STP 73 | Replacing Traditional Marketing Funnels for Mission Driven Helpers
===
[00:00:12] Speaker 4: Hello, and welcome to the Scaling Therapy Practice Podcast. This is your host, James Marland. This is the show where we empower mission driven helpers to launch life changing online courses. This week, we're going to be talking about funnels. What are they and should you use them in your online course, marketing and business?
[00:00:31] Speaker 4: But first, I wanted to talk about the name of Scaling Therapy Practice. Originally, this podcast was with myself and a co host, David, uh, David Hall from PsychMaven, who is great, and he came from running a group practice, and I came from running the back end with virtual assistants for mental health clients, and it was a great show.
[00:00:55] Speaker 4: We produced some awesome content. But along the way, David, uh, left the show and I've been still running the concept of the scaling therapy practice. However, my skills lie more in online digital content, um, blog creation, course creation, uh, marketing tools, automation, those types of things, which could still help therapists.
[00:01:22] Speaker 4: And I still believe there's a lot of helpers in the therapy field who could benefit from the show, but it wasn't quite. The emphasis that I personally could deliver. So instead of Directing the show and finding another therapy co host. I am transitioning to fulfilling the tagline, launching life changing or empowering mission driven helpers to launch life changing online content.
[00:01:51] Speaker 4: It still fits therapists. It still fits the psychologists and therapists that want to help their clients outside of the therapy office, maybe on a, A one to many type of model instead of a one to one model. But it also expands the show to coaches, faith workers, social workers, people in the social sector who have a mission to share, a vision to share.
[00:02:17] Speaker 4: And, but they just don't know how to put it into an online format, an online course, or some online content quickly, easily, cheaply. That's what I can help people with. So I'm going to be changing the name of the show. I haven't quite settled on a name yet to be more descriptive of what I'm trying to do, but it's probably going to be something like mission in motion or launching your mission or something like that.
[00:02:46] Speaker 4: Just, just to put the, um, the emphasis on the mission going somewhere rather than You are just, uh, dreaming about your mission. You're actually launching your mission. You're taking steps to help those people. That's still what I'm doing. I'm still helping people create their courses, but the podcast is going to be more in line with putting that out into the world and launching your mission.
[00:03:17] Speaker 4: So today we're going to talk about marketing funnels. What is it a marketing funnel? Do you need one for your online course business? What are some of the benefits and what are some of the dangers of relying solely on marketing funnel? A marketing funnel is a model that represents the journey a potential customer takes from first beginning, becoming aware of a product, and then all the way through the journey of buying the product.
[00:03:46] Speaker 4: Uh, it's visualize it as a, it's called a funnel, but you could visualize it as a pyramid where at the top, there's a lot of people that come in and that's the widest part. And then they come as they filter through the journey. Uh, to buying, there's fewer and fewer people until you reach the people that are at the bottom of the funnel that are buying your product.
[00:04:12] Speaker 4: The purpose of the funnel is to guide people or to guide you and the marketer through, uh, the buying process.
[00:04:21] Speaker 4: Understanding the buying process in the funnel helps you understand how you can help your customers and your clients go from not knowing about your product to knowing about the product to believing in your product to purchasing and buying your service product or online course.
[00:04:43] Speaker 4: Funnels are fairly useful because it helps you strategize your resources. How do you get people to become aware of your product? How do you get people to know and like your product? And how you get them to buy your product is different at every stage of the funnel process. are very useful for identifying and streamlining your actions. I, uh, for example, if you don't have people who know about your product, then the bottleneck is getting your message out there. If you don't have people buying your product, then maybe the bottleneck is understanding what they need and understanding the problem.
[00:05:25] Speaker 4: If you don't have people giving you testimonials about your product and go, getting further and buying more of your product, then you have an issue there. Understanding the buying process and the funnel or the how people are filtered through your business and your marketing system is important for you to align your behaviors and, and help people get the benefit from your product.
[00:05:54] Speaker 5: Often funnels get a bad rap. Why do they get a bad rap? Why do funnels, uh, are they're looked on as, uh, manipulation, uh, and a bad part of marketing? Well, that's because they can be manipulative. That's because they don't respect the client's timeline. They know, or marketers know that people buy more often in the first.
[00:06:24] Speaker 5: 30 to 90 days than at any other point in the marketing lifetime. So if they don't catch you, if they don't grab you, if they don't get you to buy. in a quick amount of time, then they move on and they're going to do everything in their power. The traditional funnel is going to do everything in its power to get you to buy their product, whether you need it or not in the first 90 days.
[00:06:51] Speaker 5: And so traditional marketing often gets a bad rap.
[00:06:57] Speaker 5: This happens because they value the transaction over the relationship and people feel manipulated. If they're, they're not the right person for the product, then there's buyer's remorse. And this isn't good for Course creators, because people who are manipulated into buying a product, then they don't get it often feel disillusioned.
