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    Wild Audience Team

    What is a Sales Funnel and Why do You Need One? (For Beginners!)

    February 3, 2021 by Wild Audience Team

    Do you ever wonder how businesses make consistent sales?

    If you’ve ever tried to sell anything, then you know how hard it can be. You might make a sale, but getting to the point where you can generate regular revenue is tough.

    Successful businesses don’t just make sales here and there. They make sales consistently and with high enough volume that they can comfortably hire full time employees. They know that despite having regular expenses, they are going to be profitable.

    So how do they do it?

    The key to making consistent sales is a sales funnels.

    In this article, I’ll talk about what sales funnels are, the stages of a sales funnel and examples of how businesses use sales funnels to achieve consistent growth and predictable revenue.

    Video Summary

    Listen To The Podcast

    1. Sales Funnels Defined

    So what exactly is a sales funnel?

    A sales funnel is a step-by-step process that allows you to bring your potential customer one step closer to your offer and a buying decision through a series of marketing actions like automated emails, videos, articles and landing pages that will do the selling for you.

    Think of sales funnels as a virtual salesperson that works 24/7, 365 days a year without complaining or asking for more money.

    Sales funnels are everywhere, even if you don’t realize it. Let’s take a look at Starbucks, for example…

    Source: Pixabay

    The sales funnel for Starbucks might start when you see a piece of their marketing somewhere. You may be driving home one day and you see a Starbucks billboard. Seeing a company’s branding lets potential customers start getting familiar with the brand.

    At home, when you are watching television in the evening, you might see a Starbucks commercial on TV. The commercial might show you how the coffee is made. It could also show people enjoying the coffee and being more productive at work.

    The next morning, as you are going to work, you walk by a Starbucks and someone hands you a flyer advertising a “buy one, get one free coffee” special.

    You decide to go inside and order Starbucks coffee for the first time. The person at the checkout counter asks you if you want a cookie with your order. Their cookies look tasty so you say “yes”.

    They give you your cookie and two coffees. They put a sticker on the second coffee saying “for your favorite co-worker”.

    While most ordinary folks might not realize it, they are purchasing products or services because of sales funnels. Sales funnels are used to sell everything including information products, services and physical products that you see every day.

    2. Two options to grow your business

    When deciding to grow a business, many people struggle with how to market their business. Most aspiring business owners have two options…

    #1 – Continue to rely on “hope marketing”. Hope marketing means waiting around for referrals and word of mouth.

    Or going to networking events and talking to random people in the hopes that you will meet a potential customer.

    Basically, businesses that take this approach sit around and “hope” that business comes their way.

    #2 – Take the time to actually build a system that attracts the right leads and turns them into paying customers.

    Winning companies have figured out how to acquire customer at profit and scale. The best way to do that is through a sales funnel.

    Businesses that take this approach identify their target customer. They figure out where and how to reach them (we use Wildmetrics for this).

    These businesses also have a plan for cultivating these leads and turning them into paying customers.

    They might also have a plan to get them to buy more products or services and to systematically refer even more leads.

    Which of these approaches do you prefer?

    Do you want to continue relying on external factors that are outside of your control and waiting around for business to come to you?

    Or would you rather take control of your destiny by building a step-by-step system that attracts the right leads and converts them into paying customers.

    If creating a step-by-step system sounds good to you, then let’s take a closer look at the makeup of a sales funnel.

    3. Understanding the Phases of a Sales Funnel

    To create a successful sales funnel, we need to start by understanding the four phases of a sales funnel. These four phases include the awareness stage, the relationship stage, the sales stage and the upsell stage.

    Awareness Stage

    In the Awareness Stage, your goal is to let people know that you exist. Ask yourself, “What can I do to make people aware of my business?”

    There are many ways to reach your target customers and build brand awareness.

    Content Marketing

    Content marketing is one way to build an audience and create brand awareness. Writing articles can drive traffic to your website through SEO and social media while also allowing other people to see you as an expert in your field.

