Impressive title right? but completely true, this article might actually change your life, it will definitely affect your bank balance. I’m gonna show you how to generate leads for any business for an acquisition cost of FREE! OH MY!
Some of you might even get paid to generate leads for yourself, ain’t that some crazy shit?
Just a quick primer, I didn’t invent the words I’ve used to describe the steps, tripwire and all that nonsense. I tried to find out who did but several places claim to have invented this stuff, so I’m just gonna leave it as is.
Here’s how to get new clients (or sell products), for whatever business you’re in, predictably and for little to no money.
So what will you learn:
- How to grow a list of potential customers at a total cost of £0 per customer
- How to then use email to sell those potential customers a low value product (this is an extremely important psychological transition from list member to CUSTOMER)
- How to the use the people who buy your low value product (your customers) to sell a higher value product (this will be your main offering)
- How to catch all of those people who fall out of your funnel and throw them right back into it
And finally…
- How to sell them a further (recurring preferably) offer to squeeze the most value out of every customer.
Essentially, by the time you’ve read this article, you will have a fully functional automated sales funnel. It may not be profitable from day 1, but I will also show you how to analyse and tweak the funnel to make sure it makes you money.
In a nutshell here is what we will do:
- Buy a visitor to a landing page on your site
- Offer that person an incentive (LEAD MAGNET) to give you their contact info
- Use that contact info to create a series of emails that sells then a low value product (TRIPWIRE)
- Set up a further email series to sell your primary service or product (CORE OFFER) to the people who bought previously
- A final email series will sell them another offer (PROFIT MAXIMIZER) to squeeze additional value you can out of each person (this should ideally be recurring)
As you can see this is a fairly simple process in theory, and it works. Once you have this process working at a level that is acceptable to you, it is simply a case of pouring as much traffic as possible into the top of the funnel, it then simply poops out money into your various accounts.
It runs on the premise that a business can only be improved in one of 3 ways:
- Get more customers
- Make each customer spend more
- Get customers to buy more often
And I’m gonna show you how to do all 3 of those… OH MY!
NOTE: I USE THIS METHOD IN MY 2 PRIMARY BUSINESSES, MY AGENCY AND MY BLOG! I GENERATE CLIENTS FOR MY AGENCY (PRETTY MUCH ON DEMAND) AND SALES OF MY DIGITAL PRODUCTS!
This is the same process that pretty much every single successful business uses, including my own. We are talking about Mcdonalds, Starbucks, Amazon and pretty much every other business you have heard of that make a shit load of cash. Yes, even Google.
So let’s look at it using the format I have above subbing Mcdonalds into the sections:
- You visit a Mcdonalds
- They don’t have a lead magnet because you have walked into their restaurant, your hunger is their lead magnet
- You buy a burger (this is their tripwire, they make little to no money on you just buying a burger)
- They ask you if you want fries and a drink with that, infact it’s cheaper to buy it as a meal (this is their core offer)
- They then ask if you’d like anything else with that, ice cream, donut, apple pie etc etc (this is their profit maximizer)
So you go in with the incentive that they can solve your problem (hunger), they solve this with a cheap burger (they make no money off it, because it is their cost of getting you into their sales process), once you have ordered a burger, you buy fries and a drink too (they make almost all of their money off this part), you then buy an apple pie for dessert (they only make a small amount here, but over thousands of transactions it adds up to a lot, and all for something you weren’t initially going to buy).
At this point, it’s just a case of getting more people into their restaurant, that’s why they advertise, so when you get hungry, you think “I’ll have a maccy D’s”.
See how genius it is?
SOME EXAMPLES
I’m going to show you 4 funnels, these are all real sales funnels and it will show you how I do calculations to determine if it will be profitable (in theory) before I put it in place. These will show that this exact type of funnel works in most (if not ANY) industry.
The first funnel example is of a client of mine who sells cleaning supplies, mops and other such boring things.
