Flow & Guidance
Everyone knows what a funnel looks like. Wide at the top and narrow and restricted at the bottom.
Try pouring a bucket of water into a bottle without a funnel. You'll get a horrible mess!
When you use a funnel you capture the water at top and guide it into the bottle.
Funnel marketing follows the same fundamentals as pouring liquid in a funnel. It "captures" suspects in the top and flows customers (associates, leaders etc) into your business.
Sifting and Sorting
Remembering Ten Stages of Qualification from Marketing 101...
- Suspects: Everyone who does not fall into one of the following stages
- Prospect: When a suspect responds to your marketing
- Contact: When you have their contact details
- Lead: When you have a contact interest profile
- Customer: They buy something from you
- Client: They buy more than once
- Champion: They refer others to your products
- Affiliate: They earn money for their referrals
- Associate: They repeatedly earn affiliate income
- Leader: They teach others the process
A marketing funnel effectively sorts suspects into prospects, contacts, clients etc.
There will always be more prospects than customers and more associates than leaders. That's just the numbers pan out.
Working the Numbers
COLD marketing begins with Suspects. You create lists of people who MIGHT be interested in your product.
You place advertisements and hope people respond. Some do. They become prospects. Some of those prospects become contacts and leads. A even smaller number might become customers or better.
There are MANY more suspects than contacts or leads. Hundreds or thousands of times more.
WARM marketing begins with Leads. These are the people you know and you already know a bit (or a lot) about.
Most of your friends are Leads. You have things in common. That's why they are friends. They are the easiest ones to talk to about your product (or business).
Someone who you only occasionally see or talk to is more likely to be a contact. Because you don't know much about them. Contacts might be people you see at work, church or the farmer's market.
Example:
Here is a sample funnel, showing the ten stages of qualification and how the numbers might relate.
- 100,000 Suspects
- 10,000 Prospects
- 1,000 Contacts
- 100 Leads
- 20 Customers
- 10 Clients
- 5 Champions
- 3 Affiliates
- 2 Associates
- 1 Leader
In network marketing businesses your Champions often become Affiliates an Associates.
Which Would YOU Prefer?
- Scan through 100,000 suspects (cold names) from an internet spam list
- Spend thousands of dollars advertising for prospects
- Spend hundreds of hours trying to contact them
- Creating your list of leads
- Hunting for that "one in a million"?
OR...?
- Contact 100 leads (people you already know and like)
- Send them some info that they will probably review
- Have a chat with them and talk about life...
- Register 5-10 of them into the business
- Work with people you already know and like
- Go on holidays with a few of them
Funnel Marketing Rules
- Science and numbers win out over guesswork.
- The goal is to maximize each stage of the process.
- Small increases in each step can multiply into huge gains.
- Use a well structured system.
- Track everything (metrics)