This is an article I’ve been pumped to write for a while. If you want to see how you can produce an incredibly simple, 2 step funnel that literally prints cash… read on.
Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me explain how this happened…
Backstory:
It was November, 2016 and I was speaking at a marketing event in Phuket, Thailand.
At this event, I met Leanne from Mind Over Muffin. She had a 1 on 1 coaching program to help women overcome emotional eating.
Now, at the time, her program was $3,000 and it went for 8 weeks. She would get on the phone for a 1 on 1 session, once per week with each client – which as you can imagine – was a massive drain on her resources.
When we met, I told her she needed to move her $3,000 program to $5,000 and create a leveraged group program for $3,000.
She would provide one webinar training per week and a Membership Site to deliver all of her content.
Initially, she was a little bit freaked out by this massive step up in what she needed to do.
But to give her massive credit – as she is a large part of why this campaign was so successful – she took it on board and did the one thing that most people never do… she took massive action.
When I arrived back in Melbourne in December 2016 – we started working together. 12 months later – the SAME campaign was still running and producing incredible results, which were:
– 5,165 Leads
– 302 Strategy Calls
– $21,352.82 Ad spend
– $132,500 Sales
All of this, from a program she hadn’t even created when we met. She also kept her 1 on 1 clients at a higher price and has since started running exotic retreats in Bali.
Pretty cool stuff.
So… maybe you’re a coach wondering how you can generate qualified strategy sessions?
Perhaps you have a different kind of business and you’re looking for inspiration?
Or, you could be another marketer looking to steal my work for free calling yourself a “funnel hacker” so you can make money with it…
Either way – read this blog to the end and I’ll share with you exactly what I did, so you can achieve similar results.
1. Strategy
When it comes to generating more leads and sales with marketing, strategy is incredibly important. Far too many people, are attempting to sell their offers and programs to cold traffic – as in, people that have never heard of them before.
With the correct strategy in place and the right marketing funnel – it’s possible to convert cold traffic with your offer.
So… when I start to develop a strategy – we get crystal clear on the end goal. “What do we want to achieve with this marketing campaign?”.
In this case, Leanne wanted to make sales into her $3,000 group program. In this program, Leanne helps women overcome Emotional Eating, and teaches them how to deal with cravings, and make the right food choices, so they can have the body of their dreams.
Leanne helped women under 40 in Australia achieve a body transformation through her program. As I had experience with this market from the webinar funnel I built – I was already ahead of the game.
I knew this would be a really good market to target on Facebook, and I also knew we could generate quick results.
This time however, I decided to go for a different funnel strategy. Instead of using a webinar, I decided to make a simple opt-in funnel, where the prospect could book a call with Leanne directly on the second page.
Now… why did I do this?
Simple.
1) By creating a new program for Leanne and increasing her prices dramatically, I was already stretching her out of her comfort zone somewhat. I knew there were other ways to generate great results without her also having to learn how to create a webinar and close attendees into a call.
2) This would be much faster to build. As always – nothing is guaranteed in marketing. I wanted to test a simpler to funnel to see if we could generate sales – if not, we could do something else. But if we did… we could scale it and drive massive revenue growth with minimal hassle.
So – here is a diagram with the funnel structure. As you can see, it’s quite basic:
I call it the 1,2,3 Knockout Funnel for Coaches because its just 3 simple steps.Now, whenever I create a Marketing Strategy, I will always breakdown the metrics so I know what I’m aiming for. This is a process I learned from my good mate Ricky Baldasso from Metric Driven Marketer – if you go here you can check out his funnel ROI calculators.
So… whenever I have a strategy session funnel, I will typically aim to pay $100 for a call. However, in this case, my expectation was to pay $50 per call.
Why is that?
Well, for starters, the person opting in for the call didn’t need to go through a full application process, like they did in Niyc’s funnel here – which did $100k in sales in the first month.
As the level of resistance for the prospect is lower, I expect a higher conversion rate.
On top of that, the niche is much less competitive than the business coaching / consulting space, so I know I can get away with a much lower cost per call.
So – with a goal of $50 per call in mind, I calculate the rest:
Cost Per Strategy Call = $50
Strategy Call Page Conversion Rate = 10%
Cost Per Opt In = $5
With this I had my goals.
Essentially, this means I can afford to pay $5 per lead on the front end of the funnel, as long as I convert 10% on the second page – I will hit my goal.
One thing to note here is, I always tell my clients that the goal of a marketing campaign when you sell a high ticket product (over $2,000), is to generate a 10X ROI on your marketing spend.
So – if you sell your program for $3,000, you can afford to spend $300 to acquire a client and still make 10X.
If you can spend $300 to acquire a client, and you pay $50 per strategy call, you only need to convert 1 in 6 to make 10x.
