is a page dedicated to one thing and one thing only – “squeezing” the contact information out of a visitor, turning them into a lead.

Here's an example:

That's an entire page with only two options:

1. Click the yellow button to receive the nine steps
2. Leave

It's also “specific” in that only people interested in creating information products would be interested in this.

Specific Lead Magnets Should Also…

1. Pre-qualify leads (ie. individuals only interested in creating information products)
2. Setup the sale of the “next step” ie. the Initial Offer as defined in your Value Ladder

Anton of Performance Marketer does both of these wonderfully … check out the Thank You page after opting in for the “9 Steps”:

Spectacular! A course on creating info products!

I imagine, if I don't buy his course right away, his autoresponder series will work its magic and sell me on it!

The good news? You can do this type of thing, too!

To Do

Think about what the average visitor to your website would be interested in. Write down 3 ideas for your General Lead Magnet.

Think about your products and services. What could you offer individuals to pre-qualify them AND move them to purchase that particular product or service. Write down 3 ideas for each product/service you offer.

Eventually, you'll actually turn these ideas into Lead Magnets.

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

The “Advanced” Sales Funnel

The “Advanced” Sales Funnel is driven by interests, hence why I coined it the “Interest Driven Sales Funnel”.

In essence, people join your email list and based on the links they click, pages they view, and lead magnets they request – you send relevant emails in order to try and sell a product.

Here's what an Interest Driven Sales Funnel looks like:

The left hand side shows the “Simple” or “Straight Line” Sales Funnel (also called the “Main Series”).

As previously mentioned, this autoresponder series acts as the backbone for your Interest Driven Sales Funnel. As it sends emails that follow the 3 E strategy (entertain, educate, earn), it automatically pays attention to how people respond to certain emails.

If people respond a certain way (show interest), a “Micro Sales Funnel” (Product / Service Sales Funnel) will automatically trigger. The point of the Micro Sales Funnel is to sell a product or service.

You will likely have lots of Micro Sales Funnels. Ideally, one for each product and/or service you offer.

Here’s an example:

Note: A Micro Sales Funnel may differ from the above example based upon what you’re attempting to sell, your Value Ladder, and your approach.

Quick Explanation

No matter what the Micro Sales Funnel looks like, the start and end will look the same.

The Start

The Start occurs when an individual shows interest in a product/service you offer or a topic you talk about. We can gauge interest by tracking their link clicks, Specific Lead Magnet requests, page views, and via points (if you use a CRM).

The End

The End occurs when an individual has gone through the entire Micro Sales Funnel. If the individual went straight into the Micro Sales Funnel by requesting a Specific Lead Magnet and they have yet to enter the “Main Series” (Straight Line Sales Funnel) – they’ll now enter the Main Series starting at the beginning.

If the individual was in the Main Series, showed interest in a product/service by clicking a link, and entered a Micro Sales Funnel – upon entering the Micro Sales Funnel, their “trip” down the Main Series is paused, and upon exiting the Micro Sales Funnel, they resume their “trip” down the Main Series.

The Rest

Action Series

A few emails that attempt to drive action, ie. a purchase of the product or service the individual has shown interest in.

Did Action Happen?

If the desired action was taken, go to the Upsell Series.

If the desired action was not taken, go to The End.

Upsell Series

An email or two that attempt(s) to either sell more or the next product/service.

Examples

Crazy Eye Marketing

An individual joins the email list by opting in for a Specific Lead Magnet that offers a “Lead Magnet Essentials Checklist”. It's specific, I know the individual is interested in creating Lead Magnets.

We then send 3 emails about Lead Magnets and attempt to sell the corresponding Lead Magnet course.

• Email 1: Case study, show differences between good vs bad Lead Magnets. Include link to course, as the final thought of the email (PS line).
• Email 2: Explain how a good Lead Magnet lowers ad spend, increases authority, etc. While a bad Lead Magnet will cost a lot more to advertise, may attract the wrong people, may hurt your business in the long run. PS line includes a link to the course.
• Email 3: Sell course, maybe offer discount, last time you'll hear me talk about it.

Let’s pretend on Email 2 they purchase the course. We then end that series (we won’t send email 3) and launch into our Upsell Series where we send 2 emails that attempt to sell the Sales Funnel Training Vault.

