#16 - Q&A - All your funnel Qs answered

And you think that magically this pocket of free time will just open up and you're like, right, that is when I'm going to go and create my funnel. And that's not the case. I've yet to see this magic pocket of time ever eventuate. The truth is, you've got to make that pocket of time for anything that you want to create in your business.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd, Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking, nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey. Hey, everybody. It is Kate McKibbon here and welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. This is episode 16 and this is a special Q and A episode. Today I'm going to answer all your funnel questions. So you may have or you may not have noticed that currently the doors are open to my amazing 5K funnel formula program, but not for much longer. And this is a special live four week fast start edition of the program, which means we'll be creating, testing and automating your course sales together over just four weeks, which is so exciting. I love, love, love getting to, you know, roll up my sleeves, get in there and help people get their funnels so sorted. But of course, I've been getting lots of questions around setting up funnels, who they work best for, how long it takes, what tech you need, all of it. So I wanted to jump in and answer them for you today so you have all of the info that you need to Decide if our 5k funnel formula program is right for you. And you can jump in today before the doors close on October 22, US time. And that's October 23, Aussie time. So I actually asked on IG stories the other day, what were the top cues that people wanted A's for with all things funnels and these were some of their responses. So hopefully, guys, if you had a question, this is going to answer it for you. So the first one we had is from Sam. Hi, Sam. And Sam is saying, what is the right time in business to start a funnel? And I love this question because I think this is actually something that most people get wrong or not so much wrong. But I think most people assume that the right time to funnel is when you are, you're really far along in business when you already have, you know, thousands and thousands of followers and you've already making like multiple six figures and you've already got so many other pieces of the puzzle organized and done, and you think that magically this pocket of free time will just open up and you're like, right, that is when I'm going to go and create my funnel. And that's not the case. I've yet to see this magic pocket of time ever eventuate. The truth is you got to make that pocket of time for anything that you want create in your business. But the other truth that I think not everyone knows is that actually if you get a funnel set up earlier in your business, it's going to help you to grow faster. So my answer to this question is really, as soon as you can. There's only one prerequisite for getting a funnel like that you have to have in place before you think about creating a funnel, and that is you have to have a program or an offer that you're going to be able to deliver on Evergreen. If you still haven't figured out the exactly how to take a live offer and turn Evergreen, that's totally fine inside the program. That's one of the modules where we help you show you how you can do that. But you have to have something that you're going to be able to sell online and that you've sold before. Because my sort of strategy, I guess, or the. My ethos for all things funnels is that you always test before you invest. So when you go through the program, at each stage, we get you to sign of create something and then go and test it and make sure it works. Because there's absolutely no point in going, oh, I'm going to, I want to have a funnel. So I'm going to create a product and then create the funnel and then just see if it works. Because you won't actually know which bits did work and which bits didn't work. So I say that 10 times fast. Unless you've, you've step by step created and tested each one. If you just set this thing up and you don't know whether it's the offer that's not working or it's the, you know, the emails that aren't working, or it's the. Your sales mechanism which isn't working. If you just, yeah, if it's all untested, then that's just recipe for disaster. So long story short is as long as you have an offer already that you have successfully sold, it doesn't have to have been a hit the ball out of the park Successfully sold a lot of my best clients, actually, the reason that they went, oh, bugger, I'm just going to try a funnel is because they've been trying to get launches happening for so long and the launches just weren't working. And then, you know, we were able to make some tweaks, take their offer, make it more funnel friendly. That's all about funnel friendly offers. And they set up a funnel and their offer actually sold better on a funnel. So sometimes, you know, that's why I'm like, don't wait until you've got a perfect launch. Don't wait till you've got tens of thousands of people on your email list. Sure, if you have those things, it's also great. And yes, you'll also be able to capitalize off these assets you've already created. But if you don't have them yet, that's totally fine too. And the thing is, once you've got your funnel set up, as you grow, the funnel will grow with you. Um, and it will, you know, maybe when you first get it set up, it maybe makes you a handful of sales every month. That's still a handful of sales you wouldn't have gotten before. Right? And there's a handful of sales you get without having to do anything and without having to even spend any money. Because this can be off the organic traffic that you are already driving just by creating the blog posts you're already creating and doing, you know, the social media posting that you're already doing and sending the emails that you're already sending. So this is. Sorry, I've gone off on a tangent, but to answer your question, when is the best time to create a funnel? The best time is as soon as you can, as long as you have an offer that you know, sells.

