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Your Digital Marketing Sucks, Nah Bro, I'm Telling You, It Sucks!!!

Promise

By the end of this, I'm hoping that you would have learnt a means to exponentially increase your business, as you bring in more customers as well as make more money off of every single customer that comes in alongside those you already had. All of this is meant to be scalable, so that you can have something resembling infinite leverage, allowing you to kick your feet up and start focusing on other aspects of the business or start focusing on having a little more fun. Either way your customer acquisition process is about to become a perpetual machine

Problem

You’re stuck between P500K and P5M, finding it difficult to scale and get your products into more hands, leaving you in two situations, you aren't taking home enough profit or the hours in the clock that you have to yourself are so desperately few. The answer would be pretty simple, just get more customers into the firm, but the reality is that you can't. You've most likely been relying on outdated means of marketing or banking on word of mouth, maybe you even thought you delved into digital marketing but probably aren't talking about the digital marketing I’m talking about. What you've done has gotten you this far, but it hasn't gotten you to where you want to be, which is to have 100s of tons of money and time.

You aren't where you wish to be because your customer acquisition process is doodoo. It's unscalable, unreliable, inefficient and lazy. The equivalent of a toilet with stains on the rim, might wanna put some bleach on that.

Unscalable, you really can not get it any larger than it currently is. Can you, at will, make your street advert or newspaper ad reach more people? I didn't think so either. If you can't get more people to know about you, how on earth are you going to get to the point where the company is big enough to become its own being that doesn't require you and yet feeds your children, who you'll finally be able to spend time with and just maybe, they might not start sniffing glue. Don't even get me started on word of mouth being unscalable, it's good but you are having your customers tell their limited number of peers about you. “Oh, but it's not like I've got only one customer.” Cool, but this feeds into point two.

Unreliability, using WoM (word of mouth) as an example, you're literally hoping that they talk about you, emphasis on hoping, hope is a terrible way to run a business and it’s a bad drug you need to get off of. Secondly, you are hoping that their peers want what you sell and then you are hoping that they’ll act on that need/want to buy before they sort of just forget. Even at scale, you can now see that WoM is a dastardly thing to be putting your bets on, the multiplication law of probability is not on your side. 

When it comes to the newspaper ads, how many people even read those things anyway, and when they do, what are the chances they’ll see your ad in the right-hand quarter of page 10, given that they jumped to page 12 to see the story of the guy caught having sex with a goat. You don't read those things from front to back either, so don't act like this isn’t the reality. For the billboards/street adverts, it's going to go past most people, given that they’ve got their heads buried in their phones, fundamentally making it nigh impossible to grab their attention. I don't know about you, but I don’t think your billboard is going to beat doom scrolling (the act of continually scrolling hoping you'll find something entertaining).

Finally, someone actually saw your ad. Too bad it sucks. Most of the reason for some of your success is that you had people who were actively ready to buy with minimal persuasion. Your ad is some massive picture, telling us about your best prices and quality, and some of the services that you offer and that’s it. Thing is, no one cares, outside of the ready buyers, who already know what they want to purchase, but that's only 3% of your entire market, that's 97% of your market being pissed away into the wind. People are lazy, you think most of them are going to put in the effort to find out more about you, it happens but it's rare, and once again, you’re banking on hope. To be fair though, the media you've chosen by nature is rather limiting in what you can express. Let's say the ad was written well, so you’ve increased how many people buy when they see it, that still doesn't change the large number of potential customers that you've left to be taken up by competitors because your media is incapable of collecting customers and incubating them until they are ready to buy. You’ve got customers slipping through the cracks.

You’ve got no simple way of tweaking your marketing to see what works best. Do you know what the conversion rate is on that newspaper ad or your WoM? Do you know which headline  would have gotten more clicks? You don't, you can't measure any of this stuff, and if ain’t getting measured, it's not getting managed. You don't know what gear to shift to, because you are wearing an eye mask and earplugs, you can't hear the engine nor see the RPM counter or speedometer, you just have your foot on the gas. You’ll move, but gear one can only get you so far.

The consequences should you stay down this path are at best, you continue to slowly grow, selling your soul, to get to the next level. You’re starting to make some money now, but your kids hate you for it and so does your spouse, given how little time you spend with them. But you hate it even more, you didn't start this for it to be a time and soul sucking vampire, you look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Am I a bad parent?”. To top that off you’re riddled with anxiety, is this the day that it'll all come crashing down, you're on that roller coaster, one minute sales are up, the next, they’re in hell.

At worst, you’re still selling your soul, but competitors are stealing food out your plate, and you just don't know how. The company is starting to starve, it's getting anemic, maybe doing 100 hr work weeks will help, oh, what's that, it's dead. Won't be long before you're in the same boat too, alongside everybody that was dependent on you. Spending your days wondering what could've been, all that potential, that wasn't met. Maybe you'll start another company, but it'll probably end up in the same position.

Myths

You’ve read all that was above, it's starting to make you feel some type of way. So you start telling yourself some comforting stories like…

“But we actively do digital marketing.” A social media post is about one part out of many of a digital marketing system, and for most of you that is all you do. The post is usually pretty useless to say the least, examples being a merry christmas branded post. If not that, then maybe it's promotion, promotion that’s lazily written and lasts a couple days at best, as social media platforms will probably boot your post to the void, as they prefer to promote the newest content. “I'll just make a new past every 2 days.” Now you’re spamming, and nobody likes that.

Let's say hypothetically, someone clicks and goes to your profile, for one its dead, everything you post is pretty unengaging, secondly it does not lead them anywhere, maybe to your site that looks like it was designed by a 5 year old, but once they're there, the site does very little to convert visitors into customers as it plagued with basic copy that is not persuasive, does not try to capture customer info to follow up, or have a means of continuing to track them once they leave the page. That would make up the front-end of a Digital Marketing System, which you are barely doing, so I don't think you do any form of digital marketing.

