← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
How To Grow A Business While You Sleep With Sales Funnels - 815
00:46:13
In this episode, Brock sits down with Alisha Conlin-Hurd, co-founder of Persuasion Experience, to demystify the world of business funnels. Alisha shares her expertise in creating persuasive landing pages, irresistible offers, and actionable email...
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- [00:02]
A
Hey music fans, there are some great.
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B
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A
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- [00:33]
B
There are quite a few things in marketing and business that are not sexy or fun to talk about, but they are absolutely necessary if you want to build a business, especially a successful long term business using social media. Of course the sexy things to talk about are going viral, creating content, getting more views, getting more engagement. Those things are fun. Those vanity metrics at the end of the day do serve some purpose because they do ultimately represent people's interest in your account, your brand or your business. But it's what we're talking about today that is ultimately going to be the biggest difference maker between having a four or five figure business and a six seven figure business. If not a six seven figure a month business. Sally Sparks Cousins, who we've had on the show before says that the fortune is in the follow up. And when we say follow up and marketing, I don't just mean messaging someone a second time after they ghost you the first time. What I mean by follow up is that each and every individual touch point is an opportunity to either increase your revenue or miss out on revenue. To say it another way, every single possible way that you could talk to someone, whether it's a social media post, a direct message, email marketing, a landing page, a consultation call, a sales call, anything like that, every single one of those moments is an instance where you are either going to be making more money or losing out on money or potential customers. And of course we are business owner. So at the end of the day making money and increasing revenue are kind of the bottom line. But making an impact on people, serving more people is also what is going to happen when you are able to follow up. Today we are talking about a different F word not following up but funnels and your funnel is non negotiable. Having a funnel is equivalent to having a business. To say that in reverse, if you don't have a funnel, you don't have a business. Today we're going to demystify. That is little secret word that you'll hear later in today's episode. We're going to demystify funnel building. What is a funnel? Why do you need it? What are the different points in a funnel? What are the big mistakes that people are making when they are building their funnels. To give you a little bit of a personal anecdote, the Insta Club Hub, which is my Instagram membership that I co run with my mom Chalene, is now a multi million dollar business every single year. And we are on, I believe, our 7th or 8th complete redesign and rework of our funnel. I'm not talking changing a few words or a few emails here or there. I'm talking seven or eight complete reworks, redesigns, scrap everything, throw it on the floor and start over from scratch. And we've done that in just the course of three or four years. So you do the math. Basically, every six to eight months, we are completely reworking our funnel. And it's not necessarily because our funnels are broken, but just because we are constantly seeking to make them better, to tighten up any leaks and to save any potential customers who we might be losing along the way. Today I have an absolute wonderful guest, an expert in this space who has so much experience and so much expertise when it comes to funnel building. The guest who is joining me on today's episode of Build you'd Tribe is Alicia Conlon Hurd, who is the owner of the Persuasion Experience. And she not only is an expert in funnel building, but in human psychology. And all of that has to do with marketing. We're going to talk about creating irresistible offers. We're going to talk about consultation calls. We're going to talk about building email sequences and funnels. And what do you do when someone doesn't show up? What do you do when your sales and marketing isn't working? How do you get people from social media to your actual landing page? Once they're on a landing page, how do you get them into a consultation call or onto your email list? How do you create those irresistible offers? And so much more. I am so excited to share this episode with you. So without further ado, here's our full conversation. Hello, Alicia. Welcome to today's episode of Build you'd Tribe. So excited to have you here.
- [04:31]
A
Hey, Brock. I'm very excited to talk about one of my favorite topics today.
- [04:35]
B
Absolutely. It's a topic that, as we were talking about before we got started, is very daunting, overwhelming, scary, confusing to my audience, to a lot of our listeners today. And so I'm excited that you're going to really give us new ways to think about this, to simplify it, to unpack the complex world that is building funnels for your business. But let's backtrack before we get started. And just kind of lay the foundation of who you are, how you got here today and how you grew your expertise and your experience.
