Funnels don't have to be complex or difficult! Use these funnel strategies to reach your students. A marketing funnel is just a series of communications that convince someone to do something. The "do something" part can be a lot of things: buy your course, sign up for your freebie, follow you on Instagram, or any other action that you want someone to take. So let's talk about it!
Funnels don't have to be complex or difficult! Use these funnel strategies to reach your students. A marketing funnel is just a series of communications that convince someone to do something.
The "do something" part can be a lot of things: buy your course, sign up for your freebie, follow you on Instagram, or any other action that you want someone to take. So let's talk about it!
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
Every funnel also has two parts: the funnel strategy and then the funnel tools. Today we are only talking about the strategy behind your funnels...
Funnel Secret #1: Start with the Action You Want
Funnel Secret #2: Snag Their Attention with Your Hook
Funnel Secret #3: You Need to Try Lots of Hooks
Funnel Secret #4: Every Funnel or Mini-Funnel Needs a Hook, Story and an Offer/Action
Funnel Secret #5: Course Funnels Make Your Prospective Student Comfortable and Confident
Let's start thinking about what your funnel should look like!
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So when I first heard the term funnel, I remember thinking isn't that what my dad uses to change the oil in his race car. What does that possibly have to do with marketing? So today let's talk about funnels 101 and the strategy behind using them to sell your online course. Let's get to it. Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast,
helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood. Hey there, I'm So glad you're here today because we're going to talk about one of the most Fun things around course creation and actually marketing and selling your course. And that's setting up a funnel to help introduce people to your course. And some people hear that and they think it's something super complicated and super complex.
And yes, some times funnels get complicated and complex, but they don't have to. So today I want to talk about the strategy and let's start with some of the basics. The first thing is a marketing funnel. In my opinion, is just a series of communications that convince people to do something so that do something. Part of it can be a lot of different things they could mean to buy your course,
maybe it's to sign up for your free lead magnet. Maybe you want them to follow you on Instagram or any other kind of action that you want someone to take who comes across you either online or offline. And the reason it's called a funnel is because normally what happens is related to the number of people that take each step in the funnel. So typically a lot of people start at the beginning.
So you might get a, a lot of people that will come across your landing page to sign up for your freebie. But then only a few of those will actually go to the next step, which is to sign up and then an even smaller number may go to the next step of the funnel, which is to actually buy your course. So you can see that that starts with a big group of people at the top,
and then fewer people as you go further down the funnel. So that's why they describe it that way. Every funnel also has two different parts, the strategy behind it, and then the actual tools that you use to set all this up online. So today I just want to talk about the strategy behind what you're doing. And then later on, I'm going to get into more of the tools that you can use in order to do this type of work.
Okay? So I've got several different strategy secrets that I want to with you, and we can sort of work backward into what your funnel should look like. So the first thing is to start with the action that you want the person to take. So you start your strategy by thinking about what is it you want them to do. So do you want them to sign up for your course?
Do you want them to send it for your freebie? Do you want them to follow you on Twitter? This action becomes your goal. And then the second step in this strategy is to figure out how you're going to grab their attention. So what is it that you can use? That's going to get their attention and make them stop scrolling. So Russell Brunson calls this your hook and a special shout out to him because a lot of the concepts that I've learned about marketing funnels are from him,
his books and podcasts, and the training training that he offers. So hooks are typically some kind of unique, unusual, interesting, something, just playing different that somebody sees and goes, wait, what was that? And so it kind of arouses, their curiosity to say, Hmm, is this something I need to look into further? What is this?
Exactly. And so actually you can kind of consider this podcast episode. Even it's sort of a mini funnel for me, because I want you to listen to the episode. And then if it interests you, you can click on some of the links that are in the show notes. So it's a mini funnel, and then I'm trying to grab your attention,
share something useful, and then point you to the next step. So if you think about it, one of the ways to really make your, your funnels and your hooks stand out is using numbers. Because whenever you say, Ooh, I've got five secrets or I've got seven strategies, or the three mistakes, people make something about the numbers gets your attention and it makes you kind of pause and go,
Ooh, I really want to know all of those. Or I have this kind of fear of missing out if I don't know all five. And in addition, secrets is a really great word to use because it also kind of triggers that fear of missing out. And so you can see how you can combine these different things to come up with hooks that will really grab the attention of your listeners or your readers.
