As an entrepreneur building your own business, you need a way to bring your target audience into the "doors" of your website. Once inside, you have the opportunity to show your "stuff."
When you think about businesses that are not internet-based, you can see an example of "funneling" people in the doors when you see coupons for discounts. When people come in to use their coupons for a specific item or items, the store owner has other items, not on sale located in areas of the store where they cannot be missed.
This technique is as old as business has existed. When people come into a store and bring the discount coupon with them, it's easy and automatic for the store owner to show other tangible items just by locating them strategically. It's not so simple on the internet.
On the internet, the "funneling" process is different. It's difficult to show your products and services all at once and locate them so they cannot be missed with a website. It can be done however. One way of doing that is by offering something worth having and offering it for free or for a very low price point.
In exchange for the free information, the visitor leaves a name and email address for further contact. By doing this, the visitor is generously giving something to receive something and can be easily led back to your website "store" later. While you want to offer something that has compelling value, you do not want to be coercive in any way. It is simply an exchange based on the universal law of reciprocity.
The "funnel" process is only a terminology to help business owners understand efficient ways to display their products and services to the most appropriate audience. For example: It's silly to put information about marketing a roofing company in front of a new parent whose focus is on parenting an infant.
We often use terminology in marketing which can be construed inaccurately. Yet the only goal is to discover processes that help customers find solutions to problems they may have and for businesses to somehow let those potential customers know about the solutions available.
By offering valuable information where people can easily "opt in" for more information from your business, you are "funneling" people gradually to the place that serves them best. All along the way, the people are learning more and more about you and your quality and style. At any point where they feel you are not a match for them, they can easily opt out – as easily as they opted in.
Therefore, your marketing funnel at the top will bring masses of people to the "door" of your website. As the funnel gradually narrows into the specific areas of servitude, some will drop away and others will discover they really are in the right place at the right time with YOU.
Bringing people into your marketing funnel can be done through many techniques and all are valuable to the visitors. As you do this, they enter through something called a landing page, an opt-in page and yes, sometimes referred to as a "squeeze" page. No matter what you call the page, its purpose is the same. On the internet, without obtaining names and email addresses, people often click away intending to return and later cannot remember how they found you in the first place – even when they bookmark you, they forget what the page was called.
Your marketing funnel is essential for any business to move people through to see what you have to offer. On the internet, the technique is a slight variation of what is done in traditional businesses. Nonetheless, the purpose is the same – it's all about informing people of solutions to their problems. And that's the only purpose a business has in the first place.
Only after people have had an opportunity to learn enough about you to trust you will they spend money. At that point of your marketing funnel, you will be making money through serving people in the most tightly focused and efficient way possible.
Make your marketing funnel make you money… it's all in a days work…: )
Copyright 2006 Juanita Bellavance
Juanita Bellavance, the author of this article is CEO, Co-Founder of Audacious Enterprises™, Internet Business Entrepreneur Coach and master teacher at http://www.amasterteacher.com To register for the Audacious Marketing Mastery™ FREE teleclass, "How to Create a Marketing Funnel that Makes You Money," go here: http://www.callinnumber.com
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