A trusted member of my network, Simone Douglas from Social Media AOK recently wrote a post about the Click Funnel sales process (not Click Funnels the product.) I kind of agree with what she has to say but I also think it’s not quite that simple.
The Sales Funnel Process is important – a business needs leads, a business needs to qualify a percentage of those leads, a business needs to close a percentage of those qualified leads and then once they are customers you should look at profit maximisation – you can do this ethically only selling people things that they need.
I’m a qualified PR professional. I have studied at a Postgraduate level the fundamentals of marketing. Digital tools can be an important part of the Marketing, PR and Sales process but are most effective if they are used as part of an overarching fundamental strategy.
The typical Digital Sales “click” funnel goes something like this.
Someone puts an ad on Facebook. These ads have “compelling” copy of varying quality that encourages their prospects to click on the ad. This ad goes to a Lead Page, generally a long form sales letter, video or both, that encourages the prospect to hand over their email address. In return they’ll generally be offered attendance at a webinar or some sort of PDF style cheat sheet or report – often referred to as a Lead Magnet.
The webinar is the popular one at the moment. Many of these webinars follow a similar process – the presenter talks about how awesome they are, the presenter gives some useful information, the presenter pitches their product.
If you have a valuable product or service to offer, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. Webinars are a great way to leverage your market – potentially reaching a global scale. But it’s not for everyone. You should only be considering this if it actually fits within your overall marketing strategy.
The problem, as identified by Simone, is that many people think the funnel is the business and are potentially being preyed upon by those wanting to make a quick buck. Hence Simone’s MLM analogy.
The first guy puts up a Facebook Ad that says, “here, let me show you how to make $$. Just sign up to my webinar.” He then proceeds to put you through a webinar that tells you that the best way to make $$ is by using Facebook Ads to get people to sign up to a Webinar and proceeds to sell you his “Webinar Coaching” Process. He’ll even provide you with templates.
The next tier of guys will have some success but less success. The third tier will have less success. By the time you hit tier 4 or 5 everyone’s heard it all before and those trying to follow the process end up losing all credibility.
So, basically, this post is my long-winded way of saying that Facebook Ads and Webinars are tactics that can serve your purpose. They’re both tools I will be using this year. But business is hard work and you have to have a compelling product and service underpinning this process to ensure that you will be able to use these tools effectively. I someone’s trying to sell you a shortcut then it’s perhaps time to walk away.