Today I’m going to give you an entire digital marketing sales funnel, as outlined in Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz.
Going from top to bottom, I’m going to teach you how to profit from every single stage of the marketing funnel – irrespective of what you’re selling or what you’re offering in your business.
This will help you understand how to sell to just about anyone, no matter what stage of the funnel they are at, or what stage of the funnel you operate in.
And this is the exact process that will help people to feel that they ‘know, like and trust you’.
For this we’re going to return to Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz.
Table of Contents:
Breakthrough Advertising
I’ve gone through this book before on Profit Copilot, it’s the most expensive book in copywriting history, that I’m aware of.
It frequently sells on Amazon for about $1,000 but you can get cheaper versions elsewhere.
If you’re going to invest in a copywriting book that’s the one to get.
This book talks about the 5 levels of prospects awareness.
And while it was written in 1966, I’m going to update it for the Internet age.
I’m going to show you how you can use this content in this book in 1966 to make money on the Internet today.
To do this we’re going to use a combination of psychology and technology.
So we’re going to take the psychology from the book, and then I’m going to give you my own experiences with technology and show you how it all fits together.
The Modern Marketing Funnel
The content of a marketing funnel all begins with Breakthrough Advertising.
Everything that we do with sales funnels online comes from this book. It’s the birthplace of the marketing funnel.
So if you wanna profit online this is important stuff, and there are dozens of courses that charge $3,000 to learn this.
I’m a little bit excited about teaching you this today because I’ve been planning this for quite a long time.
If you’re not aware of what a marketing funnel is at the moment, let me explain it to you.
A marketing funnel moves a prospect from A to B.
That starting point is usually a prospect not knowing a thing about you and they might not even know that they have a problem.
You can use a funnel to move a prospect through a series of events through that will eventually result in them trusting you enough to hand over their credit card details.
And that is the real purpose of the funnel.
But we can also use it for different things; so we can take someone from not knowing a thing about you, to them sharing your content, or opting into an email list.
Resources:
Stages of a Marketing Funnel
We have multiple stages of a funnel, and I’m going to give you different strategies that work for every single stage of the funnel.
I’m also going to teach you how to capitalize from every segment of your market, because each stage of the funnel represents one segment of your market.
And I’m going to show you how to do all this with integrity, and through value-based marketing – so if you care about your prospects and you care about your customers this is out absolutely going to help you deliver more value to them, and make more profit in an ethical way where you feel good about the sale.
Then I’m going to give you examples that make the process easy to understand, and finally I’m going to give you actionable strategies that you can use.
This works so well because it helps you build enough trust with your prospects, through educating them – and that is the key; education.
But listen, even though I’m going to teach you all 5 stages, you don’t have to use all of them, just 1 will be fine.
The 5 stages of prospect awareness are:
- Unaware
- Problem aware
- Solution aware
- Product aware
- Most aware
I’m going to explain what each of these means in detail in a minute.
The first three stages; unaware, problem aware, and solution aware, are all about educating your prospects.
And the final two stages; product aware and most aware, are about selling.
All this will become clear as we go through it and by the end of this post it will all make sense, I promise.
Unaware Stage of the Funnel
This is the first stage of the marketing funnel; the unaware stage.
And the traffic temperature is freezing-cold.
These are the people who don’t know that they have a problem, they’re unaware that a problem even exists, and they’re happy.
They don’t know that life could be a lot better.
Interestingly, this is the biggest segment of a market – but it’s also the hardest to sell to.
This stage is all about planting seeds and it’s about giving people new ideas, and making them interested.
Once you have their attention and interest you can then start moving them through the lower levels of the funnel.
Example of the Unaware Stage
So an example could be; there’s a blogger who’s happy running his blog, updating it every day.
He’s monetizing the blog with Adsense, and he doesn’t realise that he’s missing out on a whole heap of revenue.
He thinks that Adsense is where it’s at, and might be shocked to know that he could easily make 10 times the amount with a more lucrative monetization strategy.
Strategy for the Unaware Stage
So a plan of attack could be to create an interruption.
This is the stage of a marketing funnel where you use pattern interrupts – I’ll return to the in more detail in a future post, but it’s really just about creating a piece of content that stops your prospect in their tracks, and grabs their full attention.
You tell them something new and educate them – make them aware that the problem exists.
A good way of capturing their attention could be through Facebook Ads.