Visitors to the site @ 25p per click.
2000 visits (£500) The site is a mini site set up to give very specific cleaning advice that can be filtered by room and surface type. They are then retargeted and emailed to products that are sold on a completely separate site but with the same familiar branding.
Lead magnet is a free sample of a product (40% pick up rate is 800)
– Tripwire is a manual mop sold at £10 (10% pick up rate is 80 purchases for £800)
— Core offer is a steam mop sold at £30 (10% pick up rate is 8 purchases for £240)
— Profit maximiser is a refill of the mop head sold at £8 for 2 and is a recurring need every month or so (this generally has a 100% pick up rate for a recurring £64 per month)
So look at the maths here, they spend £500 on ads and it creates £1040 in revenue with £64 per month recurring. So £504 profit on each £500 spend and £64 recurring.
These are just quick calculations, the conversion rates may differ, the pricing and products can differ and be switched around and changed as often as you like to make the funnel work better.
Lets look at 2 of my funnels for this blog, one that is active and the one I plan to use this article to kick off.
SEO Product Funnel
1000 visits (£700) To my start an SEO agency in 2 weeks article
Lead magnet is the goodies at the bottom of the article (40% pick up rate is 400)
– Tripwire is my SEO audit product at £10 or SEO strategy product at £30 (10% pick up rate is 40 purchases for £400 or £1200)
— Core offer is my SEO first month guide sold at £30 (10% pick up rate is 4 purchases for £120)
— Profit maximiser is my SEO newsletter (this generally has a 50% pick up rate for a recurring £20 per month)
As you can see this has a £700 spend, and only makes £520 with £20 recurring. This is an acceptable loss to me at this point as I do not have a real core product such as a course or consulting package (although one is in beta at the moment).
Plus most of you buy more than 1 of my products so I almost break even, but it’s all about building my audience at this point. Both my email list and my various retargeting lists.
Planned funnel funnel (haha)
1000 visits (£700) To this article, I will also use my retargeting lists for more people at a lower cost.
Lead magnet is the goodies at the bottom of the article (40% pick up rate is 400)
– Tripwire is my funnel step by step product at £30 (10% pick up rate is 40 purchases for £400)
— Core offer is my new consulting package when launched (10% pick up rate is 4 purchases for £2000)
— Profit maximiser will be an ongoing group consulting group at £1000 per month (this hasn’t launched yet so I have no idea how many of ya’ll will sign up to it, although I will be capping it at 30 members at a time)
Hopefully this will pan out, but it all depends on you lot, what you’re interested in and how well I provide for that need with my products and services.
SEO clients funnel (the one you’re really interested in)
500 visits (£500) To an article that explains exactly how I do SEO for my clients, with case studies and testimonials etc etc
Lead magnet is a free consultation where I will give people 5 things they can do to improve their organic traffic (40% pick up rate is 200)
– Tripwire is either set up of retargeting on Adwords and Facebook (for £130) or a full technical audit (for £250) (5% pick up rate is 10 purchases for £1300 or £2500)
— Core offer is my SEO package at £1000-2000 per month, outreach etc (10% pick up rate is 1 new client for £2000-4000 recurring)
— Profit maximiser I offer other services such as funnel setup (£1100 per month), ad management (£750 per month), conversion rate optimisation (£400 per month). These things don’t sell at a predictable rate at all, it completely depends on the client, their needs and how hard I try to sell it.
As you can see my agency stuff is extremely profitable, it doesn’t always work out this easy and the steps between each stage are much more time consuming than the automated funnels above, I obviously have to talk to people and write proposals and a whole lot of other stuff to proceed to the next step.
For this reason I don’t run this funnel at all times, just when I have a client to replace. It usually takes 4-5 new clients before I find one that is worth my while and is a good fit, for guys starting out though, take on every single client and then get picky later.
SO HOW DO WE DO IT?
