How to fix your funnel and increase conversions
In this episode of "Process to Profitability," I have the pleasure of interviewing the amazing Katy Widrick, a funnel expert. We dive deep into the world of sales funnels and discuss how to fix them to improve conversions. Katy shares her insights on bringing more people into the funnel, creating compelling offers, and maximizing the average order value and lifetime value of customers. We also touch on the importance of personalizing the sales funnel and the onboarding process to increase customer satisfaction and retention. Whether you're a seasoned business owner or just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable strategies to take your sales funnels to the next level.
Timestamps:
[00:01:36] Meet Katy
[00:03:16] Career evolution and iteration that leads to business ownership
[00:13:14] The parts of a marketing funnel
[00:15:10] Your business needs to make a profit to have an impact
[00:20:08] Missed buying signals from potential customers
[00:26:33] The importance of your onboarding as an extension of your funnel
[00:28:24] Adding revenue expansion to your funnel
[00:30:16] Ask for the sale
[00:33:33] Funnels work for any type of business
[00:36:30] Quick funnel fixes you can implement this week
[00:41:29] Connect with Katy
Key Topics:
The importance of being mission-driven and serving the right audience with excellence as a business owner
The significance of having a strong offer that sells to the audience and the potential for unlimited success once the website is up and running
The discussion on fixing your funnel to improve conversions and identifying leaks in the funnel
Ideas on bringing more people into the funnel and the importance of believing in your service and creating ideal case scenarios for clients
A successful case study of a fitness funnel that focused on a 6-week program with additional options, emphasizing thoughtful curation
The speaker's personal journey as a business owner, navigating career decisions and their sweet spot in the online business world, specializing in funnels
Strategies for personalizing the sales funnel and outreach, addressing potential customers' questions and concerns
The importance of a well-designed onboarding process to support customers after the purchase and increase engagement and retention.
Resources:
Bonus Tip: Use Interact to create a quiz that helps you find more leads that understand your expertise and trust you. They even have an AI builder that helps you write your quiz based on your topic and audience.
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: On today's episode of Process to Profitability, I'm talking to Katy Widrick all about fixing your funnel so that you can see more conversions.
[00:00:10] We have a really great in depth conversation about her journey from the broadcasting industry into working in the online business space and how we can all bring the skills that we have acquired over our lives into the work that we are doing right now.
[00:00:30] We also talk about funnels and where you might be seeing some leaks in how you are moving people from the top of the funnel where they're just getting to know you into actually paying you money and giving your business a profit.
[00:00:46] She has some great ideas for how you can increase those conversions, how you can bring more people into your funnel. And we talk about why that is so important to a business to make the impact that we want to have and to bring in the profitability that we need in order to see that big vision come to life.
[00:01:10] Katy is the founder of Makeover Media, a funnels-focused fractional CMO service, and the host of hard costs, a podcast that shares the personal and professional journeys that the world's most interesting marketing sales and business leaders took to get to the top.
[00:01:25] She's also a corporate dropout, a mom of two, and passionate about helping visionary CEOs avoid burnout.
[00:01:31] Thanks for joining me, Katy.
[00:01:32] Katy Widrick: Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Meet Katy
[00:01:36] Samantha Mabe: Can you tell us a little bit about how your business has evolved and your business journey to where you are now?
[00:01:44] Katy Widrick: Absolutely. And it really has been a journey. That's the perfect word. So in a nutshell, I actually started my career in television journalism. I thought for sure I was going to be on the air as a baseball color announcer. This was my dream as a kid. It's what I grew up watching. I'm a huge sports fan and I grew up in Boston. And so I was like really one track career focused.
[00:02:07] And then I went to college. I studied broadcast journalism. I had an incredible time, but it turns out that being on camera actually wasn't as exciting for me. But I really found that the people in charge were behind the scenes, the people making the decisions about how long a story would run or what camera angle we were cutting to, or when in a broadcast we were talking about any given story that was the producer. That was the executive producer. That was the news director.
[00:02:36] So even in college, I figured out that I'm a little bit of a control freak. And I really like to be the person that is coordinating the chaos. And so I shifted my approach even then, in my early twenties and I started working in television news, but I was a news producer and I learned so much that I still apply to my marketing career today.
[00:03:00] In fact, I stayed in the news industry, both in live television news for, about three to four years. And then ultimately spent another decade working with a startup who is still in the media space, but producing public television programming and documentaries.
Career evolution and iteration that leads to business ownership
[00:03:16] Katy Widrick: And what I learned in that iteration of my career is that when you work for a small business, everybody wears all the hats. The CEO was also doing copywriting. The vice president was also in the edit room and I had the opportunity to figure things out and to build the plane as we were flying it.
