Gemma 0:23
Hello, all you wonderful ladies out there, welcome to this Friday afternoon’s Work Wife Wine Time podcast! And, of course, the most important thing: happy bevvy o’clock.

I hope you’ve had a brilliant week, an amazing working week, an amazing life week. But please, now it’s your time to enjoy. Sit back, relax, put your feet up. And listen to our next episode in our marketing bonus series.

So it’s that time again. And today I’m talking to you all about marketing funnel. And I’m sure you know about this. If not, I’m sure you’ve heard about it. We all know the marketing funnel looks like that, well, it looks like a funnel. Whoa, there you go. That’s one for you! Oh, goodness, I’m cracking myself up. That’s always a fun thing to do. Think about an upside down triangle.

So what’s a marketing funnel? It pretty much describes your customer’s journey with you. Okay, so the journey your client, your customer, your human goes through with you in their way to become someone who works with you. Which means it has stages. So you have your initial stages where someone’s learning about you, learning about who you are, what you stand for, what you do, then it moves into more of the purchasing stage. And then of course, through to conversion and even beyond, when they’re a returning client or customer.

Now, I want to talk to you about something first, which is called AIDA. Okay, so it’s an acronym for a i, d, a. And this is a really good way to think about every purchase and every stage of a funnel, of a marketing funnel. Now, what’s amazing about this, this is a very hot tip. AIDA is also a tried and tested copywriting formula. Now, you heard this here first! So I’m giving away something very extra special today.

So what does AIDA stand for? So, the first ‘A’ of AIDA is awareness. So your client, customer, human is aware of their problems. So something’s happened and they’ve discovered, “I have a problem here! I need a solution to this problem.” So that’s your first awareness stage. Then the ‘I’ moves into their interest. So your human starts to show interest, does some research, looks at different options of services or products that’s going to solve their problem, okay.

Then we move into the ‘D’. So AIDA, awareness, interest, and desire. So here’s where the human starts their evaluation process. So this is when they’re delving into you and you as a solution to their problem, and they’re comparing you with other brands, which then brings us to action.

Okay, so awareness, interest, desire, action, the human then decides whether to purchase. Now, what’s amazing about awareness, interest, desire, action, is you can use it to formulate your copy. So if you’re really stuck on trying to formulate some copy, you’ve got something you need to write and you don’t know where to start, I’m going to break that overwhelm down for you.

Grab out a piece of paper, or your keyboard and computer screen, whatever works for you, and write down awareness, interest, desire, action. And then what you can do from here is create some copy. Now, when it comes to copy, in awareness, what you actually want to do here is different.

In copy, the awareness stage actually translates, or I should say actually changes, to attention. So if you’re using AIDA for copy, write down, attention, interest, desire, action. So what you want to do from there is grab their attention, then gauge their interest, so start to really draw them in by something that’s super interesting, something that’s going to spark their curiosity, then tap into their desires.

So you’ve done your target market research, you understand what it is that your human desires to tap into that desire there, and then boom. Give them the action, give them the call to action. So this, grab their attention, spark their interest with some curiosity, that always works really well. Tap into their desires, “this is what this will do to you.” Give to you, this is the result. “Press here to do the thing, press here to buy the thing.” Attention, interest, desire, action. It’s an amazing copywriting formula.

Now, back to funnel and marketing. I always get a little bit carried away, but that’s okay. So let’s now look at each stage of the funnel. So we broke it down into the awareness stage, right? Awareness, the interest, the design, and the action. So if you’re looking at the upside down triangle, we start with what we call ‘TOFU’. Now not the soy based protein from Japan, which I love mind you, don’t get me wrong, I love tofu, I love me some tofu. But it stands for ‘top of funnel.’ Now the ‘top of funnel’ is the awareness stage. Okay, so this as your business, as you, as everything, this is where you’re creating awareness.

So remember, your human has decided, and they’ve realised, “I have a problem, I can’t solve it, I need some help.” So this is we’re jumping in and creating the awareness of your brand, of your business, of you, of your services, of your products. So that is the top of the funnel. And that’s why it’s the biggest, because you’re actually going to get the most people, the most humans, in your top of the funnel, because not everyone will then move down the funnel, right?

So you’re grabbing all of these humans in here, which then brings us down to the ‘MOFU’. Middle of funnel. So here is where you want to provide these people that have a problem with some solutions and say, “I’m the answer to this.” And then, of course, you’ve got a ‘BOFU’, which is ‘bottom of funnel’. And this again will get smaller, because you’ll have a whole bunch of humans that will come into your middle and then may then not go down to complete conversion into what’s usually your highest sales item.

So here in the bottom of the funnel, what you want to do is drive your conversions, so you’re really pushing into highest ticket items, and you’re driving the conversions there. So this is why it gets smaller, because not everyone is going to go down to the bottom of your upside down triangle.

So if I return back to the TOFU, to the top of your funnel. So what do you do in the top of your funnel, to your most amount of humans that are looking into you, into your products and your services and your businesses because they think that you and all your other competitors may have the solution to their problem? Which means what you need to do in your top of funnel marketing is create this awareness. So this is usually when we’re looking into all of your cost effective free marketing, like your social medias and blogs and things like that. So you’re creating awareness of you, your brand, your business, your products and your services. And then what you want to do with all of these humans that are sitting in the top of the funnel, so they’ve found you somehow, and they’re looking into you, you want to make these humans problem aware. So you want to acknowledge their problems. How do you do this? You’ll know their problems through your market research. So you’re making them problem aware, and then you’re making these humans solution aware. So this is your problem, I can solve it for you.