With 7 basic steps
| Step | Task |
| 1 | Market Research – is there a fit and desire for your product/service? |
| 2 | Select Traffic Source – where are your customers? |
| 3 | Offer a Lead Magnet – something for free in exchange for email address |
| 4 | Offer a Tripwire – something cheap that changes people into a customer |
| 5 | Offer your Core Product – the main thing that you sell and make profit from |
| 6 | Offer Profit Maximizer – get max value from customers |
| 7 | Pick up all people who have dropped out of your funnel and put them back in |
From here on out I will be ditching the Mcdonalds things and using this blog as my examples… most of you will be able to see what stage of my funnel you are currently at and be able to breakdown what I am doing to try and get you to the next stage.
Step 1 – market research
So who are my target market for this blog?
I asked the following questions, and came up with the answers…
| Questions | Answers |
| Who wants to start a digital marketing agency? | Struggling SEO’s, people who have full time SEO jobs, people who can’t leave the house, people looking to travel and work from their laptops |
| What is their biggest problem? | Lots of money, systematic, can be outsourced, can be done from anywhere, set your own hours, no boss etc etc |
| What interests them the most about it? | Too much info, contradictory info, don’t know where to start, don’t believe the people telling them how to do it |
| How can I make them happy? | Showing them exactly how to do it from A-Z, getting clients, fulfilling for them, with proof and evidence of me doing the same thing |
| Where are they already looking for this type of info? | IM forums, other blogs, Google |
| Where else are they? (not necessarily looking for this info) | Facebook, other websites (not IM related but opted into advertising platforms) |
| How can i get access to these places? | Posting on forums, advertising on forums, guest posts, adwords, facebook ads, remarketing, advertising on blogs |
You see how answering those questions has given me everything I need:
I know who my audience are
I know why they want what I have
I know what their problems are
I know how to solve it for them
I know where they are actively looking for this info
I know where else they are while not looking for this info
I know how to put what I have in front of them
It’s key to mention at this point, that the aim of this process is to solve the problems of the target audience, this can be followed down a path to target the things that matter most in marketing… EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS.
For example, these people want my services because they want to earn more money while sat at home or on a beach etc, but why?
They may need to need to feed their family but are too sick to go out to work? they hate their job and don’t want to take instructions from a boss anymore? they are greedy and want that new car? they want the freedom of travelling the world?
So I am not selling people an instruction manual on earning £3k a month in the next 2 weeks, I am selling them the solution to their problem, in some cases I am selling them a way to achieve their dreams.
When you understand this, your targeting and selling will improve a huge amount.
This will also help you to determine your pricing, how much are people willing to spend on their dreams vs how much people are willing to spend on an instruction manual. The difference is MASSIVE!
Step 2 – traffic
99% of ya’ll come to me and you all have the same problem, you can’t get traffic to your site, offer whatever else it is you’re trying to sell.
Guess what? traffic ain’t your problem.
There’s a shit ton of traffic out there, you just have to go and get it. It’s not even hard, it might require some cash though. Remember this is just upfront cash, you will get it back, that’s the entire point of this article, to let you be able to buy traffic for free.
You’re gonna do this with a self fulfilling offer, so you’re gonna pay for traffic, then sell that traffic a product, which in turn pays for the traffic, at the same time your list is building both email and retargeting), so you can sell them more expensive stuff for profit.
If you knew that you made £10 for every person that comes to your site, you’d spend anything up to £9.99 to get them there right? Then just scale from there.
When you understand this model, you can buy all the traffic you want, and wait until you realise that once you add in the next step, you could probably spend £15 to get each person to your site. Still making profit. MAGIC!!
Anyway back to the point, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SEO and about a bajillion others are all just trying to sell you traffic, infact, their business models depend on it.
If you can choose one of these, cough cough… Facebook, and make it send you steady, affordable, targeted traffic then you will be forever abundant.
Choose one and send it to your….
