Podcasting Secrets

This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. I was named after an inspiring business leader named Nathan Tanner. When I went to college, the building that housed the business school I attended was the Tanner Building, named after Nathan Eldon Tanner. 

Nathan Eldon Tanner was known as a man of outstanding executive ability and unquestioned integrity. Throughout his public career, he was known, even by his political opponents, for his rugged and undeviating honesty. His high moral standards were said to be constant, undeviating, and immovable. I have a long way to go to live up to Nathan Tanner’s example. However, in today’s episode, we’re going to tell Nathan’s story and discuss how to build a business with integrity. 

One of Tanner’s favorite sayings was, “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight; but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night.” Tanner’s wife said. “And he tried to accomplish what he set out to do by doing just that: By rising at five A.M. to teach himself typing when he was running the store in Hill Spring.” (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org)

Tanner’s Life

Nathan Eldon Tanner was born on May 9, 1898, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and he grew up in Canada in the small town of Aetna, near Cardston, Alberta. On his family’s farm, he learned how to work hard, driving a four-horse team at the age of twelve, caring for livestock, and nursing his entire family back to health when all but him had smallpox (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

In Alberta, Tanner worked as a teacher and school principal before being elected to the Alberta Legislature, where he served as speaker of the Assembly. He was chosen as Speaker of the House, but before he had never even attended a session of the legislature and was elected to act as chairman of sixty-three members. On the subject, his wife said, “We were given an elegant suite of rooms in the legislative buildings, to use as we liked, and … it seemed that he had fallen into the ‘lap of the Gods,’ but only he and I knew the hours, day and night, that he spent studying parliamentary procedure. This was the beginning of jobs which he was given, which he said were far beyond his ability to cope with.”

When Tanner was acting as Minister in the Alberta government, he earned the well-deserved nickname of “Mr. Integrity” because he refused to compromise by accepting gifts of any kind and was strictly honest in his dealings. The affectionate title followed him through a lifetime of success based on principles of fairness and integrity (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org).

Later, he served as president of Merrill Petroleum Ltd. and director of the Toronto Dominion Bank of Canada. In 1954, he became president of Trans-Canada Pipelines. As president, he directed the construction of a $350 million, 2,000-mile pipeline from Alberta to Montreal (Source: NYTimes.com).

Tanner later moved to Salt Lake City and quickly established himself as a business and civic leader. He served on the board of directors of First Security Corporation and Mountain Fuel Supply Company. He helped plan, develop, and promote building projects in Salt Lake such as the Salt Palace, Symphony Hall, the Fine Arts Center, and the restored Capitol Theater (Source: NYTimes.com).

Decision-Making and Concentration

Tanner was said to have near flawless judgment when he was making decisions. Religious leader Victor L. Brown said, “He gathered all possible facts before making a decision, never making an impetuous or off-the-cuff decision. He had an unusual talent for setting bias and prejudice aside if such existed. He did not make the mistake of having pet projects that would tend to warp judgment.” 

Another of Tanner’s favorite sayings was, “I’d much rather be part of the solution to a problem than a part of the problem.”

Tanner used his power of concentration to help him make quick and well-informed decisions. For example, one day a group was making a very detailed and technical presentation that lasted over two hours. There was little time for discussion. At the conclusion of the presentation, Tanner said something like this: 

“Recommendations one and two can be implemented with little difficulty. Recommendation number three needs more study, and your chart covering this portion of the presentation needs to be redone for the following reasons (which he listed). Recommendation number four will require much more study and appears to be untimely at the moment.” 

This experience occurred after Tanner’s eyesight had been seriously impaired, so he hadn’t seen the chart—it had only been described to him.

Tanner was able to concentrate for the whole of the two hours and concisely relate his conclusions at the end of it. He didn’t let his bad eyesight become an excuse for him to not be part of the solution. (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org)

Service and Caring for Others

“Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

When Tanner was still living in Cardston, he led a group of boys in his church’s youth program. Some of the boys hadn’t been coming to meetings, and Tanner went to their homes to find out why. He discovered that some of the boys didn’t have the right clothes and had been too embarrassed to attend church meetings without them (Source: rsc.byu.edu). 

Tanner and the rest of the boys in the group all agreed to wear overalls to meetings on Sunday mornings. Because of Tanner, all the boys became active in attendance, and they grew to love their sensitive and dauntless leader (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

Tanner was willing to forgo a formal look to make all the boys feel comfortable. He cared about the boys and it was more important to him that they were all there than looking a certain way. He kept the important things in mind and pushed aside the worldly focus on the image. 