• Email 1: Explain how Lead Magnets are just 1 piece of a much larger puzzle.
• Email 2: Share a “Before-After-Bridge” story of my life before I fully grasped sales funnels, my life after I understood sales funnels, and show how I got to this point; you can too with The Sales Funnel Training Vault.

After completing the Upsell Series, they enter our Main Series from the beginning where we begin to build and maintain a relationship and gauge interest(s).

Financial Advisor

An individual has been on our email list and in our Main Series for a few weeks when they receive a 3 E email about “how to make sure your money lasts while in retirement”. They click the link contained in the email.

By clicking the link, we know they’re interested in “how to make sure your money lasts while in retirement”. We pause the Main Series and trigger 3 emails (Action Series) about that topic, while promoting our products/services.

Goal of these emails: Get individual to schedule a call

• Email 1: 5 Strategies For Controlling Your Spending, So You'll Never Run Out Of Money
• Email 2: Should You Handle Your Own Money In Retirement?
• Email 3: The True Story Of Sarah And John. Tell a story of a couple that retired and traveled the world without worry because their finances were handled by a professional.

No Upsell Series here. Due to the fact financial investment is a very personal topic and event, we only need to get them to give us their money once, becoming their “financial guy/gal”.

After the Action Series, the individual resumes the Main Series exactly where they left off.

Dentist

An individual registers for their 6 month checkup. On the checkout page, we ask if they also want to get their teeth whitened at a discounted rate. If they say no, we ask again on the Thank You Page (1-click upsell). If they say no again, we send 1 email – “Last Chance: Teeth Whitening” where we offer them one last chance to get the teeth whitened at the discounted rate.

More On Interest Driven Sales Funnels

Providing tailored content to your audience increases conversions. You have to provide content people are interested in or they leave without buying. An Interest Driven Sales Funnel automatically adjusts to peoples' interests based on their actions and sends content they actually want.

It's an incredibly powerful strategy that any business can benefit from.

Click here to learn more and checkout more Product/Service Sales Funnels!

To Do

• Pick a product or service that has a Specific Lead Magnet or piece of content (blog post, video, etc.) tied to it. Write 3-5  Action Series ideas (like I did above) on how to convert those leads (individuals who showed interest in that topic or product/service) into customers.
• Write down 1-3 Upsell Series ideas if they purchase that product/service from you (if applicable).

Note: Many of these emails will likely link to blog posts and other content you’ve created, fitting nicely within the Epic Blogging Strategy I outlined above.

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

Traffic

There are as many ways to drive traffic as there are people on this planet, so it's impossible to discuss them all in detail in one blog post; however, I'll share several strategies that'll frame how you should look at traffic generation.

Before I get to the rules, I want you to know that I break advertising into two categories that incorporate both online and offline methods:

1. “Free” Advertising: A form of advertising that costs time. Examples include SEO, Social Media, Podcasts, and Cold Calling.
2. Paid Advertising: A form of advertising that costs money. Examples include Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Newspaper and Radio Ads.

#1 Advertise Where Your Audience Hangs Out

Makes sense, right?

Make sure you're abiding by this rule, otherwise all other actions are futile.

#2 Have Multiple Streams

You never, ever, want to be dependent upon one single source of traffic. Platforms change, algorithms change, new platforms emerge, people move – things change.

You never want to have your entire business dry up overnight, trust me. I was solely dependent on Google, one little algorithm change and my business had to shut its doors.

The ideal situation is to have a mixture of “free” and paid traffic coming to your business.

#3 Patience

Whether you're dealing with “free” or paid traffic, it's going to take time and/or money to get platforms figured out.

In 2016, SEO typically takes between 9-12 months before it starts to show.

Social media, unless you gain some virality, typically takes a long time to grow a following. Even if you “go viral” you still have to capture and maintain that relationship (ideally by adding them to your sales funnel) – or you're just a flash in the pan.

Paid traffic comes with a learning curve. Most of your ad campaigns will fail at first. It will take time and money to figure out what does and doesn't work with regard to your particular market and business.

Basically, you can't spend $10 and expect magical results. Expect to spend over $1,000 before you start figuring out a particular paid traffic source.

#4 Measure Everything

You have to measure your results, otherwise you'll make bad decisions.