[00:03:36] And so even though we were creating programming and storytelling for all of these publications, somebody had to figure out how to build a website. So I figured out how to build a website. Somebody had to figure out how to build an email list. So I found MailChimp, built our email list and ran with it from there. And everything that I learned in that decade of my career ultimately led me to become a marketer and that's what I do today.
[00:04:02] And so I'm a fractional CMO and my zone of genius, my passion, what lights me up is the funnel. So how do we help people get aware and interested in your service, your program, your offer? That's really exciting. But for me, the fun part and where the conversions and the magic happen, is right there in the middle. So today I can confidently say I am a fractional CMO, primarily working with high six, seven, eight, and even nine figure business owners.
[00:04:32] But all of the things that I learned from marketing came from figuring it out with early stage businesses and really just breaking things and fixing them and breaking them and fixing them again.
[00:04:43] Samantha Mabe: It sounds like we have a similar story. I decided in probably middle school that I wanted to be an architect.
[00:04:50] I went to college for architecture and I graduated and I was like, I don't want to have to get a master's and a three year internship. And so I ended up like at a small business where I was doing pretty much everything behind the scenes. I was their accounting and their IT and their graphic design and everything. And then started my business when we relocated.
[00:05:13] And it's amazing all of those skills that you think you're like, oh, I got this college degree and I don't use it. But you really do learn so much about kind of technology and critical thinking and working with people that carries over.
[00:05:28] Katy Widrick: What is really funny and almost gave me chills is I am married to an architecture dropout. So he also went to school for five years. I met him in college. I was with him in his five year program as he was defending a thesis and was on the partner track in architecture. There's a lot of parallels.
[00:05:45] And he had a similar awakening of that just was not the long term lifestyle that he wanted. Also, we were getting married and looking forward to having a family. And obviously this was 20 years ago. But he made that shift and today he sells beer for a living. So he works at sales and marketing for a very large conglomerate of beverage companies and breweries.
[00:06:05] And I do think that a lot of the business dealings, attention to detail, the organization, the ability to think from a business standpoint. How are we making sure that what we're doing is profitable? That is agnostic across all of our careers.
[00:06:21] I find that so many people who had this vision for what their job or their career was supposed to be, really got into it and figured out that's not the lifestyle, that's not how they want it to feel. And it wasn't going to support their longterm dreams.
[00:06:35] Those of us who have transitioned and iterated and transformed, I think that we bring a lot to our next stage of our career.
[00:06:44] Samantha Mabe: How did you get into the online business?
[00:06:47] Katy Widrick: Yeah, it's funny because, I mentioned when I was working for this production company, that was really the early stages of it.
[00:06:54] We're really talking about probably the very, very late nineties into the early two thousands. And that's really when I had shifted into this production company and again, spent about 10 years there.
[00:07:05] So when you think about that period of time, social media was still in its infancy. When I say that we were building an email list, MailChimp was really the only provider on the market. If you wanted to build a website, you were either hiring a developer and doing a totally custom build out. We're trying to figure out what this new WordPress framework was.
[00:07:24] So all of that, because I was figuring it out and there, there wasn't the type of resources and access that we have today to different programs, to different frameworks, to different mentors, to teach us these things. There was no course to tell you how to build a website.
[00:07:40] And so because I was figuring it out for this company, ultimately I had people watching and saying, 'Oh, so you figured that out. Can you build an email list for me?' So I fell into my first foray into freelancing.
[00:07:52] I never expected to work for myself. That was never a dream. I thought, 'I love working for other people. I just I love the stability.' I'm an Enneagram one. I'm a human design five one. I like black and white. I like rules. I like to dues. I like structure. And I always thought like, 'entrepreneurship, yes, it's exciting, but it's also so terrifying.'
[00:08:12] And so when I started freelancing, I didn't even think about it as the early stages of being a business owner, which of course it was. And at the time I was newly married, no kids. I would say, sure, I can build you an email list. Why don't you pay me 45 and I'll spend the next couple of nights doing it.'
[00:08:29] And I'd go home from my nine to five. I do something for somebody. There were no processes, there were no systems. But I did that frequently enough that I realized there was this demand from people who did not understand how to use technology, but had a great product. Or had a great offer or wanted to tell a story.
[00:08:48] Some of my very first customers were bloggers. And again, I told you about the time period we're in, this is when people were blogging three times a day. Google reader was still one of the most exciting products on the marketplace. And so these were bloggers who were not particularly tech savvy, but who wanted to get their message out to people.
[00:09:08] So I made very little money, but I was so excited to be doing it. And so when you ask, how did I get into the online space? Very accidentally. But what happened, and this is still the case today with my very different type of clients, is that I would work on a website. Build an email campaign, set X, Y, and Z up for a blogger. And she would tell the next person. And then that person would tell the next person.