- [05:04]
A
Okay, so a quick origin story then and I'll make it somewhat quick. So a lot of my background is in sales, cold calling, telco sales, et cetera. And then eventually I ended up in an agency in Australia called King Kong. And they're quite a big agency in Australia and I was one of their first employees and I built out their sales funnel and CRO team from scratch. Right. But what that meant was by the end of my time there, I had built out this whole team, but I'd worked on over 400 funnels, landing pages and offers. I'm talking like everything from Brazilian butliff doctors, porn addiction counselors, quit smoking, hypnotists, and then your more normal stuff, billion dollar home builders and E commerce and courses and everything in between. Right. And looking back on that, that gives you a very unique perspective to become a student of market. So after that I went and worked in a company called Founder. Some people might know them as Founder magazine. They do courses and I built out their funnel team from scratch, launching seven and eight figure courses to the email list and then evergreening them onto ads which if you've ever done that, there's a lot of trauma involved. But eventually my partner and I, my boyfriend, we were doing this thing called Operation Freedom. And this was during lockdowns at the time. So we spent two years in Melbourne. We couldn't leave our homes. We could leave our own homes for one hour a day, allegedly within a five kilometer radius. And we were like, okay, no, this is not how we're going to live our life. Operation Freedom. And one day we shook hands over breakfast and we rage, quit our jobs and we said effort, like let's do it, let's figure it out. And that's how Persuasion Experience was born. So I'm the co founder and CEO of that brand. We are a seven figure agency and we help people to build predictable, scalable and consistent lead machines. So what I'm very, very good at is the human psychology of finding somebody on cold traffic, warm traffic, and then creating what we're going to talk about today. This post, click Experience to convert them into qualified leads. And the one very quick last thing, because this is usually the thing people find the most interesting, is that as part of this Operation Freedom, we sold all our stuff, we packed our lives into a suitcase and for the last nearly two years we've been doing it all while traveling the world as well. So that should bring you up to speed. That's the origin story.
- [07:21]
B
Very, very quick origin story. And so freaking cool too. I love this Freedom Project. Let's talk about a different F word, though. Let's talk about the word funnels. Why the heck does a funnel matter? Because I'm sure a lot of people who are listening are like, can I just post some really cool reels and then maybe have like a website where people are just gonna like, pay me money for whatever it is I'm selling? Like, why does a funnel matter? And what even is a funnel? Let's start there.
- [07:46]
A
Okay, good questions. So let me give everybody some ways, some formulas to think. Right. Some frameworks for thinking, and then we'll get into how to do this. And the first thing to realize is a funnel's not optional. Yeah. Like if you have a business, you have a funnel. A funnel is just every single touch point that someone's going to have with you on the Internet or online on a phone call, it doesn't matter. But each of these touch points, they're a potential revenue leak. Yeah. So all of these businesses doesn't matter. If I'm working with billion dollar brands like linktree or startups, they have these revenue leaks. And when we're creating a funnel, or what I call a persuasion experience, like my brand name, wink, wink, we want to make the most out of this. So that's how we think about a funnel. Right. It's not some Internet scammy thing. It's not some Russell Brunson clickfunnels thing. You have it by default and you are probably leaking out revenue throughout it. Now the other thing to think about is traffic is worthless unless it converts. And most people get very obsessed because it's sexy and fun to make reels, and it's not so sexy and fun to figure out a landing page. Right. So I'll pause there, see if you have any questions. Otherwise I'll launch into my next monologue, which is a bit more about funnels and how to think about them.
- [08:55]
B
Yeah, I think everything you've said has made sense so far. Basically, if I'm understanding correctly and just to reword everything that you're saying, there are these revenues, or I should say attention sources or lead sources like reels or paid advertising or social media where you're getting eyeballs. But with each step, each touch point, there are lots of opportunities to either increase revenue or to leak out revenue, depending on how solid your funnel is. And if people want like a visual depiction, literally, like picture a Funnel, right now, pour a bunch of people, a bunch of followers into the top, and then the very bottom is when they're ultimately making that purchase. So am I understanding everything correctly?
- [09:37]
A
Yeah, exactly. And so what it is, right, we're trying to get attention, and that might be on an ad, that might be on your social media. It doesn't matter. But all we do then is we get the click. But what happens next? And that's what most people leave to chance. Right? And again, so a funnel's not optional. We already have one. And so when we're starting to think about a funnel, we can think about it in different ways. The highest level is that we think about it as before, during, and after. That's a Jo Polish thing from I Love marketing and Dean Jackson. So it's like before they become a lead during their sales process, and then during their time being a client. And then what are all of the touch points and knowing all of that map. But more specifically for your audience, will it be more valuable to think about how to take traffic from social media and turn it into a funnel or from ads?
- [10:24]
B
I think from social media. But let's. Yeah, let's. Let's go through that.
- [10:27]
A
Awesome. So the first thing that we need to think about and understand is where is somebody in their stages of awareness? Right? And when we're creating a funnel, that funnel just consists of different touch points. And typically those touch points are landing pages. Now, spoiler alert. A landing page is where somebody lands. But they're not all created the same. Right? And so what we're trying to do when we create a funnel is we're not looking for this big knockout punch, drag you back to my cave and force you to use a credit card to purchase something from me. Right? We're looking for a series of micro yeses. So what are those micro yeses? But you can only figure out those micro yeses to get them to the big yes if you know where they are now. And then you hold their hand and bring them down that stage of awareness. So to put it in another way, nobody wakes up one day and wants what you have, right? And we know this because there's top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, whatever. But what I'm talking about is Eugene Schwartz's different levels of awareness. So there's completely unaware. Nobody even knows that they have a problem. Then they become more problem aware. Then they can become more solution aware. Then they can become most aware where they're looking for offers. You need to meet them where they're at and understand what is that conversation going on in their brain. And then the next way to think about this is, okay, what's the temperature of traffic? So the way that we would construct a funnel for organic social media is very different to what we would do for paid ads, potentially. Right. Because on paid ads, we're usually going after that product or problem aware, they know what they want. And then we're like, okay, we're sending them to what we call a digital appointment setter landing page, getting them to sign up with an offer. But what we want to think about for social media is, and I was listening to one of your episodes actually earlier this morning on the importance of your email list. Right, that's what we want to do. We want to take people off of these platforms and put them onto a platform we own, which is email. So when we think about the funnel, really for this, we're thinking, okay, what's the strongest, most irresistible offer that we can drive this traffic to? To put them on the email list. And that's what we can deep dive on today. Because what's going to make them think, holy moly, I need this, I need this in my life and I'm willing to give you my email address and risk you harassing me in my very, very sacred inbox. So, yeah, I'll pause there and we can take it to the, to the next step.
