#222 - Do this BEFORE you spend money on your funnel

Having better ads might get you a little bit further there, but it's not actually solving the actual problem, which is you don't have the strategy behind the funnel. As with anything in life and in business, if it's just the one thing that's carrying all the weight, it's a really hard job for that one thing. So we kind of want to make it a bit more fair, a bit more even.

Hey, hey, guys, it is Kate here from hello, funnels, and welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. So today we are talking about my favorite thing, as usual, which is funnels and actually what to do once you have one. Because this is something that I find probably isn't discussed enough. I think there is a lot of information out there, which is that you need to have a funnel. You need to have a funnel. And here is why. And a lot of people go out and they install their funnel, they build their funnel, they design it, they get it up and running, and obviously those funnels are going to be a wide range of awesome to terrible. But, you know, but they have one, and now they're like, oh, okay, I've got a funnel. I still seem to have a lot of the same problems as I had before my funnel. Now what? So I wanted to really talk about that. What next? Like, what do you do after you've actually created the funnel, after you have hit go, hit play, go live and you started putting traffic through it? Because it's not enough to just have a funnel. The funnel needs a strategy behind it, and it needs other pieces in place that are then going to make this funnel work really well, and then going to make sure you have a lot of people coming through that funnel, that that funnel is converting as well as it can, that that funnel is as profitable as it can, and that your business can be the business that you actually want, which is the reason you created the funnel in the first place. So start off with. I want to cover a couple of mistakes that I see a lot of people doing once they have their funnel. So funnel is built like, this is what we actually call. You know, it's like your engine is created and that should take you. Like, if you do it the way we do it between two to six weeks, it really depends on a bunch of things, like how much time you have to put into it, assets you've already got ready, how funnel friendly your offer is, that kind of thing. But two to six weeks is a pretty reasonable amount of time to design it, build it, get it ready to go. So your funnel is built. Now what do they do? So commonly what people will do is one of three things. So one is that they just go, all right, I'm just going to start running ads. I'm going to spend a whole lot of money running ads. Now this can be good or it can be bad. If they properly tested their funnel and they know their numbers and their metrics, a lot of people can scale this way quite successfully. I've had clients who've done this to get up to like 60, $70,000 months purely from doing ads. I'd say there's exception more than the rule. Yes, ads are super powerful. Yes, they will help you to grow quickly. Particularly as long as you know your funnel works. You've got the right funnel strateg strategy in place. Like you've created the right funnel for your offer. Your offer is funnel friendly, you've tested it, all that stuff like everything that you know that we talked about in other episodes. So once you know your funnel, it works and it's good to go. You know, running ads is one of the quickest ways to get more sales in. However, if you don't have the other pieces in place, you're gonna hit a ceiling. You're gonna hit a point where actually as you spend more, it costs you more and you're not necessarily getting more leads. And then that's where people get really stuck and they get really like laser focused on, oh, okay. My problem is I don't have the right ads. I don't have the right ads team. They jump around to a bunch of different. Either doing it themselves, hiring really expensive ad providers, or ad managers. That doesn't actually help them because it's not actually the problem. Having better ads might get you a little bit further there, but it's not actually solving the actual problem, which is you don't have the strategy behind the funnel. So the next side thing is the absolute opposite is that people have their funnel and they're too scared to run ads. And again, they've probably been burned before. They're probably have maybe tested things with like $20 here, $50 here, didn't make a sale. Oh, ads don't work for me. And, and you know, decided not to do them. So again, not what I would recommend. Like we never recommend people start running ads until they their funnel is built and is tested. But there is a certain, again, a certain strategy with this guys, a certain amount of money you need to be able to spend, be able to get the right number of eyeballs to be able to actually know, yes, this works. Yes, this didn't. And if you don't have these other puzzle pieces, which I'll talk about in a second, you're really, really expecting these ads to do a lot like they're doing all the heavy lifting. You don't have anything else that's helping out, helping to contribute to the sales in your business. You've quite often swapped being solely reliant on maybe it's a live launch bottle to then trying to be solely reliant on a funnel model. And as with anything in life and in business, if it's just the one thing that's carrying all the weight, it's a really hard job for that one thing. So we kind of want to make it a bit more fair, a bit more even. The second thing is second, third can't count that they forget about the rest of their list. So a funnel is designed to convert new people coming in to your business. Like that would be what we call an acquisition funnels. Yes, there's other automations and stuff you can lose later, use later down the line. They're more advanced strategies. But for most people, the funnel that they think of is a funnel that's something from like some kind of lead generation or list builder into some kind of email sequence, into some kind of sales mechanism into a cell. And that's usually between seven to 30 days long. And it's that first seven to 30 days that someone is in your world or on your list. So they go through the sequence. A percentage of them will buy because they're your now buyers. They're the ones who are really ready, really super primed and then the rest are going to go into your email list. And then what if you're solely focusing on your funnel, if you're just getting obsessed about optimizing the red button versus the green button or the it should be this type of ad, or maybe it should be carousels or maybe it should be we should try YouTube or whatever. Like if you're just focusing here and forgetting about them at any given time, 95, 90% of the people in your world are not seeing your offers, they're not being warmed up, they're not being provided value, they're not being serviced. So that's not the right way to do it either. So let's just assume that you aren't doing any of those things, in which case, well done and let's move on to what you should do. So obviously, as I said, part one is, and this is actually the three steps that we take People through inside our Equals empire program. So step one is building a sales machine. So that's building the actual funnel. And that's only step one. That's not it. Okay, your funnel's