“Build it, and they will come”, I half-heartedly believe in this, and so should you. Fundamentally it makes sense, make a good product, and people should flock to you. For some of you, this is the only way you've ever gotten customers, but how many artists with phenomenal voices go to the grave with only a handful of people having heard it? It is those who can call attention to themselves and keep it there, who will succeed, pair that with a good product and you've got a cocktail for obscene amounts of money and time

“Won't work for my business”, indeed, yours is so different from the myriad of other companies out there. You’ve come up with a product/service that's delivered through such a unique business model, there’s no way it could merit from anything you find in this guide.

“Just keep working hard”, at the right things, sure. At something that can be automated and delegated, absolutely not. The goal of all of this is to create freedom for you, to give you access to both money and time. As your business ages, it should only get easier to run, as you implement systems that operate smoothly without you, because if they don’t, you don't own a business, you're self-employed. Even if you have no intentions of ever selling your business or not working in it, you should design such that you can.

Changing

Any firm's reach has gotten  ridiculous, so long as they try and reach out, this will most likely continue to happen, giving pretty much anyone the chance to successfully get in front of an audience. About half the country had an internet connection in 2020, that number has only gone up. Internet speeds have picked up, allowing us to perform operations with ease and at scale. This should scare and excite you. It's exciting because the potential you have is nigh limitless, all those people within your grasp and access to tools that make working with them easy.

However, it's not just your potential that is nigh limitless, it is also your competition’s. There is a potential first mover advantage available here, the ability to further cement yourself in your industry, by being one of the first to actually fully utilize digital marketing and hoarding all the customers. Competitors will copy you, but it won't matter, you'll be so far ahead, while they're still bothering with sticks and stones, you'll be trying to achieve space travel. Should you not be a first mover though, you could end up being the one in the stone-age, you and your loved ones will suffer for it, as you find yourself playing a game of catch up, costing you the freedom and security you've somewhat created and are trying to enhance.

How much time do people spend on their electronic devices? A lot. We pretty much always have the things on us. You've got mad scientists at Facebook and Instagram, who spend their day trying to keep you scrolling for as long as possible. Why not take advantage of that? One factor of good marketing is omnipresence, and what’s more omnipresent than being in front of a customer, even as they’re dropping bombs over the toilet. If you don't end up being the one in front of them, someone else will gladly take that position.

During the heights of covid, we were nigh in a recession, companies were downsizing and people were getting laid off. Consumers were hoarding money due to the immense uncertainty that clouded us. Then it started getting better, the economy opened up and companies started hiring again. Now, given that covid has passed, we’re most likely going to see something resembling a boom, and boom and spending happen to rhyme in economics. 

If you've done basic economics, you know that one metric of economic growth is increased consumer spending. And people will always spend money on those who can capture their attention and due to the accelerated technological adoption caused by covid, it is probably easier than ever to make use of digital means to take money out of people's wallets/purses.

Knife Twist 

To top it all off, I think we might start seeing a case of ‘winner takes all’ economies, due to all the technology that exists in making transactions go by easier, I believe that any firm that has a solid customer acquisition process is going to suck up most of the market share. Think Samsung and Apple, every other phone company is fighting for scraps.

If you aren't one of those companies, you too will be fighting for scraps, having money taken directly out of your own pocket and into another, spending all your waking hours trying to keep your company afloat. Wouldn't that be ironic, the thing you created to give security and freedom  is starting to take them away.

Solution

The entirety of this writing isn't doom and gloom, designed to make you feel worried about what your future holds, because I'm about to show you the solution to your problem. Introducing the process.

It’s comprised of:

1. Setting up email marketing + Retargeting

2. Decommoditizing/Offer Enhancement

3. Creation of website/funnel + Direction of traffic into it

4. Setting up a referral and reputation management system

5. Content creation + SEO

6. Optimization of system

7. Discussion of new markets/products + moving customers up the value ladder

Email marketing and Retargeting

First up is email marketing, it's in the name, you send emails to customers or potential customers, guiding them to make first or repeat purchases. That is a very simplistic view of it though. In reality, we would have you sending valuable pieces of content to your subscribers that are linked to your goods/services. If you just kept spamming people with offers to buy, that's how you get people unsubscribing from the list. 

Before we even discuss the marketing itself, you need people to give you their emails, we call that list building. This is probably the most important  thing you can take from all of this. When you build a list, you are moving people from the real world, social platforms or  websites, to a land that you own, where you're the king, you own these people. Your instagram followers are great, but tomorrow you could wake up to a ban, that is never the case with email. Building this list is also vital to keeping you profitable, once you have an email, you can market to this person, up until they unsubscribe or die, with a cost of close to zero, as frequently as you like. However, you have one hurdle, getting the emails, you're gonna need a lead magnet. (we'll talk about that later)  

When someone gives up their email, they were hoping that you could solve a problem that they had, so when you send content that relates to solving that problem, and the content is good, you are viewed as an authority, which makes you the default seller in their mind when the time comes for them to spend money on a solution. Now, most of your emails won't even get opened, but the customer will see that email in their inbox and associate the solution to their problem with you. 

In order for people to make the trade of giving you their emails, they're going to want something from you, that's what our lead magnet is. A lead magnet is simply anything of value that is relevant to your business and the customer, it could be a written guide on how to style button down shirts or a video on how to start working out at the gym. So long as someone can see it and go “Hey, I'd totally like that”. I hope you realize that this means that anyone who gives you their email is a person with direct interest in what you are selling, only a man who takes his fashion seriously, wants to know how to style button downs, you can probably selling him clothing, and you now have the right to sell to him, nigh for free, for the rest of his life.