Now, the number one thing, really important, I want to say to you here is as much as you can when you’re in the top of funnel and you’re bringing out this awareness of your brand, along with being problem aware and offering solutions. What you want to do here is to be entertaining, we don’t be too serious, you want to entertain these people to engage them and really gauge them into you and what you offer. And then you want to educate them. So they know they have a problem, so you want to give them some education, teach them about this problem. And from there, you want to inspire them.

So your marketing strategy here is to move them from that top of funnel down to the middle. So you really want to make sure it’s engaging, it’s entertaining, it’s super educating, they’re learning, and you’re inspiring them.

So what types of marketing and content marketing should you put out here? We’re talking of blog posts, social media, learning infographics, you can have some FAQ’s that they might Google and find on your website, blogs, vlogs, all sorts of things like that, that’s going to entertain, educate, teach, and inspire. So then once we’ve done that, and if you’ve managed, if you’ve done this great job of inspiring and they’re following you, and they’re starting to engage with you, what you want to do is grab these humans, and move them into the middle of your funnel. So you want to convert, now this isn’t your final sales, what you want to do is convert these top of funnel humans into your middle funnel. So that’s changing these humans from potential prospects into leads.

And now this is where your lead magnets come into play. So for example, what can these include here? If you’re turning them in the middle of the funnel into leads, what you want is their email address. So you want to exchange some of your information for their information. So then you’re creating them into a lead and pushing them into that middle funnel. So they’re not a distant human, where you don’t have any access to be able to speak to them, or email them, you’re turning into a lead human.

So what types of lead magnets can you give in exchange for an email? Of course, there’s all the educational resources. So you’ve put all the inspiring info and the problem, awareness and solution awareness out there and you’re top of funnel. So in order to get that bit of information off them to move them into a lead, you want to give them something more but for free. So when your educational lead magnets, what we usually call a digital download, can be a PDF, it can be even a checklist, it can be a quizz, a survey, things like that, where they’re going to learn, or you can even do a free consultation. So a free 15 minute consultation, they’re going to book in with you if they leave their name and email address. So then you’ve already had that little bit of contact with them as a human. So they’re moving into the funnel, they’re now a lead, you’ve had that first point of contact. And then of course, if you want to go even further, these can even be an online event or a webinar, which is just brilliant, because you’re super engaging with them, rather than just downloading a PDF or something like that, a digital product, as a webinar, you’re sitting in front of them, and they’re really seeing you one on one. You can even do Q&A’s or anything like that to really start to engage them in your middle of your funnel.

So then what happens, we go down even thinner to the top of that upside down triangle into a bottom of funnel. Our BOFU, that’s quite a fun way to say actually, BOFU. So of course, in this bottom of funnel, what you need to do here is to really educate your human lead from middle of funnel in order to get them from middle into bottom. You really need to help them make an informed purchase decision. Why should they buy from you? What are you going to give them? What are you going to do for them? For the money they pay you, what results are they getting? To move them into your bottom funnel.

So for example, what looks fabulous in here? Testimonials, this is what testimonials are so important. So they might have heard so much from you, they’ve seen all your awareness stuff and your top of your funnel. And then they’ve either seen you in a webinar and heard all of your fabulous, amazing knowledge and information or they’ve downloaded your digital PDF, and they’ve learned all that information there.

What they now want to do is hear from other humans. So they’ve heard everything from you like, “Oh, yep, yep, this is great. Love this business, love this person, love what they’re about, love what they can offer me. What do other humans say about working with them?” And this is why testimonials here are really important to get them into that bottom of funnel to really convert them and make that sale. Other really helpful parts here of your bottom of funnel, you can look at demonstrations, free trials of a product, customer stories, again, another webinar event, mini classes, mini courses, there’s so many things you can put in here to get them to make an actual purchase from you. And again, this can either be your higher priced item or service or product or a lower one. But you are getting them in in that bottom of your funnel, as a paying customer/client/human.

And that, ultimately, is how a funnel works. So you may hear the word and you may see the upside down triangle everywhere and think, “oh, what do I do? This is a lot!” But what I wanted to do for you today, in a shorter podcast is break it down, give you some examples of what you need to do in each stage of how you’re following your human into working with you. So what you’re doing is once you create that awareness, you’re giving them something, and then you’re giving them something again, and converting them into a paid customer.

And this, the marketing funnel, this has worked and been used for years and years and years, it may be different how we do it now, being digital and online. But a funnel really is the way to get someone in, to get that human you want to work with in to working with your business.

And that is all from me today. I want to keep that fairly simple, but really break down and explain to you what a marketing funnel is and I gave you that super exciting copywriting tip of what you can use there. So the AIDA: attention, interest, desire, action. So next time you need to write a bit of copy, write that down, and work through that and pop that in there. And how we then move through using AIDA in your top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom of funnel.

And that’s that’s all for me today. I hope that was helpful. Of course, you know where to find me and where to find all of us if you have any questions, anything we can help you with. Because remember, collaboration is power, collaboration over competition. This is why we’re here at Work Wife Wine Time, this is why we want to help you grow your business. And remember, we’re there for you. We’re all in this together because we all get it.