Your equation for irresistible products + services.

To join. And so just give us a quick second as people start joining on here. Okay, I think I see people trickling in, which is always a good thing. Um, yeah. Okay, hold on one second. I'm having some Echoing.

That's always fun. Come on, Riverside.

That's not fun. So let's fix that. Okay, cool. So today we're going to be talking about BOFO, which if you've been following along, you know that that means bottom of the funnel in our bowtie series. So we've been talking about customer journey and how we use not a traditional funnel, but a bowtie funnel for our customer journey and why that is really important for you. Creator and thought leaders. And so we're so glad to spend a few minutes of our day with you. And if you have any questions, always feel free to just drop them in the chat, and Amanda is glad to answer those as we are on this call. So if we haven't met, there are 2 ways that we help thought leaders build rock-solid recurring revenue businesses. First, we have Level Up Creators, which is our done-for-you white glove consulting firm. And then second, we have Level Up Creator School, Where we help a global group of thought leaders build businesses through a done-with-you model. Creator School includes access to our consulting team and our methodology in a way that used to be reserved exclusively for our consulting clients. So we are so glad to have you today. Okay, so let's jump right in. Amanda, can you explain to us how the Bowtie Funnel helps in converting leads into actual paying customers?

Yeah, definitely. So pretty much every way we look at thought leader creator businesses can be overlaid. Think about tracing paper is the way I've been thinking about this. When we were kids, you could overlay tracing paper on top of something and it's like every paradigm and framework that I have for how you run a business, you can overlay it on top of a bowtie funnel, which is, I mean, really just the shape of a bowtie, right? And like Aaron was saying, with a traditional funnel, shaped more like this, like the funnels we use in our kitchens. Um, but the problem with a traditional funnel is it's like the end of it is when someone makes a purchase from— for you. And in your creator business, you really want to provide as much value and therefore sell as much as possible to the same people as you can. And that is called horizontal growth instead of vertical growth. Vertical growth companies, you have to get a new customer for every single thing that you sell as a very expensive business model to run and it's not as relationship-based. And so the bowtie funnel is not only how you nurture customer— customers from like the top of your funnel, TOFU, to the middle of your funnel, MOFU, to the bottom of your funnel, BOFU, which is what we're talking about today, not only to that first purchase, but to the expansion into a long-term relationship again, where you are having a mutual value exchange cycle where you're providing amazing products and services. And they are providing money to you commensurate at the rate of the value that you're providing for them. So the purpose of the bottom of your funnel is to help someone start that reciprocal relationship, actually pay you for something that you're offering, right? And typically the way that we teach funnels is depending on your methodology and your approach and your positioning in the market, it's typically a lower dollar product. And that could even be relative to the types of products that you sell. Some people only sell things up to $500. Some people sell things that are $50,000. So if your top of, you know, your product ladder is a $50,000 product, like say in our consulting firm or something like that, um, an entry-level $300 a month creator school would be a quite inexpensive product as is compared to what's at the top of our product ladder. So, um, everything is sort of relative. So take that with a grain of salt. It means something different for each business. But the bottom of your funnel is, say, people have already like gotten to know you. They're following you on social media. They maybe listen to your podcast or listen to you be a guest on other people's podcasts. They've joined your email newsletter, picked up a lead magnet or 2. They're receiving your email newsletter on a regular basis, hopefully every week or every other week at most. And then at least, I mean, and then you're nurturing them, right? Maybe they've attended a live webinar, something like that, getting a little bit more face time with you. And you're trying to get that conversion. So Erin, I think we were gonna talk about different like bottom of funnel strategies and you had a couple specific things you wanted to— Yes.

So what are the key strategies for effectively engaging those leads in like kind of the initial way at the bottom of the funnel?

