Sales Funnels Are NOT Always The Answer

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We're anti funnel, Ralph.

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I hate funnels with

everything inside of me.

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And I'm joking.

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No, I don't think that funnels are dead.

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I just don't think that they're the

ubiquitous truth that marketers have

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made them out to be like It's weird

because they almost feel like, Oh, you

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can't drive traffic without a funnel.

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And in my opinion, you need

an excuse to have a funnel.

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It's not the default.

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And some of this might stem from

the fact that you and I just serve

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different customers is my anticipation.

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I know I, I definitely fish in

a smaller pond than you do, but

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we've got, professional services,

local services, e commerce, SaaS.

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And those engagements, when somebody's

shopping for that type of service,

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it takes time and it takes multiple

touches and it takes multiple narratives

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and You want them to self direct

and a funnel doesn't allow for that.

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A funnel is a squeeze page per se,

but I think funnels use squeeze

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pages as part of the, scaffolding.

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just don't think that our

customers like to be squeezed.

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When they're shopping for

especially higher end services.

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So the way that I'd build the fork

in the road is if you have something

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that's an impulse, something that

can get a quick, easy opt in, then

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a funnel starts to make sense.

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if you have something that's,

I don't wanna use the term high

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ticket, but longer sales cycle,

maybe higher end product or service.

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I think you need a more robust web

presence that someone can engage with

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on their terms at their point of.

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Where they are in, sales funnel.

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You know what I mean?

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Like contextually, cause there's

your funnel that you've built the

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technical deployment of pages.

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And then there's the sales

funnel that we always talk about,

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awareness, consideration, interest,

intent, et cetera, et cetera.

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So wherever they are in that phase, I

think that we need to make sure that we

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have content that's accessible to them.

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And a funnel makes everything

really myopic, my soft opinion.

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I'm going to pause here to get thrashed.

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No, I think it might be.

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A difference in the types of

companies that we serve, as

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well as the type of advertising.

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Now, could the argument be made

that more intent based marketing,

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more intent based advertising

doesn't necessarily need a funnel.

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All you need to do is have

offer and a price point.

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To get the conversion through Google

search, through a lot of the advertising

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that you guys do, which isn't all search,

obviously, but there is a difference as

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far as like where they're coming from.

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Most of our advertising that

we run is non intent based.

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we obviously, we do a fair amount

of Google ads as well, but most of

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it really is interruption marketing.

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So from our Perspective, we

look at it one of two ways.

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Either we have an incredibly great

asset that convinces them very handily

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before they even make, do the click,

which is, a video format that we either

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have perfected through our agency

or it's some other type of asset.

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But anyway, or the offer is so low

priced, there isn't a whole lot of

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selling that really needs to go on.

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I'm just going to say for the sake

of argument in the newsfeed, which

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is basically, when you're running

Facebook ads, let's just say

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that's where they're seeing you.

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So how much convincing do you

actually need to do prior to them

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making that initial interaction?

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if you don't have a whole lot of

convincing that you need to do,

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oftentimes you don't need a funnel.

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if it's a local business, that is.

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it's intent based, I'm searching for

a plumber because I've got a leaky

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faucet or my toilet just exploded.

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I'm not looking for an opt in.

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I'm just looking for a phone number to

call a guy to get out here as soon as

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possible before my living room floods.

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So do we need a funnel

in a case like that?

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No, you probably do not, but your types

of customers, a lot of the folks that you

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serve might be in those types of areas.

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So this whole funnel

discussion is a bit irrelevant.

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I would say this,

however, though, is that.

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Not in all cases in intent

based advertising, is it always

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looking for the sale immediately?

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There is value in having the email,

collecting the email and the information,

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and having a follow up sequence, because

not everybody is actually going to do

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what you want them to do, even if they

do click on one of your intent based ads.

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I totally agree.

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So one of the things that we do

with clients is, as somebody travels

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down a page, and I really love long

form landing pages, incidentally,

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as someone travels down the page,

we travel up the sales funnel.

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So when you're at the top of my page,

you have a bottom of the funnel offer.

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it's buy now convert schedule, whatever.

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and then as you travel down the page,

the assumption is, you haven't opted in.

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So whatever I was offering

you isn't of interest.

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And then we start to move, let's say,

middle of the funnel, which might

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be like a calculator or something

that, helps you begin to really.

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Look at our product or

service from your perspective.

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And then if you get to the extreme

bottom of the page, and sometimes

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this is just exit intent, then

it's a top of the funnel offer, the

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webinar PDF download, et cetera.

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a couple of nuances there.

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One, the pages that we drive traffic to.

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99 times out of 100, they have

navigation, and I think that's a really

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important distinction because when you

have a page that lacks navigation,

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you're inhibiting somebody from,

traversing throughout your site and

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also intrinsically qualifying themselves

from an interest based perspective.

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If they're on one page,

imagine watching that person.

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Browse.

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If they're on one page, you really

can't tell what they're interested in.

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if I use like Hotjar or True Conversion

or Lucky Orange, when we install that on

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somebody's page, we see that they land

on the landing page, they start from

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the top, they scroll all the way down

to the bottom, and then they go to the

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point that was of most interest to them.

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They're looking at the entire page.

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I can't really tell what

they're interested in.

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If I have navigation and now all of

a sudden, for the majority of our

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clients, the second most traffic page

they have is their about us page.

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Cause people want to see mission

vision values, but you go to the about

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page or you go to the pricing page or

you go to a specific services page.

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And now each of those

visits is a data point.

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And that's data that funnels

don't have to give us.

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And it's data that we

can optimize towards.

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they're qualifying themselves, especially

if your site's built in such a way that

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lends itself to this type of journey.

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you're collecting information

that, you just wouldn't be able

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to capture instead of a funnel.