    Video

    Video is another tool that can help build awareness. Videos can allow people to see who you are as a person and form a deeper connection with you. Videos can also be used to demonstrate a product (or service) or share other ideas.

    Paid Ads

    Advertising can be a great way to reach your target audience quickly. Paid ads often allow you to target people by preferences or demographics.

    Word of Mouth and Referrals

    Word of mouth and referrals will start to generate awareness for your business if your products or services and content are good.

    While getting customers through referrals is nice, don’t rely on it.  Instead, build a real marketing system that provides predictable revenue and results.

    Relationship Stage

    Once people become aware of your brand, you want to continue to build a relationship with them in the Relationship Stage. In this stage, ask yourself how you can build trust and authority so that people will feel comfortable buying from you.

    If you do a good job of building relationships, then you might start getting emails like this:

    Think about what communication channels will allow you to communicate with your audience most effectively.

    Email marketing is a popular choice for online marketers because it is relatively inexpensive. Once someone joins your email list, you can keep communicating with them by sending emails.

    You can even use re-targeting to show ads to people who visited your site before so that you can continue to build brand familiarity with those prospects.

    Some other channels might include social media, webinars or even sponsored videos.

    During the Relationship Stage, you also need to decide on what buying beliefs you need to install before your customer will buy. For example, a vegan bodybuilder might need to believe that a vegan protein powder comes from 100% plant ingredients and is an effective source of protein before buying it.

    A belief system consists of the beliefs and biases a person might have regarding your product or service.

    Here is an example of a belief system target towards a vegan consumer:

    Decide what buying beliefs are necessary. Then incorporate them into your sales funnel during the Relationship Stage. Educate your prospects so that they will be ready to buy once they reach the Sales Stage.

    Sales Stage

    After your prospects have been through the Relationship Stage, send them to the Sales Stage so that you can close the sale. In this stage, ask yourself what is the best way to get people to pay.

    If your Relationship Stage is well designed, then selling should be easy. Your customer will already want to buy your products or services.

    However, you can still improve your results by having a strong Sales Stage.

    For a high end conference, the Sales Stage might consist of a landing page with a video and a list of featured speakers. It could also list other benefits of attending, like being able to network with other successful individuals.

    Another way to improve sales results is to use urgency or scarcity to get people to buy. Scarcity is optional if you did a good job of building trust and authority in the Relationship Stage or use a Relationship Funnel instead of a sales funnel for your business.

    Avoid using fake scarcity to get people to buy. Customers can sense it and it prevents them from trusting you.

    Upsell Stage

    Finally, the Upsell Stage is where businesses can make more money by selling additional related products or services to their customers. McDonalds grew into a multi-billion dollar company by simply asking their customers “Would you like fries with that?” after they purchased a burger.

    Asides from generating more revenue for your business, upselling can also improve the customer experience. Some people purchasing a ticket to your live conference might be willing and even wanting to pay more to consult with you directly.

    When designing your upsells, think about what other products or services that your customers might want. Can you upsell a more expensive product or service that can help them even more? Or can you cross sell them a similar product or service that they might be interested in?

    Sales Funnels Are All About Relationships

    Ultimately, a well designed sales funnel focuses on building relationships. Building a strong relationship is the key to success.

    Having a relationship building mindset will allow you to provide more value for your customers and therefore drive more growth to your business over the long term.

    At Wild Audience, we use what I call a Relationship Funnel that improves upon the sales funnel process by focusing on building the relationship and providing value to our audience.

    Building relationships through Relationship Funnels is our super strength and it is what we are known for. We offer Wild Mail (benefits of using Wild Mail includes our RF course) and also have Automation University which helps you grow your business with the latest marketing automation tools & growth strategies.

    If you want to learn more about Relationship Funnels, feel free to download our free case study of how a real business achieves 7-figures in sales by clicking the image below:

    4. The Top, Middle and Bottom of the Funnel

    A lot of marketing people might also describe a sales funnel as having a top, bottom and middle. These categories relate to the four stages previously mentioned.