“It is easy to do things for our own families and loved ones, but to give of our substance for the stranger who is in need is the real test of our charity and love for our fellowmen.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

Keeping Our Commitments

“Self-discipline is doing what you know you should do when you don’t want to do it.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

As Tanner was asked to serve as president of Trans-Canada Pipelines, the backers of the company planned to set up headquarters in Toronto. Tanner was living near Calgary at the time and had committed to a leadership role in his church. Because of this duty, Tanner refused to move to act as president of the company. Instead of finding someone else, the company owners set up their headquarters in Calgary (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

This shows not only how much they valued his leadership, but also how committed Tanner was to keep his commitments. He was willing to risk losing a job because he wouldn’t back out of a commitment. Tanner often had to take the time to travel to eastern Canada since that’s where much of the company’s business was transacted (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

Tanner stood his ground with his promises. We must do the same thing with our commitments. When we take a stand for what we know is right, it shows people we can be relied upon and we’re not going to give in when outside influences pressure us.

“To meet the serious issues facing us in our respective communities today, we must be examples of virtue and righteousness ourselves and choose today to take our stand on the moral issues which threaten us.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

Enduring through Hardships

When Tanner was about 15, he was herding cattle when he was thrown from his horse. Getting to his feet, he looked down to see three fingers on his left hand were broken. They had snapped at his knuckle joints and were twisted back against his hand, the bones of his middle finger sticking out of his flesh. Tanner took hold of his fingers, put them back in place, got back on his horse, and rode to a doctor. The doctor marveled at him; all the bones were in the right place and he only had to stitch him up. 

This is the kind of attitude Tanner had throughout his life. When something unexpected happened, he didn’t complain. He didn’t give up. Instead, he took care of the situation as best he could, got help if he needed it, and kept going.

Tanner also tried to be grateful for what he did have. He was working as a schoolteacher during the depression, and the teachers weren’t very well paid. Instead of moping about his situation, the Tanners sold their only valuable possession: a new Ford sedan. They used the money they got to purchase a small general store. 

He also supplemented his income by selling insurance and suits of clothing. The family had milk cows and his two oldest daughters delivered milk daily, often wading through heavy snow with the milk strapped to them. The Tanners kept their household too busy to dwell on the negative. One of his daughters even remarked, “During those depression years all the other kids seemed to feel poor, but we never did; we were too busy.” (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org)

Like the Tanner family, sometimes the best thing to do in hard times is to find ways to keep busy and focused on good things to solve our problems. Dwelling on our trials won’t make them go away. 

“As we express our appreciation of our many blessings, we become more conscious of what the Lord has done for us, and thereby we become more appreciative.” - Nathan Eldon Tanner

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Having true integrity builds credibility and trust, and opens doors.
2. Sometimes we must put the care of others before other things such as keeping up appearances. 
3. We can often show charity best when we serve those we don’t know very well.
4. Self-discipline is doing what we know we should do even when we don’t want to do it.
5. Tanner was willing to give up a job to keep his commitment. We must also be willing to do what it takes to keep our word.
6. When we go through hard things, it can help to not dwell on the hardships, but keep busy and focus on filling our life with good things, such as working towards solutions.

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-lead-a-business-with-integrity/ 

Welcome back to another episode with email marketing expert Brittany Bayley. In the last episode, we discussed how to grow our email lists and essential email sequences. In today’s episode, Brittany answers common email marketing questions.

How often should we email our list? 

How many times per week should we email our list? For nurture emails, Brittany said we should be emailed at least twice a week. She recommended sending one email highlighting something external such as an interview or podcast episode we’ve done. This trains our readers to open the email and click to go somewhere else. 

If a YouTuber, podcaster, or blogger publishes something daily, it is usually best not to send an email every day because we may overwhelm our audience. We can send something like a weekly summary or highlights for all the episodes we’ve published that week. 

There are some situations where a daily email would be acceptable. If “daily” is in the title of our show, our audience members will likely expect to get daily emails. Or if we set it up so they know it will be daily emails, then they may not be overwhelmed. If we aren’t sure what will work well for our audience, we can test different frequencies and see how they respond.

We can also give our audience options for how often they want to receive emails or which kinds of emails they’d like to receive. When they sign up we can ask if they’d prefer highlights or daily emails or perhaps they only want to hear from us when we have a new product or a sale. Brittany said, “Segmentation is . . . a great way to show that you respect your subscriber and that you respect their time.”

How do we find the best incentives or lead magnets?

To find the best incentives and lead magnets, we need to turn to our audience and be aware of what they are going through. What experiences are they having? What’s going on in their world? How can we help them get through that?

Brittany saw many successful lead magnets related to COVID-19. She saw things like “How to deal with stress in a pandemic” or “How to take your business online in a short period of time.”

“It's much more about the intention and what you're teaching versus the container like a challenge or an ebook,” Brittany said. We need to be offering incentives and lead magnets based on what the customer needs, not based on what we want to offer or sell.

The most successful lead magnets Brittany has seen relate well to their audience. Instead of using techie business jargon, they use simple terms their customers use and understand, making it clear for the audience.

How do we write subject lines?

Subject lines should be eye-catching and pattern-interrupting without being unclear. We don’t want to just put something random in the subject line that has nothing to do with the email’s content just to get people to open the email. When we do the random eye-catching thing but don’t give them the context behind it, our audience will feel tricked and they may not continue reading our emails.

