If you’re reading this post on the day it goes live then it is the day after Thanksgiving here in the US. So, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I really hope you were able to take time for yourself and your family while enjoying the holiday.
I don’t know about you, but the last couple of years have really felt like an eternity and a blink at the same time. It’s been a really long couple of years for all of us. The thing that has shown up for me the most is realizing that time is short, and there’s a lot of distractions in the world. In my personal life, I’ve experienced many distractions, like my daughter going away to college. I’m going to really take the last six weeks of this year to focus on what is important to me. And that’s spending quality time with my family. I really hope that you’ll do the same.
As I just said, there are only six weeks left of 2021, which is kind of insane if you ask me. Today I wanted to chat about 2022 and some predictions in the marketing world for the coming year.
2022 Marketing Predictions!
The year of the creator
First, I think 2022 is really going to be the year of the creator. What 2021 has shown us is that it is incredibly important to have more than one social media platform that you are engaging on.
We all know there is a ton of competition out there, and 2021 just proved that as more businesses than ever have taken online to social media. Audiences have shown that they will follow creators who provide valuable content from one platform to another. This makes creator engagement a key competitive point between the networks.
Lately, I’ve been intensely focusing on how I can make more time in my day by creating effective automations. The reality is there is a hard way and an easy way to grow a business. The hard way is the hustle and grind. Don’t get me wrong, the hustle and grind is an important step when it comes to getting your business off the ground and creating the profit you’ve always wanted.
However, I think there comes a time for every business owner when they want to…
- Create an easier way to move prospects from cold, to warm, to clients.
- They want to scale faster than the hustle will allow.
That, my friends, is where funnels come in.
What’s a Funnel?
In the simplest of terms, a funnel is your customer journey. It is the way that you take your prospects through a cycle of getting to know you so that they are ready, willing, and excited to buy from you. A funnel can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be.
There is one key thing that you want to be very aware of when you’re creating your funnel: always know the goal of your funnel.
Not every funnel goal is to get clients now. Sometimes it’s to build your email list so you can launch later. Sometimes it’s to gather information from your ideal clients so you can create a new product or service. Most times it’s to get clients.
Whatever your reason is, make sure you’re aware of that reason and create the funnel in a way that is going to help you to achieve your goal. I know I say this all the time, but how can you know if your marketing is successful if you don’t have a goal to reach?
The Top 3 Types of Funnels:
The Webinar Funnel
I’m quite sure that we’ve all been through someone’s webinar funnel in the past. In fact, I think webinars are the original digital marketing tactic. I know I’ve heard some say that webinars are dead. I think webinars and challenges (which I will talk about later) got a bad rap last year. By the end of 2020, most people were burnt out from being on Zoom. Which made webinars and challenges, well, challenging. That being said, webinars are absolutely alive! They just keep working and are a super-effective marketing strategy
What is dead, when it comes to funnels, is “Bro Marketing.” You know what I’m talking about, right? The low-value, high-pressure, sleazy marketing techniques that we’ve seen arise over the past few years. When creating your webinar you want to make sure you are truly providing value to your audience.
In essence, a webinar is a short training. When I say short I mean that in a very relative term. A webinar funnel can be as short as fifteen minutes. Generally, I wouldn’t suggest anyone have a webinar longer than ninety minutes. Right now, the standard for a good webinar is about forty-five minutes of teaching, followed by your invitation and a Q&A. So, in total, about 60 minutes.
These are the top benefits of doing a webinar:
- You don’t need a ton of tech
- You can convert it to evergreen, or use it in other content later
- Boost your awareness and increase engagement
- Warming up your audience
- Creating a seamless process to a discovery call
- Generating and nurturing new leads
The Challenge Funnel
If you’re training is going to be longer than that forty-five-minute mark it might be better and more effective to turn this into a challenge,
A challenge, in the simplest of terms, is an extended training session. Generally, it’s 3-5 days of 60-90 minute training sessions all designed to take your client from cold, to warm, to let me buy this right now.
How it works: you invite your audience to register for a paid or free online challenge about a topic or pain point your ideal client is concerned with. Every day during the event you’re going to go live and present your training.
These trainings are really designed for two objectives. First, it sets you up as the authority and gives the audience mini-tasks that will produce a quick win. These wins will help to show the participants a small piece of the amazingness that is your coaching or training. It’s designed to warm them up quickly so by the end of the training they are ready to jump on your offer.
Keep in mind that you are absolutely teaching them something every day and because the goal of a challenge is to generate sales calls (or applications, or sales), every day you are seeding the audience with a little bit of what they could expect when working with you.
These are some of the benefits of doing a challenge:
- Explode your email list even if you’re starting from scratch
- Building trust and authority in the short timeframe of your challenge
- Showcase your expertise and transform into an overnight authority
- Seamlessly sell your paid offer without coming across like a sleazy used car salesman
The Quiz Funnel
This last funnel is really one of my favorites. I love the diversity of what you can do with a quiz and the information you can gather from people. Honestly, it’s one of the most underrated marketing tools available to you. A quiz is incredibly effective at generating leads, engaging your audience, and giving you information.
A quiz helps people to become aware of your business and more importantly aware of the problem that your business can solve.
Take my client, for example, we just finished building out her quiz. Her target audience is people who already have a business, but are struggling to get to six figures. Our quiz goes through the areas we know they need to have in place before they’re able to reach six figures. At the end of the quiz, there are two result options. These two results allow us to segment the audience and offer them the appropriate product or service for where they are at right now.
Quizzes are an excellent way to start segmenting your audience. You can set up segments for your quiz results and individual questions. Plus, integrating your quiz with your email platform does all the segmenting automatically! The segments from your quiz are moved to your email platform, and you can begin nurturing the relationships with the people on those lists right away.
Quizzes also teach people about themselves. So often we have blinders on to our own life and business. We may not even know there is a problem, or what parts of the problem are the biggest issue for us. When you help people learn something new about themselves, you are able to establish yourself as the expert in their problem. This makes it easier for you to also establish yourself as the best solution to fix your ideal client’s problem.
These are some of the major benefits of using a quiz funnel:
- Grow your email list
- Segmentation of your audience
- Increases your understanding of your audience
- Helps you in retargeting
Funnels are an essential method for growing and scaling your business. Keep in mind that every funnel needs to have a purpose. No matter what type of business you have, you need a funnel that attracts and converts your audience. The goal for any funnel is to move people through the different stages of your sales process. To create an automated system that takes them from introduction to commitment. A great funnel gives you the ability to grow your business, increase your revenue, and scale your impact.