What you’re about to get is a step-by-step blueprint for online marketing success…
And, it’s just about guaranteed, IF…
And the if is the important part…
You’re going to need to meet certain conditions along the way.
You’re going to need to be willing to pivot or abandon ship along the way (no matter where you are in the process), if you’re getting red flags.
But, if you follow this 3-step process, and you continue to get the right signals all the way through…
You’re pretty much guaranteed to have a profitable sales funnel, in as little as 90 days, or less.
Before we get into the steps, there are two big prerequisites — first, the market…
It’s not even worth getting started unless you have a specific market of BUYERS that you want to go after.
It always starts with the market. A market is a group of people who are ready, willing, and able to spend money, given the right offer.
A market’s viability is best measured with two numbers: size, and willingness to spend.
That is, a GIANT market (say, toilet paper) can be a great place to make money, even if people don’t spend that much.
The only way to get a TINY market to work is if the transaction amounts and willingness to spend are very high (e.g., copywriting for financial newsletter publishers).
Most products fall somewhere in the middle.
There are a few places to research markets, which really goes beyond the scope of this essay. But things like web search data, Facebook audience size based on matching interests and likes, mailing list size, publications specifically targeted to the market, and so on will tell you a lot about the size of the market.
Spend time researching your market before you even start to build any offers for it. You want to understand the market itself, how big it is, who else is selling to it, what else is being sold (on what terms), what promises are being made, the style of marketing, hot buttons being used in marketing, where to get traffic for your offers or reach the market, and so on.
Once your market is known, you need to meet the second prerequisite — the offer…
Now, I am getting a little ahead of myself.
Because steps 1 and 2 of the 3-step process I’m about to share will help you refine your offer and better-target it to your market.
But if you don’t have a clear and compelling offer for your market, you’re not going to go very far.
When considering what that will look like, look to the competition.
What products or services are they offering to the market? What problem are they solving? What need are they filling?
How can you create a product or service that solves that problem and fulfills that need in a unique and compelling way?
Is there something you can add to it? Is there something you can take away? Is there a way to deliver the benefits of top products via a higher-priced service? Is there a way to take a more expensive service, and transform it into a product that’s more scalable?
By aligning your offer with what’s already out there in the marketplace, you have a disproportionately higher chance of succeeding.
Why? Because if there are already a lot of similar offers out there in the marketplace, it’s because there are buyers. One comparable offer does not a market make, but if there are 5 or 10 or 100 comparable offers in a market, that’s actually a good sign that you have the opportunity to tap into a stream of buyers, some of whom will be interested in your offer.
(e.g., The best way to write a best-selling book is to find the section of the bookstore — internet or brick-and-mortar — that has the most best-sellers, and write a book that models all the best properties of all the best-sellers in that category.)
One final note before our 3-step process…
Even once you have identified a market of buyers and a compelling offer that models or builds on others that have been made to the market, there may still be roadblocks that come up.
If you’ve really gotten those two things right, the roadblocks should be very minimal, and passable.
If you’ve deceived yourself into thinking you’ve identified a narrowly-identifiable target market and created a compelling, clear and targeted offer for that market, when really you haven’t, the roadblocks are likely to be large and a sign that failure is imminent.
The best thing that can happen if you get into these steps and find a roadblock, is to determine how much time, effort, and resources you’re going to put into trying to get past that roadblock, and if you can’t find a way around, take a big step back and seriously consider if you need to start again at the beginning, perhaps with a different offer to a different market.
That said…
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If you have a product or service your target market wants… This 3-step method guarantees you’ll have a profitable sales funnel in as little as 90 days, or less!
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STEP 1: Do an Ask-style DDS to the market…
I’ve written extensively about Ryan Levesque’s Ask Method. (I strongly recommend the book, which you get on Amazon via the link.)
It’s a survey-based approach to identifying the core drives and buying motives of a target market.
The book itself is a step-by-step breakdown of Ryan’s survey methodology, including the big WHY behind everything he does.
The Deep Dive Survey, or DDS, is the first survey you run as part of the Ask Method. It’s the 80/20 of Ask — the 20% of the work that determines 80% of your results.
It starts with the Single-Most Important Question, or SMIQ.
You ask, “What’s the single-most important question you have about ____________.” You fill in the blank with the topic you plan to build your offer around.