What I'm about to share is perhaps the most insane part of email marketing. If you set up an email collection campaign, and spend P1500 to acquire 100 emails, that's a cost of  P15 an email, you'd be at a loss for acquiring those emails. But let me show you something. Say, after reading the guide on how to style button down shirts or immediately after giving us their email, given they're about to learn how to style them, we sell them a pair of button downs for P350, only 10 of those people buy, that's 3500, the cost of acquiring just went to zero and if you have high net margins, you were potentially just paid for acquiring customers.

Now to fill the list, I'd personally start with people who have already bought from me, as they are very likely to convert, considering they trusted you enough to give you their money. This is where retargeting comes in. Retargeting is simply the act of following users across platforms and showing them ads, given they have interacted with you one way or another.  As I said, your customers are some pretty low hanging fruit, but a good second are any of your followers on any socials and an easy third are website visitors.

So using your platform of choice, you just create a custom audience based on a customer list you upload, people who have interacted with your social pages or visitors to your website, assuming you were tracking them. Show them your lead magnet, convey the value it has with some good copy and voila, the front end of your Digital marketing system is done. From here, you start messing with lookalike audiences and detailed targeting so you can go after cold prospects. (people who have never heard of you, but may have interest in what you do).

However retargeting isn't just limited to building email lists, I'm pretty sure you can see how you can use this to get people who interacted with your ad, but never bought. Leading into this cool little section I wrote a little while back…

“If after seeing an ad, a person chooses not to buy, there are about four reasons as to why they wouldn't, and retargeting aims to deal with three out of four.

Why She Doesn’t Want You

First case scenario, the person sees your ad and doesn’t care about what you do, just throw this kind of person to the side and don't bother with them. This is the girl that thinks you're ugly and rejects you, no winning there.

Second case scenario, they do care about what you do, but aren’t currently in the market to buy and they didn’t opt-in to the email list. The goal of a retargeting ad in this case is to sell the click to get them to join the email list, that way you can be their first choice when they are ready to buy, because you're always in their face. This is the girl that thinks you're attractive, but she's got a boyfriend.

Third case scenario, once again they care about what you do, but don't trust you specifically. So here the retargeting ad is selling the click again to your email list so you can put them in a little incubator to keep them warm and eventually they will start to cozy up to you, because you seem like a cool dude, and eventually give you money, their money. This is the girl who refuses to come home with you until you take her out on three more dates.

Last case scenario, this is the person who saw the ad but just doesn't understand what they would be buying, so they just don't buy, your retargeting ad will be designed to explain on a deeper level what your product/service does and also show them everything that they stand to gain from buying your product/service, show them the value stack. This is the girl, who the first time she ever saw you, your hair was uncombed and you wore the worst clothing imaginable but the next time she saw you, you had a fresh haircut and wore a suit, so she hopped into your arms, because you were now her Prince Charming.”

Decommoditizing/Offer Enhancement

Niching down, the act of only serving a particular sub market, to me this is the realest form of branding, being known for specifically one thing. When you think of Naledi Motors, you think of Mercedes-Benz, so when you want to buy a mercedes-benz, where do you go, that's right, Naledi Motors. You want to set yourself up in a similar position, this matters as people are a lot more likely to start interactions with you because you specifically state you help solve this kind of person's very particular problem. “We help mothers of 35 and above with at least 2 children, to create more time without neglecting work or household duties”. 

Secondly, it puts us in a category of one, you are the only one in that market, so you are number one, people always remember the winner, maybe second place and definitely not third. Naledi Motors could be the third best auto house in Botswana, but they are 100% the number one seller of mercedes-benz vehicles. Now, there might be a voice in your head arguing that you'd be leaving a good portion of the market on the table, and that is what you'll be doing, but you’ll be compensated with higher prices. A general practitioner works with most ill people, but a neurosurgeon/cardiologist only works with people with brain/heart problems, who gets paid more though.

You’ve niched down, but you’re still going to need to deliver a valuable good/service, so check out a post I made a couple weeks back:

Value = Dream Outcome * Perceived Likelihood of Achievement / Time Delay * Effort & Sacrifice

Alex Hormozi is a $100M man that I respect very much. He came up with that value equation up above that I'm going to share with you, with the hopes that you can learn to position our offer in a valuable way. I know it's not digital stuff but it's really important.

So one goal of your offer is to ensure that it is not a commodity, that is, I should not be able to compare it to another product in the market, one to one, this leads to price shopping, where people will default to the cheapest and we don't want that, we want our customers to perceive our offer as valuable and give us a lot of money for it.

So time for lesson one my young ones, Dream outcome, this one we all know, quite literally what someone gets out of buying your thing, but that benefit falls into one of three categories, your customer might get better relationships, more money or increased health. There are cases though, where what you sell ends up becoming a stew and mixes two or more categories.

Let me give you an example to show you how these categories work, you like digital marketing, if not leave we don't want you round here, heathen. So digital marketing lets you get more money, see how its fallen into a category, but watch this, what do you want more money for, you can clearly take care of your bare minimums, I’d hope, so it's not for survival, a young man might want more money to become more attractive to women and gain the respect of the men around him, so you could argue he's buying to get better relationships, an older guy, would want to provide for his family, once again he's buying relationships.

So think about where your offer falls, remembering that it's ok if it falls into two, then craft your message to convey that so easily even a mental patient would get it.

Numero dos, perceived likelihood of achievement, lets say your wife doesn't lay in bed with you anymore, where there used to be a fire is now sits sacks of ice, imagine I come to you saying I’m selling a book on how to light that spark again and I showed you that 98% of people who’ve used the book, had their wife jumping their bones, you’d probably buy the book, but what if instead I said the techniques have not been tested and aren’t proven, your just gonna think i'm going to make your wife go all the way down to absolute zero (that’s negative 215 degrees celsius), I'm definitely not getting your pulas then. 