    Now let me explain what I mean..

    Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

    The top of the funnel (TOFU) corresponds to the Awareness Stage of a sales funnel. People at the top of the funnel are not ready to buy, but instead are looking for information to help them solve their problem.

    In this stage, we focus on talking about their problem and sharing information that might help our audience move towards a solution. We talk about the problem that our product or service is solving to get the attention of our reader.

    We also want to build brand awareness in this stage and let our audience become familiar with our business and what we do. Our goal at this stage might be simply to get new visitors to opt into our email list so that we can keep in touch with them.

    At Wild Audience, we even segment our list so that we can send customized content to readers based on interests. Our opt-in form starts with a quick survey that pops up, as shown in the image below:

    When marketing to top of the funnel prospects, the long term goal is to educate them with content and move them towards the bottom of the funnel. These prospects might not be ready to buy now, but with the proper nurturing, they may become great prospects later.

    Once a prospect opts in to your email list, they move into the middle of the funnel.

    Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

    The middle of the funnel (MOFU) corresponds to the Relationship Stage of a sales funnel. In this stage, we nurture our prospects so that they will be ready to buy once they reach the bottom of the funnel.

    The middle of the funnel has two main goals.

    The first goal is to establish relationships by creating trust and positioning yourself as an authority. You can accomplish this task by sharing useful and relevant content with your followers.

    The second goal is to install necessary buying beliefs.

    To install buying beliefs, talk about your unique mechanism (a unique method or process that you and your customers used to solve their problem). Sharing your unique mechanism will eliminate competitors from your prospects’ minds as they start to see your method as the best way to solve their problem.

    Talk about your solution and show your prospects why it is the best way to solve their problem. Cover all the features and explain why it works so well.

    Use articles, videos, podcasts and other forms of content to educate your audience so that they view you as an expert on the topic. You can even showcase some case studies or testimonials as social proof to make your product or service offering even more compelling.

    Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

    The bottom of the funnel (BOFU) corresponds to the Sales and Upsell Stages of the sales funnel. The goal of this stage is to sell your product or service to the customer and maximize profits by upselling more products or services.

    Anticipate any common objections that your customer may have and address them in your sales copy. Consider providing answers to frequently asked questions as well to streamline the buying process and reduce customer support time.

    Throw in some examples of results that your other customers have achieved. Use detailed case studies, show testimonials and conduct customer interviews to build social proof.

    Here’s an example of a great customer success story that we use at Wild Audience, where the customer achieved a 9.48% conversion rate:

    Think about other products or services that you can upsell and cross sell during this stage to increase profits and provide a better customer experience.

    Now let’s talk about why we need a sales funnel and the benefits.

    5. Why Do We Need a Sales Funnel

    Sales funnels solve one of the biggest problems that companies have, which is creating a system to acquire profitable customers at scale.

    Sales funnels have four main benefits:

    1. Having processes in place to systematically generate new leads.

    2. Being able to build relationships with leads automatically through processes and automation using Wild Mail.

    3. Turning prospects into paying customers.

    4. Getting repeat business by selling more products or services to existing customers.

    Here are a few additional benefits:

    1. You can do as little or as much lead generation as you want.

    Once you have your system established, you can scale your business by focusing on improving your products or services. You know that people will be systematically taken care of and converted into customers by your system automatically.

    2. Your profits and revenue will be consistent and predictable once you’ve tested your funnel and have it working.

    Like Mubaid, who increased his sales conversion rate to 9-10% using Relationship Funnels:

    Or Landon who made over $6,400 in just six weeks:

    3. You will be able to measure how your business is performing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis by analyzing your performance dashboard and analytics.

    4. You will also be able to more effectively communicate with your team and make better decisions based on data.

    Would you like to see a visual representation of the Relationship Funnel stages? Click the image below to download my free Relationship Funnel graphic.

    Ok, are you ready to see how a sales funnel works in real life?

    6. Sales Funnel Breakdown: Y Combinator

    Let’s take a look at Y Combinator, one of the most successful small business accelerators. Y Combinator invests in early stage startups and profits when those companies are successful.

    They’ve invested into successful companies like Dropbox, AirBnB and Reddit. Y Combinator’s portfolio of successful companies has a market valuation of over $80 billion.

    I chose Y Combinator as an example, because it’s also how I learned about sales funnels.

    I lived in a startup house with 17 other people and did sales and marketing for a company called Close.io, a Y Combinator (YC) company in Palo Alto, California. I was amazed at how Y Combinator invested in so many successful companies like Stripe, Zapier and Mixpanel.

    I became curious about how they were able to develop such a strong brand and invest in successful companies that have a combined valuation of over $100 billion.

    I studied everything they put out. I went to YC demo days, talked to YC founders and even snuck into YC alumni meetings.

    Ultimately, I discovered that YC used sales funnels to build brand awareness. Here’s a breakdown of how they do it.

    1) Awareness Stage – For YC to attract business founders, it needs to drive awareness for its brand. YC uses several tactics to build this awareness including:

    • Public RelationsGetting featured in publications like Forbes helps YC generate widespread media attention.
    • Success stories from their invested startups

    Investing into successful companies also helps spread the YC name. As invested startups become successful and well known, people begin talking about YC through association.

    • Free startup school at startupschool.org – YC doesn’t just stop with investing into startups. They also provide educational content to help entrepreneurs start their own business, including Startup School which offers a free course to learn how to launch a startup
    • Content for startup entrepreneursThey also provide other free content to attract startup entrepreneurs. YC co-founder Paul Graham creates a range of content including articles and startup ideas.
    • Free online courseThey also provide a free online course on how to start your own startup with multiple videos.
    • YC YouTube channelYC also has a YouTube channel with video content that has attracted over 147,000 followers.
    • YC blogYC also blogs regularly to share updates and insights from other YC companies.

    These are some of the tactics that YC uses to build an audience and generate brand awareness.

    Once YC builds awareness, they need to continue to build relationships with their target audience.

    2) Relationship Stage – The Relationship Stage consists of all their free content and also live events where people can meet and interact with other business owners and experts. The free content helps entrepreneurs get educated on startup businesses and even get inspired to start their own business.

    3) Sales Stage – When people are ready to get funding for their business, they can apply to the YC program. Founders can also apply to present their business during Demo Day (after a 3 month incubator).

    4) Upsell Stage – Y Combinator also has a program called Y Combinator Continuity, which is an investment fund that helps companies scale their companies. Companies in a growth phase can apply for this program.

    I hope you liked the Y Combinator example. Now let’s take a look at another successful sales funnel… Tony Robbin’s high ticket service based agency.

    7. Sales Funnel Breakdown: Tony Robbins

    Tony Robbins is a world renowned motivational speaker, entrepreneur and #1 NY Times Bestselling author. He is the founder of multiple companies that earn around $6 billion in sales annually.

    Tony’s coaching business teaches his students how to find happiness and get motivated to make positive change in their lives. Here’s a closer look at his sales funnel:

    1) Awareness stage – In the Awareness Stage, Tony Robbins uses content and lead magnets like podcasts, articles and videos to attract his target audience.

    Asides publishing the podcast on his website, he also syndicates his podcast to ITunes, Stitcher and other podcast channels to maximize his reach.

    Tony publishes articles on his blog, which allows him to engage his audience and to attract inbound search engine traffic.

    Creating videos and uploading them to places like YouTube and Facebook also allow Tony to expand his reach. Some of his videos have also been re-published on high profile sites like Inc and NY Times.

    All of this content creates brand awareness and drives visitors to his website where they can opt into his email list and enter the Relationship Stage of his funnel.

    Tony also segments his email list by using Life Assessment Quizzes to divide people into buckets. He can then send customized information to each bucket targeted towards their interests.

    Here’s a screenshot of one of his quizzes:

    2) Relationship Stage – In the Relationship Stage, Tony builds a relationship with his audience by sending them content periodically.

    He also offers the Ultimate Edge Program for $249 as his front end program for audience members that are ready to buy immediately.

    Email autoresponders automate his relationship building processes by dripping out content including podcasts, YouTube videos and articles.

    Tony even uses bots to automate his process even further. Tony’s Facebook messenger bot, for example, will automatically reply to people and answer their questions.

    Content is also shared on social media for people following those channels.

    3) Sales stage – During the sales stage, Tony sells his core product for $3k which is the “Unleash the Power Within” live event. He gets people to join a sales call with one of his team members to sell tickets to this event.

    4) Upsell stage – To maximize profits, Tony also offers other products or services to his customers. His offerings include more live events, one on one mentoring and other online courses.

    Tony offers multiple live events and the tickets can range from $4,000 – $9,000. The events can range from 1 – 5 days and are held at different locations.

    Tony also offers one-on-one coaching services with one of his trained coaches. The price of coaching ranges from $4,500 – $6,000 for 6 months of coaching.

    8. Want Results? Here’s What to Do Next..

    Do you want to get results in your business and grow your business by building authentic relationship with marketing automation?

    Then ask yourself these questions…

    #1 – Is my website a sales funnel?

    Make sure your website actually has an automated system in place to attract leads and convert them into sales.

    #2 – Do I know how much it costs me to acquire a customer?

    You will need to know this information if you want to grow faster and generate more profits for your company.

    You can easily know this with Wildmetrics. You can try it for free.

    If you want to supercharge your website sales, then you might want to check out what a Relationship Funnel is right now. It’s a sales funnel on steroids that can help you acquire customers at profit and scale.

    If you are a fast mover, you can start using Wild Mail today (in partnership with ActiveCampaign).

    Hope you enjoyed this article and happy automated and predictable selling!

    4 Sales Funnel Stages All Profitable Companies Have In Common

    January 20, 2019 by Wild Audience Team

    This short story is written from a guy’s perspective..

    Imagine you are riding the train to go to work. You spot a nice girl and you sit next to her and start talking..

    The conversation goes well and you connect with her on Facebook and Whatsapp.

    You continue messaging each other for a while and start to bond.

    You check out her Instagram and Facebook pages and learn more about her friends, hobbies and work.

    A couple of days later, you chat with her again on Whatsapp. You feel like you know her a little better now and ask her on a quick drink after work.

    The first date feels a little awkward, but because you already chatted online, it didn’t go too badly. You don’t kiss on the first date, but just have nice conversations to get to know each other.

    Because you had a natural first encounter, interacted on social media and went out on a date, you are no longer strangers.

    You invite her out again and the relationship progresses. This time, it’s more romantic.

    You kiss, things get hotter..

    ..and you can imagine the rest.

    Successful businesses build relationships in a similar way. Your potential customer needs to go on a well crafted journey where they can transition from being complete strangers to feeling like they know you before they purchase your product or service.

    And every sales funnel has 4 key stages.

    Video Summary

    Podcast

    But before I walk you through the stages of a sales funnel, let me set the stage real quick..

    Audience Temperature:

    Before creating a sales funnel, you need to understand the concept of audience temperature.

    The goal of your sales funnel is to turn cold prospects into hot prospects which are ready and eager to buy from you.

    Cold

    A cold audience is a group of people who haven’t heard of you or had any interaction with you. These prospects are unlikely to buy from you right away because they don’t know, like or trust you yet.

    A cold prospect might come across you for the first time through a Facebook or Instagram ad. Or they might have found you through a guest post you wrote on another blog.

    Once a cold prospect finds you, you want to start warming them up. For example, you can convince them to sign up for your email list by offering them valuable content in return.

    Warm

    A warm audience is a group of people who have had some interaction with you and your content. They already know who you are and you know that they have some interest in your products because of these interactions.

    A warm prospect may have taken actions like opting into your email list, following you on social media or listening to your podcast.

    There are different degrees of warmth. Some prospects who haven’t been in your funnel as long might not be ready to buy from you and may need more nurturing.

    Other prospects who have seen more of your content may be warmer and ready to buy.

    A warmer prospect might jump onto one of your webinars, get on a call with you or participate in a free trial for your product.  

    Hot

    A hot audience is a group of people that has already purchased a product from you.

    They are eager and ready to solve their problem and are the best prospects for your next product. They already know you and are convinced that you have the solution to their problem.

    A hot audience is hungry for your solution and ready to buy. They’ve already tried one of your products, so they know you deliver quality.

    Hot prospects are ready to buy, so you can send them into the Sales Stage of your funnel. Some educational content helps, but they don’t need as much nurturing because they already know you.

    Sales Funnel Stages

    Sales funnels consist of 4 stages:

    • Awareness Stage
    • Relationship Stage
    • Sales Stage
    • Upsell Stage

    Sending your audience through these stages converts cold prospects into paying customers of your products or services. They are also designed to maximize profits from each prospect.

    Let’s take a closer look at each sales funnel stage..

    Awareness Stage

    In the Awareness Stage, your goal is to make people aware that you exist and convince them to join your email list. Ask yourself these two questions:

    1. What’s the temperature of my audience?

    Audience temperature will affect how you market to your audience.

    For cold audiences, you can offer a PDF download that addresses their pain point or gets them curious about your content.

    The goal: To get people to join your email list so that you can keep communicating with them.

    For warm or hot audiences, you can use tactics like retargeting to get people to sign up for a longer webinar.

    Warm audiences already know you and have consumed your content. They are more likely to participate in a longer webinar that dives deeper into the solution for their problem.

    2. What lead magnet should I create to get people to join my email list?

    A good lead magnet will attract the right prospects. Getting them to join your email list will allow you to begin building a relationship with them.

    Think about what problem your audience wants to solve. Then create a lead magnet that helps them get closer to the solution.

    The Awareness Stage takes place at the top of the funnel (TOFU). The goal of this stage is to attract a relevant audience.

    During this stage, focus on lead generation.

    You want to let people know you exist and that you can create value for them. Create value for them by giving away educational content for free with a strong lead magnet.

    A good lead magnet should attract the right prospect, but it should also filter out the wrong people.

    Your goal is not necessarily to get the most leads, but instead to attract high quality leads. You want leads that will genuinely be interested in what you are selling.

    Lead magnets are usually PDF downloads or a content upgrade on a blog post. A blog post with content upgrade works well when targeting organic traffic. A landing page with a PDF download can work well with PPC traffic.

    People can download your lead magnet for free when they give you their email address.

    Here’s an example of a Wild Audience content upgrade page:

    5 Stages of Awareness

    When deciding on a lead magnet, there are 5 levels of awareness you need to keep in mind.

    1. Unaware – The person does not know that they have a problem.

    2. Problem Aware – The person knows they have a problem, but doesn’t know there are solutions to the problem.

    3. Solution Aware – A person knows there are solutions, but hasn’t chosen one and doesn’t know about your product.

    4. Product Aware – A person knows about your product, but isn’t sure that it totally solves their problem.

    5. Most Aware – A person knows a lot about your product. They are ready to buy, but need more details and specifics.

    Usually, you want to target cold audiences that are either product aware or solution aware. You can target audiences that are unaware, but doing so requires more content (to educate them and make them aware that they have a problem) before you can sell to them.

    Since you are approaching a cold audience, don’t try to pitch or sell your product right away. Instead, start by talking about their problem.

    At Wild Audience, we use bucketing and segmentation techniques during this stage. We ask questions to learn about their interests, goals, problems, budget, etc.

    Using the data we gather, we can personalize the experience in the Relationship Stage.

    So what channels can you use to generate leads?

    Here are a few examples:

    1. Run PPC video ads on Facebook or Instagram – Video is a great way to engage new prospects and show them who you are.

    2. Podcasting – Consider starting your own podcast or getting interviewed on other people’s podcasts.

    3. Blogging – Write your own articles to attract organic traffic from the search engines and social media.

    4. YouTube Channel – Creating video consistently can be a good way to connect with your target audience and tap into YouTube’s built in audience.

    5. Facebook groups – Being active in Facebook groups and other communities where your target audience hangs out can be a good way to generate leads. As people become familiar with your name, they will become curious and visit your website.

    Relationship Stage

    Once you have generated some leads, they are ready to enter the Relationship Stage. In this stage, you will grow a relationship with your audience by sharing helpful content for free.

    Would you like to see a visual representation of the different Relationship Funnel stages? Click the image below to download my free Relationship Funnel graphic.

    When designing the Relationship Stage, you should ask yourself a few questions:

    1. What is the best way to communicate with my audience to build relationships and install buying beliefs?

    Some options include email, bots and ads. Most people will focus on email marketing, but other channels may also be worth exploring.

    2. How can I introduce my unique mechanism?

    Think about how, when and where you’ll introduce any unique or original ideas to your audience. Your unique mechanism separates you from other competitors.

    Please note that your business’s product is not its unique mechanism. A unique mechanism is the unique way that your product or service delivers its benefit to your customers.

    At Wild Audience, Relationship Funnels and Respect Based Marketing are two examples of unique mechanisms.

    3. Think about what your customer avatar needs to believe before they will buy from you.

    Define your belief system. A belief system is a set of beliefs that a person must have before they will buy.

    There are usually 10-20 beliefs that you must install into your prospects before they will buy from you.

    Once you’ve defined your belief system, do belief mapping. Map your beliefs into your funnel stages by asking yourself in which stages will you install which beliefs.

    After your prospect joins your email list (which happens TOFU), they will enter the middle of the funnel (MOFU).

    In this stage, you will focus on lead nurturing. The goal of this stage is to turn cold leads into a warm audience by building the relationship, gaining trust and establishing authority.

    Continue to install all the necessary buying beliefs in your messaging. Your prospects should have all the right buying beliefs installed before your move them into the Sales Stage.

    Research from Hubspot shows that “companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads and those leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured lead”.

    Sometimes, this stage is viewed as the most complicated stage in the funnel because most businesses attract a broad diversity of leads that haven’t been fully qualified.

    At Wild Audience, we excel at lead nurturing. Why?

    Because we invented the Relationship Funnel where we combine human psychology with smart automation so that we can build relationships on autopilot.

    Relationship Funnels (RF) make this stage easier. We pre-qualify leads through our lead bucketing system.

    Based on what answers they selected on our opt-in survey, we can send them through a more customized content path. We can personalize our content towards each bucket of people.

    Relationship Funnels (RF) allow you to offer relevant and personalized information. It uses a Respect-Based Marketing approach to bond with your audience.

    Using permission based marketing and delivering personalized content can boost engagement rates significantly. Here are some examples of results our customers received using RF:

    – Matias went from having a 16% email open rate and 1.7% click rate to 84% open rate and 58% click rate

    – Mubaid achieved a 90% email open rate and 80% click rate

    Although you are focusing on educating your prospects during this stage, you should also be positioning your unique mechanism as the solution to your lead’s problems.

    Become their trusted advisor by providing great content. But also install all the necessary buying beliefs so that they see your unique mechanism as the solution to their problem.

    You need a marketing automation tool during to successfully implement this stage. Some tools include ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign and InfusionSoft, but we at Wild Audience (along with 50,000 other businesses) use Wild Mail.

    Combining relationship building with automation allows us to get higher ROI in the Sales Stage.

    Sales Stage

    Once you’ve built the relationship and installed buying beliefs, you are finally ready to sell. You’ve attracted and nurtured your leads, so you are now in the BOFU (bottom of the funnel) where you can make your sale.

    Start off by deciding on a selling event. Ask yourself, what’s the best way to get your customer to buy?

    Some commonly used selling events include:

    • Getting your prospect on a phone call
    • Webinars
    • Sales pages
    • VSLs.