Yeah. So by the time people are at the bottom of your funnel, again, they've gotten to know you a little bit. So this is where you really, really want to communicate with surgical precision the value outcomes and transformation that your products and services provide. Like, they already know why they should care about what you're listening to, right? Like, who are you and why should I care? Now it's like the next layer is why should I actually fork over some of my discretionary income, um, to you, right? And so value outcome and transformations. You're taking someone from a place of maybe lacking clarity to clarity or unconfident to confident. We have a whole list of sort of this from-to transformation that you want to take people on with whatever product or service you're providing. Like, we can overlay this in any way. And then there's always specific outcomes and value associated specific to your industry, to your niche, to the specific thing that you're selling. And again, if you've listened to anything we've ever talked about with regard to product development, you start that process in thinking about these solutions that you are uniquely positioned to provide. To your unique audience, your pocket of the world that's listening to you. And so you're just demonstrating through your marketing and whatever channels you have access to your prospects who are currently in that bottom of funnel stage, that you are going to deliver what you say you're going to deliver, right? So this is everything on your product landing page. This is retargeting ads, which we're going to come back to in a minute. This is again, that webinar where you've got kind of like a close and a special offer at the end. There's all sorts of methodology around that. We don't have time to get into today. Bottom of funnel. Sources are also things like cart abandonment recovery email automations, failed payment email automations. If someone has visited your checkout page, this is kind of like retargeting, or also your product landing page, and then bounced without completing their purchase, you can use retargeting ads on Google or Meta. There's a number of different ways to slice and dice this to remind them that they were interested in whatever you're selling and try and bring them back to That product landing page, if that makes sense. Yeah, that can be a little confusing, but that's, that's how people, that's how, um, it's almost a little bit creepy if you're not familiar with the concept of retargeting and like how that works. If you're looking on a product page and then the next day you see an ad on Google for, or on Instagram for what you were looking for, that's a little creepy, but that's how that works. It's, it's the cookies that follow you around the internet.

Yeah. And like, that's how Instagram and Facebook know just what to put in front of you because of what you've already consumed. Right. And so, yeah, it can be creepy and it can be Be like, you just read my mind in a way that I didn't know if I liked. But yeah. So how can creators and thought leaders ensure that their calls to action are compelling enough to drive the conversion?

Oh, that's a good question. Well, again, we want to demonstrate value, outcome transformation, and social proof is going to be so big here. And the risk reversal, the guarantee, right? So think of these as like 3 major buckets that have got to be present on your landing page and throughout your marketing at the bottom of your funnel. Value outcomes, transformation proof, which is testimonials like voice of customer from people who have already been successful with you and your products and services. And then any sort of like statistics, number of people who have taken your courses in the past or successfully completed your courses or gotten the certificate or money that they've made as a result of like, if you, if part of the outcome of your program or whatever you're selling is that you will, you know, double your income in 90 days or something like that, you want to back those claims up with words from like real people. Video testimonials are gold standard at this point, but a photo of a real human with their real name and their real words are really, really important. Again, coupled with those statistics and then the risk reversal. This is the guarantee. This is the, 14-day trial, the 30-day money-back guarantee, the lifetime warranty, whatever the case may be. It's really important to put that guarantee in there to help people feel safe making the purchase. That's so important in that kind of final stamp of approval in our human brains. Of course, there's all sorts of like sales psychology around this and that backs this up, that the guarantee can really, really help seal the deal if someone is not quite sure, they're still kind of on the fence.

Yeah. So you kind of mentioned this before. What does retargeting ads and what does that play in boosting conversion rates at the bottom of the funnel? And what are maybe some other strategies for that?