“Well Omo, how do I do this?”, like I said in the last email, show them all the people who’ve won with your thing, all the time you've spent in that industry, flex your knowledge of the topic, write emails like this.

From the top rope here it comes, time delay. If I could promise you a way to make a 1 million pula, and you’d get that million pula in zero seconds flat, would you not be willing to give a sizable portion of your net worth to learn such a technique, you answered yes, I know you did. When creating your offer, let people know about how long it will take to see their dream outcome, and you should spend your days trying to figure out how to reduce that number as close to zero as possible. People will always pay a premium for a faster service and are more likely to perceive it as valuable.

Last but not least, there is effort and sacrifice. Make getting the dream outcome as easy as winning a boxing match against a six year old. Nobody likes hard stuff, no one wants to go through pain. If I could take you from size 40 in pant size, to 32 with a chiseled six pack, but you never had to run a day in your life, spend a minute lifting weights nor give up that moist chocolate cake, you’d give me your money.

From this, I hope you learnt how to demonstrate the value of your offer, to make it more attractive, this also leads to the point of increasing your prices. Price is only an issue in the absence of value, but I just showed you how to create that value, so no excuses, else PaPa no luv u.

We are not done decommoditizing though, assuming you follow the equation, you should have a rather valuable offer, but why not make it even more deeeeeelicious, with enhancements like:

1. BONUSES

This is just adding on extra items/services that a person would find valuable when paired with your main offer. For example, you are looking to join a gym, and you start shopping. Most of the gyms just give you the membership and that’s it, but then you come across one that says on top of the membership, they’ll give you a customized workout and diet plan, as well as a check-in system, to encourage you to come regularly. 

Other than the fact people just like getting extra stuff on top, usually the bonuses bring up one of the variables in the value equation, hence making the offer more valuable. Take the check-in system for example, many a people don’t bother trying to go to the gym as they believe they won't be consistent, therefore they won't see the results they want, however if you now have someone in your corner encouraging you to come, which is the hardest part by the way, you are a lot more likely to do it. The perceived likelihood of achievement has gone up.

How do you create bonuses from thin air, the simplest way is to think about all the problems your customer will encounter once they've bought your main offer. You bought a gym membership, now you need a training program and a better diet.

2. SCARCITY

Simple economics, demand and supply. If the demand is the same, but your supply is falling, this causes the price to go up, this is why your home is worth more now, than when you bought it. Inject this into your offer by emphasizing how little units are available for sale, or limiting how many people you can service. If 100 people want what you sell, but you can only handle 20 people, and 10 spots have already been filled, you now have 90 people fighting for 10 spots, hence allowing you to increase the value of your offer. This connects to number…

3. URGENCY

Which is motivating people to buy now, rather than later. For example,  a price cut that will only be available today or only available to the first 10 people to buy. See how this resembles scarcity, but rather than limiting access to product/service itself, you’ve limited access to a bonus, by putting a time limit or buyer limit. This is only one version of urgency, the other stimulates urgency by making the customer aware of the fact that they’ll be closer to their desired result, by purchasing  the product/service today as compared to tomorrow. For example, if you’ve been eating a little more pizza than you should, and the gym reminds you that if you purchase the membership in January, you’re more likely to have melted that fat off by April, compared to if you start in February, meaning that the fat would be melting off in May.

4. GUARANTEES 

Everyone is risk averse, take advantage of that. No one wants to put resources down to get nothing in the end. So quell that fear with a powerful guarantee, that ideally brings buyer risk to zero, not all of us can feasibly do that, but try your best. No questions asked, full money back, maybe even double money back, 10 year warranties, it doesn't matter what it is. Emphasize this guarantee, considering that you are about to start charging high prices.

Creation of website/funnel + Direction of traffic into it

We’re making websites not the trashy one you’ve got, but a cool one, a funnel. It has a large mouth that has strangers dropped into it from the top, and a thin end that poops customers out at the bottom. The purpose of the site/funnel will be purely to convert visitors into buyers or leads, no online brochures, which is what most of what your sites look like, dreadful little things.

First things first, we're going to need to assess the type of business you've got. Are you selling services/products and at what price, are they low ticket (you shouldn't be here), medium or high? Is it digital or physical, and what other products/services do you have or potentially could make? Once all of this is known, it is time to pick a funnel and design a value ladder.

What the hell is a value ladder, it is the set of steps that you’ll move your customers through, to get them from interacting with our lowest priced offers, all the way up to our most expensive offers. Whereby under each step , we have a funnel dedicated to that step. There are only 4 steps on the value ladder, and depending on the information that I queried you about up above, you may require all four steps or just one. Those of you closer to P5M will probably need all 4, and those closer to P500K, might need 2 or 1. 

The four steps are Front-end lead funnels, Unboxing funnels, Presentation funnels and Bake-end phone funnels. With each step there is increasing intimacy as we give higher priced offers. Under front-end lead funnels, we've got Squeeze funnels, survey flannels and summit funnels. Under unboxing funnels, we've got Book funnels, Cart funnels and Challenge funnels. Under presentation funnels, we've got Video sales letter funnels, Webinar funnels and Product launch funnels. Finally, under back-end phone funnels , we've got only application funnels . 

Front end lead funnels

This is any funnel designed to capture emails, or any form of contact info, of people with interest in the goods/services we sell, by intriguing them with something such as a lead magnet, survey or summit. 

We've already talked about squeeze funnels, they're the email marketing section of this manifesto. Personally, I believe squeeze funnels are an integral part and not an option, that is why it has a whole segment dedicated to it. However, you may find that your firm may be better off with the other two.

Survey funnels

We put out a multiple-choice survey/quiz/questionnaire, that when answered, can give our user an answer to their pressing problem. Within that quiz, only one question actually matters, the one that allows you to give advice based on the answer. We’ll then give them the answer, in exchange for their email.

