Everyone has to make an income to survive. But what happens when your current income isn’t enought to sustsain your lifestyle. What do you do? Find a new job or find a way to make some extra income?
Have you invested a ton of time and money into your website, only to find out that it doesn’t convert visitors into leads?
Frustrating as hell, isn’t it?
The first time I heard someone say this, I didn’t buy into it at all. It did not make sense why people would go to a website and not take action, if they were interested in what they were looking at. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was assuming that everyone else made decisions just like I did and I didn’t even know it.
Then I created my own website and invested a ton of time and money.
Can you guessed what happened to me?
I created products and offered services and nothing happened….
Then I would rework the website, create and delete pages, etc. and still nothing would change. That’s when I learned about something called a “sales funnel” or a “marketing funnel”. Everything changed for me after that and I am going to share some basics with you, at a high level.
Sales Funnels
These take the traffic from your page and weed out the people quickly who are not interested in what you are offering. The top of the funnel is also known as a “landing” page or a “squeeze” page. At a glance, a landing page looks exactly like a website except all of the distractions are gone. Landing pages are designed to get the visitor to take a single action or to leave.
A name and email (and sometimes phone number) is usually exchanged for access to a .pdf, a free course, a resource, a voucher for a coupon, a meeting, etc. or something else of value for the visitor. You have hit your fair share of landing pages yourselves. I know that I have.
Once someone opts into your funnel, at a minimum, you have their email address and they have expressed interest in something that you have to offer and said “yes” to you already. For example, I offer a totally free 7 day podcast launch course on my site and I am rolling out a members only “podcasting for entrepreneurs” community very soon. I will only make this available to the people who are on my free podcast course list, because I have already given them tremendous value and I know that they are interested in podcasting the way that I teach it. There is no reason to annoy other people on social media about my paid community because I am just throwing crap against the wall. This annoys people and wastes my advertising dollars at the same time.
If you aren’t using funnels in your business, think about how this could develop some warmer leads for you.
Automation
Automation is simply automating a sequence of events that happens as the result of something else. When someone opts into one of my funnels, they will get added to an email list, and may receive an automated sequence of emails and/or SMS texts that I have setup ahead of time. Once it’s built, the hard work is over with. It’s a beautiful thing my friends. You can automate your chat bot responses too in the very same way.
There are a lot of options out there for automation solutions, some I have found nearly worthless and one I absolutely love. A user friendly and powerful automation solution is something that every business should have and it’s so easy to use that it makes no sense not to. I will share resources for all of this at the end of the blog.
Automation allows you to get some time back. It allows your sequence to do some selling for you. Your list of subscribers can purchase eBooks, courses, programs, etc. They can purchase of these from you through your email sequences. Did you notice that I didn’t mention anything about a newsletter? I have had some great guests on my podcast who have built massive newsletter fan bases. These guests are in very specific niches. However, for most of us no one wants to read our newsletters long-term.
How many newsletters do you read every week that hit your inbox?
Passive Income
Since your funnels and your automation work together hand in hand. The combination is the hidden system that can help you build your passive income. Remember, it requires a lot of work upfront. However, very little once established and functional. If you plan on building a significant stream of income by solely trading your time for dollars, you are in for a rude awakening. Everyone wears down. We get sick and get burnt out at some level. This is why proactively working on your passive income strategy is necessary.
Technology is amazing and can certainly give you some amazing advantages in business. There are many young guys that reject all of this and want nothing to do with any of it. I guarantee you that their competitors are doing it, so you have a choice to make. Why make something harder than it needs to be? It makes no sense to me at all.
Resources
As promised, here are a few resources that I use and rely on for my funnels and automation. These are affiliates of mine and I chose to set this up because I really use them and love the services they offer. Another thing I love is that both of these offer free trials. Both with no contracts, so that you can try them for yourselves. I will even share a funnel that converts well, if you want to grow your email list. If you have any questions about getting your first funnel and email sequence setup I am happy to help.
ClickFunnels – Landing page and marketing funnels (Free 14 day trial)
ActiveCampaign – Email and SMS automation (Free 14 day trial)
These two programs integrate perfectly with one another as well. If you have any questions about any of this, just leave them in the comments.