[00:09:34] And so I very quickly built out a pretty significant database of people that I was doing monthly work for, doing set up, doing maintenance. I was their on call techspert, if you will.
[00:09:45] But fast forward. At that point my freelance income had surpassed my corporate income and there was also this period of time where I think I would have had to make a decision anyway, but it's now 2015 I've already given birth to one daughter. I'm pregnant with my 2nd daughter and my husband has an opportunity to move to a different city in our same state and it was was a city that we desperately wanted to go to.
[00:10:13] I feel like I'm at this tipping point with my career and so that was the point when I said I need to leave my nine to five corporate job and I need to really be a business owner. And apparently I thought that was the right time of my life to start a business. I don't know that I would recommend that to everybody, but it, it worked out.
[00:10:32] You take the leap and you build your wings on the way down. So I really just said, 'I have clearly figured out that I do something that is in demand and that I'm good enough at it, that I've got people coming back and wanting more and referring me to others. I know that this is a type of business that I can run on my own terms with my growing family. And if not now, when?'
[00:10:55] So that was the first time, even though I had been a business owner and I had been making money for years doing this, that was really the first time that I said, 'Oh, I'm a business owner in the online marketing space.' And it was off to the races from that point on.
Katy's experience with funnels
[00:11:11] Samantha Mabe: We're talking today about funnels. So I'm assuming you evolved into doing that for people too, going from just general marketing into funnels and finding people that really needed help in that and figuring that out.
[00:11:24] Katy Widrick: Yeah it's a natural progression. And what I find and I wonder if this is the case for you as well is, the thing that people talk most about is top of funnel and without top of funnel, nothing else matters. You have to get people to be aware of you, to be aware of what you do and to engage with you. And I would consider all of that top of funnel. And we can talk about all of the different things that are like classic top of funnel benchmarks, but that's the fun part. And I love that too.
[00:11:52] And I think even when I talk about the full funnel, I really like being engaged in the strategy and in the ideas and the brainstorm for what are we doing at the top of the funnel, but posting the Instagram reels, going on LinkedIn, doing a webinar, I love all of that, but most of the people that I work with have that pretty much in hand. They understand how to do that. They're great on camera. They're clear in their messaging. They just don't know how to do any of the rest of it.
[00:12:21] And it turns out it's the rest of it that I get really excited about. So ultimately what I found is that I would talk with a potential client and I would say 'what do you want to do?' And they'd say 'I have a new product. I really want to launch this new ebook, but I'm totally overwhelmed.'
[00:12:37] And truthfully, all of that is part of the funnel. So what I figured out is that the space for me, for my clients and in the online business world, and the place where I could really make my mark, is let me take all of the pieces and parts of the funnel and make sure that they're all integrated and connected.
[00:12:55] And ultimately, and this obviously has come over time and I did not have this clarity five years ago, maybe even two years ago, but I really have figured out, my sweet spot is empowering visionary CEOs to stay completely in their zone of genius. And then I find and fix their tech blind spots.
The parts of a marketing funnel
[00:13:14] Katy Widrick: When we talk about top of the funnel, again, awareness, how are we telling people about us?
[00:13:18] And then whatever the call to action is: join my email list, check out my product, do X, Y, and Z, register for my webinar. That middle of the funnel, all the way down to the ultimate sale or the final conversion, that's where I really love to play.
[00:13:33] And what's nice is that the technology has gotten so great over the last few years that you can apply these strategies to pretty much everybody's tech stack.
[00:13:43] And I have worked inside of, I think, every modern tech stack and MacGyvered pieces and parts together.
[00:13:49] Most business owners who have a great idea, a great product, and really deserve to have impact on the world and in their community. They are unable to do that if they don't have somebody executing and implementing the rest of the funnel.
[00:14:03] And I talk a lot about the biggest expense in most people's businesses. It's surprising. It is expensive to run a business, right? Like hands down, whether you have a team, how much you're paying yourself, all of the platforms, like all of the licensing, the fees, this is an expensive endeavor, but actually the biggest expense to any business is a lost sale.
[00:14:24] And so if you are working to get someone into your email list or into your funnel and they're ultimately falling out because you have leaks or you're not able to engage with them and teach them and educate them and ultimately get them to say yes to your offer, that is a very expensive problem. And finding and fixing that is very exciting to me.
[00:14:45] Samantha Mabe: I love that you mapped that out because as a website designer, I'm always telling people 'I can design the best website. It can be totally strategic, but if you don't have people coming in at the top of the funnel to land on your website, it does nothing for you.'