Example: B2C: A make-up store sends out a quiz to show women what shade of makeup is best for them, within that quiz, there could be questions on the state of her skin, is it dry or oily, but the only one that probably matters is the complexion she has, is she light or dark-skinned. Once this has been input in the database, the survey just matches her answer to a shade that is good given her complexion and in order to find out what is, she just has to put in her email.

B2B: A business development agency or consultancy, send out a quiz to assess what a business should focus on in order to scale. There could be questions on what industry they're in, but the only one that matters is how much revenue they're doing. Using Michael Masterson as a guide, from 0 to $1 million, focus on selling. $1 million to $10 million, look into creating a second product offer and so on. (read the book, 0 to 100 million in zero seconds flat, to see what happens beyond 10 million). In order for the entrepreneur or manager to find out, they just have to enter their email.

Summit funnels

This is effectively a virtual speaking event , where a bunch of speakers will come together and discuss several topics that should be of value to the audience. You are going to be the host. Given that you are the host, registration will be handled by you and therefore you'll get access to all those emails which could be converted to customers.

Example: I decide to host “Marketing in 2023 and Beyond”. I go through linkedin looking for other marketing experts, asking if they'd like to speak during this summit. Should they say yes, I will give them a link that they'll share with their audience, who are most likely interested in marketing, probably professionals and entrepreneurs/owners. As people register, I get a fat stack of emails, of a bunch of people who would probably buy a marketing related good/service.

I don't really  see a good use case for this in a B2C setting, but hey, squeeze those brain muscles and you might come up with something phenomenal.

Unboxing funnels

In this funnel we take a piece of our offer and give it away for free, with the goal of upselling some of those people into the rest of the offer. In a sense, you opened the box, that is your offer, pulled out one of the contents and gave it away and said if you want what's in the rest of the box, pay up!!!

Book Funnels

Bit of a misleading title, in reality it's more like a free+shipping funnel. How does it work? You take one part of your offer and sell it for free, the customer only pays shipping and handling, but before completing their purchase, you ask them if they’d like to buy a complementary product, which is used alongside what they purchase for free.

Example: Using the book, you offer the book for free and they pay shipping, as they’re about to complete the checkout, you ask if they’d like to purchase the home study course on the material in the book. Given that the book was free, with a small shipping cost, they haven’t really spent any money but you’ve put them in a buying mindset, so there’s a chance a number of them will agree to make that purchase. Best used with informational/educational products. 

Cart funnels

A tweaked book funnel but for low ticket physical products. You’re going to need an online storefront for this.

You’re going to offer your best selling product, and then tack on your lesser performing products onto it for free. From there, you offer them the main offer again but at a discount, and then upsell them on products they’ll logically need next.

Example: An online butcher is selling some steaks, but on top of the steaks you get pork/beef bones for free to make broth. The butcher then offers the customer more steak at a discounted price, ideally the person adds more steak. The butcher then asks if they’d like some spice rubs to go with that.

Challenge Funnels

Rather than having someone buy the entire offer, you first introduce them to the offer by making a segment of it a challenge for them to partake in. Why? If you successfully get a result from partaking in the challenge, you're a lot more likely to believe you will receive value from the entire offer. Plus, who doesn't like a good challenge. You charge people to partake in the challenge and then upsell them things that will aid them in completing the challenge. Make sure to give prizes at the end.

Example: “21 Day Fat Buster” A personal trainer and a gym set that up, that's the first 3 weeks of their 16 week program. You write a compelling ad, and people start signing up. On the sign up page, you could sell a training logbook or apparel. At the end of it all, an offer to continue with the 16 week plan is made to all remaining participants, a large chunk will probably listen to it, given they just spent 3 weeks with business, and a decent portion will convert, because they saw results from the little sliver they got.

Presentation Funnels

Generally used with your more expensive goods/services or those that may be difficult to fully grasp the value of from a static image and a couple words. By presenting your good/service to your audience you get to do 2 things, first, you get to break beliefs or at the very least challenge them, putting your audience in a state of mind that is more likely to convert. Secondly, gives you time to convey the value of what you do or sell, that way when the price is revealed, it's looked at alongside what they get and not in a vacuum.

Video Sales Letter Funnel

Why type out your sales letter when you can record it? If you've never seen a sales letter, it follows this structure: introduction, problem, agitation, solution, objection handling and a  call to action. Your goal is to record a video, showcasing your good/service using the structure I just showed up above or any other variation you prefer.

Webinar funnel

It's effectively a really long VSL, or you could think of it as a university lecture, as generally you want to spend at least an hour. It has a very similar structure to the VSL, of an introduction, problem, agitation, solution, objection handling and CTA, but you’re going to spend way more time on each section, because you're about to ask people for obscene amounts of money, so they're going to need to believe that this stuff work.

Product Launch Funnel

A product launch usually looks like this: announcement of its existence, showing off the manufacturing of the first batch, announcement of its arrival to a distribution center, a reveal of the release day and finally launch. These aren't all done at the same time, usually spanning days if not weeks. The goal is to build excitement/hype around the product, sort of like how video games or movies are released. You'll be doing the same thing with your webinar. So you might release the introduction on day 1, let that marinate in the audience's minds, get it to taste real nice and gooood. Then on day 4 hit them with the problem and agitate, and finally on day 7, give them the solution, handle objections and make your CTA

Back-end phone funnel

The creme de la creme of all your offers, P100000 price tags and equity purchases. Nobody is clicking a button on the internet to do those kinds of deals.