Hey guys, it's just Kate here. So first of all, I just had to quickly stop by and say thank you so, so much for listening to and supporting my brand new podcast. It really means the world to me. And to help kick this puppy off with a real bang, I actually have an amazing free bonus just for you, Gu, which is I'm giving away access to my five day mini business accelerator workshop worth $97 totally for free to everyone who leaves a five star review of the Doing It Online podcast on itunes right now. This five day workshop walks you through creating your own killer online business plan for your online course business. One that is scalable, profitable and enjoyable too. It's chock full of my very best lessons and strategies from over 13 years online and Today it's yours for free. All you have to do is step one, open up iTunes, click on this podcast, click write, review, and then click those little five stars and share what you love most about the show. Step two, head to katesbonus.com that's K A T E S B O-N-U S.com Kate's bonus and pop in your contact details and itunes account name so we can know the review is from you and we can send you your login details for your bonus. It's that simple. Step one, leave a five star review. Step two, head to Kate's Bonus.com and send us your details. And that's it. And as an extra little thank you, I will be choosing my favorite reviews every week and sending that lucky reviewer an exclusive I do it online mug so you can sip along in style while you listen to your favorite show. So what are you waiting for? Hit pause, go leave that review, then head over to katesbonus.com, pop in your details and claim this amazing five day workshop for yourself. I'll see you inside.

All right, so the next question is from Kaya. Kaya, I hope I've said that right. And her question is, she says, I am a relationships coach. Is a funnel going to work for my offer? So yes, yes, yes, yes. So basically, if whatever it is that you, your offer is about, if it is out there helping people, then and it's able, you know, it's available to be sold online, then yes, a funnel will work. There's no, you know, we've had people who teach people how to crochet, who teach people how to ride horses. We've also had nutritionists and yoga teachers and, you know, we've got marketing strategists and Pinterest experts and, you know, all, you know, the whole gamut of different types of online coaches and experts and service providers. As long as you have a product that you've successfully sold, you can then put that product into a funnel. Next question is from lovely Heidi. Hi, Heidi. And her question is, I have a membership site. It's only $19 a month. Is this something that would work with a funnel? So again, this is actually one of the things I really love doing. When we first, when you first jump into the program, one of the very first pieces that we workshop and we spend a bit of time on is making your offer what I call funnel friendly. And that includes making it something that's gonna be super easy to sell. So it's like an easy Hells yes for your clients and it's also something that's going to be profitable. And we talk about, you know, different ways of scaling when you have different models. But basically, the end of the day, we want you to be able to set up an offer that is going to be able to be profitable, not just when you use organic traffic, also when you start to add in some paid traffic, because that's how you're going to be able to grow faster and faster again. So my methodology is, as I said, get it set up, get it tested, and have this basically set up so it can work on the traffic that you already have, no spend required. But most people, I would say 99% of people, once they get that up and working, they're like, okay, great, more please. And then we sort of start walking you through how to start scaling, how to really go in depth with the scaling. That's ecourse empires. We take you through that. Why it's a bit more of an involved program. Why it's a longer program other than four weeks, but inside 5K funnel, you get that funnel set up and you start to be able to scale it and you kind of have the plan of what to go and do beyond there. And with the membership site, we've got heaps of people come through with membership sites, and we're able to show you how to really best craft your offer for your membership site, even for a lower ticket, you know, 19amonth. That can absolutely work in a funnel. It can absolutely be profitable in a funnel, even with paid traffic. I've seen it already. So. Yes, yes, yes. Low ticket, absolutely. Next question is actually the opposite of this is from Tori, and Tori says, my offer is 3-999-SO-3999. Will that work in a funnel? I don't want to have to do sales calls. So absolutely. Anyway, if you'd asked me this question a year ago, I would have said, oh, no, you'll probably still need to do sales calls. But, you know, I myself have an offer that's $5,000 that is working completely automated in a funnel with no sales calls. And we've been discussing that in the program, and I'm actually looking to add a little bit of an extra bonus training on that into the program because it's just a small switch around how you craft, you know, a certain part of the funnel that makes it work for higher ticket offers just as well as lower ticket offers. So, yes, absolutely. If you don't want to do sales calls, you don't have to do sales calls. It's just you have, there's a couple of places where you're going to. It's how you craft the offer, how you craft how it's delivered. The, the urgency that you add in all that kind of stuff. We'll take you through all that inside the program. But yes, high, high ticket, low ticket. They all work with funnels. All right, so next one is from Alib.