done. Now we need to put the other pieces into place. So next thing you want to make sure you're doing is you've optimized that funnel. You make sure that you know what your numbers should be, you know what metrics to track and you've added in things like upsells and downsells and other little optimizers to make sure that you are making sure that everybody who comes through who wants to work with you in some way has the right offer put in front of them at the right time. So let's pretend you've done that. Then the next thing that you need to do is to step away from your funnel for a second, let it have a bit of chance to breathe, let it sort of do its thing as the first people coming through and you can start collecting that data and sit down and make a plan for your live promotions to your list. Now we love funnels and we love automations and we always want to make sure that we are automating and systemizing and doing things in the most reliable, consistent and low stress way possible. But like I said earlier, if you neglect your list, you are neglecting the majority of the people in your world. And a lot of those people are going to be happy and want to work with you at some point. So we want to try and do this in a way that is making offers again, regularly, reliably, consistently, all the same factors that we love about a funnel. We want to be able to do that actually in live promotions to your list. We want to be able to do it in a systemized way, in a semi automated way, in a way that is going to bring in reliable and consistent revenue, but low stress. So it's normally our recommendation that you want one of these what we call evergreen launches happening every 30 to 60 days. And if you are newer, like if you have a list that's on the smaller side, I would definitely say closer to the 30 days because these will help you to grow your list more as well. So speaking of list growth, this brings us to the third piece of the puzzle, which is what we call the traffic trifecta. So these are three systems you need to have in place. And you'll notice that everything I talk about is systems. It's all about having systems in place because that's how you build your machine. Like you have your sales machine, you have your launch machine, and now you need to have your traffic machine. And so within that, you need to have a system for content marketing that is designed to convert, that makes it easy for you to create content, that makes it, you know, one of those things that normally gets put to the end of your list, but it's actually something you can do in a couple of hours. It's really high quality, it does what it needs to do and it just gets done. You also need to have a paid marketing, paid traffic strategy. So whether that's Facebook ads or whatever is going to be right for you. But you need to know how much money to spend because you know your numbers and your metrics. You need to better reverse engineer that and go, okay, well, this is my goals. This is the percentage that I would expect to be getting from paid ads from my new cold leads coming through my funnel. Therefore, this is how much I should be spending. And you need to know what those guardrails are in place for, if it's working well and when to increase it and if it's not and it needs some attention. So you need to have that in place as well. And then the third thing, and one that often gets overlooked, and this isn't one to do all the time, but for people who are in that beginner phase, like who are wanting to get to that first six or, you know, mid to low six figures, it cannot be discounted, is the power of JV promotions. Now, I would recommend people do this once they have the other pieces in place because this isn't as systemized as the other things. This relies on a lot of other people, lot of stuff outside of your control. But it is a super powerful way to grow your reach. And it's doubly powerful when it's coupled by you having a funnel in place, you having an offer that works, you having spent the time doing these regular, small, consistent rinse, repeat launches or evergreen launches, and having got the data from that and learning like, this is what my readers love. This is what people click on, what people send me messages about. This is you know how to speak their language. And from doing that, all of a sudden you can put together a really profitable, really juicy JV campaign or joint vent your campaign, in case anyone's wondering what that means, is when you go out and you get in touch with other people with complimentary businesses and say, hey, can we do something together? That's a win win. I've got this great offer, it converts really well. I've got this whole system set up, I think your readers would really like it. If you've got any gaps in your promo calendar, do you want to do something together where you can help me to promote my offer and you get a commission for it? That's what a joint venture is. There's lots of different ways, like more complicated ways to do it, summits and bundles and all that kind of stuff. You know, you can go down that rabbit hole if you want. And when you have these other systems in place, you're kind of free to like because this can then be the thing that you're out there playing and testing because these other systems are just working. But if you don't have these pieces in place, if you discount too many of them particularly early on, then it's going to make it that much slower. It's going to mean that if you're only focusing on one of these and you haven't built it out to do, be something that is systemized, that does sort of run in the background without you, then you're not going to have the time and headspace to the other one. So it totally makes sense. So this is what I mean, guys, about needing to have that bigger strategy, needing to have a step by step strategy and system in place to implement these one by one. So they layer on top of each other and they add to your business, not just add more stress to your life because you're trying to do five different things and every single one of those is slightly on fire and requires your attention. So I hope that makes sense, guys. I hope for those of you who are going, oh, hey, hang on a second, I, I did have a funnel and I did just kind of either just leave it there or I just run some ads and it didn't make me a millionaire overnight. So maybe I should have another look. This has given you some places to start and if you want to dive into this deeper, this is literally what we do. Inside of Equals Empire. Head on over to HelloFunnels Co click on programs, go to Equals Empire, Come and apply, come and join us and we'll take you through this step by step, through the whole process. Give you templates, swipe files, everything the whole way along to make it as easy as possible. But it's really about making sure you take the time to install them one by one so that you can have this amazing engine running in your business, making sales for you, making the most of your list of everything else, and just making your business be just a joy to grow. So hope this be helpful guys. If you had any aha moments, make sure you hit me up over at hellofunnels on Instagram or share this with any of your other nerdy business friends. I would love it if you could help me to get the word out. Otherwise, leave a comment below if you're watching on YouTube and I will see you all next week. Bye.