- [12:46]
B
Gotcha. Okay, so just again, so I'm understanding everything. There's kind of a difference between building landing pages and funnels for paid ads versus for organic social media. I would assume the majority of our audience is focused on organic social and they're not running very many ads yet. But it makes sense from ad perspective. You want to hit people who are, they already know they want the product or they already know they have the problem, they need the solution. And then you're just kind of like, here's the ad. I'm paying to get it in front of their face. And then you're building landing pages, you're building sales funnels that convert them and say, hey, I have the solution. This is the problem fixer that you're looking for. But then on social, there's different levels of awareness. And so I kind of want to pull this apart and pick it apart before we go any further. Is the ultimate goal with social to get them to the point where they're not just unaware, they're not just like a lukewarm follower, but they are a fully aware follower. They know what you have to offer and they are basically Asking for that irresistible offer, or is it more beneficial to create, let's say, different funnels and different landing pages to kind of meet these different kinds of. Or these different members of your audience where they're at. Which one would you say is more beneficial?
- [14:02]
A
So that will also depend on for most of your market, how much education do they need on the problem that they have? Right. And it just depends how much they understand the problem that they have, which means how likely are they to take the next step. But this also depends on what sort of business do you have? Do you want to get them on a call? Is the sales process through a sales call or is the sales process through a checkout? Are you selling a $500, $1,000? The micro yeses or the steps that you're going to take them on in the funnel are gonna be really different for that as well.
- [14:34]
B
Gotcha, Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about the landing pages before we even talk about what the landing page is driving to in that irresistible offer. First, I have my social and I'm maybe educating my audience. I'm providing value, I'm gaining awareness, and then I'm directing them to a landing page. What are some best practices or general recommendations that you might have for landing pages? And let's frame this specifically for. Again, the majority of our audience is coaches, consultants, people who are offering online services and things like that.
- [15:08]
A
Yeah. Awesome. So when we think about our landing page, we want to think of it like our digital salesperson. Now I'm going, there's probably two different landing pages that your audience can make. Right. We can have a lead magnet which will pull people onto our list. But there's also going to be a small segment of your market who are ready now. They're in the in market, so we don't want to lose them. So that can depend on your social strategy. And then you'll have some bottom of the funnel content that pushes them to a consultation and some that pushes them to the email list. I'll focus on that consultation most because that's the closest to making money. So we can talk about the other one. But the consultation is the one how we make a money and we find the people who are in the market now. So with our landing page, thinking of it with this frame of reference, this is our digital appointment set. Our digital salesperson, you start to think of it very differently. We don't start to think that copy's too long or I want him to design it really Pretty we start to think, okay, what are the four conversion levers that I need to have on this page to convince and persuade a complete stranger from the Internet to want to talk to me, to move that next step with me, right? So these are four conversion points of a landing page. Number one is we call it target market language. Very sexy creative name. I know, but like, what does that mean, right? What we're trying to get on the page and it's hard for us as business owners because we have the curse of knowledge, right? So we have to articulate in their words what is their problem, what's their dream outcome so that we can position ourselves as the solution. The solution. I'm going to come back to that, to go from A to B. So a very general way or that we could outline our page for copywriting is called pass. P for problem, A for agitate, S for solution. And so what you need to do before you do any marketing, right, you need to understand your ICP or your target market avatar. And a way that I say this to my team is marketing's inputs and outputs, right? Garbage in, garbage out. So whenever you're struggling to do this, it's usually because you haven't got really crystal clear on some of these key elements of your target market. Now what we want to achieve here in our copy on the page is making sure that we're talking in their language. But almost like when they read the copy, it's like, oh my gosh, you have ripped a page out of my diary. Like, how are you articulating this better than I can? And so we are not seeking to be understood, we are seeking to show that we understand. And this is where it all comes back to understanding where they are in their journey. Right? So for example, if you're a coach or consultant, you're running social media to a landing page like this. But you want to get leads. This is going to be a lead generation page or digital appointment center. So you would want to say, hey, my name's whatever. I understand that you're having these problems. Here's my story. I've seen it before. I bet you've already tried X, Y and Z. I've seen it before because I've helped over a thousand people to achieve big outcome. And that's why I want to invite you to. And this is where your offer comes in. So what we want to do is similar to politics, right? It's not the best politician who wins, it's the one who can articulate what the market feels and what they're thinking, so that's the first pillar out of the four. The second is what we call authority marketing. Because basically in business, in marketing, you can be a commodity or you can be an authority. That's it. Which one do you think gets to charge more? Which one do you think gets better clients? It ain't the commodity, I can tell you that right now. And so with