A lead funnel is the way you get new leads for your business. According to Blogspot, new business requires about 8 touchpoints before a prospect will interact with you.
What is a touchpoint?
A touchpoint is any interaction prospective customers has to you and your brand.
Touchpoints can be:
- An article / case study on your website
- Paid ads on social media (Facebook, Linkedin ads, Google ads)
- Seeing your brand in the Google search engines
- Appearing in their social media feed such as a Like or Share
Golidlocks and three distinct stages
For most businesses, the customer journey has three distinctive stages:
Awareness stage
The first stage is to build awareness. At the top of your funnel, prospects want to know what do you do and how you help people. A common mistake first time founders make is that they assume their audience already knows. No, they don’t.
Ever felt that selling sucks? It’s because you’re trying to cramp in too much too soon in the awareness stage. Keep it light. Three tactics you could try to increase your visibility in front of your prospects:
- Increase your organic traffic with content marketing
- Specific social media posts on your prospects pain points
- Search engine optimization (such as keyword research) on your existing content marketing
Consideration Stage
This part of the sales process is where most founders & entrepreneurs are strongest. By this point, you’ve already built awareness, now the focus switches to building trust and competence. In the old days, this used to be cold calling or random email / brochers. These days, its more about case studies, examples / mockup scenarios & discovery sessions.
Decision Stage
This is by far the shortest stage and is more focused on the logistics. We’ve qualified leads and now the prospect wants to become a customer. What happens next? (ie the onboarding process) and how do they go about this?
As with Goldiocks, you don’t want to be too hot or too cold on any of these phases.
Building an effective lead generation funnel
The primary goal of any sort of funnel is to move your prospect from attention to action
What is a lead magnet?
Your lead magnet is something small, (relatively) cheap to produce and has a quick win for your prospect and sits on your landing page. Your prospect gives you something specific about them (generally their name, email address and perhaps job title). In return they might receive:
- 5 ways to increase sales, immediately!
- how to fill your social media calendar in half an hour
- get your free __________
What format should my lead magnet be?
It doesn’t matter what format you use for your lead magent, so long as its easy for your prospect to use and consume. An Ebook / Video / Podcast / or a combination of all are great examples. So long as its downloadable content you’ll be good to go.
A compelling call to action
Its weird, once you know this, you’ll start to see it everywhere! The call to action format is as follows:
- Your name (who you are)
- Who do you help?
- How do you help them? (the benefit – the good stuff)
- The pain point – what are they trying to avoid
Take these examples:
- My name is Christian Payne. I help first time founders and entrepreneurs release their product on time & on budget, without the fear and panic of wasting thousands
- Gary Vaynerchuk is the chairman of VaynerX, a modern-day media and communications holding company, a full-service advertising agency servicing Fortune 100 clients across the company’s 5 locations
- Bob Proctor and business partner Sandy Gallagher, helps people get in touch with themselves—who they are, what they’re capable of and what they want in life. We offer events, programs and products—all based on decades of research, study and application—to elevate people’s thoughts and bring their genius to the surface.
Sometimes it can be more subtle. On Tony Robbins’ website, he asks you to self select:
Other benefits of a lead magnet
Assuming you have your google analytics and other right tools in place, the big benefit is the tracking. Once your prospects enters your lead funnel, you can track what content of yours they’re interested in and then either retarget them or send them an offer.
Common mistakes founders make with their funnel leads
Miss their target audience
By far the easiest mistake first time founders make is that they try and target everyone! The best example I use is Donald Trump. Regardless if you love or hate him. One thing he did very well was focus (solely!) on his target audience.
Use jargon with their potential customers
I see far too often founders will get excited when talking about what they do. Passion, excitement, enthuasism are all great. Slow your sales efforts down.
The rush to paid advertising
While paid ads can increase your outbound marketing, too much too soon is just a waste of money. The problem is the language you use with your target audience. What are their pain points? What do they want help with? And by when?
Working with your marketing team to build a strong lead generation strategy will have you generating leads in no time.
With the right messaging, and a great customer journey, you’ll be able to increase those conversion rates, turn those potential customers into real customers.