Asking questions, having statements, and using emojis can be great ways to draw attention. We can also use things like caps, parenthesis, or brackets to draw attention to the subject line. Anything that varies from the typical subject line can be eye-catching. Depending on our audience and what they’re expecting from us, lists such as “5 Ways to…” can also work.

Brittany recently received an email with the subject line, “Brittany, do you have time today? I want to run something by you?” Brittany is acquainted with the sender, so she was immediately intrigued and opened the email. The sender had written a great email and wanted responses from her list, so it was a great way to pull her readers in.

Everything with emails should be based on our benchmarks. To get benchmarks, we need to make sure we’re emailing one to two times a week for 60 to 90 days to see what they are, then we can go from there and test to see what works well for our audience.

How do we improve our calls to action?

Calls to action (CTAs) can be tricky because we want our readers to take the action but we don’t want to be annoying when we give them that CTA. Though we may want to pack everything into one email, we should only have one clear and concise CTA in each email. It should be set apart from the rest of the email, not buried in a block of text.

Brittany usually writes her emails out of order. She writes her CTA first, then she’ll write the hook. Last, she bridges those two together through the middle or main body of the email. When we’re writing our hooks, we need to keep the CTA in mind, so every word should be leading to that call to action. When we write the email in reverse it is easier to carve the path leading to the CTA and our readers will have a better time following it.

How long should emails be?

The length of our emails can also vary depending on our audience and what they’re expecting from us. If we promise them content-heavy, blog-style emails then we should be giving them those kinds of emails. If our audience wants something shorter and more to the point, we can try that kind of email.

What are the best ways to personalize an email?

One of the best ways to personalize an email is by adding the reader’s name. People love to hear people say their names and it is the same way in emails. When we are collecting their information, we need to make sure we have space for them to put their name so we can do this.

Another great way to personalize is to show them we know who they are, what action they took, and where they are in their journey. We can do this by asking them in our onboarding sequence how they are liking the specific product they purchased or the lead magnet they received.

Many technologies like ConvertKit have these personalization options built into them, so we need to ensure we are taking advantage of those.

Should we use a tactical or humanistic approach?

Email marketing is often a combination of tactical and humanistic approaches. 

Through a tactical lens, we can think about things like personalization or inserting the audience member's name at the beginning of the email. We can also focus on concision and make sure our emails aren’t full of big blocks of text that are hard to read.

We can also come at it from a more humanistic standpoint by thinking about the person we’re writing to and what kinds of stories they are telling in their mind that are stopping them from taking our call to action. What is their belief system? What questions are coming up for them?

To create great, successful emails, we need a combination of these approaches.

Why should small brands use email marketing?

Brittany recently did an order bump with one of her services. She emailed her list to let them know about the bump and then went to the gym. While she was there she got all these notifications about purchases. That day she made $500 just from emailing her list. 

If we have a small brand like that and we’re used to spending money on ads or in other places or we're used to jumping through hoops to get sales and doing big launches, there is great power in being able to just write an email. Email marketing gives us a line directly to our customers, so we can avoid all the hassle of other advertising.

What do we need to know about spam laws?

Spam laws can be tricky because they can change depending on the region. We must make sure to check the laws for whatever area we live in. Brittany said the bottom line for these rules and regulations is do we have permission to email them promotional or marketing material?

One thing to note is that when asking for permission it can’t be a conditional part of the purchase. The checkmark to receive promotional emails can’t already be checked even if we’re using it with a lead magnet.

What are the biggest mistakes with email marketing?

Two of the biggest mistakes Brittany has seen with email marketing are having a cold list and only emailing when we need sales or are launching something. 

We need to be consistent with our email list, having a long-term nurture strategy in place. We shouldn’t freeze and not use our lists at all, and we also shouldn’t do a burst of emails, then stop, then do another burst. Brittany said, “Know what you want to say to your person, understand what they're asking from you, understand what questions they have on their mind, nurture them, and have a long-term strategy in place so that they feel supported.”

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Brittany for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We should probably be emailing our list with value at least twice a week.
2. Subject lines should be eye-catching and clear.
3. Each email should only have one call to action and everything should lead to it.
4. We can personalize by adding readers’ names and referencing their specific experiences with us in the emails.
5. Email marketing should combine tactical and humanistic approaches.
6. Every company can benefit from the direct connection to customers email marketing provides.
7. We should understand and comply with anti-spam laws in our countries.

Connect with Brittany

If you want to learn more about Brittany or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, or visit her website at BrittanyBayley.com. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/answers-to-10-questions-about-email-marketing/ 

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Brittany Bayley, and we’re going to discuss the ins and outs of email marketing including how to grow our lists and the essential email sequences.

Brittany Bayley is an email marketing expert, coach, and copywriter who helps her clients monetize their email lists and create unstoppable marketing channels for their businesses. She has penned successful campaigns for some widely recognized brands such as Russell Brunson. She's the founder of the popular email template system Swipes That Sell. She focuses on making email marketing simple, so it's easy to stay consistent and get ongoing and sustainable results. 

How to Effectively Grow a List

Here are a few strategies for growing our email list.