our marketing, what we want to make sure we're getting across is that we're not just another we want to be. The solution, a lot of people forget is you don't sell coaching, right? Like, you don't sell what you sell. You sell a dream outcome. And this is why it's so clear to get on top of that and to build your authority. And it can be very uncomfortable, especially for women, to be like, look at me. I like it. Feels like I'm so great, blah, blah, blah. But if you don't do that, if you're not your number one PR person in your marketing, like, sorry to tell you, but no one's going to trust you. No one else is going to do it for you. So that's the second pillar, is the authority marketing. The third is what we call the irrefutable proof. So it's not enough to just slap a testimonial slider on there. We want to use social proof with intent. So how can we use video testimonials, written testimonials, how can we tangibly show the outcome that we give are the different things that we can put on the page to tell a story, not just have some random testimonials on there. And then the fourth and most importantly, it's what we call that offer, right? The legion offer, that irresistible offer. And for the offer, it's change your offer, change your business. If you focus on the design, if you focus on pretty pictures, it doesn't matter. I've seen the fugliest click funnel pages. I can't even tell you the fugliest click funnel pages, our convert pages that have a strong offer and strong copy. Because at the end of the day, it's not technology that will save you. It's not better design skills. It's the thing that hasn't changed in hundreds of years and won't change for hundreds more. It's the human psychology. And when someone lands on this landing page just starting to put a bow on it, all they're thinking is, so what? Who cares? What's in it for me? And if you can answer that question, what's in it for you, it's the offer. If you can give them something in your offer and build the value and the context around it, that when they're trying to feed their kids at night, when they're trying to fall asleep, they're like, they can't stop thinking about it if they didn't take it up. Right? That's the kind of pandemonium you need to create in your marketing. Otherwise you'll just get lost in the noise. So if you spent all that time you finally got someone to stop scrolling, click on your thing, investigate you, and you send them to this sad thrown together landing page that couldn't close a door, like, and you're not getting your results. That's why all of your money is in the post click experience. And that landing page is really just the first step.
- [20:49]
B
Gotcha. So helpful. I love one of the things you said that stood out the most to me was seek to show that you understand rather than seek to be understood. I think that's so key and so important. Let's even backtrack. And I want to understand how do you empathize with your audience better? Like, how do you use their words? Because I feel like one of the biggest challenges that I see people running into and a huge mistake people make on Instagram is the curse of knowledge. Basically they know the thing and so they're using insider lingo, they're using terms that only they would use or only people who are already in the business or who are already customers would be using rather than meeting the potential customers where they are, rather than speaking to people at their level. So do you have any tips or insights that you can share when considering that specific pillar?
- [21:41]
A
I have opinions on this as well. How did you know? So it's really easy. All you have to do is learn how to read their minds. Done. Just go and read. But. But here's how you do that. That's all guys. Develop the skill if you believe you can. So, but how do we do that? Right? There's a few different ways. But what does this come down to? Good research and inputs, outputs, outcomes, right? Garbage in, garbage out. When we are doing marketing, there's just again, like conceptually, then I'll actually answer your question. But we have research, we have strategy, we have execution. And then we launch the thing and then we analyze, we learn, we adjust and then that's the flywheel. Doesn't matter if your research is five minutes or 40 hours, you have to do it right. So this is where we come into the research. And so the Question is, how can we understand them? And how can we shake that curse of knowledge? Because there's nothing more humbling than doing your own marketing. You can drop me into any business and I can figure out how to make them a million dollars like that, do their marketing. Doing my own marketing. Like, it's hard and I get it. And this is where, like, this research really helps. So how can we do that? There's a few. I would call them mines. There's a few places we can mine. My favorite that we run with our clients is a survey. And now automatically everyone will think no one responds to surveys. No, they do. If you ethically bribe them and you ask them for their opinion and you frame it the right way. So that's always the first place to start. A few questions you can ask is, what problem were you having before you found me? What motivated you? What concerned you about working with me? And then my favorite question, which is, how would you explain business X to a friend or colleague? Right? And what happens is we start to get their exact language. And you'll be surprised how many people will comply and give you that because they want to give their opinion. So that's one place. I'll give you a couple of others. The next is Reddit. The beauty of Reddit is that everyone is anonymous, right? Everyone's anonymous. So they pour out their hearts and their minds. And you can find any subreddit on what you do. Go read that, run it through AI if you want to, and, like, get all of the sentiment out of that. AI can easily do that for you. Other great places are Amazon books looking at the top book review the top books looking at the reviews of those, just getting an idea of their language, going to Whirlpool, YouTube videos, whatever. One of my favorite hacks, which doesn't work for every industry is you type in your, like, what you do comedy routine into YouTube, right? Because who trains the most? Who's testing their material? Who has a pulse on what makes people react better than comedians? Not many people.