If you convert 1 in 3, you’ll make 20X. But if you pay $100 per call, you MUST enrol 1 in 3 people into your program for your 10X ROI.
I’m sure you get my point.
To recap however:
$3,000 Program
$300 Cost per Customer Acquisition (for 10X ROI)
16% of Sales Calls Closed (1 in 6 calls)
$50 Strategy Call (to get $300 CPA)
10% of Leads Book a Call
$5 Leads
This will make more sense when you see the funnel, but understand that these are the baseline numbers I aim for. That way, I can review how they look further down the track and go from there.
2. Build
After mapping the strategy and metrics out, its time to get down and dirty. For this, we used Clickfunnels as the landing page builder and Active Campaign for Email Marketing / CRM.
When we started working together, Leanne already had an eBook that she had written we could immediately use. I’m a big believer in using the marketing assets you already have available at your disposal, as long as they fit into the strategy, so you can generate sales quickly.
It never ceases to amaze me when people talk about marketing and advertising, but their first and primary concern ISN’T making money. Like… what the hell else are we doing it for folks?
But that’s a rant for another time.
Leanne had the eBook created, so the only tweak I made was to the headline. She called the book: “3 Secret Steps to Stop Eating When You’re Stressed, Bored, Overwhelmed or Wanting Happiness”.
I kept the cover exactly the same, but tweaked the headline slightly for the landing page and ads. I changed it to: “3 Secrets to Crush Emotional Eating when Stressed, Bored or Overwhelmed”.
As a copywriter first and foremost, there are 3 changes I made and here’s why:
1) I took out ‘steps’ – it fits in perfectly, but it’s unnecessary and just adds length to the cover that doesn’t need to be there.
2) I removed “wanting happiness” – due to the ‘power of 3’ rule. Have you ever noticed how when we tell a joke, the punchline is always on the third point? It’s been proven time and time again, that when it comes to persuasion and influence, having only 3 options, or punchlines, or adjectives in a sentence is far more powerful than 2, 4 or any other number. You can read about it in this Business Insider article. So I just took out the last point, as the headline flows better.
3) I changed ‘Stop Eating’ to ‘Crush Emotional Eating’. This is for a few reasons. For starters, Crush is far more powerful as a word than Stop. Likewise, Emotional Eating is the specific problem we want to address – and we want to attract people that are aware of that problem.
Now, with that finished, I set about building the landing page for the start of the funnel – and I followed a specific format:
1. Clear Header with logo and branding displayed
2. Headline, Call to Action Button and Image related to the Offer
3. Bullet Points explaining the Offer. Here I will always have the 3 – 4 biggest benefits the prospect will receive when they opt in. I finish this with a Call to Action.
4. Testimonials from Existing Clients. For this, we used Leanne’s current 1 on 1 clients.
5. Call To Action Bar
6. Bio of Leanne – you can see both of these if you want to view the landing page here.
It really is that simple. I used a mixture of on brand colours for the landing page to make all of the copy contrast well and help to improve conversions.
Now, on to the consult page.
In terms of design, you can see we went with pale, brand consistent colours with simple and easy to read font. Most importantly, we maintained congruency with the landing page to maintain trust for the entire customer journey through the funnel.
This may seem obvious, but you’d be amazed at the amount of time I see horrendous landing page design with hard to read font.
With this page, I want to break down the important psychological elements in the copy and why it’s been written this way. It’s very similar to the consult page I create for this funnel here.
Make sure you read the article. It’s another example of how the same offer can work for different people in the same market. You just need to figure out what that offer is.
Anyway:
1. Acknowledgement: Always acknowledge the action a prospect has taken, before making another offer. Simply just congratulate them, and then position your upgraded offer, which in this case is the strategy call. If you ignore this one line of copy, it can drastically affect your conversion rate.
2. Bridge: The next step is to ‘bridge’ them to the new offer. For this funnel, we simply said – “Now what?… if you’re like me, once you’ve made a decision to change something… You want to get a head-start, right?”. To drive someone to take action, you tease them with the idea of solving the pain they are having much sooner.
3. Offer & Call To Action: I will next present the offer, which in this case is a 1 on 1 Emotional Eating Audit, where Leanne helps her clients breakthrough whatever is holding them back with their diet, before offering them more help in her program. The Call To Action is placed twice throughout this.
4. You’ll Walk Away With: After this first CTA, there are bullet points in the next section that highlight the specific benefits of the call, to further entice the prospect, before the final CTA button.
5. Testimonials: Again, Testimonials are placed on this page, that show the results Leanne’s clients have received as a result of working with her. Below this we place another Call to Action, just like the landing page had. It’s important to add as many as possible.
6. Bio and Final CTA: Again – Leanne’s bio is added at the bottom of the page to further solidify her credibility and build trust with the prospect.