Application funnels

Given that this is your best offer, it probably requires the most from you, so you want anyone who gets on the phone with you to be very serious about working with you, hence the need to apply. If you've ever done sales, this is basic lead qualification. You wanna know that the person/company can afford your offer, whether they’ve got the time to invest in executing and whether what they're hoping to gain from working with you is attainable ( don't wanna work with people who think you can help them make 10 million by next month, you're not Jesus. Though, to be fair, if certain assets are in place, 10 million next month is a possibility

That was a mouthful (that's what she said), and now it's time to wrap it up, the funnel section that is. Rule one, only use one funnel under each major funnel, that is, only have one lead funnel, only one presentation funnel. Rule 2, funnel stack, connect your funnels together, so you can always have people moving from your lowest value offers to your highest. Once you've got a lead, move them into your unboxing funnel, from your unboxing to your presentation and then back-end.

Remember, you don't need to use all of these at once, if right now, the nature of your business is that you can only afford to use one, then use one, you'll build the rest later.

These funnels are great, but they don't mean jack if you can't get people into them, so let's talk traffic. You've got three types that all lead to one. Your 3 types are earned, borrowed and paid, your goal is to turn them all into owned(your email list).

Earned traffic

These are all the people on your social platforms, your followers and subscribers. You got them because you produce either great content online or sell a good/service they would like to eventually buy or have already bought. They're the easiest to convert, they already like you. However they are the hardest to attain, as they have to consume your content multiple times and then make the conscious decision to follow you. Getting your content in front of them multiple times is the hard part, you're hoping that the algorithms of whatever platform you are using will feed you to them, and you know how I feel about hope. If you don't actually produce any valuable content, I've got a little guide down below. Don't use your social platforms to sell, you'll sell inside the funnels.

Borrowed traffic

All the people that have been earned or owned by other people. Here, the influencer is giving you the chance to be put in front of their audience, naturally they probably want compensation. How do we go about it? Firstly, dig your well before you're thirsty, start conversations with these people, conversations for conversation's sake, compliment them on their work, find out what their interests are, and then move on to step 2.

Make your ask, but we are going to do it in a very particular way, frame the favor of promoting as being beneficial to them. One way of doing this is to look at how content creation works. A creator must come up with something good that is worth sharing. If you give them a piece of content that is worth sharing, such as the literature you're currently reading (make your own), you've helped them do their job. Their audience will attribute all the great ideas that they learnt to the creator, only strengthening the position they hold in the audience’s mind. However, you are still the author, so credit by nature will make its way back to you, your job is then to transform all those people into owned traffic.

What if they refuse that offer or the nature of your business is such that you cant create a manifesto such as this one, to be shared. If it's creator to creator, and youre large enough, you can trade promotion for promotion. If it's business to the creator, you're probably going to pay for promotion or establish an affiliate marketing deal. Leading into…

Paid traffic

Paid promotion, give an influencer money, they tell their audience to buy, a little more complex than that, but that's the gist of it. Affiliate marketing, here you cut a deal with an influencer/creator that is relevant, whereby for every sale they make, they will get a cut of that revenue. They make no sales, they get zero. Very risk free.

Pay -per-click or purchasing impressions. Here, you pay a platform, like Google, Facebook and Instagram (Meta), Twitter. I don't care, so long as they have your customers there. Give them money and they'll put you above everyone else or make sure you show up in your target markets feed.

Setting up a referral and reputation management system

As much as I may say running on WoM is a hope strategy, it does carry a lot of weight. Almost everyone will pick a customer's voice over yours. So we need a system that firstly, gets your customers to regularly talk about you to their peers, the same way a young girl talks about her first boyfriend “Oh my god he's so hawt”, while simultaneously dismantling any negative opinions you may have of him. Secondly, gets incentivized customers to invite more incentivized customers.

Reputation Management

This is a 2 step process, encouraging the positive reviews and quickly dealing with any negative ones.

Positive Reviews

I'm going to assume you're a reputable company that actually delivers excellent products/services, if not, stop reading and go fix your business. So you're a great company, people will naturally want to leave you good reviews, the issue, people forget, the answer, remind them. However, you can't tell them right after they've eaten their meals to use their greasy fingers to type out a 5 star review, they might feel pressured. So collect a means of contact, email, let them know why you're collecting it, and then remind them later that day or early the next morning. Not everyone will open the email, not every opened email will lead to a review, but trust me, having potentially 20 extra four to five star reviews, helps, alot.

Negative Reviews

Your kryptonite, one of these, is the equivalent of five 5 star reviews. Look for these everyday and deal with them by apologizing and then offering compensation for the bad good/service, could be 20% off their next purchase. This could be what gets someone to change that one star to a five. “What if people abuse it, to get discounts?”. Come on bro, did you not drive your car to the office today. what are the chances it would’ve crashed?

Referral stimulation

By nature if you do a good job, people will refer you. However, we aren't here to talk about what you already knew, it's probably what got you here. What you don't know is the use of joint ventures and double incentivizing (incentivize-ception, you should checkout “Inception” by Christopher Nolan if you haven't, one of the best movie directors ever, then you'll understand the reference)

Joint Venture

Disregard the formal definition of joint venture that you've got floating in your head, we’re using this one. The act of partnering with complementary firms so that you may share customers, emphasis on complementary. When you partner, only choose companies that work within the same industry and aren't a direct competitor, the lot of you will cut a deal where the both of you will direct customers from your firm to the other.

Example:  Little Tina’s got her make-up salon, Tshego’s got a nail salon, Thato’s got a hair salon, Ayanda’s got a fashion boutique and your Mom’s got jewelry and accessories. These are all naturally products/services that if a woman walks into one store and purchases, she's very likely to want the other offers the group has. So all five will cut a deal, where they give discount coupons, or anything that would incentivize purchase. When Gofaone walks in to get her hair done, she gets 10% off at the nail salon, buy one get one free at the fashion boutique and so on.

