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    Episode 187: How to Build Your First Digital Marketing Funnel – with April Beach

    187 SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast April Beach

    This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?

    Episode Bonuses:

    Get Kajabi free for 14 days to generate perfect funnel pipelines with ease – www.aprilbeach.com/kajabi

    Who This Episode is Great For:

    New and established small businesses who have a general understanding of marketing but want to tap into the power that building a digital marketing funnel can do for your business. Those in Phases 2-3 of my “Start to Scale System” formerly called Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap.

    Summary:

    You’ve heard that digital marketing is the way to grow your business but you aren’t sure where to start. Building your first digital marketing funnel is not hard as long as you understand the components of a funnel and how they work.
    In this episode, April Beach dives into the 3 components of all winning funnels, how you use your marketing funnel and what you can expect if you’ve built it right. 
    You’d be surprised by the number of large companies that do not currently know how to build and utilize a funnel and grass-roots relationship marketing. This episode will catapult you beyond big giants! 
    Hiring a marketing firm may not yet be in your budget, or if you do plan to hire out you at least need to have an understanding of what a marketing funnel is, your company’s goals and expectations, and an overview of how your funnel should function and work.  This podcast episode gives you clarity to move forward. 

    Highlights:

    1. Know what a marketing funnel is
    2. Know the components of a marketing funnel
    3. Understand how to set yours up

    Resources Mentioned:

    SweetLifeLaunch 90 Day Program is Open! Early fall registration starts now! Visit www.SweetLifeLaunch.com
    Get Kajabi free for 14 days to generate perfect funnel pipelines with ease – www.aprilbeach.com/kajabi