Google Analytics is a great, free tool that can help with tracking.

Most paid advertising platforms have the advantage of built in tracking.

You have to track your numbers.

Think about Shark Tank for a second. If anyone walks into “The Tank” and doesn't know their numbers … they're eaten alive!

Don't get eaten alive!

Know your numbers.

To Do

Consider your audience. Think about where they hangout, whether online or offline. Write down a mixture of 5 “free” and paid traffic sources to reach your audience in these locations.

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

Optimization

Unfortunately, you cannot optimize something you don’t have – so, you need to implement the marketing strategy you drafted with the help of this post.

However, when you begin optimizing your sales funnel, there are ways to think about it on macro and micro levels.

Macro Level

Your entire sales system is an integrated system.

Who your customers are, where they hangout, how you present your business, how you deliver your products, your product listings, your pages, your emails, your ads … it’s all integrated and how well one part performs affects the other parts.

For example, if you’re advertising to the wrong people, it doesn’t matter how good everything else is, your entire system will fail.

If you’re unable to match your products to your customers' needs, your entire system will fail.

The Golden Rule

Start at the beginning.

If you’re having trouble with your sales system, start at the beginning – with your customers. If you’re absolutely positive you’re attracting the correct customers, move on to your business – how you portray yourself, what you sell and how you sell it (Value Ladder).

Does everything make sense? Is the “flow” of the Value Ladder natural? Is your business’s persona coming across as sincere or insincere?

How are your products listed on your sales pages? Do you have high quality photos? Good copy that’s attractive to your ideal customer? Is the checkout process easy?

Work your way through the entire system, piece by piece.

If the early stuff isn’t right, it won’t matter how good the later stuff is, no one will ever get to it.

Micro Level

Beyond optimizing at the Macro Level, you have the Micro Level – and, to be honest, this is what most people focus on already.

These are things like email subject lines, page titles, calls-to-actions (CTA), ads, etc.

The good part is, a few % increases here and there can increase the performance of the entire system very quickly.

For example:

A few minor tweaks (all 5% increases or less) to the ad, squeeze page, thank you page, action series, and upsell series resulted in 10 more customers than before and 2 additional upsells.

Imagine if only the ad’s CTR increased … what would happen …

We’d still add 4 more customers!

It’s amazing what even a half-percent change can do!

To Do

Implement.

>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format

How To Implement

This post should have your Coaching, Consulting, or Service-Based Business on a path for success; however, there’s still a lot of work and technical understanding that needs to happen.

There’s still …

• Email marketing automation configuration
• Landing page and opt-in form integration
• Advertising campaign launches and optimization
• Tracking tools and pixels to implement
• Various other areas that’ll need tweaking

Of course, you can piecemeal all this together from various sources, or you can save a bunch of time, effort, and energy by joining The Vault!

The Vault includes all the training, resources, and support you need to implement everything you planned above!

Click here to see how The Vault can help your business!

Are you throwing money away again?!

If you're like most small businesses and entrepreneurs I work with … and are doing some form of paid advertising … you probably are.

Most folks do the “throw crap at the wall and see if anything sticks” approach to advertising.

Obviously, this isn't wise.

If you've ever “failed” at paid advertising, or thought to yourself that Facebook Ads or Adwords “doesn't work” … this post is for you.

• Related Course: How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel

How To Attain The Marketer's Mindset

In order to attain the marketer's mindset, you need to approach all marketing and advertising as an experiment.

You're essentially a scientist … a mad scientist, if you'd prefer.

It's your job to test hypotheses by conducting experiments, analyzing the data, and making decisions.

The best way to do this is by following the tried and true – Scientific Method.

Having said that, I cannot discredit marketers. Marketers spend time learning, understanding, and practicing things like psychology, human behavior, copywriting, design, user experience, etc. and are able to develop better hypotheses and experiments more effectively and efficiently than individuals that don't.

So, there's certainly a massive benefit to having someone that's an actual marketer do your marketing; however, if you understand the marketer's mindset and how they approach their marketing campaigns … you're going to be in a much better position to succeed than those who don't.

The Scientific Method

Ask A Question

In business, the question is usually, “How do I generate more business?”

Do Background Research

Fortunately, you should already know a lot of the background information.