Double Incentivizing

In order to increase the likelihood of getting a customer to refer you, you should give them a reason to do so, but don't stop there, you should also give the referee a reason to act on that referral (incentivize-ception).

Before we ask for the referral, we acknowledge our customer, let them know how happy we are to have their patronage. The customer has just received good service and have been gratified, time to make the ask, “Hey [Customer Name], would you be so kind as to refer a friend? If you do so we will give you [insert incentive] and we'll also give your friend [insert same or different incentive].” The customer has very little reason to say no to that. Some will go out and refer, some won't, but now your WoM is no longer dependent on hope, but rather there is a machine that makes it happen on a regular basis.

PS. You should also aim to give customers who’ve just purchased the incentive to purchase again, especially for products/services that have a somewhat long cycle for a repurchase. Take shoes for example, once they are bought, most people won't be in the market to buy again for maybe 6 months to a year and even more, but what if right after buying you were given a 30% discount coupon, that expires in 3 months. There are going to be people who will want to cash in on that discount, and would you look at that, you've suddenly increased your customer LTV.

Content creation + SEO

Why do we produce content, it's not for likes and follows, though that is a benefit. If you've been listening to what I’ve been telling you, it's because it establishes authority/credibility, when a customer sees it they should think, “These guys are the type of people who can solve my problem”. Its second use is that it produces density in that little pocket of the internet that you exist in. if you've got a  lot of good content out there, there's a higher chance that it will be picked up and that’s a chance to bring people into your funnels

How do we create content on a regular basis?

So service based businesses have it the easiest, in their attempt to better their offer, they will learn new things, new things they can share with their audiences. So if you're in the service side, a regular activity you should engage in is the consumption of information in your industry, followed by repackaging it with your own findings, to produce content that current and potential customers may find useful.

 If you've got a product, this becomes a steep slope, but a general guideline is to produce content that can enhance the user’s experience with the product. Say a TV company/electronics distributor makes an article on the best viewing angles and distance, based on the size of the room and the amount of light coming in and from where. Try to get this type of content out there, weekly or every fortnight and the very worst once a month

The second form of content is the type that you disperse on a daily or every other day, it's the one you already know. In a sense, sort of sharing the company’s life, what events you recently held, who is employee of the month and who got promoted. This content, in my opinion, isn't very useful in the attempt to get sales, it does put you and the company in very good lighting though, and that has its merits. So keep at it, if you want, it's the filler between your real content, the snacks between the meals.

Search Engine Optimization

Little fun fact, most people don't ever check the second page of google. That's why you need to get your site on the first, and even then, most won't go beyond the halfway point , usually sticking to the top three. The only way to move yourself up the ladder is to optimize your site for a search engine, we’re going to use google, but this works for any other search engine.

Before we start, I want you to think about Google's goal. It is to output high quality information relative to what you searched so that you keep coming back to use the search engine, thus increasing the chances that you interact with an ad. That leads to our first point in SEO, which you are now familiar with…

Content creation

I've just told you that Google's goal is to supply good information, but they don't produce any themselves, so where do they get it, from you. The site with the most relevant information on a searcher's query gets the chance to rank higher, increasing the chances that people will land on their site. Given we've already talked about the other merits of content creation, we’ll keep it short and end it here.

Keyword Research

You need to spend some time thinking about what someone would search to find the solution to the problem you solve. These are your keywords, they're like the hashtags of your site. When Google goes through your site it should be able to say that without a doubt this site talks about this topic, therefore I can deliver this site as a result for a user looking for data on this topic.

Example: let’s say you sell dating/relationship advice, your target market is clearly people who are struggling in that department. So a young man searches, “how to get a girlfriend”, that “how to get a girlfriend”, is a keyword. However, he could also search “Why don't women want me”, “Why aren't women attracted to me?” or “How to make women sleep with me?”. All of those are keywords that you are going to try to rank for. 

On-page elements

Time to put those keywords to use, by including them in elements such as your meta descriptions, headings and title tags, as well as the general body of your page. However, don't go crazy and start forcing “how to get a gf” in every other sentence. This is keyword stuffing, and search engines hate that and are likely to reduce your rankings for it. The reason for this is because doing so reduces the quality of the content of the site, making it not suitable as a result to show users. Here’s an example:

“HOW TO GET A GF

Welcome to my site on how to get a gf. In order for you to get a gf, you will have to follow my 9 step process on how to get a gf. Step 1 on how to get a gf is…”

Steer clear of writing anything remotely similar to that. Use the keywords, but make it sound natural 

Link building

The act of getting other sites to link back to you, from the search engines perspective, if multiple sites are willing to have links back to yours, then it can assume it is because the content on your site is worth seeing, thus prioritizing it when showing results. However, links aren't built equally, a link from a random on Facebook doesn’t carry as much weight as from high ranking sites, like conglomerate and government sites. 

How do we get dem links? One way is guest blogging, where you will appear on someone else's site, and write a good article for them, if it's actually good, the blog/site owner would be more than happy to link back to you so their readers can check you out. You're also going to fix any broken links you've got lying around, these are links on other sites that go back to your site, but because they are broken i.e., typed incorrectly or your domain has changed, they lead nowhere. Lastly, say it with me now, creating good content, by nature people will want to share it, thus getting you your links.

Technical SEO

Ensuring that your site works and looks like a charm. Sites that are hard to navigate, look like trash, take millennia to load and don't automatically contract to match mobile phone screens, get penalized. 

Optimization of system 

It's rare that the first version of a system is the best one, so this section is dedicated to chasing the forever elusive perfect state. By optimizing we can bring down our costs and up our revenue, the only two things that matter. 

 Boys (and girls), we’re split-testing.

So what's split-testing? We’re just making two ads/emails/etc.., that are almost the same, fight to see who is the king. The difference between them will be one thing and one thing only, and I mean it, only one. This is our split-testing variable, it can be whatever you want, say an image or a headline. 