[00:14:58] And so you have to go back and find where those leaks and those holes are in that funnel to make sure that they're ultimately going to get you that sale, because that is what's going to allow you to run a business.
Your business needs to make a profit to have an impact
[00:15:10] Samantha Mabe: We're not doing this just so that we can have a hobby. We need to make money and pay ourselves and our teams and, afford the lifestyle that we got into business for.
[00:15:19] Katy Widrick: That's exactly right. And I agree with everything you just said. And I would say even more, I really feel called to also then recirculate and reinvest in other people. And so if I, as a business owner can really focus on making sure I'm mission driven: am I speaking to my right audience? Am I serving them with excellence? Am I fulfilling all of the core values that I hold near and dear?
[00:15:42] I'd like to not just make money, but I'd like to make significant profit because that's what allows me to hire an amazing web designer, an amazing graphic designer, a team member who can help with customer success, a copywriter and all of the other things, right? Pour into my family and create generational wealth and take time off and all of these things. And for me, that has become really integral to why I do what I do.
Launch and sell messy
[00:16:07] Katy Widrick: And I love your point because the weakest piece of my marketing brain is anything related to branding. I always say I'm the cobbler's daughter with no shoes. Do not look at my website. Don't look at my own email marketing funnel. I'm spending all of my time working on client projects. Don't look at my stuff.
[00:16:25] But I have, I hold design and wireframing and web design in the highest regard, truly full stop. However, what I find is that many people who are just starting a business or who are trying to take it to the next level will go through all of that work and have a beautiful website and everything has been thoughtful in terms of the flow and the messaging.
[00:16:50] But actually the offer isn't tested and the offer doesn't work. We spend all this time building a website and you haven't actually sold anything. And I said earlier, build the plane while you're flying it. I am a big proponent of saying, ultimately, what you want is an incredibly well designed website where UI, UX, and analytics, like everything is factored in. But before, or while you're planning that out, don't be afraid to launch and sell messy.
[00:17:17] And I have a client who literally makes multiple five figures a month and her sales page, I'm using air quotes. If anybody's listening to the audio. Her sales page is a Google drive document. And the reason I bring that example up is that she is able to prove that she has a very strong offer that will sell, that her audience wants. There's no limit to her success once she has the website up and it's beautiful and it's doing all the things.
[00:17:46] But isn't it better when you're bringing in money and you're like, 'I know I have a great product. Now let's build the website.'
[00:17:53] So my favorite thing to do is actually to work with someone like you, which is to say ' we need this to be a showcase. This has to be beautiful and on brand and all of the things, but over here, we're going to be making some money.' Now we're going to do it messy so that we can really feel confident that when all of these other things are perfected, we've got this clear funnel, we've got this clear pipeline and we're not going to be disappointed.
[00:18:19] It's exhausting and exhilarating to go through any type of branding and launch like that. So I always just want people to feel like, 'Hey, when I launch. The website, the podcast, the whatever it is, like everything else has already been set up as a strong foundations.'
[00:18:36] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. That's the number one piece of advice I give to anybody who reaches out and they're like, 'I'm thinking of starting a business. Can you design a website or a logo?' And I'm like, 'you don't want a website or a logo. You want to sell whatever it is you're doing, find your service, find your market first, and then you can revisit all of that.'
[00:18:54] Because you don't need to make that investment until you know that you like what you're doing, that you're proven business model, that it's actually going to be a business and not a hobby because you decided you wanted to go photograph some of your friends one day.
[00:19:10] Katy Widrick: That's exactly right. And I think that selling is harder than most people think it will be. There are some absolute born Rockstar salespeople. But I think even those of us who are good at it or who have gotten to be good at it because we're solopreneurs or we were lean and scrappy. It's a hard thing, convincing somebody to part with their money. It is in itself a journey.
[00:19:32] And so I think just like preparing somebody for: maybe test that, make sure that you feel really good about that cause you never stop selling. You never stop selling when you're a business owner or when you're working on a team where profit and revenue are important benchmarks.
[00:19:47] And by the way, that's a hundred percent of businesses. Even nonprofits, which I do work with a few nonprofits, even the nonprofits are still looking to hit some of those benchmarks so that they can continue to bring in the cash flow and the donation flow so that they can have their operating costs met. Nobody is not thinking about this type of pipeline.
Missed buying signals from potential customers
[00:20:08] Samantha Mabe: As we dive into funnels, the point of a funnel when you're working on it, you want to increase your conversions. You want to increase that profit so you can run your business. So what are some of the things people are missing as they're building that out?
[00:20:20] Katy Widrick: Yeah let me just first extend a lot of grace because if somebody is listening and they hear me talk about some of these leaks, you might think, 'Oh my gosh, my funnels a mess', or 'I can't believe I did all of this.'