Focus on the Customer’s Point of View

We can grow our list by thinking about things from the customer’s perspective. We can ask questions about their perspective and what they are dealing with to attract them to our list. We can do things like low ticket offers, freebies, or other hooks to invite the ideal reader onto our list.

A lot of people come at it from, “What do I want to offer?” But they don’t see great results from this kind of approach. If instead, we say, “Here's my person. What do they need from me?” our list is going to grow significantly faster because we’re coming at it with them as our focus.

Paid Advertising

The same mindset will work with paid advertising, we just have to put some money behind it. We do need to be careful with trying to scale it and putting a bunch of money behind it before we've proven and tested it. We should test it organically to make sure it works before we start paid advertising.

To test this, Brittany recommends split testing one thing at a time. Generally, the three things we will be testing are the subject line, calls to action, and our story. When we do this we should be watching our open rates, our click rates, and our conversion rates to see how they change. Brittany personally uses ConvertKit to do this, but she said she thinks ActiveCampaign is great and she’s heard great things about Mailgun.

Networking

Getting on other people's shows, or Facebook Lives, or having other people talk about us on their email lists is a great way to bring in traffic. Brittany was recently in a mastermind bundle called Digital Insiders and her list grew by about 1,500 people. They all got together and were sharing each other’s audiences. “It’s a really good way to jumpstart your list and to get some fresh people onto your list and then get that ball rolling,” Brittany said.

3 Essential Email Sequences

Here are three different email sequences we should implement and how to get a start on setting them up.

Nurture Sequences

Whenever someone gives us their email address, we should start with a nurture or onboarding sequence. This is an introduction to us and our brand. It should tell our audience about who we are as an expert or coach, and it will set the foundation for the rest of our relationship with that new subscriber. 

Typically, this is a five-part series that will tell our story and set us up to coach them and give them some of our resources. Once we’ve done this sequence we can drop them into our main list.

“That's an example of a core sequence that every coach, every single online coach, should have. There [are] no exceptions. We all need a nurture sequence to onboard our customers, to onboard our new subscribers, to set ourselves up for success with every other aspect of the email list,” Brittany said.

Launch Sequences

Launch sequences introduce a new product or highlight a product we already have in existence that we haven’t brought up for a while. This can be a 5-10 part email sequence saying, “Here's what it is, here's why I created it, here's how it's gonna serve you.”

Abandoned Cart Sequence

We can set up an abandoned cart sequence by having them enter their name and email address before they get to the order form. Then, if they do that but they don't complete the purchase, an abandoned cart sequence would remind them of their cart and ask them if something went wrong on our end. It’s a great way to save some sales.

How do we set this up?

It can be overwhelming to try to figure all of this out and expensive to hire a copywriter to do it for us. Brittany offers a more affordable way to at least get a start on our email lists called Swipes That Sell. The product has templates for the core sequences and training to teach us how to infuse our stories into them so they don't look or sound like templates. Swipes That Sell is just $37 compared to the thousands of dollars an email copywriter will charge to set this up.

Brittany’s Journey to Become an Email Marketing Expert

In college, Brittany studied journalism and wrote for the paper. She started writing more for herself, doing blogs. A woman came to her blog and told Brittany that she liked what she was writing; she asked if Brittany would ghostwrite for her. Brittany didn’t know what that was, but she accepted the job, figuring out freelancing as she went. 

Brittany wrote for her for years, and she did some of her landing pages, registration pages, and other pieces for her. She started getting referred more, finding herself in a place that wasn’t corporate that she really enjoyed. 

One day a client came to her, asking her to do her email campaigns. It was a great moment for Brittany because things started coming together. She could use what she’d been learning with freelance writing and one of her passions, psychology. She loved it, and from there she worked her way to exclusively doing emails for online coaches.

Her greatest home run was the opportunity to write a campaign for the Mastermind.com launch with Dean Graziozi, Tony Robbin, and Russell Brunson. She said it was one of the coolest experiences she’s ever had to write the campaign and to see the sales coming in live.

Narrowing Your Niche

When I asked Brittany what the biggest failure or mistake of her career was, she said it was not being specific enough in her niche. She didn’t specify what kind of emails she would be writing and for whom; she just said emails. She realized that emails for webinars and follow-up sequences for sales calls are significantly different from emails for infopreneurs.

“I made the mistake of assuming that just reaching into email marketing would make me an expert in all email marketing when really you have to know your industry,” Brittany said. 

Narrowing our niche is one of the secrets to how we can become number one in the world at something. As we narrow it down, there are fewer people that are experts in something so specific, so we become the expert of a niche within a niche within a niche. When we do this, we can become one of the best people that our clients could possibly hire to do that and we're worth a lot more.

Long-Term vs Short-Term Monetization

Brittany said one of her favorite monetization strategies for email marketing is focusing on long-term and short-term monetization. For long-term monetization, we want to have strategies such as ongoing content going out, ongoing nurturing of our list, funnels that fire a couple of weeks after someone buys, etc. 