You'll obviously know the ins and outs of the products and services your business offers.

You should also know your customers. If you don't know them as well as you should, click here and here to learn how to develop marketing personas.

Construct A Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an educated guess about how things will work.

“If [I do this], then [this] will happen.”

• If I publish this ad for this audience, my conversion rate will increase.
• If I change the subject line of this email, my open rate and click through rate will increase.
• If I change the title of this sales page, my sales will increase.

Tip: Measure At Least 2 Levels Deep

At the end of the day, your advertising campaigns must generate sales or there's no point.

To help ensure what you're hypothesizing about actually matters, I recommend generating hypotheses that are at least 2 levels deep.

What does that mean?

For example, let's take a Facebook ad. We could hypothesize that “If I change the ad image to X, it will have a higher Click Through Rate (CTR).”

The ad's CTR is the 1st level.

Increasing the CTR is great, but – does it affect the bottom line? Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to tell unless you measure how it affects the bottom line.

The 2nd level would be a measure of the next action the person takes after the 1st level.

For example, level 2 could be to signup for your mailing list. (signup conversion rate)

So, a better hypothesis would be, “If I change the ad image to X, it will increase my signup conversion rate.”

Signup conversion rate is a better metric to measure than ad CTR because it's closer to the end goal of producing a sale.

Here's a table to better illustrate the concept of levels:

Common Things To Test

Here's a short list of possible things to test:

• The offer
• Ad image and ad copy
• Ad targeting
• Subject lines
• Titles
• Formatting
• Call-To-Action (CTA)

Test With An Experiment

Click the “Live” button, ie. launch your campaign, change your subject line, change your title, change your CTA, etc.

Now, don't touch anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the point where most people mess up.

They'll launch their ad (experiment) and watch as money leaves without delivering the results they were hoping for.

I agree – it's hard to watch money leave your account without it generating results. It's really easy to freak out and either stop or change the experiment on the fly … but you can't do this.

Remember, it's just an experiment. You're simply testing a hypothesis and collecting data.

The more data you have, the more accurate it will be and the better decisions you'll be able to make.

You need this data in order to analyze it and make educated decisions, so your next experiment will hopefully deliver the results you're looking for.

Tip #1: Start Small

You don't have to spend thousands of dollars. Many times, $5 to $10 a day for a week is enough to test a hypothesis.

Tip #2: Set A Budget And Leave It

To help curb the urge to mess with an experiment, set a budget on your campaign and don't look at it until it's ended.

For example, set a campaign limit at $50 with a daily budget of $7 – after a week, login and view your results.

Procedure Working

Make sure everything is functioning correctly.

Make sure your ad is sending people to the correct landing page.

Ensure your signup form is synced to the correct email list.

Simple stuff; however, I've personally made both of those mistakes before … stuff happens, make sure you double check your setup especially if results seem way off.

Analyze Data and Draw Conclusions

Before analyzing data and drawing conclusions you need to make sure you have enough data.

Not having enough data is the second largest point of failure for an experiment!!!!!!!!!!!

How do you ensure you have enough data? Statistical significance. (click here to learn more)

When you don't have enough data, you're not able to confidently say whether the experiment proved your hypothesis right or wrong. Without high levels of confidence, you're likely to make some bad decisions.

Results Align With Hypothesis

Excellent! Your experiment becomes your control and you can run more experiments against it and/or you can scale up your advertising and develop hypotheses for other portions of your sales funnel (ie. different levels).

Results Align Partially Or Not At All With Hypothesis

Like Thomas Edison with the light bulb, you haven't failed, you've just found a way that doesn't work.

Take what you learned, go back to the drawing board, form another hypothesis and run another experiment.

You will fail, a lot.

Most of your campaigns will start out yielding negative results and you have to remember that this is OK.

Remind yourself that you're conducting experiments and gathering data in order to make better decisions and build a highly profitable marketing campaign.

Final Words Of Advice

Someone smarter than me once said, “Successful marketing campaigns are built, they're not discovered.”

… Or, something to that effect, unfortunately I can't find the source of that quote right now; however, the point is that it takes work, patience, and a method (ie. Scientific Method) to build a successful marketing campaign.

It's not something that magically “happens” … you can't keep throwing crap at the wall and hope something sticks.

• Related Course: How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel