How to Build a Marketing Funnel That Works
If you don’t know what a “marketing funnel” is - or as I like to call it, a “freedom funnel” - you may be wondering if you’re in the right place. And if you’re a creative entrepreneur (read: make a living from your creative expertise or service) who is tired of the same old grind and is looking for a little more freedom, welcome!
Are you ready to try something new and build a creative business that finally gives you nights and weekends off the clock?
Please say yes — it’s so worth it and you deserve it. For years, I couldn’t go on vacation without lugging along my laptop, and I was so worn out from logging on during my off-hours. Running a creative business is a labor of love, don’t get me wrong. But it does not have to be as all-consuming as it is right now.
This is where your freedom funnel (aka marketing funnel) comes into place.
What is a freedom funnel?
It’s everything you never knew you needed. Expanding your business is not an easy journey, but it can be simplified through automation.
Instead of relying on social media for all of your leads, create one amazing lead magnet and build a freedom funnel to support it. Just one freedom funnel can bring you growth, nourishment, and sales.
A marketing funnel — more simply known as a freebie followed up by a string of scheduled, automated emails — can help support the long term growth of your business and give you freedom to log off and go on vacation.
Okay, I’m interested. How does it work?
Start thinking about your high-value content. What valuable, skills, knowledge, and expertise do you have to share?
Now work from the other end: what does your target customer want? How does that align with your skillset and your company?
Find a way to combine the two, and turn that into something that will bring in your target audience and benefit them. Then, create a freebie with that in mind. Once your audience “buys into” your content and signs up for your freebie, your freedom funnel does the rest of the work.
Set up a cadence of emails — or what email marketers call a “nurture sequence” — that anyone who downloads the freebie will receive. It’s really easy to set them up by using an online tool like Flodesk. Use my referral link for 50% off your first year. Your nurture sequence should include a few instances where you promote your latest offer or business services.
Once you’ve created your freebie and your email sequence, you can start driving traffic to your freebie from Instagram, your blog, Pinterest - basically wherever you come in contact with your target customer or client!
So…do I actually need one?
Short answer, heck yes! And my long answer is yes, but…this isn’t an easy way out. It’s an easier way to reach your ideal customers without over-exhausting yourself. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to work hard, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to actively grow your business, and it doesn’t mean you don’t have to reach out to potential customers.
The analogy I use to explain this is that if you are driving the car and the car is your business, you might run out of gas, you might get passed by a few times, and you might even decide to hand the keys over to someone else at some point along the way. But in order to get to your dream destination: you have to be in this car.
You can’t be on the couch with your feet kicked up and wondering why the car is still stuck in Kansas. It’s there because you left it there!
And here’s one more really, really, big tip. If you have a freebie set up and a marketing funnel in place but it’s not converting, it may be time to have a heart to heart with your target customer and make sure your freebie actually addresses their needs and desires. Listen to your audience. Change up the language you’re using in the title or try a new freebie new altogether.
Running a successful business requires a lot of heart and a whole lot of effort. If it was easy, everyone would do it and we’d all have oodles of zeros in our bank accounts. ;)
