#252 - How I Made a Funnel in One Afternoon With AI!

If you've heard that funnels aren't working right now, I am here to violently disagree. Because I just created a funnel that I launched at the start of this year that is converting five times better than industry standards it took me an afternoon to create. All thanks to AI. And inside this episode, I'm going to walk you through exactly what's in it and how you can create one too. So let's dive right on in.

Hey, guys, it is Kate here from hellofunnels and welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. Today I am going to be talking about, you guessed it, funnels, and more importantly, the brand new funnel that I created at that was like, end of last year, start of this year. It's been running now for about six months. So it's had a good long chunk of testing and the results have freaking blown my mind. So I want to walk you through what it is, what's inside it, and exactly how you can create it as well. Now, first of all, the big question, like, you know, why did I go and tear down my old funnel and start this new funnel? And there was a few things that I was noticing were happening in the market and I wasn't really liking where it was going. Like our current funnel, it was great plodding along, you know, I was. I think maybe it's just ego, but I wanted to grow it. And I was seeing that both with myself and with clients, that a lot of people who were sort of, you had all different types of funnels when they were either finding it hard to get them up and running or. Or they were finding that they were able to grow and hit a ceiling. And I hate it when that happens. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to solve this problem because I love funnels. If anyone can do it, I can. So, as I said, I went into my funnel cave. I tested a lot of stuff. I went and deep dived, I final hacked. I did all the things. So why did I even want to do this? Why did I decide to turn off a funnel that was working, quote, unquote good and start all over again? Well, first of all, it's an illness. I love to deep dive into funnels. I love to funnel hack, I love to do all that nerdy stuff. But second of all, I was noticing a couple of things happening more and more. Both my clients and just other people are speaking to peers, friends, and I was like, this is a problem that I just have to solve. So the three things were, number one, I noticed that people were finding it harder to get good amounts of affordable, affordable traffic. So ad costs were going up and down, particularly up. And you know, there's the thing that I was seeing is that people who had really great funnels, like, ticked all the boxes. They're like, I can't get enough sales through my funnel because I can't get enough people in to my funnel. And, you know, there was so many different reasons why that was a problem. But, you know, when it comes to funnels, it's a numbers game. Once you've set your funnel up and you know it converts at X percent, then you can always do that background maths and go, well, I want this number of sales, therefore I need roughly this number of people through my funnel. And people were doing that math, but they couldn't get the numbers. So that was problem number one. How can you create something where you are able to reliably and consistently bring through the people you need, that the numbers you need to hit your goals and do it in a way that doesn't just destroy your profit. So number two, I was also noticing that even when you did get those people in that the. I think they're calling it the trust recession, but basically that a lot of people were needing maybe more touch points, more, just more something from you, more communication, more. More chance to get to know you. And that can be really bad for a funnel where the assumption is that you're going to come in totally cold, hear about an offer, you know, learn a little bit about the person, and then hopefully, hopefully purchase. So if people are coming in and they go through that process and it's all great, like, yeah, but I just don't know if I trust you yet. I need to sort of know a bit more about you first. That is going to kill your funnel conversion. So that was problem number two, that the level of inbuilt trust that people had was way, way lower and they needed a lot more first. The final piece was that content production is kind of out of control right now. So the amount of content that people are needing to create across multiple platforms, across whether it's your social, it's your email, have you got some pillar content on YouTube, podcasts, all of this stuff, it's getting like, more and more. And I think the requirements for the production value and all that stuff is getting higher and higher and higher as well. Like I've been told multiple times, if you want to go on Instagram, you need to be posting at least three times a day, plus stories, plus this, like, who's got time for that. Like I don't. So you know, content production, it was really getting out of control. Like we still need to do this but you can't be spending all your time on non revenue generating activities. Like when you're a small business, when it is that bit harder to make a sale, it's taking that bit longer. You need to have a good portion of your time focused on revenue generating activities. Try saying that 10 times fast. And when you're being pulled away by content all the time, that content's not actually contributing to your revenue. That's