If a prospect opts in for a phone call, they would then reach the final thank you page. Now, it’s worth noting that if they go straight through the funnel and opt in, they haven’t actually been indoctrinated about Leanne or any of her work properly.
The good news is – this is to be expected. When a prospect goes through such a simple process – the sale will likely be more difficult. However, the price per call will be a lot cheaper, so it’s a great place to start for most coaches.
3. Facebook Campaign
As always, I run Facebook traffic to my funnels. In this section, I break the ads in terms of the main two critical factors – Creatives Targeting.
Creatives
Given the offer on the front end of the funnel, which was: “3 Secrets to Crush Emotional Eating when Stressed, Bored or Overwhelmed” – the ad was always going to follow a very similar format.
Now, when I first launched the ads, we actually had a lot of trouble getting reach. No matter what I tried, manual bidding, automatic, different placements, Facebook would not serve the ads. Eventually, I shortened the ad copy down to just a few lines and this worked the trick.
It was weird, because they didn’t ban or disapprove the ad, they just obviously stopped serving it and had an issue with it. This is most likely due to the fact the ad mentioned “emotional eating” – as dieting is a sensitive topic when it comes to Facebook’s ad policy.
Either way – this is what the ad looked like:
I initially had slightly longer copy.
However after taking out the body of the copy where I talked about the pain around emotional eating and weight loss – the ad got approved and started reaching the intended audience.
I tested a few different images however – as you’ll see when you reach the results below – the results were very conclusive from the get go.
Targeting
When I launched the conversion campaign – I started out with 3 ad sets. I had one interest in each audience I was targeting, which included:
– I Quit Sugar
– Michelle Bridges: 12 Week Body Transformation
– Weight Watchers
After launching, I will always extensively test interests. I will look at demographics from within each audience of an interest.
Does a certain age bracket, or area, or device convert better for each interest? If it is relevant, I will look at gender data too.
Once the campaign got going, I set up a retargeting ad set, and an audience that included anyone who had visited Leanne’s website. Naturally, the website visitors were far cheaper than the cold, interest based audiences.
We then launched the campaign – It was December 2016 when this began.
4. Results
This is truly one of my favourite campaigns. We literally ran it for nearly one year, with minimal changes. Just management, optimisation and testing. But the core part of the funnel stayed the same – which shows how truly powerful it is when you have a solid strategy.
Here are the Facebook Results from December 1, 2016 to December 1, 2017:
As you can see, from Facebook’s ad manager, we generated 6,430 leads at $3.32 per lead – a total ad spend of $21,352.82.
You can also see that 432 strategy calls were booked at $49.43 per session:
Now… if you’ve read this far, you are probably thinking – but those numbers are different to the ones in the headline James?
And yes – you are correct. Because here’s the thing:
Facebook’s pixel is sometimes inaccurate, so you need to check how many leads and calls actually came into the system, which is why I always cross reference it with Clickfunnels.
As you can see, this show’s the actual reality:
5,165 Leads, 302 Strategy Calls. The conversion rate for the landing page was 67.45% and for the call page was 6.13%. This changes the overall metrics. We know these Clickfunnels values are accurate because the actual leads contact information is attached to Clickfunnels.
On top of that, here is the growth of Leanne’s email list as shown across the same time period in Active Campaign.
2502.14% growth.
When we started working together in December 2016, her email list had 281 people. Today it has over 7,300 – which is a staggering result. A whole new list of warm prospects that she can nurture and sell to for life. Although I must note that about 2,000 of those came from other marketing sources.
Very cool.
So – to recap the metrics:
Ad spend: $21,352.82
Strategy Calls: 302
Cost per Call: $70.70
Leads: 5,165
Cost per Lead: $4.13
Sales: $128,500
I want to explain something here that is very relevant in this case. Leanne put a lot of work into sales and closing people into her program. I am proud to admit, that this is one of the main reasons this funnel was successful. Leanne made $96,000 from selling the course she created, and the remaining $32,500 from upgrading some of these clients into retreats she ran. Leanne is truly amazing and deserves a tonne of credit for booking the sales calls and closing them. She’s a superstar!
5. Analysis
Looking back at this campaign now, there are 3 reasons why it worked so well.
1. Crystal clear market with a solid offer
Leanne new her market well and was already generating massive results. This made it easy to create an offer that appealed to the market.
2. Great Marketing with the right strategy & a concise message
The marketing strategy was perfect for this niche. The message resonated with consumers in this market, which made them interested in both Leanne and the subject matter. The marketing, being well executed, lead them to take action.
3. Strong sales focused on helping other people
As I said – Leanne is great at sales and empowering people to take action, which makes a massive difference to the end result of this kind of marketing funnel.
Anyway – I hope you enjoyed this post! That’s all for now.
Let me know your thoughts and comments below.
JH