Says how, sorry, how much do I need to spend on ads to make my funnel work? I don't have a big budget. All right, so this is a great question and I understand where this question is coming from. So my, as I said, my methodology, my ethos is always I said test before you invest. So what you're going to need to do. So if you have. Sorry, back. Let me backtrack slightly. Cause Allie, I don't know anything about your business right now. But if you are starting with zero, like if you have zero subscribers and zero people on your email list and zero contacts and zero friends, then you're probably going to want to spend a small budget to be able to test the pieces as we go along. Like a small budget to test your. Opt in a small budget to test a webinar. Things like that. Most people who join the program, like if you already have, as I said, the one prerequisite to join the program is you already have an offer and you've sold it before. Usually to be able to do that, you have at least a few hundred people on your email list. You have, you know, at least a few hundred people on your social media. And if that is the case, then actually you don't need to spend any money on Facebook ads to start with. What we're going to do is we get you, we walk through the process instead of getting your funnel created, we help you break down the steps that you need, show you how to create them, show you how to test them with your existing audience. So you're kind of going to end up doing like a little mini launch while we're working together, which is great because it means you actually get some sales through the door right away. And that allows you to test a few key pieces. And then once you've done that, then you set up your funnel. Your funnel is running. Then if you want to, you can start doing Facebook ads. And the Facebook ads that we. So we've got some training on, I call like my low hanging fruit Facebook ads. And we'll show you how to do a couple of really simple key evergreen Facebook ad strategies inside 5K funnel formula to get you started. It's always my aim for people, particularly around Facebook ads, is I said we want you to never want you to spend any money until things are tested so that you feel confident that when you do invest in Facebook ads that you're going to get a return, you're going to get at least your money back, preferably two to three times over. That's always a goal. And also my sort of longer term goal for you is that, yes, I want you to understand Facebook ads. I want you understand how they work. I want you to understand about getting a return and all that kind of jazz. But I'm not trying to train you to be a Facebook ads manager. I'm trying to show you how to understand it as a concept, understand how it works, be educated about it and then be able to as it set up your funnel, start with small budget, get it rolling, get sales coming through. And when you kind of get to the point where you're feeling confident with that, when you've got enough sales coming through that you're probably like, hey, it wouldn't be such a stretch or it wouldn't feel like a big ask for me to now go and find a Facebook ads manager to take this to the next level. For me, that is, you know, my ideal. That is why I want for all my clients. But basically for your funnel to fund itself and fund its own growth and fund a person to come onto your team and take that part. Because no one, I mean.

There'S not many people out there who go, oh, I really love doing Facebook ads. Some of them do and they're Facebook ads managers and that's great. But usually if you're in my program, you're not a Facebook ads manager. Although actually there have been a couple, so. But it's not the majority. And you know, you want, you're going to want to outsource that piece to someone and if you set up your funnel right, it should actually fund itself. So again, sorry, to answer your question, Ali, as in how much you need to spend on ads at the start, nothing to get start. Once it's set up and running and tested, you know, you can start with like $20 a day, $30 a day and see, you know, and then as you know, you start making sales, you can then choose to reinvest back into your budget. If you like this little strategy, we break it down inside the program. But I just don't want you thinking that, oh, my funnel is only going to be a success if I, you know, have got hundreds and hundreds every day to spend on Facebook ads. Because that's just not true. The funnel that we show you how to set up, it's designed to work and to be making new sales, as said, off the. Off the marketing that you do already of the promotion of your business that you do already. Off the list building that you do already. And we've actually got a really cool bonus which is part of the offer right now, which helps you to get your. This building rolling. So once you have your funnel set up, if you then just know that you've got this little machine running in the background, you're like, great, I'm going to go, and I want to grow my list. I want to get out there more. And as you do that, as people come into your business, they join your email list, they'll go through your funnel, and sales will just, you know, because of that, because you have the funnel, you'll start making sales, making them more reliably, and your funnel will grow and make more sales as your business grows. And if you're wanting to add Facebook ads onto that so that it happens faster, then, you know, whatever budget you're comfortable with to start with, that is how much you need to spend. All right, Shane says, she says, I don't want a discount. It makes me feel sleazy. Will a funnel work without a discount? Yes, absolutely. So with any offer that you make online, if you're in a store, whatever, you always have to have some urgency. The offer always has to end at some point, right? Like, even if you go into McDonald's and they give you a voucher and say, hey, you, next time you come