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    Full Show Transcript:
    You’re listening to the sweet life entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate Under the show. This is episode number 187, and you are listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast. And my name is April beach. Thanks for being here with me for yet. Again,
    another episode today on the show, we’re talking about how to create your first digital marketing funnel, why it’s important and why as a business owner, whether you’re a brand new or you’ve been a business for a really long time, you have to start utilizing the power of building a digital marketing funnel and strategy. And it doesn’t matter if you are a teeny tiny business,
    a mom and pop, even a large corporation, you need to be using these grassroots relationship building free. If you will type of marketing strategies to attract your perfect customers and your, your ideal audience. And as a matter of fact, the large companies are actually less utilizing these digital marketing funnels than small and midsize businesses. And they’re going to catch up sooner or later,
    they’re going to have marketers come in there and say, Hey, let’s, you know, stop crushing everybody with these big ad campaigns and start building relationships with the audience. But you are going to be ahead of the game because you listen to this show and you will have already established awesome relationships with your audience and growing your list because you, especially at the end of this episode will know exactly how to build your first digital marketing funnel.
    So this particular episode is, especially for you guys, you could be new, you could be established and you want to understand digital marketing. Now, again, it doesn’t matter what stage of business you’re in. Just in the last three weeks. I’ve had two different companies that have been in business for over 20 years. Join my business development mentorship program who have never had a digital marketing funnel ever before,
    but they’re established companies. They do great. They’re making a lot of money. They’re ready to scale and grow. And it’s time to start kind of picking up the pace here at tapping into digital marketing. And they want to tap into that. So again, it doesn’t matter whether you’re new or you are like the best established expert in your space, whether you are a small business,
    a midsize business, or even a large company, this episode is for you. And at the end of this episode, you’re going to know what a marketing funnel is. You’re going to know the components of a marketing funnel, and you’re going to understand how to set yours up. So I don’t care if you hire this out or you keep this in house.
    I’m a big advocate that even the things you hire out, you have to understand the end result and how they generally should be done yourself before you can hire that position or that task out to somebody else. So you’re going to understand this here on the show. And here’s some statistics why a healthy and thriving marketing funnels are essential for your business. This comes from small business genius.net.
    So first of all, 82% of customers feel more positive about a brand after reading your customized content. So they like you better when they read customized content that comes from you in 53% of businesses rely on creating customized content as part of their brand strategy. So it leaves us with two questions. Number one, how do you get the chance to get in front of your ideal audience and even share customized content and number two,
    how do you get people to pay attention so that they can absorb your customized content and buy from you? And the answer to both of those questions is we build you a really awesome, but simple doesn’t have to be elaborate digital marketing funnel that generates the leads of your ideal audience that will become your ideal customers. And so that’s what we are diving into in today’s show.
    All of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife podcast.com forward slash one eight, seven. There’s going to be a lot of links in here and different bonuses. We always love to give you guys bonuses with our podcast episodes to make sure you’re cruising over to Sweetlife podcasts.com to get those. Okay, let’s go ahead and dive into building that component of your marketing funnel.<inaudible> Okay.
    So let’s start out with the basics here. A marketing funnels, a series of online pages and actions that bring new users into your site so that you can capture their information and build a relationship with them for future sales. Should I say that again? I’ll say it one more time to be safe. If you’re like me, you’re probably driving your car and half listening because we’re also busy.
    So let me just say it again for you. A marketing funnel is a series of online pages and actions, and I’ll explain what that means that bring new users into your site so that you can capture their information and have a chance to build a relationship with them so you can sell to them. So a sales funnel is this same type of structure, but when you’re sending somebody just to buy directly today,
    we’re talking about building your first marketing funnel to generate leads as opposed to direct sales. And here are the steps to do that. Step. Number one, to build your first digital marketing funnel is to decide what you’ll give away for free to attract people, to give you their information. This is also called freemium business model, as a matter of fact,
    that the recording of this tomorrow morning, and I’m speaking on a Kansas city business leaders summit and teaching how to use this business model. I mean, this is how companies aren’t even tapping into this very much yet. You guys it’s so important in my talk tomorrow, they’ve asked me to speak on the quote unquote freemium business model. So this is what we’re talking about here.
    If that’s the terminology you’re familiar with, I call it a lead magnet because it magnetizes people to give you their information so you can generate the lead either way. Step one is to decide what your company is going to give away for free in exchange for a lead’s name and email address. And here’s some things I want you to know about this are very important because this has changed over the last couple of years,
