Your lead funnel leads somebody from not knowing that you even exist to becoming your client.
Lead Funnel for Accountants
In this episode Nathan Watt of Watson & Watt will tell you how he grew from zero to 100 client groups within less than 3 years, all thanks to a well-executed lead funnel.
Here is what we learned but please listen in as Nathan explains all this much better than we ever could.
To listen while you drive, walk or work, just access the episode through a free podcast app on your mobile phone.
Lead Funnel
A lead funnel is the journey somebody takes from not knowing you exist to becoming your client.
Having a well designed lead funnel is essential for effective marketing. Without a clear funnel your marketing is like shooting in the dark.
Theory
In theory, a funnel consists of four stages:
1 – Awareness
2 – Interest
3 – Decision
4 – Action
A person becomes aware of your offer. Gets interested. Makes a decision…and voila: Action.
That is the theory and maybe in retail this is how it works – sometimes. But we are not in retail. For us the road from blissful ignorance to somebody ultimately becoming our client is much more arduous.
Continuous Loop
But it is not that this loop from awareness to action doesn’t apply to us. It still does. It is just that we have to run through dozens or hundreds of these loops. It’s like a continuous loop.
When you run a Facebook ad, people see it – awareness. You pick their interest and they decide to click on your ad – action – and arrive at your landing page.
Now the loop starts again. Your landing page talks to them – awareness – picks their interest and gets them to decide to take action – whatever that action is, maybe to download your brochure.
And so it keeps going on and on – awareness, interest, decision, action – with every email you send them. Every offer. Until they finally become your client.
But this continuous loop doesn’t really tell you what to do. It is just there in every step of your funnel. So to really nail this you need to focus on your funnel.
Funnel
Your funnel consists of 9 steps but not everybody goes through all 9 steps. People are different. Some are happy to talk straight away. Some take years of nurturing to finally trust you.
So think of these 9 steps like an omnibus ride with people getting off and on at every stop. Which can make it confusing.
1 – Lead Ads
Google search and display ads, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin ads, Spotify and radio – the choice is wide. What works and what doesn’t depends on your target market. Experiment.
2 – SEO
You make a list of the keywords you want to rank for in Google and then you create a landing page for every one of these keywords. Each landing page is optimised for a particular keyword. You might have up to 100 landing pages or more.
3 – Offline
Word of mouth, referrals, public speaking, people you happen to meet – most will check you out online before they proceed. Your SEO will make sure they find you.
4 – Website
The aim is to get everybody to your website because this is your territory. This is where you control the conversation. So every ad, every SEO search term links to a landing page of your website.
The fast will look for your phone number and call you. But for most that is far too fast. They don’t know you. They are not ready to talk. And so you don’t. Instead you keep nurturing the relationship you are building.
5 – Something To Read
You offer them a gift. Something to read – a brochure, checklist or book. All they have to do is give you their email address in return and officially become a ‘lead’.
6 – Email Campaign
And so now you start talking to them via email. You send them an email and then another. You ask them a yes/no question to better gauge what they are after. And that will determine what emails you send them next, around 6 in total.
7 – Free Consultation
Your aim is to get your leads to talk to you. And so you offer a free 15 or 30-min consultation. You offer this in your emails as well as on your website through a Call to Action (CTA).
8 – Phone Call
This is what your entire funnel aims for. You and your lead actually talking to each other. Be it during your scheduled free consultation. Or they call you with a problem.
You talk and now it is no longer marketing but sales you are doing. Except that you are not selling. You are helping. You find out where their pain points are and how you can help.
9 – Conversion
Depending on your personality and skills, the final conversion can be easy or really hard. Practice makes perfect. Just learn from every conversation.
So these are the 9 steps of a lead funnel as we discuss in this episode. Please listen in as Nathan Watt shares a lot more insights than we were able to do here.
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