You might create a shocking Facebook ad (or boost post) that that gives your prospect some interesting stats or data.
Once they know that there’s something they need to know about, and that they need to take action, you bring them down to the second stage of the funnel.
Problem Aware Stage of the Funnel
The second stage of the marketing funnel is problem aware.
These are the people who know that there’s a problem, but they need more information.
They might be searching for a solution, so they turn to Google and they start looking on forums, or asking for advice on the Internet. They start reading blog posts and watching videos.
Example of the Problem Aware Stage
An example of a problem aware prospect could be; our blogger now knows that they could be earning more and they realise that they’re missing out.
Strategy for the Problem Aware Stage
A strategy to help you to capitalize from these prospects could be through content marketing.
This is where keyword research comes in.
You can also embed yourself in communities and groups. a
And this stage of the marketing funnel is all about education.
So we use education to bring them down into the next level, which is making them
solution aware.
Solution Aware Stage of the Funnel
This is the third level of the funnel and these are the prospects who are actively looking to solve their problem, they’re looking at their options.
They’re still searching on Google, they’re still asking for advice on communities and they’re still reading blog posts and watching YouTube videos.
Example of the Solution Aware Stage
An example could be, again sticking with the blogger analogy; our blogger realises that creating digital products is the most lucrative way to monetize his website.
So he starts looking for ways to create digital products.
Strategy for the Solution Aware Stage
A strategy could be to use a Facebook retargeting campaign.
If he’s already hit your website once, then you’ve probably already pixeled him – so create a retargeting campaign and offer him your lead magnet.
Or you could use content marketing.
If you discover the exact search phrases that prospects are using on Google, you can create content that helps them to solve part of the problem, and position it high in the SERP’s.
Easier said than done, though.
But if you can put your content in front of these prospects, and use that content as a vehicle
to get them to subscribe to your email list – while still providing them with an education, you’ll increase the chance of getting a sale later on.
Have you noticed that all these levels, so far, are still about providing your prospects with an education?
So when you get them to opt-in to your email list, it’s usually through the promise of continuing the education.
And that will move them down to the next level of the funnel.
Product Aware Stage of the Funnel
Prospects at this stage of the marketing funnel are called product aware, and they realise that there’s a specific product that will help them.
If we look at the traffic temperature, this is warm traffic – they’re either going to buy from you or they’re almost ready to.
If they haven’t pulled the trigger and purchased yet, it means they’re still on the fence and they need a little bit of a nudge.
I’ll show you how to do that.
Example of the Product Aware Stage
An example could be; our blogger knows that your specific product exists but they’re
still on the fence and they’re still weighing up their options.
Strategy for the Product Aware Stage
So a strategy you could use to convert these prospects into customers could be to create a custom audience on Facebook and run an ad campaign only to the people who have already subscribed to your email list.
Another good strategy could be to write a product review article. You run them through all the options available as you review every product that’s available (or the ones that you believe will best help them) and have affiliate links in there.
Most Aware Stage of the Funnel
Then at the bottom of the funnel the very final stage of this we have the prospects who are the most aware.
This is red-hot traffic and these are typically your previous customers, or they are prospects who know exactly what the problem is, they know exactly what products exists and they want a deal.
They might have gone through most of the sales process, they’re about to buy the product – they might have even put it into the shopping cart, but they’ve hesitated for some reason.
Example of the Most Aware Stage
An example could be; a blogger who wants to buy your product, they’ve added it to the shopping cart but they didn’t buy because they’re going to go look for a coupon code or
they’re going to look for a better deal.
Strategy for the Most Aware Stage
A strategy you could use to convert these people into customers; retarget them on facebook with a special offer, or you can offer them a coupon code, or maybe a time-limited offer, or a bonus – something that will help shift them into buy mode.
Include something to help sweeten the deal.
That is a really easy way to convert that segment of your market.
Final Thoughts About the Marketing Funnel
So there you go, that’s five segments of your niche that you can target.
You can decide which segment is best for your business, or you can target every single segment if you want to, but you don’t have to – just one will do.
I know I’ve given you a lot of information too use, and I hope this is going to be immensely profitable for you.
When we break it down and we look at each segment, each level of the marketing funnel, you can see that it’s really easy stuff.
We’re not doing anything too complicated and in fact you’re probably already doing a
lot of what is required to turn this into a profitable system.
Anyone can do this.
Big props to Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz – what an amazing book I will return to this again in the future.