- [24:15]
B
Right?
- [24:16]
A
It's really cool. And I found some, like, really cool ad angles through doing that as well. So basically, like, my short answer is, ask them. Have customer interviews. Have it as part of your onboarding, have it as part of your offboarding. Have questions when someone has to book in with you, like, collect this qualitative data. Because if people even track data, they get very obsessed with the quantitative, the numbers. But that's just the what. The qualitative, it tells you the why. It helps you to create a story from that data. So that was my long answer to your question. How can we learn research? And that's a bit more on how you can do it.
- [24:52]
B
I love it. That's so, so, so helpful. So that's the landing page. The landing page is ultimately driving people to this phrase that you've used a few times, an irresistible offer. Talk to me more about how do you come up with an irresistible offer?
- [25:07]
A
Okay, good question. And the first way to think about it is what is their next micro step? So I'm going to focus on trying to get leads booked in a calendar. That's typically what coaches and consultants want. I work with a lot of them, they want leads in the calendar. Right. And we can do offers on lead magnets and stuff, but that's further up the funnel. If you can nail this and have a machine, a system that's scooping your in market leads up, then you can go back down the funnel and add more of these things. But there's people in market, we want to clear the room on that. So how can we create an offer? Well, we need to understand your target market and what's going to motivate them to take action. But there's also two different ways you can think about it. For most coaches and consultants they're going to do some sort of consultation. So let's try and think about it. Do you have an industry example or somebody in your. I've got a couple of clients I can reference. But do you have anybody in your circle, your universe that you can think of? Then we can use them as an example.
- [26:04]
B
Yeah. And specifically someone who offers some sort of like coaching or one on one type of thing. Someone in that space.
- [26:11]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:11]
B
So let's do, let's do one of our all star community members. They're called the mobility duo. I actually don't know if they offer one on one coaching, but let's pretend they do. And essentially what they do is they help snowboarders with functional mobility, yoga and workout routines. They do it primarily with courses, but let's imagine that they do one on one coaching as well.
- [26:32]
A
Let's pretend they want to go high ticket and get some cash money coming in. And so what they need to do is we've got to remember what's the goal here? Our goal is to get a highly qualified, pre framed excited person onto the call to motivate them and persuade them. We need an offer because you have to get a lead before you can get a sale. So that we have to fill that gap. That's the next micro step. So when we make this offer, we think, okay, we've got a snowboarder. I don't know why they're having mobility issues. Let's assume they're really good and let's assume this company is the best company. The way that I would be framing something like this is apply to work with the number one snowboarder mobility exercise physiologists in the world and finally figure out how to achieve dream outcome. I've never been to the snow, so I'm obviously showing like my newbie snattest on the, on the snow.
- [27:24]
B
So I picked the worst possible example. You've never been to the snow?
- [27:27]
A
Now I can show you guys the inputs and the outputs. So it's like, okay, we always use the word apply because it shifts the frame, right? Instead of like, hey, chat to sales, talk to us. No one wants to do that. That smells like I'm going on a sales call and I'm going to end up having like some sleazy commission breath guy trying to close me on something. So how do we give value, right? How do we shift that frame? And then it's like, cool. So what we're going to do on this call, whether you go ahead with us or not, we're going to do a 360 analysis of your body on this call. We're going to go through what are your three biggest pain points when it comes to snowboarding and by the end of this call, we're going to be able to give you an exact, let's call it like snowboarding physiology, like overview that's going to pinpoint exactly where to focus to unlock your dream outcome, whether you go ahead with us or not and see how that kind of shifts the frame to being like something valuable. So that's what we want to do here. We want to give it a cool name. I'll tell you an example for a couple of my clients in a second with these consultation offers. So we had a client, they're a luxury home modeling additions firm out of Dallas, right. And they compete in a male dominated market. And most of the other offers on the market because you also have to look at the other offers on the market because you exist in context. But all of these other home builders, they were offering a free quote. A free quote, a free quote. Here's the problem. When we understood the market, so the woman, the wife was usually making the decision and she had a Pinterest board, a mood board. She wanted to stay in her home. That was her goal. And she knew kind of what she wanted it to look like, but she didn't know what she wanted. So her next micro step, it wasn't to get a quote. Because how can you get a quote on something that you don't understand? It's like if you wanted a website and someone's like, get a free quote. I'm like, yeah, but what color will it like, I don't know what color it's going to be. I don't know how many, like, are you going to help me? Like, what's going on? So we did that and then, you know, selling Sunset and chicks love champagne, I can attest because I am a chick. And what we made the offer was apply to work with Dallas's number one home builder and remodelings firm and start with your free champagne design consultation. That sounds a lot more sexy and fun to take that next step than free quote, chat with sales, free quote. So we're trying to inject fun brand personality as well. Right. It's not just like having like direct response offers, but that's how we want to think. Another example is we work with Australia's number one hair restoration doctor and he was running Facebook ads, he was with another agency and this agency was running ads straight to get a hair transplant. Hey, nice to meet you. Do you want me to cut open your scalp? No, not really. Okay. It's the wrong next step, right? Because somebody hasn't decided on that temperature. And this is the same for Organic Social, which is why I'm using Facebook ads. They haven't decided they want a hair transplant yet. And we haven't built any value around that. So with a consultation offer, usually what we're doing is we're using that time to finish the sale, to diagnose their problem, to help prescribe the solution. So the offer that we came up with, this was the save my hair consultation and treatment plan, Right. Very different to, hey, get a hair transplant. What this also did for that doctor was unlocked his economics because he had other things he can sell people. Right. So it wasn't like he can't help people. There's some people who don't need a hair transplant. They're more preventative. So it actually like, like not only is he getting bookings and a lot of them for hair transplants, but now he actually has other avenues to sell people and to bring people in. So that's kind of like hopefully like the differences in, in the offers.
