BY ERIC VALENTINE
Admit it. You’re on Facebook more than you admit. It’s OK. It’s actually a business tool, you know. Facebook is not just for food pictures, vacation brags and political rants anymore.
You’re probably starting to notice the pattern. It goes like this:
1. You see a sponsored ad that speaks to something you’ve been thinking about, researching, shopping for.
2. The ad promises a free tip on that thing you’ve been thinking about, researching, shopping for.
3. So, you click it.
4. You then get taken to a video of someone “not selling” you anything; just from the kindness of their heart they are giving you free information within the confines of a brief four-minute video.
5. But of course their information is so effective and so incredible, they can’t possibly share all of the important stuff in a quick four-minute video. So they tell you where to go to purchase the deep-dive version.
6. Do you buy it?
Number six is up to you, but numbers 1 through 5 are what’s called a sales funnel. The term is not foreign to traditional advertising, but with the advent of social media and the relatively low cost of advertising there, we’re getting inundated with it. And, as stale and annoying as some of those ads may be, they work. They also have—as one might imagine—a slightly different, hipper? moniker: click funnels. Thanks computer mouses.
Whether you want to start a business by prospecting buyers via social media or you already have a business and you’re looking for an alternative, cost-effective advertising tool, click funnels are worth understanding.
Demographics
The first thing to understand about click funnels is that the content is typically a “proven expert” or “firsthand user” promising—err, offering—a solution. No surprise there. What is a surprise is how that solution happened to be something you’ve been looking for. As you should know by now, your Amazon searches, the pages you like on Facebook, and the cards you fill out to win that new truck they somehow drove and parked in the inside of a mall, “track” you. Sometimes it can feel creepy—the other day I was writing about Vancouver and now my Google Chromecast screensaver shows Granville Public Island once a day. But it’s basic demographics. If I’m a white male, 50s (but I feel 29), seeking affordable hotels in Canada, Airbnb is going to start sending me offers.
If you are spending one penny on social media advertising, make sure you understand the power of using demographics to pinpoint your audience and generate qualified leads. From there, make sure the content is presented in a way that catches the attention of that demographic.
Scalability
Yes, social media advertising is significantly cheaper than traditional advertising and significantly easier to find your niche audience. But for the businesses or entrepreneurs who use click funnelling successfully, they did not find success through click funnels alone.
They actually put a lot of work into their real-world, real-time business. They developed a reputation as an expert—not just by blogging but by delivering on real projects for real clients. They held seminars for free just to get their name out there. Then they charged for those seminars once they were in demand. They spent a lot of money on this, and a lot of patience developing it. Then, once they had “proof” of their successes, they took their offer online. And instead of charging 50 people $500, they charged 5 million people $1. Do the math. That’s called scalability.
So, whether you are selling the next best workout regimen or a foolproof marketing tactic, understand that click funnel success is more than just a click of the mouse.
