Hey there, my friend, welcome to episode 312 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

Thanks for leading me your ears right now – I know you have lots of other things you could be doing or listening to – so I appreciate you.

For those playing along live, this podcast is two days late. Sorry! I went on holidays, and I’d love to say that automation tech let me down, but the honest truth is that I went on holidays! And I didn’t have an episode ready. Sorry, today I am doing it. I know you understand because you’re in business too.

Last week I did an episode that was the answer to one of community members questions and this week, I’m doing the same. Another “Dear Dolly” business version!

The amazing Louise from Floral Harvest (check out her online store or go in store – Lou has the most beautiful stuff) asked a question about marketing funnels. Specifically, asking me to explain the “marketing jargon” behind them. So, I am!

But first, a shoutout to me and my book Small Town Big Impact with 107 Simple Marketing Strategies for Regional Business Success. If you haven’t got a copy yet, go to www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au and get a copy. It is available on Amazon – so you can get a kindle or hard copy there too – but I’d prefer you get it from my website! I have just picked up the next print run of the book – which means, holy cow, that’s there are already a thousand copies of my book out in the big wide world (and some have even gone overseas!).

And before you hear today’s episode, I just wanted to see if you had a chance to listen to last week’s episode featuring the answer to as business owners what’s the three things we should do every week for marketing. Apparently, that episode stuck a cord with my community as I’ve had lots of conversations this week about it. If you haven’t listened to that episode, tune back into it after listening to today. Can you find it at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/311

And lastly, I have started a Throwback Thursday part of this pod. This week’s throw back is to episode 131 which is titled How to Attract Your Starving Audience? What’s the number one thing a new restaurant in town needs to grow and be profitable? Yep, a starving audience. This episode is how to find yours. You can find the episode here: www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/131

Okay, let’s get into marketing funnels – are you excited? I bet you are, I can feel it from here!

If you’re a visual person, you might like to head to the show notes at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/312 and take a look at the marketing funnel picture and reference it as we go through it today.

Okay, so a marketing funnel is like a funnel – big opening, small exit at the bottom. Why? Because marketing is a numbers game. You need to get as many amazing ideal clients as you can coming through to create the sales you want.

How many do you need? That’s actually dependent on your ability to convert leads to sales. If you convert 10 leads to sales and want to make 100 sales, then you need 1000 people through your funnel. It’s basic math really!

But that’s another episode to talk about numbers – and not my zone of genius, but marketing and funnels are!

So, imagine the top of the funnel, the widest point. Up here we have

• Awareness and problem recognition, and
• Discovery, Interest and information search

The type of marketing that exists at the top of the funnel might be things like:

1. Awareness

Objective: Introduce the brand to potential customers.

Content & Marketing Activities:

• Social Media Posts (Paid and Organic): Create engaging, shareable content on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn to showcase products, services, and brand values.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Use relevant keywords in blog posts, product descriptions, and web pages to improve search engine rankings.
• Content Marketing: Publish educational or entertaining blog posts, infographics, or videos to raise brand awareness.
• Google Ads or Social Media Ads: Invest in targeted ads to appear in front of the right audience.
• Partnerships with Influencers: Collaborate with micro-influencers in your industry for product shout-outs or reviews.

Goal: Get as many eyes as possible on the brand, focusing on impressions and clicks.

Basically, you are producing content that falls into your brand awareness strategy and your engagement strategy. You are producing content that sets you up as the expert, shows your ideal client that you understand them, you get them and you have the solution for them (or, of course, you are surprised and delight them).

Then we have the middle of the funnel. Here we have

• Discovery

Your ideal client knows who you are and what you do by the time they reach the middle of the funnel, and we are encouraging the potential customers to explore our brand further.

The types of marketing content that fall under the Discovery part of the funnel are:

• Website Content: Ensure your website is user-friendly, with clear navigation and optimized content to keep visitors engaged (use tools like heatmaps to improve experience).
• Landing Pages: Create focused landing pages for specific campaigns, with a clear call-to-action (CTA) like signing up for a newsletter or downloading a resource.
• Lead Magnets: Offer free guides, checklists, or discounts in exchange for an email to build your email list.
• Email Marketing Campaigns: Send welcome emails to new subscribers with more information about your business and how they can benefit from your products/services.
• Engaging Social Media Stories: Use Instagram/Facebook stories to give behind-the-scenes insights, product features, or testimonials.

Goal: Encourage deeper interaction, with key metrics like session duration, page views, and downloads.

The next phase in the marketing funnel is Consideration.

