| Friend,
I'm just about ready to wind down this series on direct response marketing for martial art school owners. And to do so, I need to talk about how you put all this stuff to work in growing your school.
And putting it together means we need to talk about...
Marketing Funnels
When most marketers talk about marketing funnels, what they're likely talking about is the actual marketing tools and methods that are used to take a consumer from suspect to prospect to customer.
You have various tools at your disposal when building a sales funnel, many of which we've already discussed in this series.* I call these the "mechanical elements" of a marketing funnel.
I'm going to discuss how you might put those mechanical elements to work in future emails. But first, you need to understand the why behind each mechanism and step in the process.
Buyer Phases
I've seen this broken down a few different ways, but what follows is as good an explanation as any of the steps a consumer generally takes before they make a purchase.
Consider that there are (more or less) six phases or steps a consumer has to go through before they make a buying decision... meaning, before they buy your stuff:
Step 1 - Discovery
The first step is when they learn about your product or service. Either they hear about it from a friend, or they see an ad, or they spot it being used in real time in the wild.
Step 2 - Awareness
In this step the consumer is seeing your product or service or business advertisements more and more. This is in part due to the reticular activating system,** but it should mostly be due to how good and ubiquitous your advertising is in your community.
Step 3 - Research
This is where most businesses focus their efforts, because they think the more information they give consumers, the more likely they are to buy their product or service. Certainly nearly all consumers do research before making a purchase, and more today than ever because Google makes it so easy. But your job is to not just provide information, but the RIGHT information - the kind that makes it easy for consumers to take the next step (I'll go deeper into this later).
Step 4 - Word-of-Mouth
Sure, they might have initially heard about your product or service from a friend. But now they're paying closer attention to what people are saying about your business, because their interest has been piqued. Note that today social media plays an important role in this stage, as do online reviews.
Step 5 - Purchase Decision
This is when the consumer makes the decision to buy. However, they have not yet actually MADE the purchase. It's important to understand that until you have money in hand, you have not made the sale. That's why step six is so important in your sales funnel.
Step 6 - The Sale
This step is when the consumer actually takes action and buys what you are selling. Your job is to make this step as easy and painless as possible. The more barriers you create (needlessly, in most cases) for the consumer to complete this step, the less likely you are to get that sale.
Creating A Sales Funnel
The job of the mechanical elements of your sales funnel are to take the consumer through each of these six steps. Your job is to take them from not even being aware your business exists, to deciding that they can't live without what you're selling.
When setting up your sales funnel, you must consider each of these steps carefully, and create your funnel so consumers are able to go from one step to another painlessly and effortlessly.
That's where the real skill lies in crafting a sales funnel. Anyone can set up a website, write an email message, post to social media, or buy some online ads.
However, it takes thought, patience, and practice to take many disparate marketing elements and combine them into a cohesive, functioning marketing funnel.
I'm going to discuss the task of doing so in future emails. Stay tuned.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
Quick-start Guide to My Books and Resources: - Looking for a list of books and resources I've written? Click here! - Need business coaching to grow your dojo? Click here…
P.S. - *Note that there are a million ways to set up a marketing funnel, but most these days will follow the method I'll describe later this week.
P.S.S. - **If you'll recall from past email messages from another series, the RAS is the portion of your brain that controls sleep, wakefulness, and FOCUS. It serves as a sort of filter for information, to keep your conscious mind from experiencing overwhelm. But once you determine consciously that something might be interesting or important, your RAS will allow that info through it's mental filter, so to speak. This means that once you pique someone's interest, you need to make sure they keep seeing your stuff everywhere. | 