(There are variations on this question, but they’re all around the biggest question or challenge you have.)
There are other parts of this survey that are important, including a scoring system for ranking the feedback you get as part of the survey. You’re looking for hyper-responders, and Ryan tells you how to identify them.
From the answers, you are able to identify the 3-5 biggest motivators that people will use in making their decision to buy.
If you’re dealing with a market of buyers, and your offer meets these 3-5 biggest motivators (or can be made to meet them), you’re in really good shape.
Here’s one of those red flag moments… If you think you have a market of buyers, but you can’t get enough responses to your survey, or responses are prohibitively expensive when going to paid traffic, you need to rethink things. Maybe you don’t have a market after all. Maybe your traffic source is wrong. Maybe something else.
However, if you’re able to get a good number of useful survey responses at an acceptable cost (varies by market), then you’re in good shape to move on…
STEP 2: Run a Proof-of-Concept…
This is the quick-and-dirty version of your offer and marketing messaging.
What you’re really looking to do here, in direct marketing terms, is to establish a “control.” That is, you’re looking to develop the most basic of offers and marketing messages that are making sales at an acceptable economics.
Don’t plan to make a fortune here. You’re simply proving that you’ve identified a market of buyers, and that you have an offer that will make them spend money.
Use the intelligence you’ve gathered from your DDS. Speak to the biggest motivators your market has told you they are using as buying criteria. They’ve told you what their biggest questions or challenges are — now, you offer to solve them.
Make your offer clear, compelling, and tied to these buying motivators.
Set up a very basic website or funnel — “Movement beats meditation,” to borrow a phrase from Gary Halbert.
Make an offer, take orders, and fulfill on the offer.
Then, using whatever traffic source you were using in running the DDS, send that traffic through to this offer page.
You don’t have to get fancy. You don’t have to include all the bells and whistles.
You just have to make the offer, and send traffic to that offer.
Another red flag moment… This doesn’t have to be profitable. But if you are struggling to make any sales, or if you’re hemorrhaging money just to make a few sales, something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Maybe you misread the DDS results. Maybe your offer is not right. Maybe you need to charge significantly more or less. Again, figure out what you’re willing to put into fixing it. And if you can’t, figure out how many steps back you need to take (including all the way to the beginning) to get back on the right track.
STEP 3: Build out your full funnel…
If you are able to generate consistent sales from your proof-of-concept, it’s mostly smooth sailing from here.
Now, it’s time to build out a more sophisticated funnel, and really start to bring in the profits.
For this, I recommend you continue with Ryan Levesque’s Ask Method, and build out a quiz funnel…
Or, you can use one of any number of different funnel approaches laid out in Russell Brunson’s DotComSecrets book.
At this point, you’re really looking at optimization…
How can I get the most qualified leads at an acceptable cost-per-lead?
What can I do to get leads over the threshold of spending any money with me, as soon as possible?
How can I build on the initial transaction and get first-time customers coming back more often?
How can I turn one-time sales into continuity income?
For the biggest buyers, the hyper-responders, what opportunities can I give them to have their problems and challenges met with big solutions that mean more revenue and profits for me?
Usually this means you want at least a few levels in your product ladder. Entry-level. Big core offer. Back-end, high-profit products and services.
Every step of the way, you optimize. What can I do to serve the customer on every level, and because of this over-the-top service, make as much profit as possible from every customer that comes through the door?
It’s all about removing friction and increasing leverage. In every touch point and every transaction. Across the entire customer lifecycle.
Implementing this…
I promised this was a process that could happen in as little as 90 days, or less. And I stand by it.
Once you’ve committed, doing your survey in 30 days is very doable, if you just do it. Getting that first proof-of-concept into the market within another 30 days should also be very workable. And finally, upgrading your funnel with front- and back-end offers within another 30 days is also doable.
Then, it’s years or even a lifetime of optimization and ever-increasing your results.
If this is something you’re interested in having done for you, I’m in an interesting situation.
I’ve had a client’s “guru” (the public face of my work) retire mid-project, and suddenly am looking at a bit more availability in the coming weeks.
If you’re spending a minimum of $15,000 per month (more is better) on internet traffic and you’d like me to guide you through this step-by-step process, custom to you and your business, let me know.
Shoot me an email at [email protected] and we can schedule a quick getting-to-know-you call — and plan the next steps from there.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