But we can also monetize in the short term. We can do flash sales or if someone came through our funnel and didn’t buy the bump or the OTO, we can say, “Hey, how are you liking this product? Here's something that you might have missed in the haste of buying this.” 

These are a couple of easy ways to monetize long-term and short-term. We should always be leveraging our list to the max, not just focusing on one side or the other.

The Best Way to Provide Value

We need to make sure we are nurturing our list. Brittany said, “If all we're doing is . . . hopping in and doing these little sales, we're never going to nurture them. We're going to have a lot more unsubscribes. We're not going to build loyal customers or loyal brand credibility. We're just going to be those people who are hopping in when they need money.”

If we make sure we’re consistently providing value to them and nurturing them, then when we do come back with a short term offer or short term sale, they're much more likely to realize that we're bringing that to them for the best interest because we've been investing in that relationship in the long-term.

“It all comes back to who you're talking to,” Brittany said. “Sometimes we get really over-complicated with how to nurture lists or how to do these things. It all comes back to . . . the person in your list. What can we do for them? When you come from that standpoint, all of the strategies, everything else, makes sense when you come from a place of, what do they need from me?”

We should be thinking about what we can do to improve their circumstances. What questions are running through their mind at night? What things are they coming up against based on current events? What is coming up for them that we can solve or answer? What resources do we have that you can give to them? It can be as simple as what they need and how we can fill that.

Owning Our Database

Brittany sees an increasing need to build our list, own our database of customers, and have a way to directly contact them. There is so much going on with social media, with algorithms, with changes to how we're able to relate to our customers, and with what we're able to stay in our ads. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be on social media, but it is important to be able to have a direct-to-customer line in case something happens with social media that negatively impact our business.

This is an example of the tectonic shift of building a “skyscraper” on “land” we own. In this case, the skyscraper is our business and our customer database, and the land we own is our email list. If we don’t own the land, someone could come in and disrupt things for us. However, if we do own it, we can control what goes on on it.

It is important to sell in a way that we can get their contact information and permission so we can build that relationship through our list. The long-term value of a business comes in the ability to have that list and continually be able to sell new products to that list.

“Until you have a list, you don’t have a business.” - Russell Brunson

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Brittany for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Focusing on the customer’s point of view will better attract them to our email lists.
2. Before we do paid advertising, we should test it organically to make sure it works.
3. We can grow our list through networking and leveraging other people’s audiences.
4. Everyone should have a nurture sequence to introduce customers to us and our brand.
5. Abandoned cart sequences are a great way to save a sale.
6. When choosing our path, we should narrow our niche, so we become an expert in that specific thing and increase our value.
7. We should focus on both long-term and short-term monetization.
8. The best way to provide value is to look at things from our customer’s perspective and ask, “What do they need and how can I give it to them?”
9. It is important to be able to control our connection with our customers and have a direct way to contact them.

Connect with Brittany

If you want to learn more about Brittany or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, or visit her website at BrittanyBayley.com. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What email marketing strategies have worked best for you? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/?p=8787 

Dave Woodward is the CEO of ClickFunnels, the premier sales funnel software that generates more than $100 million per year, and has been used to create more than 1,000 million-dollar funnels (This page contains affiliate links and we may earn a commission if you click on the links and buy). 

In the last episode with Dave Woodward, we discussed the benefits of using sales funnels to monetize a business. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can create a value ladder for our business to guide our customers on the buyer’s journey. 

The Value Ladder

Part of creating a sales funnel is creating our value ladder. A value ladder is a lineup of value we offer to our customers at each step of their customer journey so they move from a visitor to a repeat, loyal customer. At each step, the value and cost increase. For example, the bottom of our value ladder may be a free newsletter or downloadable workbook while the top of our value ladder maybe a subscription to our software. 

• Determine What Value We Want to Offer

The first thing we need to do is figure out what our offers are going to be. What are the steps of our value ladder? “I always look at trying to create the offer before you create the funnel, and then from that determine what type of funnel you're going to create,” Dave said. 

There are many different ways to provide value to our customers, and we certainly don’t need to provide them all. The best way to determine what value to provide is by first determining our core offer. What are we trying to get our customers to buy? A product? A software? Tickets to an event? The best offers aren’t usually just one product, but instead are a bundle of products and services that are related and make our offer very valuable and unique. Whatever the case, once we have our main offer, we can work backward from there. What will lead our customers to buy our product or service?

Here are many different ways we can provide value to our customers in our value ladder. And, the concept of a value ladder is that we pay to acquire a customer once, and then we nurture that relationship and help them progress up the value ladder to buy more and higher value offers from us. Here are a few examples of different types of products and services we could provide on our value ladder to our ideal customers:

• Books/eBooks
• Workbooks
• Webinars
• Events
• Courses
• Challenges
• Free trials 
• SaaS products
• Coaching
• Podcasts
• Reviews
• Products
• Newsletters
• Blog content
• Videos
• Pictures
• Inspiring quotes
• Social media posts
• Speeches/talks
• Seminars 
• Memberships
• Programs
  
• Communities

At ClickFunnels, their value ladder includes books, software, virtual summits, live events, challenges, coaching sessions, a membership site, virtual summits, webinars, and more. I’ve purchased all of those products and services from ClickFunnels. Within those steps are additional steps. For example, they offer different coaching bundles for different prices. One of the programs they offer is a five-day challenge where they teach their customers how to generate leads. 