[00:20:32] Here's the thing launch messy, right? If you're gonna hear me consistently talk about something do not wait, and I'm a perfectionist, it is hard for me to see something that isn't perfect and not Immediately fix it. Perfectionism really will stand in your way from just getting it out there and making sure that perfect is not the enemy of good.
[00:20:52] And so in, in this case, I just want to really start with that caveat that as I talk about some of these opportunities, it doesn't mean that if you aren't actively doing it now that you can't add it in. And it certainly doesn't mean that you need to do all of them at once.
[00:21:05] In fact, it's just like anything else, I want you to really think of yourself as a scientist and say, which piece of this could I implement now that's simple and that's easy on that fits into what I'm doing. And if the answer is none of those, I'm still treading water, I'm still trying to launch my first funnel, just keep all of this in mind for future opportunities.
Expressed interest
[00:21:24] Katy Widrick: But I would say number one, the biggest missed signal is what I call expressed interest.
[00:21:31] And so if you think about a typical abandoned cart sequence, what this usually means is that somebody has literally put your product into their digital cart, right? So depending on what system you're using, they may have put their name and email and other information and then the next step is when they would put their payment information and they could drop off there. Sometimes it's a one page checkout. But the point is they have put enough information into the cart where your system essentially captures that and really tracks: they were interested.
[00:22:03] Expressed interest is actually usually a larger bucket of people and these are people who visited your sales page and maybe didn't actually put it into their cart, but you know that something compelled them to check it out.
[00:22:17] Now, the best way to track these people is in your email marketing. There are other ways that you can do some tracking, but in terms of saying, 'Oh, this is Katy that clicked this link' and not just seeing there were a hundred visitors to the page and I don't know who they were. So email marketing is usually the best way to fix this particular leak.
[00:22:35] But I want you to really consider looking at who clicked over to the sales page or the landing page or the offer page and follow up with them. Because if they clicked, they were interested enough in how you described it. You captured their attention and you got them to take action. That's huge. That is huge.
[00:22:53] Something didn't resonate with them. Sometimes that's a looky loo and you're not going to convince everybody. Some people literally just want to see what's she charging for this? How does she set this up? Maybe it's a competitor that wants to see how all of that is okay. That's just normal. You're not going to get a hundred percent conversion.
[00:23:10] But outside of the looky loos, you might have people that really did have a pricing objection or just had questions. right? Or maybe they saw it on the page and are really interested in joining. They can't attend the live calls that are listed. Or they head over to the page and they are really interested it, seems like a good fit. But you are really, you talk about testimonials from coaches and this person is a registered dietitian who has a group program.
[00:23:36] These are all people who are genuinely interested and probably would convert or would have a higher opportunity to convert and purchase if they just had some additional followup from you.
[00:23:47] This is the first step of like, how do I really hone in and personalize my funnel and my outreach. What happens is that you just keep sending sales emails. And the sales emails are great, but if somebody clicked over and didn't convert, there's almost no sales email in the world that's going to answer all of their questions.
[00:24:04] I also find that most of the people who are making buying decisions in 2023 and beyond, they just need an additional level of convincing and handholding and support. Because the truth is, whether you're selling a course, a coaching program, you're a done for you service provider like us, whatever it is that you're offering, there are more people offering that type of service on the marketplace than ever before. And so you just have to understand and be okay with the fact that they might be looking at you and comparing it to someone else, or they might be looking at you and trying to make a decision. Do they invest in this? Or do they invest in, in that? And the only way for you to figure that out is to reach out.
[00:24:48] So the expressed interest sequence, and this is why I'm spending as much time on it as I am, because this is the number one area where I can see conversions just like skyrocket. And when I say conversions, we're talking about money in hand. Every new conversion is more money in your bank account.
Unscalable marketing
[00:25:03] Katy Widrick: You have to do some unscalable work at that point. One of my favorite strategies is to find those people and then send them an Instagram DM or record a quick video message, ' Hey Samantha, I saw that you were checking out the page. As we're starting on June 30th and I would love to have you there. This is me. I'm responding. So send me a message back. Send me a DM. Here's my text.' Like whatever it is that you need to do.
[00:25:27] You might not be able to do that for everyone on your list, but you can certainly do that type of unscalable outreach to the people that have expressed your interest.
[00:25:36] And I'd rather you spend your time on the smaller group of people that have at least engaged with you than just trying to blast the same message over and over to people who just aren't giving you any interest. So that's the number one.
[00:25:49] Samantha Mabe: That's great advice. And I heard somebody who did this recently and she has a very big email list, so she was recording a lot of those videos, but she really valued connecting with people, answering their questions, and it does greatly increase your conversions because they're already interested.