in, you're going to get a free Big Mac. It's still going to say, this offer expires on whatever date. So urgency, having a deadline, it just is something that you have to include in any offer, whether you're making it in a funnel, whether you're making it live. But it's just the type of urgency that you are able to use, or that's like the type of lever that you're able to pull. Will depend on, you know, what setting and what scenario you're in. One of the ways of adding urgency to an offer, so, you know, if someone comes in, this isn't how my funnels work, but this, just as an example is of quite common, is people will have, you know, people get onto your email list and then they might. You might send them a voucher and say, like, hey, for the next 72 hours or the next seven days or whatever, you can get 200 off my programs. So that's one way of adding both an incentive and some urgency. It's like the urgency is, hey, here you can get this discount, but only in if you buy within the certain time frame. But you don't. It doesn't have to be a discount. It could just be that, you know, this program isn't normally open all year round, and it's like, hey, this is like a little secret VIP way. You could wait until we do our next public launch, which is probably three to four months away. Or if you want to jump in now, you've got 72 hours. Like, just allowing people access can be the urgency. It could be that you've got some amazing bonuses that gives ads urgency. It could be like, there's a bunch of things. And again, this is part of our very first module that we jump into is creating your funnel friendly offer and discounting. It's a strategy you can use. Most people in my program don't, or they might choose to use it, like, later on down the line, but not part of their main funnel. It might be like if they're doing it for a launch, they might have an early bird and they give a percentage off for the early bird, whatever. But for the funnel that we teach you the 5K funnel formula, the steps that we go through, the, you know, the process that we have for creating your funnel friendly offer, that's, you know, discounting. It's an option, but it's not even a common one. Most people actually don't discount. So again, I'm really bad at answering these questions succinctly. Sorry, guys. You can tell I really love funnels and I can talk about them all damn day. So no discount not required. No nothing fake or gross or sleazy. We, you know, the way. All we're doing is automating a sales process. And it's no different than if someone was to go into a shop and you'd be like, hey, you're a new customer. You can use this voucher if you come back and order again in the next week. It's exactly the same as that, but it's just doing it online. All right, Mariah said, can you give me a breakdown of what I can expect once I've got my funnel up and running? What do the results really look like? I love someone who gets straight down to the point. So results, of course, vary, but I will give you an industry standard figure and I will say that everyone who goes through and completes and follows the process and completes the funnel they generally do much better than the industry standard. But this is, the industry standard is 2%. So that's kind of like your baseline milestone is that for every hundred people who get onto your email list from whatever means that 2% of them, and I say this a 2% every time, it's 2%, sorry, within the first 14 to 30 days. Because the thing is, that stat I find a little vague because some people's funnels are really short and some people's funnels are really long. And if you had a really long funnel and it was still only converting at 2%, then you've got some problems. So the funnel that we show you how to set up, it's between 14 and 21 days long. So 2% of people who go through that would be our baseline minimum conversion rate. Like, if you're getting below that, we're like, okay, there's big problems. Most people get above that and quite substantially above that as well. So what that means is, you know, if you think about, like, how many new subscribers do you get every year on your list, if minimum of 2% of them purchased your offer within the first, you know, three to 14 days of them being on your list, that extra revenue is what you would expect to add. But, but as I said, that's minimum, minimum. And we like to aim for much higher than that. Um, Lee says, how many people do you need on your email list before you are ready to have a funnel? So really, as I said, as long our only prerequisite, guys, is that you have an online offer or, sorry, an offer that you can sell online and that you've successfully sold it before. So however many people you need to be able to do that, really, the number of people you have on your list right now, it doesn't actually impact your funnel. The only thing it impacts is it allows you to test, because we test every element with your existing following and your existing list. The more people that you have on your existing following and your existing list, all that means is that when you are doing those tests, you will make more sales during that test time, but it won't actually impact your funnel as it goes forward because your funnel is for the new people who join your email email list afterwards. So as long as I said, the only prerequisite, guys, is if you have an online program or course that you have successfully sold before, then 5k funnel can help you to set up an automated system to sell that going forward. Okay, so one last question, guys. Now, if you're hearing this, guys, by the way, and you are wanting to come and join us inside 5K Funnel Formula, but you're like, oh, you didn't answer my question. Just come and DM me, come and tag me over on Instagram. You know, happy to answer any and all questions. Before the doors close, I want to make sure that you feel really comfortable knowing that this is the right program for you and that you