They look at their audience and create many front-end offers to attract them to their business. After ClickFunnels customers receive the initial value, ClickFunnels tells them how they can get access to their software. ClickFunnels offers a free trial and additional access to a bunch of great content and training to help their customers make and be excited about a purchase decision. 

While creating a value ladder can seem overwhelming as there are so many different ways to provide value for our audience, there are tools to help us create our own value ladder. ClickFunnels is a software that lets people design and creates sales funnels, landing pages, order forms, and membership sites to help businesses with their sales funnels and customer journey so we don’t have to do it on our own. By signing up today, you can get two months free at ClickFunnels.com.  

• Design Our Offers

Once we’ve mapped out our value ladders, we can start designing and developing our offers. If we want to use a book to attract our customers, we need to write it. If we want our customers to subscribe to weekly newsletters, we need to design them. On top of that, we also have to determine how we will present our offers to our audience. 

We can design our value offers as one-time offers (OTOs) or give them away for free in exchange for an email address. Dave explained that he sees a conversion rate of about 10% to 20% with his one-time offers. On top of OTOs, we can also consider recurring revenue models. Instead of making a single purchase, customers can subscribe to a software, membership site, coaching, or other product or service for which we charge a monthly fee. 

Dave sees 85% of his revenue coming from monthly recurring revenue plans. No matter what business we are in, we want recurring revenue whenever possible. Recurring revenue provides value every month to our customers and provides income and stability for us each month. 

However, no matter if we are using an OTO, a recurring revenue plan, or giving away value for free, we have to work just as hard to sell it. “No matter if you're exchanging [value for an] email, you have to sell things that are free just as hard as you have to sell something that has a price tag to it,” Dave said. “I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make is thinking that because it's free, [they can] just give it away and people are going to want it. It doesn't work that way. The whole idea behind building a list is to create an offer that has value.”

Choosing between an OTO or a subscription model is just the beginning. Once we determine our price model, we can look at different ways of offering our products or services. 

“Order form bumps are one of the [best] kinds of secrets we see,” Dave said. “Usually you'll find a successful order form bump is typically in the neighborhood of anywhere from 20% to 30% of people clicking on that. For us, I know that's probably one of the fastest ways of recapturing some of our ad spendings, and then breaking even.”

An order form bump is an offer of something that is related to a previous purchase of a custom-made. For example, when a customer goes to checkout, we may include links to other related products or services they can buy along with what they have in their cart. Or, in the order confirmation email, we can include additional links to similar products our customers may like. 

Where we position our offers on our website, our newsletters, or landing pages matters. We also can implement different strategies to encourage our customers to take our offers. 

Here are a few strategies we can consider: 

1. Bundles
2. Membership programs
   1. Buy one, get one free
   2. 15% off if they subscribe 
   3. 10% off for recommendations
   4. Seasonal discounts
3. Discounts
4. Subscriptions 
5. Free shipping
6. Free samples 

As we design our offers we should always keep our audience in mind. What discounts will they appreciate the most? What areas on our website get the most traffic? By designing our offers to meet the needs of our customers, we will see a much higher return on our advertising investment.

• Look at Metrics and Test

Once we have our value ladder completed, one of the best things we can do to ensure its success is to look at metrics and data. “The most important thing is to really understand metrics and do some testing,” Dave said. 

One key metric we want to pay attention to is our opt-in rates. What is our opt-in percentage? We should look at the metrics of our funnel to determine if our marketing strategies are effective. One of our main goals should be to get a customer to “opt-in” by giving us their name and email address. Even before a customer makes a purchase, we want to get their contact information so we don’t lose that lead. If we find that visitors on our website often leave without opting into our newsletter or program, we know we need to make a change. 

The next step is to get our leads into the check-out so we can get their address and credit card information. This is where we start to see conversion rates. Dave said, “I don’t think you have a real business until you can start driving paid traffic.” In order to get paid traffic, it may take a few months or even years of trial and error.

The first thing Dave does with a funnel is trying to break even on his customer acquisition costs. If he can make enough money in the first purchase a customer makes to cover his marketing or advertising costs, he essentially gets customers for free. 

After looking at opt-in and conversion rates, we want to take a look at the metrics of our steps inside the actual funnel. Are customers accepting our offers? Are customers following the journey we mapped out with our funnels? If they aren't, what can we change? If they are, how can we do better? 

Dave explained that the biggest mistake people make is giving up too early. He finds that entrepreneurs often try one funnel, find that it doesn’t work, and then give up. No one can expect to create a perfect funnel on the first attempt. This is why testing and tweaking are so important. We need to look at the metrics to find ways we can improve our sales funnels to increase customer opt-in rates. 

