The Marketing Funnel Is Dead

We're going to be going through the old funnel, which is this one. But more importantly, we're going to be dissecting that new funnel and what does it mean for your local service business and how can you use that information to grow your business? Real quick, my name is Phil Risher. I'm the owner of Flash Consulting, and on this channel we talk about growing local service businesses. That's what we're going to talk about today. All right, so this is the old funnel, which is you build awareness. You talk about consideration. Hopefully they evaluate your brand by reading your reviews, then they turn into a conversion on your website. What is missing on this funnel is the next part to it, which is the retargeting and more importantly, building raving fans. And that's we're going to talk about on this. There's. It's now it's an hourglass, not necessarily a funnel anymore. And we're going to dive into each different section of that new hourglass. So let's look at this. All right, let me make myself a little bit bigger. All right, so awareness happens, and there's either a visitor or a viewer of your Google business profile. This can be from an online ad SEO. There's a bunch of different ways that people can find you. This is really like top of the funnel stuff. Then they might see a video or something that you post, which is someone who's like a follower or someone who's on social media that sees something. Then they go to your website and they actually convert into a visitor. Now this could be someone who comes through SEO. And typically what we've found is like a viewer, visitor, or fan or follower. This is someone that's either going to be on social media that's asking someone or Facebook group for some information, or they might be scrolling and see something that you post. But more importantly, this is going to be someone that has an issue or a problem that that goes to Google and asks Google, I need my carpets cleaned, I need an H Vac contractor, I need a ceiling fan installed, I need a generator installed, whatever that is, that is going to be. This section up here for most companies is the awareness piece, which is people don't know a good electrician, they don't know a good plumber, and they're asking Google, and Google is making them aware of your business, which is why you do SEO and you build relationships with Google because it's the number one referral partner. Then they land on your website and now the next section begins, which is the consideration. So awareness Consideration looks very similar to the other one. Awareness, consideration and then conversion. The last piece of this is loyalty, but there's other parts in here that are very important. So consideration, they land on your website, and when they land on your website, what actually happens? What percentage of them turn into leads? And our goal is to get 10% conversion rates. We have some clients that are at 30% conversion rates from web visitor into lead. And so there are specific things like calculators on your website or estimate requests that have pretty specific information, chat widgets. There's other ways to manage your conversions, but essentially you want a website visitor to read some type of content and take action and turn it to a lead. And the way that you can do that is through lead magnets, landing pages, free mini courses, events, sales offers, whatever it is. And so that's the conversion piece. So awareness, consideration, conversion, all of these things. When you think about your business, you want to think about, well, how am I creating awareness for my business? Am I getting Google reviews? Am I creating content that people are going to be searching for? Am I posting on social media platforms for people to share and see? For consideration, Am I creating content that people are actually interested in looking at? Do I have a clean website that people want to come to that when people see that I have 500 Google reviews, do they go on my website and say, yeah, this is definitely the company that has 500 Google reviews, or do they say, I don't really know if those are real Google reviews or not because this website doesn't, it doesn't say, yeah, this is a great company. And so you're trying to play into all these different checkpoints that customers are having. And then the last thing is like, do you make it easy for people to turn into a lead? Maybe you don't quite hit the great website, but you have an easy call to action that people can turn into a lead. And then ultimately they turn into a lead and then a prospect and a customer. And so that's kind of the conversion process here. Now the hourglass, you can see that it gets really tight into prospect and then customer comes out the other side. Now this is the part that's very important, which is you want to make sure that they turn into a repeat customer, but more importantly you want them to turn into a raving fan so that you can get referrals off of this. So what does that actually mean for your business? So they have some ideas right here like loyalty offers, customer, frequently asked questions, forums, emails, like email newsletters, user generated content, contests Viral content from influencers and brand advocates. And so really what you're trying to do is take your customer, turn them into a repeat customer by staying in front of them, whether that's through email, newsletters, text message marketing, whatever it might be. We have the funnel that kind of runs people through this. And then the last piece is give such great service that you actually turn people into brand advocates, which they become influencers for your brand. And how do you do this? You create an epic experience for them that makes them a raving fan about your business. So this could be a user experience that is, wow, way beyond what this could ever imagine. So I'll give you an example of, like, something that we do. So first off, I believe that the customer service that we provide and the level of service is very, very hands on, like calls, texts and emails. But more importantly, we do like customer appreciation things. So like every couple months we might get something or do something for someone, and that could be something that's like a custom, cool thing for them. It could be a office lunch, whatever. But what the goal is is that obviously we want to show them that we appreciate them, but also we want someone to maybe come by and see something that they have on their desk. And they say, well, man, who you know, how'd you get this? And they say, oh, my consulting company, my marketing consulting company. They made this for us. And it starts the conversation and we're creating raving fans or brand advocates for us. And so when you think about your business, what is that? And I for home services, what we've seen is like, after the service, maybe you send them brownies, maybe you send them something that's like above and beyond that most home service companies don't do. Or maybe the owner literally calls them and asks how the service was, or sends an automated email from the owner or something that takes it to the next level that creates a raving fan out of that person. And it doesn't have to be necessarily the owner's time, but just think about your customer's experience and are you creating a brand advocate? Because let me pull up this funnel that we have here. You've seen it before if you follow the channel. But this retargeting piece, what happens is people come through this conversion and they go into a sale and they sit here in this blue ocean here, and you never retarget them to bring them back in. And what happens is when they're sitting here, you might get a review or referral, but you might not send them a monthly newsletter to Stay top of mind. You might not ask them to like you and follow you and share your stuff on social media. You might not send them a text message checking in on them or offering them some type of special to bring them back into the funnel. It's just through happenstance that maybe they call you again when they need you, which is great. But there's ways that you can encourage people to get out of this blue ocean and get back into your retargeting funnel. And this right here is the honeyhole of all businesses, because once this snowball gets spinning and the repeat customers continue to come in and they also spit off referrals and new customers, this is spinning. And the snowball just keeps getting bigger, bigger and bigger as you layer in new customers. And so a lot of companies, they miss out on this part right here, which is why I thought it was so important that we don't just focus on getting the views, getting the SEO all the way into leads and customers and then start this thing again. But let's think about how does this play out with repeat customers and brand advocates. And that's why we operate and we take our funnel and we drop it into companies. And again, you don't have to work with us. You can do this stuff on your own if you want to try to figure it out and implement it. But it's about, like, retargeting your past customers, bringing them through the funnel, and creating raving fans out of your customers. So I would challenge you. Think about your customer experience. Think about, are you creating raving fans? How can you create referral programs and create people that are above and beyond happy with your service, that yes, they come back and yes, they tell all their friends and family about what a great experience that they have with you. Hope that helps. If you like this type of content, be sure to hit like and subscribe. Drop a comment below. Let me know what you what you think. Always looking for content ideas. So if you have a question or something, drop a comment, too. We had some Q and A stuff coming up. Cool. Talk to y' all later. Have a great day.