are able to get in before the doors shut and can join us for this four week live Fast Art edition. Because it is going to be so epic and so much fun. I'm really, really excited. I don't like launching guys, but I do like running programs live. So you kind of have to take, you know, you have to do one to be able to do the other. Lucky last question is from Farah. She says, I don't know if my course will get people very good results on Evergreen. So that is again, this is another really common misconception is a lot of people have this belief and it's actually a self limiting belief because I just want to like stop you there if this is a thing that's stopping you from taking action. They believe that people either only invest to get them or that people only get results when they actually are the ones like kind of working with them really closely. And that is a hundred percent not true. What it could mean is that your program, how it stands now, might need some updates, it might need the structure of, it might need some changes, but you can absolutely create amazing transformational results for any topic and niche through a more leveraged program. And that doesn't mean this program is completely hands off. Like when we help you create your final friendly offer, we talk about all the different ways that you can structure and the, you know, there's different levels of engagement that you can have built in. And it doesn't all have to be you either. We also talk about how you can outsource certain parts and have guest experts and mentors. But it's, you know, we'll help you to go through and figure out exactly how to set up and structure your existing offer that maybe you are running live and maybe you're running. It's like, you know, so this is like really typical is people maybe have an eight week program every, it has an, you know, everyone starts together. On week one you do a live call and you talk about week one. On week two you do a live call, you talk about week two and you know, everyone kind of moves through it together. And I think that the fear that people have is like, oh well, if People are coming in at different points. How are these calls going to work? Because we're going to be talking about different stuff. Well, the thing is, if you think about it, like really think about it with your programs, like by about week three or four, most people are off course anyway. Like, majority of your people have not kept up and they're going to still be asking week one questions and week two questions in week six. It just happens regardless. So as long as you set up people's expectations that, you know, they can come to the call whenever they want to ask questions or they can come to a Facebook group whenever they want to ask questions. And here's how often those questions are. As long as you spend a bit of time making sure that the majority of those really common questions that get asked, that there's FAQs that you know that you're covering, what needs to be covered in the training. So because again, let's be realistic, if you think about the questions you get asked in these calls, a lot of them are the same questions. Like you could probably, if you've run this program multiple times, you probably know what you're going to get asked in week one and week two and week three. So take those. This is a bonus hint, by the way. Take those and make little Q&As, or make little extra trainings or something to, to answer them inside the program. And that means there's less questions that need to be asked live anyway. And yes, some topics people feel like they need to have a bit more connection. Some topics people feel like, you know, they want to do some one on one and you can have that built in as maybe like a VIP or a premium offer that if people do feel like, yes, I want to do this program, I'd like a bit more one on one, then you can say, okay, this is an upsell like this, we talk about this all in the program. But the end of the day, guys, is yes. Like think about if you don't believe me. I want you to think about the big players in your industry because every niche has them. Do they have online courses that are able to be sold on Evergreen? I'm pretty sure they do. If you can teach something online. And I'd say for most topics, if you're listening to this, you probably know that you have people in your industry who are teaching this online, even if you're currently doing it one to one. But if you, if it can be taught online, it can be taught Evergreen online and just as successfully. You just got to slightly tweak the delivery and it's usually not that difficult to do. It's normally updating some emails, reordering some modules perhaps and you know, doing a couple of intro videos. No big deal, guys, so don't let that stop you. So anyway, guys, that's all the questions that I got sent in. So thank you everyone who submitted a question. Um, if you have any other questions, as I said, come and DM me over at Kate McKibben on Instagram, the doors are closing very, very soon. So they close, as I said, October 22nd, US time, and that's October 23rd, Aussie time. So if you are listening to this, it's pretty much clear closing, I think tomorrow or one to two days from now if you've listened to this straight away. So if you are considering it, guys, jump in. There's heaps more information over on the sales page. The link is in the show notes. Go check it out so you can ask me questions on Instagram. We'll I haven't done this live in so, so long and I'm not sure when we're going to do it again live because as I said, launches burn me out. But I am so looking forward to being able to roll up my sleeves and dive in and help you guys set up your funnels. It's going to be so much fun. It's going to be epic. I can't wait to see you inside there, guys. And yeah, hopefully see you inside the program very soon. Alrighty guys, keep doing what you do and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.