a problem. And people were either completely ignoring their content or just phoning it in, not doing it very well, or spending a lot of time on it, but then not having enough time to do their marketing and their sales. So I sort of saw this as a. Well actually what really needs to happen is because the content's not going anywhere, we need to make sure the content is actually working harder, that it's paying for itself, that it's not just out there trying to go viral and trying to bring in new leads for free. Because we all know that is a bit of a hit and miss kind of game. It's a bit gambly not how I like to run a business. It needs to be more of a system, it needs to be more systemized, it needs to be more reliable and it needs to be contributing more. It needs to be pulling its weight. So what's the solution? Well, as I said, I went into my funnel cave. I nerded out big time and I tested a lot of different things and the very first version of this funnel was a total flop. I put my head on a hard and admit to it. I go on, I'd funnel hacked one of the big names out there. They were swearing by this particular type of sequence. I was like it's not really how I would do it but sure, let's give it a go. I'm all you test first. Like I'm all about listening to the data. I tested it. It was an abysmal failure even for a product that was like this wasn't a new product is one I'd funneled and automated and sold plenty of before I knew roughly the conversion rates it should be hitting. And it was way, way, way below. So I was like okay. But it gave me some, you know, food for thought. Went back, tested a few things and I took a few iterations. And I want you guys to listen to this. Like when you are setting up your funnels, particularly if you're just funnel hacking, reverse engineering. Something you're not actually going through. Someone's step by step plan is you're not always going to get it first go. And so you have to test things. You look at the numbers, you go back, you make changes. So I did a bit of back and forth and by the end of it, the final one I created, and this one was actually completely created from scratch in an afternoon, all thanks to, you know, all hail AI. And it now converts at almost 5%, which for cold traffic is almost unheard of. Like that's really, really rare, particularly in my particular niche. And that's almost like three times what the industry standard is for for this type of funnel. And one of the best things is it was actually really, really simple, but I kind of had to flip it on its head. So this particular funnel, it's called the content engine, it is one of the four engines that make up our ecosystem that we help our clients build inside empire. And it does a bunch of things. It's not just a, you know, one and done kind of strategy. This is a really, really powerful strategy. I'm going to walk you through what it does. So first of all, and this is one of the things that I love because it's definitely a working smarter, not harder, is that using this particular funnel and the content strategy that goes with it is it allows you to be testing new ads every single week, basically for free. And then because you'll get that real time feedback before you've even spent a cent, you're then able to take the best ones and put a small budget on those and know already that you're not just donating money to Mark Zuckerberg, that these have got a really, really high, high chance of performing. And it also means that you're constantly able to be creating new content for your ads. So you don't run that risk of having one or two ads that works for a while and then they stop and everything goes backwards and you have to quickly catch up. Like you're constantly creating and testing just as part of the content you're already creating, but you just do it now slightly differently. And what this is doing, it's building up this great backlog of, of creatives and assets that you can use inside your ads, but they've been pre tested. The second thing that this does is that it actually creates or really just honors the loop that exists between paid ads and organic because I think a lot of people just like to pretend like they exist in the silos and they don't this is very much an ecosystem that we are living in when it comes to creating content to ads, to organic. So I see this all the time in my account. And if you've ever run ads on social media and then you've logged into like Instagram, you notice this as well. You know, it comes up and goes, you know, Sarah has followed you from your ad. And then you'll watch Sarah go through, and particularly if you're using something like manychat, where you have your trigger words inside different, like reels and carousels and things like that, you'll watch Sarah then go through and opt in for about five different things. So that means that a person who didn't previously follow you saw your ad, they may not have even clicked through on the ad to the actual landing page. They might have just seen it gone. Hmm, who's this person? They seem interesting. Do I trust them? I don't know. Talking about that trust again. They click through to find out more about you. They go to your Instagram account and then they start looking at your recent content. And then through that recent content, if you've done it in the right way, it's kind of like that extra sort of validation, I guess. And then they're like, oh, okay, well, yeah, I want this thing. I know this thing sounds great. And