    your free thing you give away your freebie, a lead magnet should be of high value and low time. So we used to give away these things that, you know, could be 20 page white papers, or, you know, numerous different things that would give so much information. People don’t have time anymore. So we want to give somebody something of high value and low time.
    This freebie should solve a problem for your ideal audience. And the freebie you’d give away should be a natural lead to help people decide if they need and want to buy your products or work with you, or be more involved with your services. So once you decide what this thing is, you need to give away for free, go ahead and create it.
    Just start working on this first. This takes businesses a lot longer than they expect. I’ll be honest with you. So decide and determine what is that high value, low time free thing you’re going to give away. And again, you’re invited to join my free online business owners community. And in there is a course. It’s a video where I give you a ton of different ideas on what these free things can be from videos to quizzes,
    to assessments, to, you know, we talk about even the basics of PDFs. So cruise over to sweet life, community.com and you’re welcome to join in there and access that training for free. So step number one is deciding what you’re going to give away in order to have it be of high value to generate the lead seven. Number two is actually building the landing page where you’re going to place the form for people to fill out,
    to get your free thing. So you need, or the person on your team that does your pages needs to build a separate standalone landing page. The page needs to have a form in it, and it needs to be really basic. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. This isn’t a long sales page where you’re inviting somebody to join your $20,000 a year mastermind.
    This is one page with a form on it for them to fill out, to get your really cool free thing. So keep it basic. And the purpose of this page is to only do one thing and that’s for people to fill out the form. So because of this, the page doesn’t have navigation on it. The page usually doesn’t have social media icons on it.
    It is super simple. It’s literally a standalone page that doesn’t have anything else that any action can be taken on that page, except for filling out your form to get the free thing you promised. And then of course, make sure that you have great copywriting on there. That’s direct to the point about what they’re going to get, what are the benefits of sharing their information and what will they receive?
    What’s your promise to them that they’re going to receive after they share their contact information with you? And so here’s just a pro tip when it comes to building landing pages, build this page on your own website, if at all possible. I know there are a lot of great services out there like lead pages and splash pages and all these other things whose purpose is to just be the house of these funnels,
    just the lead page and the process of this funnel we’re talking about. But gold standard is to build this as a page within your own website. So your website generates the traffic. We want to keep them on your website. That is our best practice. Okay. It doesn’t mean those services. Aren’t good. They just, aren’t what I would call best practice in.
    Step. Number three is to then build a thank you page. So after somebody is on the landing page and they fill out the form to get your cool free thing, the very next place they’re going to go to as a thank you page, the thank you page is the most missed opportunity in all marketing funnels. You know, you’ve filled out something before and you’ve gotten some for free and it’s just like this one white page pops up says,
    thank you. Your information has been submitted. You know, click here to go back. That is a waste of somebody’s attention. They’ve just trusted you. They’ve given you their information. You need to build a thank you page. And on that, thank you page. You can have an intro video to who you are or who your company is. You can share the most important things you want.
    These new leads to understand about your company. You can even have an immediate call to action there for people to buy from you or sign up for your service for schedule a complimentary consultation. There are so many things you can do and you need to do with the thank you page that companies are missing the boat on. So first we have the landing page with a form.
    The next page you’re going to build as a thank you page and the people, once they fill out their form, they’re going to be redirected to this. Thank you page. It’s an awesome place for you to build a relationship and confirm to them. Hey, you did a really good job by giving us your name and email. And we don’t take that for granted because you and I both know the number of companies that take our names and email addresses for granted.
    And immediately we unsubscribed from them. As soon as we get that first email, that’s where like, Oh, I was weak. I gave them my email, you know, something, something triggered me, but I wish I didn’t. You don’t want people doing that to you. So utilize a thank you page to actually say, Hey, thank you so much,
    made a great decision. We’re not going to let you down. Thanks for being here in the meantime. You’re probably wondering, well, where the heck is a free thing, right? In the meantime in cyberspace, your free lead magnet asset that you created is being delivered to them in their email box. And here are a couple of reasons why we want it to send.
    We want to send it to their email address. Number one, your email will probably show up in what’s called the promo or the social media folder in somebody’s Gmail inbox. We want your email to end up in a primary folder. We want to do what’s called white list, your email address. And so we need somebody to click on it so that your email service provider realizes that you do in fact,
    want that email. And it will make sure that it’s showing that person emails that come from your business. Otherwise, if we give them the free thing immediately. So if we were to go from the landing page to immediately be directed to the digital delivery, whether it’s an ebook or a video series or whatever free thing you’ve given them, they never have to go check their inbox.
    And what happens is the next time you send them an email, they could totally miss it cause they aren’t looking for it. So best practice is to have them go check their email to then either click on or download or access the free thing that you have given them. Okay. Now let’s kind of talk about this a little bit in a recap and high level.