Step 3 – lead magnet
Your lead magnet is simple, it solves a quick and abundant problem, easily, and in an easy to digest manner. There is only one aim with this, to get their contact info.
So set up an autoresponder (I recommend Aweber), create a list and have it deliver your lead magnet as soon as somebody gives you their email address.
There are generally at least 2 ways to do this, I use 2:
- Offer an ebook or some other form of valuable content on a landing page
- Offer an in content improvement on the article, a resource that will help your visitors more than the article by itself will (this is mainly my preferred choice)
Now I use number 2 primarily (initially. I send people to a landing page with remarketing), so I’ll tell you how to build this type of funnel, then offer you some additional resources that will make it much easier for you to understand or implement, you’ll see this later on in the article.
Remember the aim here is to get the most amount of people possible to sign up for this, driving as many of them to your list as possible. The more people you get here, the more you will earn later down the funnel.
DANRAY SUPER TIP – You want to aim for about 40% of people to sign up to this list, this is the magic number
Guidelines for creating your lead magnet:
- Be super specific, solve 1 single problem
- Short and to the point, no fluff
- Concentrate on the outcome, not the process, solve their PROBLEM!
Step 4 – tripwire
This is the part where this differs from your typical sales funnel, instead of sending your traffic to a sales page and trying to make a profit straight away.
We will be offering a low priced product or service, the kind of thing that people don’t have to think about spending money on, an impulse purchase.
So price it at a cost that matches this, £5, £10, £30 something like that.
I hate to keep saying it but the only purpose of this step is to make enough sales to finance your ads. You can even afford to make a small loss at this stage. You’ll make it up later.
This is the step where people become customers, this is a huge shift in the dynamic of your relationship with them, they have given you money, now you have to deliver.
DANRAY SUPER TIP 2 – The magic conversion number at this stage is 10% of the people who get your lead magnet.
Guidelines for creating your tripwire:
- Again, specific and solves a problem
- Low cost, impulse purchase
- Delivers good value for the price, irresistible offer
- Natural progression from your lead magnet, the next step
Want some pretty much done for you lead magnet and tripwires?:
1) Lead Magnet Checklist
2) Tripwire checklist
3) Calculations sheet to determine profitability
Step 5 – core offer
If you’re reading this article, then i’m guessing that you already have a core offer, or at least know what you want it to be.
This is the service or product that you sell, your specialty. By the time that people see this offer, they have already done 2 pieces of business with you, given you their info and given you a small amount of money.
If these people trust you and you have delivered value up until this point, then they WILL buy your core offer. For most of you this will make you profitable, but if you made the decision at the tripwire stage to make a small loss.
Then you may not, and that’s fine. There are 2 steps left, and if you make even a single sale, then you make profit.
Some of you will make the decision here, as you can see the process working, to invest the entire core offer income back into traffic, and thereby increasing the number of customers you have in your funnel.
This is how millionaires are made, and how your business will poop out leads and customers FOREVER.
MY NEW CORE OFFER, WHICH IS BEING LAUNCHED AT THE SAME TIME AS THIS ARTICLE WILL BE PUBLISHED, IS A 3 HOUR CONSULTING PACKAGE, PEOPLE WILL GET 3 HOURS OF MY TIME, EITHER SPLIT INTO 2 OR 3 GOOGLE HANGOUTS, WHERE I WILL HELP YOU SPECIFICALLY WITH YOUR PROBLEMS IN STARTING AN SEO AGENCY OR RUNNING A TRAFFIC CAMPAIGN, YOU CAN CHECK IT OUT HERE!
DANRAY SUPER TIP 3 – You’re looking for another 10% conversion rate here ideally
If you’re about to stop reading as I’m like a bajillion words into this article and you still haven’t made any profit. Keep reading, this shit’s about to get realzzzz…
Step 6 – the bit where you make a profit
At this point, depending on the decisions you have made, you’ll either be making some cash or still waiting to make some.