“There [have been] so many times where we've created funnels that just didn't work,” Dave said. “The numbers weren't where we needed to be. And so for us, it's [about] going back and testing and re-tweaking and changing and doing whatever we can to get to where we need to be. Sometimes it's a pricing thing and sometimes it's a different offer.”

Dave created ClickFunnels to help entrepreneurs manage their sales funnels. ClickFunnels provides the opportunity of seeing the entire customer journey. As a person comes into our funnel, we want to see where they fall out. ClickFunnels is a great tool that allows us to do a lot of testing and make changes to the order form to find what works and what doesn't. As we use metrics and data, our sales funnels will become much more successful. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1.  A value ladder is a lineup of values we offer to our customers at each step of their customer journey. At each step, the value and cost increase. 
2. The best way to determine what value to provide is by first determining our core offer. Once we have our main offer, we can work backward from there.
3. There are many different ways to provide value to our customers such as books, courses, software, membership sites, and events. 
4. We can choose to sell our offers as OTOs, subscriptions, or give value for free in exchange for customer information. 
5. We have to work just as hard to sell things that are free as we do to sell something with a price tag on it. 
6. We can implement different strategies to encourage our customers to take our offers such as using discounts, order form bumps, and promotions. 
7. Once we have our value ladder completed, one of the best things we can do to ensure its success is to look at metrics and data. We need to look at the metrics to find ways we can improve our sales funnels conversion rates, increase customer opt-in rates, and optimize our customer lifetime value.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about Dave or connect with him you can: 

• Connect with him on LinkedIn
• Visit his company’s website at ClickFunnels.com, or go to SecretsTrilogy.com. 
• Join ClickFunnels today to get two months free. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What value do you offer to your customers in your value ladder? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-create-a-value-ladder-within-our-sales-funnels/ 

Dave Woodward is the CEO of ClickFunnels, a premier sales funnels platform that generates more than $100 million per year (This page contains affiliate links and we may earn a commission if you click on the links and buy). In addition to his CEO duties, Dave is the energetic host of the wildly popular podcast, Funnel Hacker Radio.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the benefits of a sales funnel, and how we can leverage them to increase our conversion rates and monetization.

ClickFunnels

During Dave’s entrepreneurial journey, he experienced frequent ups and downs. He started at an employee benefits company right out of college, took the company from Texas to California, and then sold it. Afterward, he started a few other businesses where he fell flat on his face a few times. He started a marketing agency business, which grew well in the mortgage and real estate industries, but he eventually lost it in the crash in 2008 which led him to finally realize his passion for online businesses.

Dave and his partner, Russell Brusson, started ClickFunnels because they had a need for the services themselves. There was nothing more frustrating than not being able to get their sites up and running, so they wanted to create software that would allow them to do it themselves. After about six months of design and development, they launched the software, which became incredibly successful, having processed over $11 billion (Source: ClickFunnels).  

ClickFunnels is the platform we use at Monetization Nation, my Adoption.com business, and with many of my consulting clients. It is software that lets people design and creates sales funnels, landing pages, order forms, and membership sites to help businesses with their sales funnels and customer journeys. 

Over 110,000 entrepreneurs actively use ClickFunnels to get their products and messages out to the world while converting visitors to leads and leads to customers (Source: ClickFunnels). 

ClickFunnels has helped my business grow and made my job easier. For a limited time, if you sign up for an annual plan you can get two months for free. You can sign up on ClickFunnels.com to join today. 

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel helps direct a customer to a purchase decision. It often starts with building awareness, providing value, and eventually leads to customer loyalty. 

“If you've got anything to sell online or a lead you're trying to generate online, that's what ClickFunnels is for,” Dave said. “A sales funnel takes you through a customer journey, solving one problem after another with a product or service that you provide.” 

One of the biggest challenges Dave finds digital businesses run into is cart abandonment. A visitor will land on our website, see a hundred different product options, and start adding products to their cart. When the visitor gets to the checkout and sees the price, instead of making a purchase, they leave their cart. 

Dave said, “The whole idea behind a sales funnel is you solve one problem at a time.” Once one problem is solved, we can offer something else to solve additional problems. This will help prevent cart abandonment as customers don’t get overwhelmed by all the different options at once. Instead, they can effectively solve one problem at a time, making one purchase at a time so they don’t have to make such a large spending decision right at the beginning. Once we build their loyalty by providing free to low-cost value, we can eventually lead them to our higher-cost products. 

Dave explains we can start by offering one-time offers (OTOs) such as books or events. For example, Russell, Dave’s business partner, has written three different books on the sales funnel. They offer this OTO product and then use an order form bump, an offer for a related product, to earn additional revenue. `

“An order form bump is very similar to if you were walking through checkout in a grocery store, and you pass by all the candy and all the magazines and everything else. It's the impulse buy. That's the idea behind an order form bump,” Dave said. 

A sales funnel helps create a step-by-step process for the customer. Instead of having to know everything all at once, we start them with our free value, lead them to our OTOs and order form bumps, and then eventually to our main product or service. 