usually it's a minimum of four things that they are responding to when I see this happen. So people are coming in and then they're binging through, and then they're getting on your list that way. So with that in mind and knowing how this dynamic works, you know, it's kind of crazy how most people are actually putting them in silos and going, no, no, this content is to go and get brand new, cold people. And they're kind of ignoring the fact that so many people come there and they're already a step or two further down the line and that we want to make sure we're creating the right type of content to really maximize their experience and to increase the number of sales and conversions that you get. So next, the next thing that does is, and you probably guessed it from what I was just talking about, is that this particular funnel, it helps you to grow both your email list and your social media, because those people who are seeing those ads, which have already been proven on your social media accounts, they're seeing the ads they're clicking through and now they're following you. Like they might not. Like I said, they may not have gotten on your list before, but they're now following you And I have found because how to my heart say, my Instagram account has never been a huge driver of traffic for us. We have been stuck at about 24,000 since forever. But since I switched over to this strategy and we're not spending that much on ads yet, our Instagram account for the first time in years is growing. And I'm not fooling myself by thinking it's because, you know, our organic stuff has gone better. Yes, some are coming through organic as they always have, but it almost. You seem to be like a one in one out kind of scenario. But now with the ads accelerating all of that, we are just getting in front of that many more people that we are finally growing again. And this I will say bit cheeky, but when you see those really big accounts that you know, spend a lot on ads giving you tips about how to grow your social media account and they are not including that one of the biggest ways they grow their social media account is by the fact they're running ads, I think that's really disingenuous and it makes me really mad. So I just wanted to let you know that that's probably up to like even 50% of their growth is from people clicking through from their ads. So anyway, the fourth thing that it does, which I haven't even mentioned yet is of course it makes you sales and it makes you sales on Autopilot. So you don't have to be launching anything. You're going to have your funnel set up, you're going to have a particular content sort of rhythm going and you can make that work for whatever works for you. And through the combination of those things, you will start making sales. Now the types of products we're selling here, they're not high ticket. These are entry level products, these are trust builder products, okay? These are the types of products that people can say yes to coming from cold without having to watch your webinar, get on a sales call, be in a 60 day warmup sequence, speak to you in person and any of that stuff. So these are smaller, more bite sized introductory products. But the purpose of these, also known as low ticket offers, but not just any low ticket offer. I definitely found some worked and some did not. The purpose of these is to not just make the sales. And I think there is a really wonderful energy that happens for both you and your business when you see sales coming through consistently, even at small amounts. But it means that these people who are coming into this system, a good percentage of them are buying and those people are now customers, okay? And Those customers have a great first experience with you and then they want even more. So, you know, and that's not to say the people who don't buy are not going to go on and buy later, but it means that you are now building up a bigger and bigger secondary pool of customers. And as all the marketing experts will tell you, it is always much easier to make a sale from an existing customer, provided they've had a good experience, than to go out and find a new person and convince them to buy. So that is number four, number five, and this is like the ninja trick is when done properly and when done with the right sort of intention is the purpose of this funnel is to build out its own ads budget. So the sales that you get from this funnel and said you can start without any ads budget or at least start with a very small ads budget and you're using pretested ads. So the risk is really, really minimal. But the sales that you do get from this, you then I want you to go into going, I'm reinvesting this in my growth. I'm going to reinvest this back to give me a bigger budget tomorrow and a bigger budget the next day so that I can get even more people through. And you know, with the way that this is designed, like it's not a standard low ticket funnel, I've done those on and off for years. This has been so much more steady and reliable and so much more effective than any of the previous low ticket funnels we had tried. And I think one of the reasons was we weren't just relying on just ads, running ads to a sales page and hoping someone would buy. Like this is actually a funnel that, that is going to then present the low ticket offer, not just bombard people with ads. And if the ads prices go up, you know, it all collapses. So through this particular type of funnel, you're actually