No matter which one of those you are, every sale you make at this point, is pure profit. That’s money in your pocket to do cool shit with. Or do nothing and let it stack up (this is not something I’m good at). Whatever you want.
This is the stage where you make more money from each customer. It is essentially a product or service that allows you to squeeze more value out of your current customers, as it is only offered to them.
This is money you wouldn’t usually make, as their LTV (lifetime value) is usually set in stone at this point.
Introducing a profit maximiser changes all that. For this exact reason, I usually like this to be a recurring revenue product.
Depending on where you are in my sales funnel and which products you have bought up to now, you will have seen and possibly bought a couple of these from me, if you have then thank you, I really appreciate it and hope that you are enjoying it.
My favourite of all of my products, and probably my most valuable one is my paid newsletter. It costs a tenner a month and I limit it to 200 people, so it will never be a huge cash earner for me, but I feel it is where I produce my best content (I actually write more for the newsletter than I do for my blog).
The majority of businesses count their success on core product sales, this is why this model makes you different, your core offer is important, it delivers value and makes you some nice revenue, but it’s not the be all and end of all of this method, you still have more chances to make money even if you choose not to with your core offer.
So what can you offer that your customers will also be interested in?
- What can you offer for a recurring fee?
- Can you offer something that doesn’t require a huge outlay of time and effort on your part?
- Think in terms of a one to many type deal
- What price do you sell at that makes you a decent income at a 10% conversion rate?
YOU CAN CHECK OUT A FREE SAMPLE OF MY NEWSLETTER HERE IF YOU WANT AN IDEA OF THE QUALITY!
I AM ALSO CURRENTLY CREATING A COURSE THAT WILL SHOW YOU EXACTLY HOW MY BUSINESS IS RUN, IT WILL ALSO CONTAIN ACCESS TO A FACEBOOK GROUP AND ONGOING REGULAR TRAINING AND WHAT NOT, THIS WILL BE MY NEW PROFIT MAXIMIZER ONCE MY CONSULTING OFFER IS READY TO GO!
Step 7 – make them come back and buy again
The final of our 3 ways to make more from your business, is to sell to your customers more often, in my opinion this step is my favourite part, mainly because a few years ago it wasn’t real possible to the extent that it is today, not for an info product business (which mine is for the most part). I do this in 3 ways:
- I utilise email marketing, based on the info I was given at the lead magnet stage, this allows me to contact people multiple times for many reasons.
- Remarketing/ retargeting (depending on which ad platform you use), I can add a pixel to my website and target people with ads based on the info they have viewed, allowing me to offer them products that I feel would be of interest to them.
- Straight up good experiences, it goes without saying that if people have a good experience on your site, with your product, they will come back to it and consume more. All of my free content is designed to be better than what most people charge for, hopefully you guys see that and come back to see some where I publish something.
- Get more customers
- Earn more per customer
- Make customers come back more often to buy again
The beauty of all of these methods, is that they give you access to people, and let’s not forget that it is people that buy your stuff, if you can connect with them and make an impression they will be more likely to buy from you.
The methodology I have used on this site, allows those of you who have bought my SEO type stuff, to be targeted by me to show you similar stuff that may be of interest, like this for example, you have consumed my SEO agency articles, perhaps bought a product.
This type of funnel is the next step for you guys, I use it to generate SEO leads, and at what cost?
£0. YEAH, £2000 per month clients at an acquisition cost of NOTHING.
Using the exact steps in this article.
So in summary I have shown you how to:
Now go forth and make bank kiddies!
Stuff that might be useful to you:
How to retarget on faceboook step by step guide
Google Adwords remarketing guide coming soon!
Step by step guide on setting up one of these funnels also coming soon!
Here are the goodies, click the button below and you will get:
1) Lead Magnet Checklist
2) Tripwire checklist
3) Calculations sheet to determine profitability
Get the time saving, badass campaign making goodies!
Dan! you are good! (:
Haha Cheers Kareim