MBA1449 What Exactly Is a Funnel? (and How to Build One)

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Hey O welcome to the 100 RBA show business building simplified every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn what exactly is a funnel and how to build one. If you've been in business for a few years or more, I'm sure you heard the word funnel, sales funnel, marketing funnel, what is this thing? Why is it important? And how to build one for yourself and your business. There are marketers that swear by the funnel technique and build funnels around every single thing in their business. Their products, their services, even how they serve their customers after they buy. So in today's lesson you're going to learn exactly what a funnel is, why it's important or why it's useful, and how to create one for yourself step by step. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Before I begin, the concept of a sales funnel has been around for some time, but they became very popular in the last five to six years because of the Internet and how easy it is to build pages and websites for yourself. A funnel is basically a procedure to get someone who's interested in what you have to offer to the point where they are a customer. So if you can imagine or you can visualize a funnel in your head right now, you know, the type of funnel you would use to change the oil in your car has a wide top and a narrow bottom. So in sales and marketing terms, this basically means that you could put a lot of people inside the top, but as they go through, only a few come out the bottom. And that's just the nature of business. You're going to attract a lot of people, A lot of people will be interested. A lot of people are going to walk into your physical store, but a fraction of them will buy. Your job is to try to increase that fraction, right? To increase that number. Try to get as many people buying from the top of the funnel. So what does this mean practically for you in your business? Well, you may want to create a funnel to attract somebody to your entry level product. So I'm going to use an example just to make this simple. Let's say you're trying to sell your $10 ebook. So a funnel for an ebook would look something like a page on your website that offers something for free in exchange for the name and email address. This is the top of the funnel. And let's say your ebook is all about snowboarding for beginners. And on this page where they give their name and email address in exchange, you're asking them, hey, opt in. And I'm going to give you the five most important steps in beginning to learn how to snowboard. So they're going to get something for free. They're going to watch a video that's going to show them the five steps in starting to snowboard and, you know, learning how to snowboard. And that's going to attract a lot of people because a lot of people want to learn something for free, especially if they're interested in learning how to snowboard. Once they give their name and email address, they're in your funnel. That means now you can contact them, you can email them, and you can follow up with them to offer them something else. And the next step would be like a page that has the video that you promised. And then the next step, the whole point of a funnel is you walk the customer by the hand and you never let them go until they actually buy. And in fact, even after they buy, there are other steps. Buy other things, right? So let me walk you through this funnel so you can see this example. So they opt in, they give their name and email address in exchange to Watch that lesson, that video. And on the video at the end you say, hey, press the button below and download the first chapter of my ebook on how to be a proficient snowboarder, for example. And then you would follow up with an email. Hey, did you download my first chapter of my ebook? You could download it here, if not. And then you'd email, another email maybe a couple days later giving them a few more tips. Another email maybe a few days later saying, hey, here's a blog post that you might find helpful. And then maybe the next email is a link to a page that explains to them why they want to buy the whole ebook for $10. It's a video maybe that says what the book includes and all the chapters and it's basically a sales video for the ebook. And you tell them, hey, the next step, go ahead and buy the ebook below the video. And there's like a checkout area. They buy the ebook and now they're a customer. Right? But in most businesses there are levels to products. So the ebook's just the first step. Maybe the next step is your online course and then there's your mastermind group. And then after that you're, you have a live event and that continues the funnel holding customer by the hand, showing them the next step. So as you could see, this is a procedure to show your customers by the hand what to do next. It's like a personal salesperson for them to help them get what they need from your business. So how do you actually do this? How do you actually build one for yourself? Well, I actually think you should start with a paper and pen. It's much easier for you to visualize what you need to build what you need to do first on paper. And then you could just use that as a reference. This is what I do. I actually have a big, like a three size paper and I draw out my funnels each page. What's the next step? What are the emails they get, all that kind of stuff. So for every funnel that I have inside my business, so you can use the example I gave with the ebook, with your own products, what is the freemium thing you're going to give? And then after that, what are they going to get as like a bonus, like a free first chapter and then what kind of email follow ups will you have? And then what's the offer? How are you going to sell that offer with a video? With a sales page? So even if you just literally write it on a piece of paper, my funnel has four steps. Here are the four steps here's the emails that fire. These are the subject lines of these emails. And it's going to take you about an hour to write that all down and to draw it all out. Then you have a plan that's an actual plan for a funnel. So how do you actually make it real on the web? So you have a few options. You can build it yourself. If you have somebody that runs your website and can build pages for you, they can build the pages that you sketched on the paper and tell them what you want them to do. And when they opt in, they want them to