The next secret is that you have to try a lot of different hooks. It's really tough to know ahead of time, what's going to resonate and what your audience is going to get excited about. So you need a way to try, try out lots of different hooks and see what it is that people seem the most curious about. So you need some kind of tracking to know which of the,
your hooks are working the best. So for example, for all of my subject lines, for the emails that I send out, I'm constantly checking, like which ones get the best open rates, which ones get the worst open rates. So I don't repeat that. A couple other good places to check out your hooks are Facebook lives or clubhouse rooms where you can bring something up and see if your audience gets excited or ask you questions when you talk about it with them.
And then hooks are very connected to the problems that your students are experiencing. So you can think about the different problems that they're coming across and then use that to inspire your hooks. So for example, I know one of the big problems my course creators have is trying to decide, Hey, is this idea that I'm doing? Is it a good idea or not?
So that's why you can get the freebie that I have on is your idea any good? And that's in the show notes to coursecreatorshq.com/39. And you can get that. And that's a little mini hook that I just threw out there that if it's something interesting for you, you'll go grab it and sign up for my email list. So follow this kind of process.
You can do the same thing, you know, be throwing out these hooks constantly to see what's getting people's attention and what's working the best. So funnel secret number four is that every funnel or mini funnel that you're setting up needs a hook, a story, and an offer, or an action on the end of it. And so according to them, Russell,
the hook gets your customer's attention. The story creates desire. And then the last step of every message or post or email or podcasts that you're doing. It's the offer where like, for example, what I just did the hook was, Hey, is your idea any good? And then I told the story about how I came up with it and I want to help you.
And all of the other course creators that come across to know if their idea's any good. And then the action part of it is go sign up and get your copy. So you can see how the hook, the story and the offer all sort of fit together. And the more you practice creating the different pieces of this puzzle, the better you're going to get at coming up with these.
So I've been really lucky, lucky I've been working some with some fantastic clients and they come up with some of the best hooks and angles that I've ever heard. And so I've just gotten better sort of by osmosis of working with them. And you can kind of do the same thing, keep track of as you're online on Facebook in your email box, what's getting your attention and why,
why did it work? What did that trigger in your mind that made you want to take the next step and start putting those subject lines and those hooks and those things into what's called your personal swipe file. So that when you're sitting down to think about some new things for yourself, you've got sort of this template that you can work with that can inspire you not to copy.
That's not what I'm talking about, but to inspire the way they put it together or the way they said something and to help you with your next steps. And then the other thing that you need to do for this strategy is to start thinking about the different stories that you can use in between your hooks and your offers. Because those stories from either a students who have worked with you or from clients you've worked with,
they really help you illustrate your ideas and get your message out in a unique way. And to make somebody go, oh yeah, that's me. And I resonate with that. Oh, I want to see what else she has. What else does he offer to help me? Cause I'm in that same situation. And funnel strategy, number five is that your course funnels.
So as you're putting these funnels together around your courses, they help make your prospective student. You want them to be really, really comfortable with what you're offering and also really confident about what it is that your course is going to provide. So it has to, as you're putting your funnel together, it has to do quite a few different things. So let's talk about those real quick.
First, the person signing up has to recognize the problem you're solving as a problem that they have. So you'll want to talk about the problem a little bit so that they can say, oh yeah, that's me. You know, I need to know if my idea for my courses any good. Once they recognize that, then they're more likely to continue with this.
They also need to feel comfortable and trust that you're the best person to help them. So things like testimonials, different case studies that you can provide, those are really good ways to help people get comfortable, that you know what you're talking about. They also need to be confident in your talents and your specific methodology. So this is where you nurture them through what you share.