- [30:56]
B
Yeah, that is helpful. I have this exact same strategy and I apply it to Social media. And I always tell people, even if you're teaching, like a relatively simple thing, three steps to becoming a better rock climber, or you have some strategy that you've come up with, I say come up with a fun, creative, sexy name for it. And I actually, this is kind of like sexy name inception here. I asked ChatGPT what should I call that strategy? And ChatGPT said that we should call it the mystify the mundane strategy. So I always tell people, mystify the mundane just because it's the grow on Instagram strategy, don't call it that. Call it something that more directly speaks to the languaging, the emotions that you want your audience to feel. So that's very helpful. I want to quickly ask, if someone isn't in that kind of like coaching space, they're not going to do a consultation call next. Let's say maybe they sell a $47 course or they have an ebook. What would likely be the next step in the funnel after the landing page?
- [31:59]
A
So if they sell a product, this is where it gets a bit more complex, right? Because there's a million different ways to skin this. And a big part of it is understanding what I call the marketing equation. Psychology plus economics, times technology. And then it's understanding and playing with all of the different economics. So if you sell info product, and I've done this a lot, and we do it in our own business, in our own funnels, you really need to understand the economics of that funnel. And it's not just about the psychology. And you have to understand the economics for all of them. Right? But if you sell a $47 product, maybe you need to look at splintering it. Should it be a $7 product with a $17 bump and $120 upsell? So, for example, in our agency, because. And I haven't done this properly yet, I'm going to unleash the beast next year. So what we have is an offer workshop. It's $17, and it's amazing. We've had like nearly 2,000 people go through it. It's 17 bucks. Could I charge more? Yes. It's really good and I'm very biased, but it is. And it just shows you exactly step by step how to make them so. But what we did is we ran the economics. So we have that. We have an order bump and then we have our landing page launch kit, which is 147, and that has about a 20% uptake rate. Now, if I had that on the front end, I don't think I would have. Like, the economics don't balance as well. Right. And then it. Then we ascend people into the agency. So. Because again, marketing is a humbling sport and I've done a lot of info. I think what a lot of people get wrong is it's like, what's your goal? So for me, my goal is to build goodwill in the market and create a list of buyers that I can launch new products to. I'm playing the long game. I'm not trying to get rich. We Maybe do like 10, 15K on that product just from my YouTube and my LinkedIn, because I know that 99.99999999% of people who see my stuff can't work with the agency. And I want to give impact back to people. And we'll keep building out that media and education part. Okay, I think I might end the rant, but I'm just going to underline the rant, which is it's not a simple answer, but everyone wants it to be. Because everybody said online that it's so easy to make info products and like passive income. No, babe, it is hard. And I know because I've been part of big companies that do this and spend millions of dollars to figure out how to crack cold traffic to make money. It takes time, and you have to have the appetite and the patience to make it work.
- [34:21]
B
Gotcha. Let's talk about some of the mistakes that you see people making in general in their funnels. Again, thinking about who our average listener is kind of thinking about this coach or consultant, if you will. What are some big flaws that you see them often making when it comes to their funnels.