The Objective here is to Differentiate your brand from competitors and highlight why customers should choose you.

Content & Marketing Activities:

• Comparison Guides: Create blog posts or downloadable PDFs that compare your products/services with competitors, highlighting your unique benefits.
• Customer Testimonials and Case Studies: Feature customer success stories that resonate with your target audience and show proof of value.
• Retargeting Ads: Serve ads to people who have visited your website but haven’t converted, offering them more personalized content.
• Product Demos or Free Trials: Offer free samples, consultations, or demonstrations to reduce friction in the decision-making process.

Goal: Reduce bounce rates by providing compelling reasons to continue with your brand, moving them toward a purchase decision.

Next is Conversion – where we make the sale! YAY. The objective is to get the customer to purchase.

The type of content and marketing activities are:

• Special Offers & Discounts: Provide limited time offers or discounts to incentivize purchases.
• Simple Checkout Process: Ensure your website’s checkout process is seamless and user-friendly. Abandoned cart recovery strategies, like follow-up emails, can help recover lost sales.
• Testimonials on Checkout Pages: Reinforce the buying decision by including customer reviews and success stories on product pages and checkout pages.
• Live Chat or Chatbots: Offer immediate support through live chat or AI chatbots to answer any last-minute questions.

Goal: Close the sale by removing any final barriers and offering personalized incentives.

Now this is where most people’s funnel finish. I have the sale, amazing, unreal, now back to the top – I need more top of the funnel peeps. But the reality in 2024 is that there are two more places in the funnel to fill and create content around. The first is Customer Relationship – this is my community building that you hear me talk about so often.

The objective is to build a strong relationship with the customer post-purchase. You must not underestimate the importance of this part of your funnel.

Content and marketing activities here could be:

• Thank You Emails: Send personalized thank-you emails immediately after a purchase and include additional product recommendations.
• Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Get feedback through surveys or reviews to improve your offerings and show you care about customer experience.
• Exclusive Offers for Repeat Customers: Offer loyalty programs, exclusive content, or early access to new products for returning customers.
• Community Building (Facebook Groups/Private Forums): Create a private group for your customers to share their experiences, tips, and connect with like-minded people.

And then finally at the bottom of the funnel, we have retention and referrals. This is where we get our customers to become brand ambassadors and advocates for us. Put community on steroids!

The type of marketing activities and content here might be:

• Referral Programs: Offer customers rewards or discounts for referring friends or sharing your products on social media.
• Re-engagement Campaigns: Use email or SMS marketing to send personalized offers, updates, or educational content to encourage repeat purchases.
• User-Generated Content (UGC): Encourage customers to share their experiences with your product on social media, using a branded hashtag or by tagging your account.
• Follow-up Purchases or Subscription Models: If applicable, introduce subscription services for products or reminder campaigns for refills.
• Contests and Giveaways: Run contests that encourage your community to engage, participate, and share your brand with their networks.

Goal: Drive repeat purchases and referrals to grow your community and build customer lifetime value.

And that’s marketing funnels!

Let’s go through the six steps again:

1. Awareness
2. Discovery
3. Consideration
4. Conversion
5. Customer Relationship
6. Retention and Referral

Now, as a business and marketing coach, I can also guarantee that most of your marketing activities are “top of funnel” activities – social media, blog posts, infographics, PR, SEO, video etc.

My challenge to you now is to look at all the other activities in the rest of the funnel, maybe do an audit of what you are already doing and work out how you can market better. How you can create marketing content, or repurpose marketing content you already have, into content that serves your clients or customers as they head down that funnel. Interestingly, if you look at the diagram in the show notes (www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/312) you will note that there is no exit – we do not want our customers to ever exit the funnel – hence the last one – retention and referral.

To make things easier, I have all this information in a checklist for you. Click here to download it.

How do you feel now? Has this helped understand your marketing funnel a little more? As my favourite business saying goes “When the student is ready, the teacher appears”, so today although you may have heard all this before, today you REALLY HEARD it and feel like you can now take on the world! (Oh, I soooo hope so!).

Let me know in the Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group your thoughts and feelings. You can join here, if you haven’t already:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/LikeMindedBusinessOwners

If you loved this episode and found it valuable, please take 30 seconds out of your day to leave me a rating and review if you want where you are listening. And do you have a friend who might like to listen in too? Can I ask a favour, and have you share this episode with them? I’d love that and appreciate it SO much.

See you next week on the podcast for episode 313.

But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook, and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

…….. remember small business peep, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!