Let’s say we are testing the image, we get our ads out in the wild, one of them has the picture of a donkey, the other, a beautiful woman, we expect the beautiful woman to get clicked on more, this is not an invitation to use beautiful women in your ad images, make sure the image makes sense relative to your business. Now that we know what image gets more clicks, we have a split-test winner. You can then go and split-test something else, like your headline or split-test the winner again, this time the woman has no clothing.

It’s rewind time, how does it bring down our costs, so the pretty woman gets 3000 clicks every month and the donkey only gets a 1000, and let's say you spend P1000 on each ad. So the donkey ad would have a cost per click (CPC) of P1 every month, but the pretty woman would have a CPC of 33 thebe, pretty darn cheap. This means your profit per customer has gone up too, getting you a little closer to the dream.

Naturally, if you’re getting more clicks, and 10% of all people who click end up buying, your revenue should be climbing. That’s a 2 for 1 special.

There are 2 things you’re going to be optimizing for, click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates (CR), CTR is what we just talked about above, just getting more people to click and CR, the fun part, is getting more people to give you their money or an email. Under CTR, you’ll be testing images/videos and headlines and under CR, it’ll be the words you use (the copy) and the call to action (CTA), a CTA is just the thing you want someone to do after reading your ad, for example, they could call you, go to your website or like your page.

I advise you to work from the outside coming in, start by testing for CTR and once you are happy, test for CR. Make it a habit to save any good ads you see, to use them as inspiration.

Perhaps the greatest part of digital marketing is the ability to measure any marketing material’s performance, thus allowing us to optimize. In the words of Allan Dib, “What gets measured, gets managed.”

Discussion of new markets/products + moving customers up the value ladder

There's not much for me to say here, it's just to sit down by the fire and start thinking about how we can deliver more value to your customers, what are they logically going to need next after purchasing what we offer and can we deliver that. Start thinking about how to make your product more sticky, like a subscription service and whether we may need new funnels as the older ones mature. You know, we’ll just be growing up.

Summary

So you're stuck between P500K and P5M, it's almost like the sales stopped coming in and that's stopping you from either bringing enough money home or the company sucks up so much of your time as you try to get people in the door. Maybe you spend more time extinguishing fires in your business because it has so much operational drag, which you can't spend the time to fix, because if you did, the cash would stop flowing in. You hope that if you just keep working at it, everything will fix itself.  You look in the mirror and start to think, “Am I a bad parent or a bad lover?”, perhaps you start to wonder if this was all it could be, have you hit your peak? Question 

The problem is that your means of getting people into your firm is unscalable, unreliable and inefficient. You tell yourself that you do actively do digital marketing, or even worse, subscribe to building your business off of hope or tell yourself that your business is different, none of this will work for it.

Meanwhile more and more people and businesses are moving online, enough to make you wonder why you aren't doing anything about this. This is your chance to potentially leap past competitors and cement yourself, to grab the largest slice of the pie as we move to a ‘winner takes all’ economy. You’re starting to feel it now, but don't know what to do, then BOOM!!!! It's almost like Jesus himself came down to give you the keys to heaven, as you are given a guide to make use of all this, that consisted of…

Setting up of email marketing + Retargeting

Decommoditizing/Offer Enhancement

Creation of website/funnel + Direction of traffic into it

Setting p a referral and reputation management system

Content creation + SEO

Optimization of system

Discussion of new markets/products + moving customers up the value ladder

Conversion copy

You’re probably in love with me right now, but I'm the type of guy who likes to take it slow. So I suggest we go on a little 14 day date, where we’ll implement the first parts of the system. I'll put my hand on your thigh and see if we click. If we do, I'll bring you back home. If not, we go our separate ways. Payment will be a simple 50% of the extra profit generated. Example, if you're expected to make a 100K over those 2 weeks, and we push you to 130K, we’ll be paid 50% of the profit from the 30K. If that sounds like a plan or you've got questions, you can reach me at odick@alatreonmedia.net

Before you start with Facebook ads, or any ad really

We need to define the goal of our ad campaign, this is important, as we need to know where we're headed, without any idea as to where we are going, frankly we will never get there. This also allows us to set up KPIs or Key Performance Indicators which tell us how well an ad is doing relative to whatever you consider 'good' , this effectively allows us to manage the ad, because if it doesn't get measured it won't get managed, and it's likely to run rampant and become a major cost or a colossal waste of time.

Down in the trenches, actually getting Facebook Ads to work for you

Furthermore, it allows us to make objective statements about the ads as compared to each other, in a process known as split-testing, which we will have to do a little bit later. Now that we know where we are going and the means to tell how close we are to that place, we have to target prospects with a customer list which will be uploaded to Facebook. This way you can target people who already bought from you, as these people are the most likely to buy from you again. However, if it becomes a case where you haven't been collecting customer data, we'll have to make use of detailed targeting, which is a demographic description of the type of people you believe your business serves best, basically your target market. Upon completing a detailed targeting ad campaign, you'll take the information you received from it to create a prospect list of people who did show interest in what you're doing ideally through buying what you're selling, but even people who didn't, say for example those who signed up to your email list.

What should I do tomorrow?

The next three things I want you to look at would be the creation of lookalike audiences by taking the prospect list we've now created or already had, we allow the Facebook AI to look for people who somewhat match the people on your prospect list, meaning they are the most likely to buy. After that we will look into split testing, where you'll change one variable of the ad so as to see how it affects performance, effectively optimising the ad for maximum clicks, for example we might change the title from x to y and end up seeing an increase or a decrease in sales by 10%. Lastly we'll discuss scaling which is pretty simple, you're basically going to throw money at the ad once we are happy with its return on investment. Trading thebes for Pulas.