- [34:39]
A
Yeah. Okay, so my beefs with all of your funnels, here they are. And it's basically just inverse thinking or the like inverse or like the reverse of what we just spoke about. Right. So here it is, number one, not talking to the target market in their language. Right. Not meeting them where they're at, not entering the conversation going on in their mind and not standing out, being boring. Copying your competitors, marketing, That's a huge thing that I see a lot of people getting wrong. The thing is, you want to be polarizing. And I think I've heard you talk about this as well. Right. I get worried when I don't get hate mail. I genuinely am worried. I'm like, I am being too soft in my marketing. I need to, like, go better. I had somebody who took the time to physically go to our booking page and then book, like, to book an appointment. And they just wrote in capitals, you are so annoying everywhere. And I was so happy when I saw that. I was like, good, thank you. I'm doing the right thing. I'm happy about. And I very rarely get that, but it was very funny. So you just can't be scared of that. Right. And I think that's a limiting belief that holds us back a lot, is we don't want to stand out, we don't want to push the envelope. But that's a big thing. I see people getting wrong in like your funnel's just an extension of your marketing. Right. The other thing that I see, people getting wrong with their funnel, well, they just don't even think about it. That's the biggest thing. They just don't even realize that they have one. And they don't go back to that core equation. Psychology, economics, technology. And there's a times next to technology. Right? So this is another big mistake. Everyone gets obsessed with the technology. Alicia, what CRM do you use? Alicia, what's like, what are you building in? And I'll just say, what's your target market? And they can't tell me. Cool. I'm not talking to you about technology until you can tell me the other parts of the equation. Why? Because technology is just an accelerator. 1000 times zero is zero. What's the point of having a shiny sports car if you can't drive it? Right? So that's another thing, this obsession thinking that AI and tech is going to save you. When you need the core, you need the economics and you need the psychology first. I've got heaps of beefs, but those are my biggest ones.
- [36:39]
B
Gotcha. I'm sure there are a lot of beefs that we could continue to go into. I'd love to kind of hit you with some somewhat rapid fire questions when it comes to mistakes. Advice, feedback you can give. And I understand everything is nuanced and there is no like one size fits all answer. But if it's cool with you, I got some kind of rapid fire questions about the funnels, landing pages and whatnot.
- [37:00]
A
I'm ready. Let's do it.
- [37:02]
B
Cool. What do you see as working best, specifically in terms of having videos on landing pages? I feel like for a long time it was like you have to have a sales video on your landing page. And then I've noticed recently a lot of people are not putting videos on their landing pages. Is that something that you find to be true? Is it like certain industries need videos, certain industries don't. What are your Thoughts on sales videos on landing pages.
- [37:28]
A
Two core things. Number one, classic marketer answer. You have to test it. And a video is not always better because there's so many elements of a video that are very important. A charismatic instructor, a good script, good lighting, good pacing, good music, good editing. And you don't always need that. We actually test out. Actually, let me go into this. If you want to do a video, don't go crazy and do an overproduced video. Do minimum viable first. This is how I always do it. Loom video. That's what I do first if I want to test it out. And then if I see an uplift, that's when I'll invest heavier into good video. So your question being, should you have a video on your page? Yes, often you should because it also just helps you to stand out. Most people don't do it. However, it's not something that you can just throw together and tick a box. That's not the goal. Right. You have to understand what is the purpose of the video. Is it a high pre order? Is it a vsl? There's different things. The goal is not to have a video on the page. The goal is to hit your conversion, your goals. Right. So that's my answer.
- [38:29]
B
Gotcha. What are the different factors that might help me decide how long literally, in terms of like page length, my landing page should be.
- [38:39]
A
I love this question. And if I had a dollar for every time a client or somebody told me that a page was too long, maybe I'd have like $120. But that's a lot of times for somebody to tell me the copy's too long. Right. And here's the thing. There's no such thing as copy that's too long. Just copy that's too boring. Yeah. And if we think of that, reframe that our pages, our digital appointments, that our digital salesperson. We would never limit a digital salesperson to a few words. Right. It's the copy and the offer that does the selling. And it's as long as it needs to be to make someone take action. No longer, no shorter. And then the length of the page depends on where they are in the buyer's journey. So often when we do a Google Ads campaign as an example, and someone's typing in B2B business loan, I don't have to do a whole long page about someone's backstory about how they were struggling with cash flow and all these things. Right. It's like, it's quite a short page to the point. But when I'm running a Facebook campaign for a coach who helps men to save their marriages that are breaking down. You can bet that's a much, much longer page. And that's some ways you can think about it.
- [39:42]
B
What are some quick pieces of homework or action items that someone can walk away from this episode? Assume this person, they've already signed up for an email list provider. Maybe they have some people on their email list, but that's about it. They're posting reels every single day. They're trying to keep up with trends on social media, but they're not really seeing anything generating in revenue in their business. What's some actionable things that they can do as homework?
- [40:10]
A
I'm going to say an answer that no one wants to hear. Get on more sales calls. Get on more sales calls. Talk to more of your market and figure out what they want. Want. Stop doing busy, productive work of, like, reels are important, right? But there's levels to the game. If you don't actually have something to sell people in your, like, I'm gonna be like brock, and I'm gonna have all these reels and do all these things. It's like, get on some sales calls and then evolve your offer so that you sell something that people want. That's what you need to do. And it's not like the advice anybody wants to hear. Everyone wants to hear, like, oh, let's play with your homepage. Let's make a lead magnet. Let's make some more reels. The reality is sales conversations get more people on the phone and figure out what they want so you can add value to the world and make money. Because the more value you add, the bigger the problem you solve. It's correlated with what you've got, right? And I bet most people really struggle, especially if they're in this, like, sort of stage of business, to articulate what they do, what value they give, who is their target market. Like, if you can't do those foundations, no amount of reels can save you, right? And it's this thing, and I've fallen into the trap many times. It's optimizing for the ego because it feels good when 80,000 people watch a YouTube video. It feels good when, like, my LinkedIn goes viral, but don't make me money. And that's what I'm optimizing for. Freedom, cash in the bank, and impact. So it's just making sure you don't get caught up in those things. If you don't actually know what people want and how you give Value to your market.