[00:07:19] Speaker 5: They return the product, they ask for their money back, or there's a whole host of other complicated, administrative details that you have to do to convince them that this is the right product for them. If they were the right person in the first place, if the marketer respected their timeline, then you wouldn't have those issues in the first place.
[00:07:38] Speaker 5: So what is better than the traditional marketing funnel? It's a relationship, a relationship with the person that respects their timeline and allows them to decide for themselves if this is the right product for me, instead of pushing people to make a hurried, buying decision. You, you go from, they know about my product to they will eventually buy in the future and you respect the time in between.
[00:08:11] Speaker 5: The relationship model and respecting their timeline is much better for helpers, coaches, faith, faith leaders, uh, and other people who are in the helping business. We, we know that the best person to make decisions for the individual is the person themselves. And if I can convince them to do something, then somebody else can convince them.
[00:08:38] Speaker 5: A different way, or if I can convince them and use emotion for them to buy into something when the emotions gone, so is the motivation. So we are looking for motivated people to buy, use and consume our product so that they can get the most value from it. And that just feels good. I mean, that feels, if you're a mission based leader, if you are a helper, you want to give them the value. you want them to get the value. You don't just want the money from the transaction. You want the transformation. And so a marketing system based on relationship or based on mutually beneficial, uh, relationship fits much better than the, than the marketing funnel, sell them as quick as you can.
[00:09:33] Speaker 5: Manipulation that you see from many people, if you've done any research about your product. online, you, the ads show up, you know, sell, get my hundred million dollar idea in this 5 PDF. They don't necessarily care. They don't necessarily care if you get the transformation. They just want the transaction.
[00:09:58] Speaker 5: They want you to buy their product. So for the mission driven helper, the person who is on a mission to improve the lives of other people, relationship marketing or building the relationship is the way to go. Relationships, uh, are more authentic to you. They're more authentic to the helper. They lead to loyalty. They lead to long term transformation and value in relationships.
[00:10:30] Speaker 5: And you are not competing against everybody in the universe for the client's attention. You are only competing for the specific people who you can help the best, the quickest, and the most with your service or product.
[00:10:47] Speaker 5: an example of my journey with Atlas. That's Joey Regona's course on creating cohort programs. And how he used relationship to move me through the different levels. Instead of using a funnel, Joey would probably say he used love. He used love to move me through. the levels of commitment to him and his product and value.
[00:11:18] Speaker 5: You know, he cared about me and my, my transformation and he walked with me every step of the way. So I'm going to do a quick story about that. I first started creating online courses for people many years ago, but I started doing it as a business about two years ago. And during that time I joined Kajabi.
[00:11:39] Speaker 5: I did some research on The different platforms to use, and I landed on Kajabi because I knew I needed an email marketing system. I knew I needed a podcast, or wanted to do a podcast. I had to put a place for my online courses, I needed a webpage, I needed blogs, and they had a community group. And it had all these things for one reasonably, reasonable price.
[00:12:02] Speaker 5: So I decided to jump in with Kajabi, and when you jump in with Kajabi, one of the things they do very well, is training. They do lots and lots of training. And one of the trainings was on attracting clients and they called it the dream client workshop or something like that. And I thought to myself, I want dream clients.
[00:12:25] Speaker 5: I want to reach people who will want to have my product. So I joined and that's where I was introduced to Joey and Joey did a course on on a new way of thinking instead of the business. running your life, you could have a business or you could have a life that is, that runs your business instead of the other way around.
[00:12:48] Speaker 5: Because a business that runs your life is very frustrating and can lead to burnout. And coming from different corporate places, I was, I was burnt out. So it was really resonating with me. And then beyond that, it wasn't like, You're going to market to everybody. You're actually going to market to the people that you can help.
[00:13:07] Speaker 5: The people that you would want to go on vacation with the people that excite you and energize you. And I was like eating this up. I'm like, yes, yes, this is what I want. I want to help my friends. You know, I want to give them support and get them over the next hump and help them launch their courses. So I said, yeah, I'm going to do that.
[00:13:29] Speaker 5: And then after that, he said, Do you want to come to a workshop? We will workshop your dream client statement. I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I want to, I want to workshop this statement. I want clarity on this. And so then he invited us down, uh, maybe 10 people and we did a workshop with him and workshop our dream client.
[00:13:50] Speaker 5: Then he said, would you like to join this Facebook community group? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, Joey, you're, you're great. I'd love to join the group and get support and accountability. So I joined the group and then I got on the, would you like more emails about how, cool. how I can continually help you. And I'm like, well, you give me a webinar, you give me a workshop, you give me a community.
[00:14:12] Speaker 5: I like what you're saying. Sure. Put me, sign me up, sign me up for your emails. So he kept continuing to give value and advice. And once a quarter or a couple of times, a couple of times a year, he runs a cohort and he said, would you like to join this cohort? And I said, no.
[00:14:31] Speaker 2: Joey provided choices for me at every stage where I could, where I could further my support and accountability with him, where I could choose to go further. He didn't force me. He didn't manipulate me. He respected my timeline. And when I, I chose to go to the webinar, would you like to go to the workshop?