You, you tell them about how you do things. You tell them about your background. They get to know you and they get more comfortable with the strategies that you're talking about. They also need not to be confused. So just remember any confused visitor or person, they just click away like, Ugh, I'm confused. This is too hard. I'm just going to go on to the next thing.
Cause there's lots of, lots of messages and offers for them. So they're just going to click away. And the last thing is they have to be willing to pay your price, to solve their problem. So sometimes that's where some friction will come in getting the pricing and the problem situated at the right and the messaging around that, all so that it fits.
And the really great news about all of this is there's lots and lots of different ways for you to meet some of these requirements. I just hit a few of the high points for you. So could you give away a free lead magnet and then just use emails as part of your sales funnel to sell your course? Absolutely. Could you use a webinar to sign people up and hit all of these different points?
Yes. Terrific. Could you do a five day challenge to sell your course? Yes. So even things like a Facebook ad, if it's long enough, it could work or a video ad because you're hitting all of these different points with your prospective students and your job as a course, creator is to be constantly improving your course funnel. So I'll tell you your first funnel that you create will probably be terrible.
It probably won't work, but what you are going to do is you're going to change something, try again and see if it works better. So constant improvement is your goal. One of my clients, we do a ton of lead magnets and sending them out and we are constantly tracking the numbers to improve them and see, Ooh, did this new lead magnet work better than the other one?
What kind of rates of opt-ins and how, how is that going for us? But then the other side of this, I will tell you, even my clients, who've been at this for a long time. They'll swing and miss sometimes. So a promotion will send something out and it just does not work. And so either kill it pretty quickly, cause we don't want to waste a lot of time with it or we'll change it up and try a different proposal or a different way of looking at it.
We start thinking about the stories involved and seeing, you know, are those stories resonating with people? So I say that because especially if you're brand new, be prepared, you're going to have a lot of strikeouts. You know, that's just part of the way this works. And I did not know that at the beginning. So I want to make sure that you feel comfortable with that.
You know, you're going to try some of these hooks and some of these stories and they just aren't going to land. So that's not something that says you're wrong. That's just how it works for everyone. Who's going through this. Okay. And then the last thing I like to mention is to make sure that when you're using these strategies, use them ethically and be honest because it can be really,
really easy to start using a lot of superlatives. So things like, oh, I have the greatest program for you. It's the best in the world to help you with this. And when you make these promises, they just sort of fall flat sometimes. And you don't want to do this because it really hurts your credibility. And I always think back to when I worked with CPAs and one of the reasons that CPAs were considered so trustworthy is we had to be incredibly careful about how we said things.
And we, we had to use almost use language without almost any emotion to it. Now, I don't know. I'm not saying you need to do that because you need to, that that gets boring. I'll be honest. It's, it's very boring, but you do need to stay truthful about what you're sharing and, and don't exaggerate or make things up or pretend to be something you're not,
I hate that "fake it till you make it". I, I just, I, I don't like that approach. It's not good for your audience plus they can see it. So don't do that. So hopefully this gives you some ideas to start thinking about what your strategy should contain. You know, what are some hooks that I'm going to do?
What are some stories that I'm going to tell? What are the different offers that I'm going to make? What is it I want people to be doing? So take some time this week to answer those questions and, and think about what your strategy is going to be in order to pull together a funnel around your course. And I'll include some links to some of my favorite tools in the show notes that you can use to implement some of these things,
the tools keep getting better and better to do this, to do funnels. And so there's lots and lots of different options for you. So I hope this helps. And I want to thank you so much for listening. I truly appreciate the space in your podcast app. I appreciate that you subscribe, I appreciate that you review and you listen to what we share.
If there's anything good that you got today, I really, really appreciate a five-star review. Those are so fantastic. And I appreciate it. It helps us get in front of more potential course creators. So I know it takes a little time on your part to go into the app and do that. So I truly appreciate it. And I hope you have a fantastic week.
And this inspires you to think a little bit more about what your funnel could be like. And I can't wait to connect with you again next week and we will talk more about course creation And course marketing. So have a fantastic week talk to you then.