[00:26:08] If you start out with just a few people clicking, you can send a couple of those and that can increase your profits enough that then you can continue to grow and continue to make those decisions.
[00:26:19] And I love that it's the unscalable marketing a lot of times that is really where you are standing out as a business owner and you're making that impact and you're getting people into the programs and courses and service that you have.
The importance of your onboarding as an extension of your funnel
[00:26:33] Katy Widrick: This isn't part of the sales funnel, so it's a little bit of a rabbit trail, but I will just say, one of the things that I have become especially passionate about is the onboarding funnel.
[00:26:44] So this is after the purchase. How do you ensure that the first day, the first seven days, the first 30 days in your program, in your service, they feel like the Taylor Swift experience? Like it should feel epic. You want people to just feel so supported.
[00:26:59] And so what I find is that there is almost a natural drop off if you haven't thought about this. So there's an opportunity, I would say to build both of these up at once. So if you can figure out like, how do I personalize the sales funnel, the marketing funnel, so that I'm empowering and educating someone to make the greatest decision, it's that much easier to make sure you're carrying that over to onboarding, because if you spend all this time saying, ' I'm going to do the unscalable, I'm going to reach out to you, I'm going to chat with you.' and then you fall off.
[00:27:31] They know you were just trying to get the sale, but if you have now these mechanisms where you know and you've actually told your customer before they've even made the purchase, this is the level of support and personalization and love that you can expect to feel once you're in my community and my service, like whatever it is that you're selling, I just think there's so much value to establishing that at the very beginning and vice versa.
[00:27:57] I've been so impressed to see the beautiful onboarding systems that my colleagues, my clients, my friends have built. And they don't do that same type of approach for their sales funnel. And I'm like, 'how are you ever going to get somebody in here to see how great it is to be with you if you don't give them that sneak peek of doing that over here?'
[00:28:17] Show them in the process and let them see how awesome you really are cause they'll know that will carry over.
Adding revenue expansion to your funnel
[00:28:24] Samantha Mabe: Are there any other like big missed opportunities that you see a lot?
[00:28:30] Katy Widrick: Yeah, this one's interesting. So when you talk about revenue expansion, and again, I know it's a little bit of jargon, but I do think that there are missed opportunities for the conversions that you are getting, how can you make the most of it? And so I know that when we talk about upsells, downsells, tripwires multi step funnels, I know that there are a lot of people who are a little bit hesitant because they're like, 'Hey, I got the sale. I don't want to seem greedy.'
[00:28:55] Here's how I look at that: if you truly believe in your service and in your offers, then really what you're saying is here is the ideal case scenario for my client and here's how they are going to get the most out of their investment with me.
[00:29:09] And so for an example, I worked with a team that had an initial six week fitness program, and then the funnel included the option to add on some workout equipment to align with the at home workouts that were in the program. And then the funnel also included a workbook that would be shipped to their house where they could track their meals, their water, their workouts, et cetera. The funnel just went on and on and people couldn't believe how successful that funnel was.
[00:29:37] And it was because everything had been thoughtfully curated. And so there was the program. The main thing was the main thing. You didn't need all of the other things to make the program work. It didn't feel like a disappointment if they only got the one.
[00:29:51] But I will say that if you have a clear path that your customer or your client can take, and you know that each additional item enhances it, it's not just a money grab. I think that's an opportunity to Increase the average order value, the lifetime value of that client, and ultimately make it so that all of the time and the money that you invested to get that conversion, you're seeing more of the profit on the other side.
Ask for the sale
[00:30:16] Katy Widrick: I think the final thing is really just thinking cyclically about your funnels. And for example one of the things that I have really started to map out with my clients when I'm doing a long term funnel map is we think about it in 30 day chunks. What do we need to educate? What do we need to teach them? What social proof or what testimonials do we need to include? And how frequently do we need to make an offer, right?
[00:30:44] So if it turns out that you have multiple offers or smaller products and you can use those as like buying intent signals, that's great. If you have one offer, that doesn't mean that this approach doesn't work, but I would say the frequency of making an offer, people miss an opportunity.
[00:31:01] If you are all in on live launching, that's fine. If you're all in on evergreen launching, that's fine. If you're neither, if you're a service provider and you're just like, my availability is my availability. Here's what I do. If I'm available, you can hire me. That's fine as well.
[00:31:16] But what I find is that people are so hesitant to build in that frequency and the urgency and even the scarcity in their funnels. And I would just encourage people to really look, if I feel strongly that I have the best offer on the marketplace and that I am standing behind this product and that somebody is going to get a huge amount of value for whatever the investment is, if you feel strongly that the value exceeds the investment and that your client is going to really just have a home run working with you, then I don't think you should be afraid to give them multiple opportunities to buy from you.