    In this stage, your audience is already warm and ready for you to hear your offer. They believe that your unique mechanism is the solution to their problem.

    In some cases, your lead may be so warm that they will even reach out to you and offer to give you money:

    At this stage, your leads already know you and your solution. If you did a good job of installing buying beliefs, closing should be easier regardless of whether you use a VSL, sales page, webinar or other selling event.

    Here are a few examples of how you can close prospects and get the sale:

    1. Sales Page – A sales page can be a text-based sales page, VSL or a combination of both. A sales page is a great way to sell lower priced products.

    Here’s an example of a text-based sales page.

    2. Webinars – Another popular selling event is webinars. Webinars can be either live or evergreen.

    Some advantages of webinars is that they allows you to demonstrate your product and form a deeper connection with people. You can also answer questions and address objections if you are doing a live webinar.

    Here’s an example of one of my webinar sign up pages.

    3. Call – Getting prospects on a live call is another way to close a sale. You can offer free strategy sessions, prequalify prospects or engage in a discovery session with your prospect.

    This approach is best used for consulting and high ticket items because calls take up your valuable time.

    Here’s an example of a page that I use to get consulting calls.

    4. Trials – Free or inexpensive trials can be a good way to sell software products or memberships. This approach lets customers try out your product or service and if they like it, they will convert into regular customers.

    Bonus Tip: At Wild Audience, we use lead scoring to measure the temperature of our audience members (based on their behaviour) so that we can present the right offer at the right time. This is called behavioural-based pitching.

    Upsell Stage

    Most businesses are happy when they get a paying customer, but don’t stop there!

    To maximize profits from our funnel, we need to include upsells and cross-sells.

    The question we need to ask ourselves during this stage is “what is the best way to upsell to our customers”?

    Email sequences and ads are a couple of options.

    If you’ve done a good job on the previous 3 stages and built a relationship with your customer, then the hard part of the upselling stage is already done.

    Your goal in this stage is to increase the customer lifetime value (CLV) of your customers. As long as you continue to provide them value, they will purchase from you again.

    So what’s the difference between cross-selling and upselling?

    When you cross-sell, you offer your customer the next logical step. A cross-sell is usually a complementary product or service.

    An upsell is often a more expensive premium service or package.

    Think about cross-sell and upsell ideas that complement your current product. Upselling should be the next logical step if your customers want to scale their results.

    A few practical examples..1. Send them an email sequence – Now that they’ve bought from you, send them into a new email sequence. This sequence can provide new information, install new buying beliefs and offer a new product to take your customers to the next level.

    2. Add them into an evergreen ad retargeting funnel – Previous customers are more likely to buy than cold prospects, so targeting customers with evergreen ads can be a good way to get them to check out other products you have.

    Your customers already know you, so you don’t have to send them through an RBS. You can often send them directly to your sales page or webinar signup.

    3. Call them – Getting a customer on a live call can be a good way to sell a more expensive package or consulting service. Another advantage of live calls is that you can also get feedback on your customer’s experiences with you and your products.

    If you want to learn how to build a Relationship Funnel in 9 steps, download your PDF below.

    To Sum It Up

    There’s a natural way to build relationships with people online..

    Would you ask someone to marry you after a first date?

    Probably not.. because you haven’t built a relationship yet.

    Unfortunately, most people approach selling by trying to get a big selling commitment without building a relationship first. They have a “sales-first” mentality, but that approach usually doesn’t work.

    Building relationships in a natural way also works in business.

    So here’s my call to action for you today.

    Commit to treating your customers like your best first date. And the way to do that is with Respect-Based Marketing.

    Your goal with Respect-Based Marketing should be to create a genuine relationship with people by showcasing your personality. Show them that you are focused on providing value first before trying to close a sale.

    If you do that, then your long-term ROI, sales and conversions will be higher than you ever thought possible.

    Hope you enjoyed this article and let me know what you think in the comments below.

    Grow your business by building authentic relationships with marketing automation.

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