adding up to 10 times more leads to your list than you would with a standard low ticket funnel. So for example, to give you exact numbers, this exact funnel that we created in I think it was over a 30 day period, added just over 3,000 people to my email list and the cost to me was less than $300 because the sales came in, we're being reinvested and you know, I'm in an expensive niche. I've, we've tested this with other people in our community who are in less expensive niches and they're coming out with profit. I never went into this expecting profit. It's obviously always brilliant. We have other funnels behind this, that that's where the profit comes from. But for me to be able to add 3,000 people to my list every single month and actually it's now got to be much more because we're slowly dialing up those ads and the cost is a couple of hundred bucks. I would do that every day of the week. Right. So. And that's solving problem number one that I mentioned. Yeah, that it's getting harder and harder to find a good size, reliable, affordable way of growing your list. And this is like a hundred percent what this does and better than anything else that I have seen. The second thing as I said that it problem it solves is that the audiences are needing more trust because they're coming in, they're getting some value, they're getting a chance to know you other than just being bombarded with ads. Some of them are buying your entry level product as well, getting that great experience there. So all of this stuff builds the trust. Plus they're also seeing your complimentary content as well. And all of that adds together and it's really, really powerful. And and then the third problem that I talked about this particular funnel solves is that making the content actually pay its own way. And this absolutely does this. And you can see it so clearly like now when you go out, once you have this funnel in place and you have this content rhythm in place, you can now go out and you can actually look at your numbers at the end of the month and go, I can see I posted this many times on social media and it made me this many sales. Like that is really motivating when you're sitting down at the end of the week going, oh my God, I have to do another batch of social content. So like I can't say enough good things about this funnel. It has got me so excited. As I said, I've tested it now myself for about a good six months and the results are just getting better and better. And best of all, because I'm usually more than happy to go in and do something crazy complicated and do all the tech. This funnel doesn't need any of that. It was really, really simple. It's an email based funnel. It literally thanks way I can get set up in an afternoon. And because of this and it really being the first time that we have had this kind of like amazing opportunity in our sort of industry where we now have the tools to do things much faster. And the way that people are responding to things is in this really specific way. And it's meant I've been able to create something really cool that I'm really excited about and that is the Automate it challenge. So what this is is a three day live get your funnel built and launched event. We are going to be running it in the next couple of weeks. Link below for all the details because I'm not going to say dates because it confuses everyone because I'm in Australia and no one knows what this means. But it's a three day event. It's not for the whole three days. It's a couple of hours each day. Each day you're going to come in, you're going to learn what you need to learn. You're going to implement on the day. We actually are going to give you, depending on what piece it is, we're going to give you templates, we're going to give you AI tools so you can literally create together live, you know, in a group. And by the end of the three days, we're going to have a little launch party where you all send out your first pieces of content to start fueling your funnel and then you're going to check back in and let me know how many sales you make. It's going to be so fun. And I've never been able to do something this quickly before because we didn't have the tech to support it. There's always so many pieces that, you know, just took a bit of legwork and now we don't like the AI is so amazing, the templates are so amazing and we've built them out for everything. So if you want to get a ticket, if you want to come and build this exact funnel that I've been talking about that is converting at like three times higher than industry standard, that is really quick to set up, that helps you to create this literal engine that can be adding hundreds, if not thousands of people into your list, into your world, into your other funnels, into your launches every single week or month. It's going to pay for itself, it's going to help you make sales every day, it's going to help you to grow your social media. Like there are no downsides. And the tickets are really, really accessible. In fact, for the first a hundred people who jump in, you get a hundred doll and so your ticket is just $97. So do not waste time. If you want to come and do this, all you need to do is head to HelloFunnels, CO Automate or if you can't understand my accent, there'll be a link below where you can click through grab your ticket, grab your spot and get excited because we are going to be building funnels together, and I really can't wait. So get your ticket and I will see you soon. Bye.