[00:31:49] You don't get what you don't ask for. And I have to tell you every time I talk about this, I realize like I need to continue to take my own lessons. It's so much easier as a business owner to see opportunities for other people and not apply it to yourself, but I definitely know that this is an area that I can improve upon.
[00:32:09] You want to be careful about selling and you don't want to come across as too salesy or greedy, but ultimately, if you have the solution to somebody's problem and they're going to get value out of working with you, I almost finally gets a disservice if you don't continue to give them the opportunity to ask you questions and ultimately to buy.
[00:32:27] And that is to me, a place where most people miss. They think about a launch window or they just want to nurture, nurture. You really have to ask for the sale more frequently, and you just have to get creative about how you're doing that.
[00:32:43] Samantha Mabe: That's all such great advice and you're right in that we don't ask for the sale enough and if somebody thinks you're talking about it too much, then they will opt out of your email list or following you and other than that, people, they want to hear from you.
[00:32:58] And a lot of people will be on your email list and in your orbit for a long time before they ever buy and so you just have to keep reminding them like, this is how you could work with me. This is what's available right now.
[00:33:10] I also love the way you approach tripwires and upsells and downsells because it's a different way of thinking about it than just ' okay, here's another product, here's another product.' They can get the results without any of the extra stuff, but you're making it really simple for them to get the best results because you are giving them value that they can choose to add or not.
Funnels work for any type of business
[00:33:33] Katy Widrick: That's exactly right. I think funnels can work for just about any type of a business and any type of offer.
[00:33:40] Specifically for service providers, I think that this is where like we think very literally. I offer VIP days, I offer three months funnel building, I offer X, Y, and Z. And so we think of it as this one time service, even if it's like a fully scoped out, scalable offer, we don't think about some of the other things that would be highly valuable for our clients.
[00:34:01] I offer VIP day services, as I know you do, and it's one of my favorite things to do because it's so empowering for the client. They get almost immediate ROI, right? We shrink the time that they invest in getting something off the ground. And I figured out almost accidentally, because I had multiple clients asking for it, that there was value for them in not just the recordings of our sessions, but actually recorded SOPs, like standard operating procedures. These clients really then needed to make sure their team, their full team understood how to make adjustments or where to find X, Y, and Z, or how to run reports. Or they needed like everything documented. ' Hey, if we want to switch out this button or if we want to change the integration, how do we do it?' and I had not included that in the VIP day because again, the idea was that it would just be fully built out.
[00:34:52] Now I offer that as an add on and it's even something that the client can come back to. And I really had to remember that's hugely valuable for that client. I don't need to feel greedy for adding that on as an offer.
[00:35:06] Service providers are not always as strategic and thoughtful about that particular, part of the funnel. And we just think, 'We have a service, we're going to work one on one or we're going to do this offer.' And it's not 'Hey, you sign up and you get this digital download, you sign up and you get this pre built course.' And yes, we could tack on X, Y, and Z, but our services are valuable and our expertise is valuable.
[00:35:30] And obviously the clients who are investing in some of those larger ticket, higher dollar investments are probably going to be willing to spend a little bit more to ensure that their investment is as good as it can be.
[00:35:42] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I totally agree. I think as service providers, we want to give so much that we don't think of this as this can be an additional thing. They don't need it for this service to work, but it could be an additional thing for them. And it's additional work for us anyway. So we should value that.
[00:36:03] Katy Widrick: Yes, that's a hard part. That's not encapsulated in funnel building. It's probably why I get so excited to talk about bundles and technical stuff rather than the actual truths of running a business.
[00:36:14] Because that is a hard thing for me to do. If I know how to fix it, then I just want to fix it. And I've had to really discipline myself to say 'I'm here. I can do that, but here's my rate for it.' And that is something I continue to work on even as a business owner myself.
Quick funnel fixes you can implement this week
[00:36:30] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, so can you share for people who are not ready to invest in somebody who builds funnels some fixes that they could do themselves with what they've got going on right now?
Create an expressed interest tracking system
[00:36:43] Katy Widrick: Yeah, so I think going back to the top of the funnel, that expressed interest sequence and funnel, I really think that's something that can almost immediately be put into place because again, you don't even have to automate it, right? If you just say, I'm going to start tracking who clicked over to the sales page and decide what to do with them later.
[00:37:01] That part can be messy as well, right? I started doing that with a spreadsheet and nothing was automated. And now I get to the point with myself and with my clients where if they click this link, then they go over to this automated sequence. That's more advanced, right?