- [41:35]
B
Totally. Two more questions before I let you go. One is we spent a lot of time today talking about landing pages, opt in forms, sales calls, consultation calls and even like the social marketing that will lead to those things taking place. But of course another huge part of any funnel is email. Email sequences, email follow ups. If I could ask one question because we could spend hours talking about email marketing and I know we have entire episodes that we've posted in the past about email marketing. So if I was to ask you one question, it would be what's going to determine the, the longevity, the length, what I put in my email sequence, what factors should I consider? Kind of like what factors should I consider with, you know, how long should my landing page be? What factors should I consider with building my email sequence?
- [42:25]
A
Yep. So I can tell people when it comes to Legion and those offers, there's three core automations that you need. Right. Number one is the pre suede flow. So that's, that's when someone has booked in with you before they talk to you. This is not just basic calendar reminders, this is getting them hyped up. You're hypegirling them, you're breaking down false beliefs, you're sending testimonials, whatever, that's a chance to do that. Your other flow that you will want is a no show flow. Someone doesn't show up. Okay. You want to put them into this. And the third, it depends if you. How we do it is someone fills in a form and then they have the option to book in the calendar. So that's a flow that if they book in, they fill in form but don't book in calendar, they send that to nurture them back to that. So that's just a little bit more about the funnel. But in terms of what you can think about for your emails and the length, it's like all the same level of thinking. Right. Well what stage is it? What's the purpose of the email? What do you need to say? I think the main thing to remember with email is it's like anything else, all you're trying to do is get the click. That's it. You're not trying to sell them on the email, you're not trying to get them to hand over money, you're trying to get them to click to something and it's to your landing page. And I think that's a good full circle way to be. Like make a good landing page, y'all. That's important.
- [43:36]
B
Awesome. Okay, that makes sense. And I know that was a very brief overview. So I appreciate you giving as much value as you could in that one answer. Final question, where can we connect with you further? Where can we learn more from you? Because I know you have an amazing YouTube channel yourself with so many valuable videos and lessons. I'm going to recommend that anyone who's listening today goes and subscribes to your channel. Your page checks out all of your valuable resources. But. But you tell me where's the best place to get connected and where can we actually get more like hands on stuff from the business? Where can we get more about leads from you?
- [44:08]
A
Awesome. So Alicia Conlon Herd. That's my name. Hard to spell, but you guys will figure it out. And I'm on LinkedIn. YouTube's probably the best. But also Instagram where I post a bit more ad hoc crazy behind the scenes cause I'm not officially doing that properly yet for business. So it's more random stuff but for everybody. Or if you want to check out our website, it's persuasionexperience.com but what I want to make sure is like how can I give you all an irresistible offer to help you to take you to the next level? Right? So I've packaged up all of these different things that we've spoken about today. Social proof, landing pages offers, target market, avatar research, everything into like a step by step free program for you I guess you could call it. And it's@ persuasionexperience.com byt so if you go there, you'll get all of that. And then if you have questions, just hit me up my. Obviously I'm very chatty about funnels and marketing. It's my favorite thing. When my boyfriend and I started dating, we would watch infomercials together and drink red wines. Like that's my level of psycho ness. Like I'm here for it. Hit me up if you have any questions.
- [45:13]
B
I love it. That's awesome. I love people who geek out over their favorite things. And so thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge with us today. We'll link up all that stuff you just mentioned down in the show notes. Notes. But Alicia, again, thank you so much for being here.
- [45:25]
A
Awesome. Thank you again.
- [45:27]
B
I will link up everything that she mentioned in today's episode down in the show notes below. She has so much knowledge and really I wish we could have talked for like three or four hours. If you wish that as well, definitely go check out her YouTube channel because you can watch three or four or even more hours of her content training, education and value. And definitely make sure to check out her endless leads bundle because that is going to be such a game changer to set yourself up for success in 2025. If you don't have an email list, I believe you don't have a business. If you don't have a funnel, I also believe you do not have a business. And 2025 is the year where we are actually going to be building our businesses and brands online. We're not just going to be wasting time posting reels and creating content. We're going to turn this whole social media thing from a time consuming hobby into an actual legitimate business that is paying the bills, builds and that is providing us with the life of our dreams. And a huge part of that is building funnels. Thank you so much for listening today and as always, happy networking after investing.
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