George Kao explains why he dislikes traditional marketing/sales funnels. He describes how funnels use a low-priced "tripwire" product to trigger a sequence of upsells that can escalate to very expensive coaching programs, argues this creates a hidden-motive dynamic that makes customers defensive, and advocates a simpler, transparent approach: generous free content plus a single clearly-priced coaching offering (and an optional external paid course).
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Hi, this is George Kao, and in today's short video I want to talk with you about the idea of a marketing or sales funnel. You probably have experienced it yourself, you may have even heard of it. But the idea of a marketing funnel is that you get someone, a website visitor, to opt into your email list for something free. And then, you know, after they opt in, maybe you give them a couple of emails of helpful information and then shortly, or pretty soon, pretty quickly, at some point, you try to sell them a low priced product. In the marketing world, this low priced product is unfortunately called a trip wire. Literally a trip wire. And the reason why it's called a tripwire is because let's say they buy a $97 ebook or even a $7 thing, something low price, whatever low price means for your market. And then the tripwire then alerts your marketing system to start sending, selling them more and more expensive things. So they first buy the, you know, $97 info product and then, you know, maybe they, you know, you deliver that info product, maybe you deliver a couple more free emails and then you sell them the $297, you know, video series and then you deliver that, and you deliver a few more things and then you, if they bought that, that alerts your marketing systems. All right, this is a good prospect. Now you would try, let's try to sell them a $597 group coaching program. Okay, they bought that. Great. Eventually they keep selling you higher and higher priced items until you're being pitched with a $10,000 one year coaching program and eventually a $25,000 or $100,000. Yes, there are $100,000 coaching programs out there. People have to mortgage, get a second mortgage on their house to buy those things. As you can probably tell from my tone here, it's not what I like or recommend. A lot of my peers, a lot of my previous former business friends do this and do this very, very successfully. They're very rich and wealthy because they get people to go into these funnels and sell more and more and more. Why I don't love it is that there's an ulterior motive to the funnel. That's the whole point from the beginning is I'm trying to sell someone more and more stuff. And so if I get them in the funnel, if I get them to the tripwire product, then the low price and then the middle price, the whole thing is based on hidden motive because if the customer knew from the very beginning, oh, this person's gonna try to sell me on this, this and this and this and this. Then they guess what, they're probably gonna be naturally defensive. Why would they be naturally defensive? Because nobody likes to be treated that way. And one common rationale maybe, or one common innocent rationale for the marketing funnels. Well, isn't it just like education? You know, you go into first grade and because they, they have an ulterior motive to get you to second grade and then the third. Well, there's no ulterior motive. Everyone knows what the path is. But imagine if, you know, a kid goes in the first grade and then you know without knowing it when they go in the second grade, the second grade teacher says, all right, if you want to go to second grade now you got to pay $97. Okay? It's like, whoa, really? Okay, $97, no big deal. They go to the third grade and then the teacher says, all right, if you're going to go to third grade, you got to pay $297. So there's no, there's no clear path for the customer on how much they have to pay. So the customer always feels defensive and kind of afraid, like, oh my God, if I opt in here, are they going to keep trying to sell me more and more if I buy this, are going to try to sell me more? So I don't believe in marketing funnels. What I do, however, is a very simple two step, if you can call it marketing funnel, education, very simple two step. You come and consume my free content. I even have my. I only sell one thing, my coaching program. Actually, I sell two things now. I sell an online paid course through the SHIFT network, but that's really more like their project and they want me to teach. And I don't really consider my product necessarily, but I sell one thing, which is my coaching program. And my prices are even available on my website. So you know that at some point, if you want to work with me, you can buy my coaching program. If you don't, I'm very honest and generous and say you can consume as much free content as you want. Because I know that most people in my audience will never become my clients. And that's okay with me. I want to serve people. So simple, two step, free stuff. And a single product is my favorite way of doing it. It's transparent, it's generous, it's of service. So anyway, I hope this helps. I'm always open to your questions. This video went a little longer than expected, but until the next video, I wish you well.