Yeah. And so we already talked about what retargeting ads are, but they're important because we live in a culture and society of extraordinary distraction. And so the statistic used to be, this may have been like 25 years ago at this point, at least 20. That takes like 7— you have to put something in front of someone 7 times for them to even potentially buy from you or buy whatever the thing is. And so, I mean, it's got to be something more like 20, 30 at this point. And so it's that reinforcement that this is the right solution for them, if in fact it is, right? We're only selling good things. So it's just another point of psychological reinforcement that, oh, I was going to do that, but I got a text message or I had to go into a meeting or I wasn't sure, but now I've slept on it and I feel a little bit better, or they're going to ignore you. If like they've decided against it, then that's okay. But retargeting ads, cart abandonment, failed payment recovery sequences, those are quite effective in bringing people back to your landing page or checkout page because those folks have shown the highest intent to purchase. Right? If they're looking at your landing page and if they put it in their cart and went all the way to your checkout page, they want it. They need a reason. So this is also where things like coupons or special offers for bonuses can come in. Those are good, like BOFU, bottom of the funnel bonuses or extras or add-ons. That's something that can give just a little bit of extra nudge again to help people feel safe, like they're getting a good value. And this is a good decision.

Yeah. So at the bottom of the funnel, what are some metrics and how should we be analyzing conversion rates in the sales process?

Yeah, definitely. Let's, we'll take 2 quick examples here. So one would be something that you're selling in an automated way. We'll say just a course for the sake of this example. And so with a course, you're gonna have like a nurture sequence that's probably from your lead magnet that guides someone to like an email automation that guides someone to go to your product landing page. So you want to look at the performance of that open rate and click-through rates to your product landing page. And then you want to look at your overall number of page views and unique visitors on your product landing page. You want to be using a heat mapping tool like Microsoft's Clarity or Crazy Egg in order to see like how people are anonymously behaving on your landing page. And so it's like, which buttons are they clicking? Where are they kind of like moving their mouse around or hovering and therefore like reading intently? So you need to understand how many people are interacting with your page, how they're interacting with your page, how many of the people who visited your page then went to your checkout page and how many people from your checkout page purchased versus abandoned their cart. And then you've got these abandoned cart, abandoned recovery automations, and you want to know how that's performing. We find those to perform like Crazy. I mean, tens of thousands of dollars for like individual customers that we've helped in our, in our consulting firm. So that's a really, really important element. Same thing for failed payment, like credit cards bounce for all manner of reasons and like you want people to come back and like try that again. So same, same, same motion on that front. So yeah, I mean, that's a lot of it for an automated sale. How are they interacting? Who's coming? Who's leaving? Why did they leave? Right? How long are they viewing your page view? Those are all really important metrics. And we have templates for all this stuff in Creator School. This is a lot. And again, this all fits right on the bowtie funnel, right at that, right before the middle on the left side. And for something that's much higher touch, like a high-ticket coaching program, for instance, you are going to want to get people to your landing page again, probably from a launch email sequence or nurture sequence. So how many people are on the landing page? How are they interacting? And you typically are gonna need to talk to people before they'll buy your high-ticket program. And you can do that in a one-to-many setting with like a workshop or webinar. So there's specific metrics that you can follow to understand how those are performing in terms of like how many people viewed the form, signed up, attended, watched the replay, converted. You know, those are the most important metrics for a webinar funnel. And then Otherwise, if you need to do one-on-one calls, your call to action on your landing page is typically going to be book a call with me if you're not sure. And so how many people click that button? Of the people who click the button, how many booked? Of the people who booked, how many did you actually speak with? Of the ones that you spoke with, how many actually bought the program? Right? So you're just following each stage of the process, like this whole customer journey. It's a very human thing, but we have numbers to help us better understand quantitatively how to improve what we're doing. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I think that's a wrap on all the questions. Any parting shot on bowtie funnel or bottom of the funnel?

Value outcomes, transformation, social proof, risk reversal.

Yep.

Most important things you can do.

That's it, guys.

And keep reminding people, keep them coming back to that landing page.

Yes. Okay, guys, thank you so much for joining our livestream. Be sure to follow us for more tips and insight on building a successful recurring revenue business. I've dropped our newsletter link in the chat. So if you wanna follow along in our Bowtie Funnel series or catch up on our past posts, you can do that at the link. Next week we're gonna recap on recurring revenue as a whole and also customer retention. And we're gonna give you actionable steps on how you can use those and implement those into your business. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a great week. Until next time. Thank you.