Photo by Carlos Muza

Originally Posted On: https://www.jimmynewson.com/marketing-funnel-automation-for-coaches-consultants-and-authors/

 

Accumulating new leads is extremely important for the success rate of your business. Without constant lead generation, your business might struggle with sales and expansion. Regardless of what type of business you own, whether you offer coaching or consulting services, setting up an automated marketing funnel will deliver positive results and simplify the process in many ways.

Professionals such as coaches, consultants, and authors can tackle lead generation with marketing funnel automation and turn passerby visitors on their website into loyal customers.

To find out more about the process, we offer you a detailed breakdown of the components that make up a successful automated marketing funnel. We will also share a set of helpful tools to create and manage the stages of the funnel, as well as a marketing funnel checklist that you can download.

What is a Marketing Funnel From a Business Standpoint?

A marketing funnel is a system that tracks a buyer’s experience with your brand. It encompasses all of the customers’ interactions with your services, beginning with the initial stage where they first learn about your business and ending with their conversion to loyal customers.

Your marketing funnel helps you gain a better understanding of your customer’s journey with your brand and a better insight into their decision-making process. You can find out how you can convert prospects into returning clientele and make the necessary tweaks to your marketing strategy.

By making full use of your marketing funnel, you can inspire your clients to take action and reach the purchasing stage. It is a lucrative tool that helps you with lead generation, attracting loyal customers, sales, and brand awareness.

Marketing Funnel Automation

The marketing funnel automation process will help you make lead generation automatic, without extensive legwork on your part. The combined influence of ads, content, and lead magnets will bring in new leads continually.

The primary goal of your marketing funnel is to guide your prospects through the process of becoming buying customers. It is a lasting process, but in time your funnel will filter the visitors on your website so that you can guide your target clients slowly to make that purchase.

There are many ways in which you can convert your online spectators into clients. You can offer them valuable content in the form of a webinar, a tutorial, or a course via a registration page. Your attendees will likely sign up with an e-mail address, which can serve as a future point of contact.

Sharing content that adds value will help you establish a relationship with your potential clients and increase their awareness of your business. If you automate your marketing funnel, you will make the entire process more efficient, streamlined, and simplified. To execute marketing tasks with simplicity, you can use marketing automation software.

Here is a helpful list of tools that you can use:

· SEMrush: an SEO tool that helps you with research.

· HubSpot offers a full platform with marketing solutions and customer relationship management.

· LeadMagnetKing.com aids you with lead magnet creation and funnel building.

· Zapier: an automation tool that helps you with repetitive tasks.

· ActiveCampaign: for your e-mail marketing and automation processes.

· ClickFunnels: helps you build your sales funnel.

· WordPress: a website creation tool.

Create Captivating Content

By creating captivating content, you will put your products or services on the map. Therefore, the first step is to provide content that provokes the interest of your website visitors. If people don’t engage with your brand in any shape or form, they are not likely to become your clients.

In that case, the marketing funnel automation process will be pointless. To attract an online audience, you need to do extensive research and find out which topics rank high in your specific industry.

• Research. The goal here is to figure out which topics can help you reach a high rank on Google. You can use a competitor research tool and discover valuable information about your competition, such as their top posts, keywords, and the type of content that ranks high on Google.
• Content. By posting content that is relevant for your niche industry, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field and a source of credible information. However, keep the sales pitch to a minimum in order not to put off potential customers.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

To make the most out of your online content, you need to drive organic traffic to your website. The three things you need to focus on for increased website traffic are keywords, on-page optimization, and backlinks. It is in your best interest to install a Google Search Console so that you can rest assured that your top keywords are part of your content.

• On-Page Optimization. To help your website rank higher in search engines, include your target keywords in your titles and crucial paragraphs. You can also use your keyword as an alt-tag for your visual content. To stay on top of your game, you can use Google Analytics to keep track of new emerging keywords.

Re-targeting Ads

Re-targeting advertisements should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. When you re-target your clients with ads that are related to their specific online searches, you can slowly increase your brand’s level of recognition.

The rule of thumb here is, the more we are exposed to something, the more we begin to trust it. You can use re-targeting advertisements as part of your marketing funnel automation process to restore the interest of your one-time site visitors and help them leap from prospects to fully-fledged customers.

Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is another valuable asset you can use to add more names to your e-mail list. A helpful piece of content can serve as a great lead magnet that can help you gather information about your clients. You can use this information as a means of communication later on.

Multiple types of content can play the role of lead magnets. From webinars, white papers, case studies, and online courses to e-books and newsletters, you can choose the form that suits your brand best. There is a large number of free tools at your disposal:

• Piktochart: offers a multitude of templates.
• Canva: a graphic design tool that you can use with ease.
• Vimeo: for your video content.
• Lead Magnet King.com: Done for you lead magnets and marketing funnels (link to done-for-you page)

An Efficient Call to Action (CTA)

In the marketing world, a compelling call-to-action can convert a site visitor to a lead. Therefore, CTAs need to be an integral part of your lead magnets to prompt your prospects to take action. Adding a time restriction can also urge people to take immediate action.

The main guidelines for a compelling call to action:

• Use action-oriented words. “Download Your Action Plan.” “Get Your Meal Plan” “Start Your Healthier You Journey.”
• Make it easily understandable.
• A friendly tone works better than a sales pitch.
• You can use strategic placement to your advantage. Place it at the top of the page, the bottom of a post or the sidebar.

Your Email Marketing Strategy

The whole point of lead magnets and CTAs is to gather a fair amount of email addresses that you can use as a communication access point to build a relationship in the future. To achieve that, you need to offer your potential clients free content that will somehow add value to their life.

A webinar, a master-class, or an e-book is a great choice to capture their attention and share your specific knowledge in the marketplace. By providing quality content for free, you take on the role of a mentor that can guide them to achieve success and gain their trust.

Just remember that compiling your list of email addresses is very important to your strategy since email marketing is at the center of successful marketing automation.

Establish a Strong Relationship

As soon as you have your list of e-mails, you can engage your clients to form a strong bond with them. Your first e-mail needs to captivate them and keep them interested in your brand.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to sell your products or services prematurely. Instead, you can work your way slowly and gain their trust before you close a sale. The first 3-5 e-mails should be about forming a relationship and providing useful information. It will persuade your readers that you are a worthy investment of their time and money.

• A persuasive e-mail technique that you can use is the Soap Opera Sequence. It consists of painting a vivid picture of the benefits you will add to your customer’s life before you make the sales pitch. Instead of naming benefits, you provide descriptive imagery, such as traveling to beautiful destinations, living a luxury lifestyle, etc.

A Cohesive Marketing Funnel

Last but not least, your marketing funnel needs to be in sync with the visuals you provide. You begin with free content that helps you gain trust and establish your expertise.

After you have an interested audience, you can use efficient marketing tools such as web push notifications to convince your prospects to take that extra step and convert to a buying customer. The main three steps to successful web push notification are timing, copy, and market segmentation.

• The right timing is essential with web push notifications. To be successful, you need to consider your customers’ habits.
• Your text needs to be engaging, to the point, and to have a clear CTA.
• Market segmentation is an under-utilized option when it comes to web push notifications that can give you the competitive edge you need.

These are the key components you need to focus on to have a successfully operating marketing funnel. You have a large number of online tools that can help your process of marketing funnel automation. Make sure to download our marketing funnel checklist to cover all the bases.