Benefits of the Sales Funnel

As we build effective sales funnels, our business will see multiple benefits. 

Dealing with a Customer’s Low Attention Span

The biggest problem a sales funnel solves is the attention deficit of consumers. People can get too distracted on a website, but a sales funnel aims targeted messages to our customers, solving one problem at a time. Consumers have very short attention spans, and if they can’t get an answer to what they’re looking for right away, they will move on. 

“What happens is that people go to a website and they just get distracted too fast,” Dave said. “There's a ton of different things, like products, [and they have] no idea where to go. The whole idea behind the sales funnel is to get very targeted ads to drag people to it and then most importantly, once they're there, to solve exactly what they're trying to do.”

Establishing Relationships 

Relationships are key. The better the relationship, the longer the customer continues to buy and if we can create a successful sales funnel, we can monitor our customers in each stage of their journey to find better ways to strengthen our relationships with them. 

The first exchange with a customer is critical. When they make that first purchase decision, we need to follow up and build that relationship so they will continue to buy from us. “There's a huge difference between a lead list and a customer list,” Dave said. “I will take a customer list any day over a lead list. Because they've already exchanged that relationship, there's monetization. There's an investment in that relationship. And because of that, they're willing to go ahead and take a look at your next offer.”

We can follow up through email, text, Facebook Messenger, desktop notifications, or a voicemail broadcast. The goal with our sales funnel is to help our customers ascend our value ladder. The follow-up sequence helps us continually nurture our customer relationships to help them climb the value ladder. 

“The whole idea behind that follow-up sequence is to reach out to [customers] on a frequent basis. Continue to nurture that relationship,” Dave said. “I think the real big thing we look at is this online community right now and the relationship is the most important part. People are very quick [to] bounce from one offer to another, and the key really comes down to how deep that relationship is. The better that relationship is, the more they may continue to buy products and services.” 

Optimizing Conversion to Monetize

Sales funnels are a great way to optimize customer conversion to monetize.

A company I follow had a 0.15% conversion rate on their site. Most visitors that came to their site never bought anything, so they implemented an effective conversion funnel, and they increased their conversion rate to about 3%. If we can go from 0.15% to 3%, we’ve converted thousands of dollars more just by optimizing the conversion of the people that are already paying to get to our website. 

In ClickFunnels, more than a thousand people have generated more than $1 million in their sales funnels because they have been able to increase customer conversion.

Dave gave the example of a designer. A graphic designer had three kids and realized she needed to be a full-time caretaker. She started looking for a way to be artistic during her free time and found a way to design sugar cookies with an airbrush. While it started as a hobby, friends and family began noticing her designs and started purchasing her cookies. Her kitchen became overcome with her orders, so she decided to create a business to teach people how to airbrush the cookies themselves. She used ClickFunnels to create a sales funnel and ended up having a revenue of over $1 million in just nine months. 

Covering Customer Acquisition Costs 

A sales funnel is a great tool to use to find ways to cover customer acquisition costs. Any time we are trying to build a business we need to look at the cost to acquire customers. 

If we can create a breakeven funnel where the cost to acquire a customer is the same as the average cart value or the amount of money we bring in, then we’re getting free customers. The question is, how do we create a breakeven funnel?

We need to carefully watch our customers at each stage of the buyer’s journey in our sales funnel. With that data, we can look at how much money customers are willing to spend on their first purchase. If we can effectively use free value to direct our leads to make a purchase that covers the cost of our marketing or acquisition costs, we have a money machine. If we can put $1 in and get $3 out, we have created an endless marketing budget. We can also use an order bump form to increase the revenue as well. 

“Most software companies will spend anywhere from $100 to $160 [to acquire one] customer,” Dave said. “We have to find a way of acquiring those customers for free. . . . One of the things we've seen is that for every dollar that comes in the front end if they're successful in their follow-up funnels and all their follow up sequences, we typically see anywhere from $15 to $17 on the back end.” 

If we create a successful sales funnel that offers value at each step of the buyer's journey and successfully use follow-ups, our sales funnel can make our businesses extremely profitable. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Dave for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. A sales funnel takes us through a customer’s journey, solving one problem after another with a product or service that we provide.
2. The biggest problem a sales funnel solves is the attention deficit of consumers. People can get too distracted on a website, but a sales funnel aims targeted messages to our customers, solving one problem at a time, so they don’t feel overwhelmed. 
3. The follow-up sequence in our sales funnel helps us continually nurture our customer relationships to help them climb the value ladder. 
4. Sales funnels are a great way to optimize customer conversion to monetize.
5. If we can effectively use free value to direct our leads to make a purchase that covers the cost of our marketing or customer acquisition costs, we have a money machine.

Connect with Dave

If you want to learn more about Dave or connect with him you can: 

• Connect with him on LinkedIn
• Visit his company’s website at ClickFunnels.com, or go to SecretsTrilogy.com. 
• Join ClickFunnels today to get two months free. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

Do you have a sales funnel? What benefits have you seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-use-sales-funnels-to-monetize-your-business/