    So the recap overview of your very first marketing funnel, your funnel contains number one, a landing page where people fill out a form to get your freebie. Number two, a thank you page where they can buy a map by now see more of who you are, understand you become more familiar with your brand and it includes your lead magnet being sent to them by email,
    of course it includes the asset itself. So the free thing, whether again, that’s a PDF or a video series or quiz or whatever it is that you’re giving away for free. So you have to build the asset first. That was the first thing we talked about. It’s important to build the free thing you’re giving away. So you know, the correct copywriting for it.
    And you know how to set that up on the landing page and communicate the end result they’re going to receive from the asset you’re delivering. And then you build your landing page, your thank you page and you connect your email marketing manager to deliver the asset automatically to their inbox within the first three minutes. So here’s some tech protests. So many people have tech questions.
    My company has a division where we build parts of websites and funnels because this is like the number one thing that holds businesses up. So let me kind of pour into you a little bit here regarding some tech pro tips. Number one, like we talked about, try to build your landing page and your own website to generate S E O if you don’t know what SEO is,
    it’s search engine optimization. That basically means that the more people are clicking on your website, the more Google is going to show your website to other people because they realize people like it really important. Number two, be sure to have your Facebook pixel installed in your website. Now we have Sarah tomes who is our Facebook and Instagram marketing expert. She’s on the show all the time.
    So you can cruise back to our website@sweetlifepodcast.com and just simply search the word Facebook. And we have hosted shows in the past that teach you how to install your Facebook pixel on your website and all the things that are important about a Facebook pixel. But I wanted to make sure I’m mentioning it here and not leaving you hanging. We do have other episodes to speak directly towards Facebook pixel.
    Please go back to the website, search the episodes because all the business trainings that other companies charge thousands for are literally sitting there like a gold mine in our past episodes. So I want to make sure you guys are using them. And then the last tech pro tip is that we really love Kajabi. I talk about Kajabi all the time on the show.
    We interviewed the Kajabi founders three years ago on the show. We use Kajabi within our own marketing and funnel building systems. And we build Kajabi websites for clients. And the reason why we’ve done this, and I’ve been in business for 24 years and moving from all these other types of website platforms is because nothing builds a marketing pipeline with funnel blueprints that we have seen faster than Kajabi.
    So we are partners, we’re affiliate partners with them and we share their information all the time on the show, not just because we know they’re going to help their business, but because we do use them for everything, all of our online courses, and even for websites and clients that don’t even have online courses, they have amazing front of the house website development.
    So you can cruise over any time and start a free Kajabi trial by going to April beach.com forward slash Kajabi. That’s K a J a B I. So if you’re wondering, how do I do all these pages? And I don’t have the money to hire it out, I have to do it all myself. Do yourself a favor, just go practice and get a Kajabi trial.
    I guarantee you, it will save you up to a year in time of online business development, sewing together, all these different other social media platforms. So that’s our show for today. Today, we talked about how to build your first digital marketing funnel. You heard what a digital marketing funnel is, how it’s used. Again, we’re not talking about a sales funnel because we’re not taking anybody’s money.
    Instead in a digital marketing and funnel, you’re taking their name and email address for the opportunity, frankly, for the privilege of being able to email them, send them information and continue to connect with them, to build a relationship with them, to increase your company’s sales. It is a privilege as a business owner to have somebody share their contact information with you.
    And we do that by creating a strategic digital marketing funnel that you can utilize in your business right now. I don’t care if you’re a large corporation. I don’t care if you’re a micro business, like my company with seven people in it, or if you’re a small business, you have up to a hundred employees, many companies are not utilizing this. This is the way to build authentic relationships with an audience so that you can continue to sell services.
    And so in today’s show, you understand, and you talked about what a marketing funnel is, the components of a marketing funnel and how to set yours up. I hope you found this show incredibly informative. We have so many different resources for you, and I want to make sure that I’m sharing them with you again, that Kajabi free trial. You can tap into that any time as well as our community.
    If you’d like to join the expert classes totally free, that teach you how to create your first asset to give away for free and the steps of setting up your first list, building marketing funnel, and you can find all of those links simply by going to Sweetlife podcast.com forward slash one 87. You’ll have to get the recap of the show, Angela, get the links to join us in the community and to set up the free Kajabi trial.
    All right, you guys, next week, I am so excited because we have Alexa big war on here, and we are diving into how to publish your book to make sure that you are established as a leader in your space. It’s an awesome show. There’s so much information. So if you haven’t yet subscribed to the show, please click subscribe on your favorite podcast.
    Listening software. We’re on Pandora now, of course on Spotify. And of course, for grateful to be a leading business podcast on Apple podcasts as well for over three and a half years. Thank you so much for tuning in and sharing this episode with your friends. And I will talk to you.