[00:37:15] But I think like in terms of that is something that is very low tech and that anybody can do. Literally just look at your analytics, who's clicking the sales page from your emails and then make a decision about what to do over in the top of the funnel.
Plan a monthly conversion event
[00:37:28] Katy Widrick: I really think that having monthly conversion events is an important strategy to consider. And when I say conversion event, it can be something as built out and fancy and formal as a webinar where you're doing a workshop and you're inviting people to sign up and you're leading them through X, Y, and Z, and then you have a call to action. But it can also be something simple. 'Hey, I'm going to go live on Instagram. Hey, I'm going to go live on LinkedIn. Hey, I'm going to do a new email drip that is Five day funnel fixes.'
[00:37:58] So the reason I say that's something that anybody can do is that I think people tend to get a little bit overwhelmed at the idea of a funnel. That is how simple it can be. And ultimately, going back to where you and I started the conversation: the middle and the bottom of the funnel don't mean anything if you don't have new leads coming in.
[00:38:17] So each month, I really like to think with my clients, with my team, and even for myself, what am I doing this month to capture interest and to get people into a conversation with me, whether it's like, it can be as simple as DM me this keyword and let's chat, getting into my email list, joining the webinar again, like you name it?
[00:38:38] I have a client who just launched a private podcast. I consider that a conversion event and mapping this out so that you can minimize the time that you're freaking out thinking about what am I going to talk about? What am I going to build? Keep it super simple this month What can I do that is high value to my audience that I can give them for free in exchange for getting into my funnel?
[00:39:01] But I really like to think this month, what are we doing? And then building that funnel. And here's the truth: if you do that for four months then you have four beautifully optimized funnels and you just repurpose them. And so I do not think this is something you have to do for 12 months straight. And then all of a sudden, every month, no, give yourself a library of four really great funnels.
[00:39:25] And again, mix it up. One is a private podcast. One is a freebie email drip sequence. One is a webinar that you do live and maybe it's offered on demand and one is whatever else you want to do. But if you give yourself that, it feels to me like it gives you that, that sort of eat the elephant one bite at a time approach. And instead of thinking about all of the funnels you have to build, just build one and market it and get people in and test it.
[00:39:50] My goal would always be, and again this is at every price point, at the very minimum I would like to see you be making one sale a week to whatever it is that you're most saleable offer is. And if you making at least one sale a week, then it's paying for itself and it's getting that qualified buying intent customer coming in who ultimately is going to be a good candidate for investing in something else.
[00:40:16] Samantha Mabe: Those are so helpful And I love the idea of like just try something else every 30 days. I was thinking about this and I was like, I've actually been doing this because I've come up with some ideas for freebies. I had a master class and then I had a new freebie that I sent out and I was like, I didn't even think about it that way. But that's what we can do when we innovate, when we think about what are some new ways that maybe I can share things, that I can get out there.
[00:40:42] And I love that you mentioned it's not always an email sequence. It's not always a webinar. It's whatever is going to work for your audience and your time and try and experiment and do it messy so that you can see what's going to work and then optimize and grow from there.
[00:40:58] Katy Widrick: Exactly. Yeah. And it also really relieves the pressure because you might want to take a vacation or you might want to give yourself a week where you're doing lighter work. And so if ' Hey, this month I have this one simple funnel. I just need to build it and I need to market it.' And then you're off the hook, right? You can do whatever you want with your time, but it is that looking at a blank piece of paper and thinking, what am I doing to move my business forward this month that I find is really paralyzing for most people.
[00:41:25] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. I think we gave some people some really good takeaways and a really good conversation.
Connect with Katy
[00:41:29] Samantha Mabe: So where can people connect with you online if they have questions, if they want to follow up, if they want to learn from you?
[00:41:36] Katy Widrick: Yeah, I really appreciate that. The first thing is, based on what we were just talking about, I actually have a freebie, a free resource that I would love for your audience to download if this would be helpful. So it's Katywidrick. com slash conversions. And this is actually an entire guide to those monthly conversion events that we were just talking about. So I give some examples of how to use them and I really think that your audience would benefit from that. So they can find me there.
[00:42:01] And then my website is Katywidrick. com. You'll also find all of my social links there. I love spending time on Instagram in particular. So come find me at kwidrick.
[00:42:11] And I would love to hear from anybody who has listened to this and has questions about funnels. The end of the day is my favorite thing to talk about is the reason I love having conversations like this with you. Technology should not ever be the reason that somebody doesn't launch and grow and scale their business and have the impact that they deserve. And so anytime I can give feedback or ideas or insights or best practices, I love to do that. So thank you for the opportunity. And I really look forward to connecting with your listeners.