[00:14:57] Speaker 2: Send me an email. I sent him an email. Would you like to join my community? Send me an email. I'll send you an invite. I sent the email. Would you like to come to my cohort course? No, I'm not ready. Oh, okay. Eight months later. Are you ready now? Yes. At every step of the way, he added value and, and, and, uh, was sort of like the anti funnel person.
[00:15:20] Speaker 2: He, he was the anti funnel. He let me decide on my own that he could provide the solution for me. It's a little bit longer, but I am, the proof is I'm a loyal customer. I speak about him all the time. His service owns a piece of my mind where that's how I think about service delivery and cohort delivery.
[00:15:48] Speaker 2: Uh, and I market for him. Like, I'm talking about him now. He's not paying me. Uh, he gets nothing. I get nothing from this. But. It's such, it's, it's such a ingrained way for me to think about marketing. Now they're respecting the timeline and unfunneling and using value and relationships and love to lead people to take the choices that I can help them the most instead of pressure and deadlines and um, time limits and those types of marketing tactics I'm using.
[00:16:28] Speaker 2: I'm using relationships. To communicate their value and when people decide for themselves that you are the solution, nobody can convince them otherwise.
[00:16:42] Speaker 2: so to break this down there, there is a sort of funnel that I went through and I describe it this way. At first I was an information seeker. I just, there was an idea or a small problem. I went to a webinar to find out information on that problem. I was willing to pay the giant fee of 0 to get this information.
[00:17:06] Speaker 2: And when I got there, Joey delivered on his promise and I started to know, like, and trust him a little more. I was an information seeker. So There are people out there who are looking for what you offer. They're looking for information. They're not necessarily looking to get your solution, but they are looking for a way to solve a problem.
[00:17:30] Speaker 2: If you can deliver on that, if you can deliver on that entry level to the funnel, then you can continue to build a relationship with them
[00:17:41] Speaker 2: as you build a relationship with them, they decide to move to the next level with you, which is the qualified level. Qualified just means they're done getting free information. They want your feedback. solution and they'll pay for the steps that you take and some videos that you do for that information.
[00:18:04] Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily give them a live person. It doesn't necessarily give them a coach or a mentor, but it gives them some structure, some support, some accountability that you can provide for them, that they can get the results that you are promising. And they're willing to invest a little bit of money.
[00:18:24] Speaker 2: And a little bit of time to get those results. People pay anywhere from 50 to 500 for this committed range.
[00:18:34] Speaker 2: And finally, there's the committed people. They, they've gone beyond qualified and they're actually willing to pay Whatever, whatever the cost, you've identified the problem, they know, like and trust you and they're willing to pay 500 to 5, 000 to even more like the high level, the high value coaches can command 5, 000, 10, 000 or more a meeting because the people they are committed to the results and they're going to pay whatever, whatever the price is to get the results that you can offer.
[00:19:10] Speaker 2: So there's. They're kind of three levels to this, this type of funnel. I put funnel in air quotes, people who just want knowledge, people who are qualified and they fit within your group. And then people who are really ready to commit and then they will pay the price for your premium product.
[00:19:27] Speaker 2: In summary, we've gone over what funnels are. They're they're a way to think about the client's journey. We've discussed how they are useful because they can help you clarify your tasks and what you can do to reach people. We've also covered covered some of the dangers where it takes away some of the relationship and it can lead to people being dissatisfied, not really connecting with you.
[00:19:51] Speaker 2: It also can be a struggle for you to try to reach everyone.
[00:19:55] Speaker 3: There's also the danger of not being able to niche down far enough in your funnel, because you are trying to reach everyone with your message.
[00:20:05] Speaker 3: For mission driven people, mission driven marketers, or people who are trying to launch life changing courses, who see themselves in the helper realm, who see themselves as benefiting society while earning an income, then the relationship model is what is going to work best for you. You value their timeline.
[00:20:25] Speaker 3: You don't have to convince them that you are the right service or product. And then you become part of their mind space. You own part of their mind, just like Joey and his Atlas program owns part of my mind and how I think of marketing and developing relationships with my ideal clients.
[00:20:46] Speaker 3: Remember, you don't need complicated funnels to make great change in the life of your clients. You just need to respect their timeline and demonstrate value over time so that they choose to embrace your product and become committed to what you have to offer.
[00:21:04] Speaker 3: This is James Marland for right now, the Scaling Therapy Practice, and I want you to remind you to put your mission in motion.
[00:21:19] Speaker 3: Thanks again for listening to the Scaling Therapy Practice. Remember the opinions shared are that of the host and guests and everybody's situation's different. So if you need professional advice for your business, I recommend that you seek out a professional in that area.
[00:21:39] Speaker 3: Please remember to like and share the show. If you have somebody who is struggling with marketing and funnels, please share the show with them and all the other resources, course creation studio dot com.
[00:21:53] Speaker 3: Scaling therapy practice is a proud part of the SciCraft Network.