join this email list. On my email marketing software, you can actually do it yourself if you know a little bit about how to create websites. Even if you're using a tool like elementor for WordPress, which allows you to kind of drag and drop pages, or you can use a all in one kind of tool like Click Funnels or leadpages. Click Funnels actually made a whole business based on this concept. And they're probably the ones that do this. The most or probably the easiest way to create a funnel is through Click Funnels. Cause they have the whole funnel all built out for you. The templates for you, you could do with leadpages as well, but it would just be a little bit more step by step. The only disadvantage to using a tool like ClickFunnels or LeadPages is that your templates are gonna look similar to other people that are using that. My advice, if you're gonna use clickfunnels or leadpages or something like that, is to modify the templates. And you could do that, change the colors, change the fonts, make it look your own. And you could do this right. Or you can actually buy a template from their marketplace to differentiate yourself a little from the rest of the people that are using these tools. And if you're using something like clickfunnels, then it's pretty straightforward. It's actually very, very easy. And you could pretty much build out the pages on your site in the funnels in about an hour or two, maybe three. If you're, you know, customizing things to make it look look like your own. The thing that's going to take most of the time though is the content, the videos you're going to shoot, the emails that you're going to write, the copy that you're going to write on the actual website. The content is going to take some time. So make sure you allot some time for that. Because I would say all in all, the content for me, for any given funnel take me about three days, about four or five hours on each day if I'm doing it all myself. Luckily I have a team and you know, we have Connor, who's our great content writer and he helps me out tremendously in these types of things, writes our emails and helps you with copy and all that kind of stuff. I shoot the videos, but it's gonna take a chunk of time for the content cause that's really what's gonna sell your funnel or sell whatever you're trying to get them to opt in for the freemium or even the actual product when you sell. So this is what's gonna you can't get around that no software is going to build your own video for you or you know, software is going to write the emails for you to convert properly for your business and brand. But you can save time with tools like click Funnels and leadpages when it comes to the page creation.

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Up today's lesson, I want to make it clear the reason why you're building the funnel here is to build trust with your audience and to nurture them, really, to give them a chance to say, hey, these people have my best interests in mind. I like what they do. I like what they stand for. I'm interested in buying now. The reason why people do funnels is because they want to capture the lead. This is the most important part of the funnel, is getting them to opt in for something valuable for free so that you have their name and email address so you can build that relationship so you can nurture them, give them more great value and then show them how you can help them with their problems, with your solutions, with your products and services. So that's really the point here, is to get the lead so you can then build that relationship and then make sure that they turn into a customer at some point. Now, not all customers that go through your funnel will buy. That's just the, you know, the reality of it. But you got to do your part and try to convert as many as you can. And that's where you optimize your funnel with, you know, better copy. With better, you know, copy on the site, but also in your emails. Maybe change up the freemium and maybe change up the actual offer, all that kind of stuff. This is a lot of work. Yes, it's a bit of work that you're gonna have to do, but it's kind of something that you build a foundation for in your business and then you just tweak it as you go along. So it's really an investment that you're making to attract the right customers and then walk them by the hand to the point of sale and beyond. Don't forget, when they buy, that's not the end. When people feel like you can solve their problems with your products and service, they want you to solve all their problems, right? They're like, hey, great, you helped me with this aspect of snowboarding with your ebook, right? But I want to learn how to do jumps. I want to learn how to do the train park. I want to learn what is the best board to buy because I'm done renting. What about how can I save money on a ski trip or a snowboarding trip to Europe? There are all different aspects in every niche that your customer is hungry for, and they're happy to pay if you can help them. So you guess it. There's a funnel to bring them from one product to the next product. There you have it. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. I hope that today's episode clarified a little bit what a funnel is, how to build one for yourself, and why you'd want to use it. If you love what you heard, if you felt like this was useful, leave us an itunes rating and review. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. Also, hit subscribe. Right now, it's absolutely free to subscribe and you could subscribe on any podcast app, whether it's Spotify or Stitch radio or Apple podcasts or we're on them all by hitting subscribe. When the next episode's available, it's available right on your device, so that way you don't miss a beat. Also, it allows you to have access to our archives, over 1400 business lessons for you to use to listen to, to learn from, to utilize. Yep. All for free. So hit subscribe right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're listening to this episode, you're like, man, one more thing for me to do. Take it step by step. Just do one simple funnel to get somebody in the door so you can get the contacts. You can build that relationship, even if it's just a freemium funnel where you're just getting them to download a free PDF or watch a video and then you can see what the next step is. And the next step? Build it step by step. It's all good. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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