There’s so much excitement when one is just creating an online course. However, a lot of course creators soon get their bubbles burst when they are done creating their courses but have no sales to show for it even after having tried different methods of marketing.
An essential element in marketing your course is your Sales Funnel also known as Conversion Funnel.
A SALES FUNNEL
A sales finnel is an ecommerce term that describes the different stages in a buyer’s journey leading up to a purchase. A conversion funnel is used for visualizing and understanding the journey a potential customer takes from the first point of contact to a desired action.
First you need to know where your business falls in the problem-solution matrix to know what funnel is right for you. It is important to know who your potential customers are so you can efficiently communicate your solution to them. However, sometinmes, you need to educate your market so they would realise that they have a problem and that you can solve it. Knowing your customer’s demography and geographical location is vital to knowing how to reach them. It is also essential to confirm if you have a strong market i.e. if the solution you is needed by anyone. A strong market is characterised by the following attributes:- The solution is timeless, solves an urgent problem, future-proof and your prospective clients can affor to pay for it.
THE PS STATEMENT
This is the problem-solution statement also known as a brand promise. It shouldn’t be all about selling to make money it should be about solving a problem. For example,
Consider an accountant who introduces himself this way “I am an accountant, please come and patronise me for your accounting problems” and another one who says “I help small business owners position themselves for investment and growth opportunities through bookkeeping”. Which one do you think would first attract customers and especially those who would be willing to pay the value of his services?
THE PROBLEM-SOLUTION MATRIX
A PS Matrix is a model that explains the relationship between the complexity of the problem a business is solving and the cost of the solution being provided.
The figure below illustrates the 4 different problem-solution types that define diefferent business types as well as the cost. It is worthy of note that a good understanding of where a business falls in the PS Matrix determines your ability to know the funnel types that is best for your business.
Problems are classified as either simple or complex while a solution can either be cheap or expensive. A simple problem is such that is encountered by people everyday, is easy to recognise and does nor require high technical expertise to solve. A complex problem is the direct opposite of a simple problem.
- Commodity PS – The remedy PS describes a business that solves a simple problem with a cheap solution for example sales of groceries.
- Luxury PS – This PS is for a business that provides an expensive solution to a simple problem e.g designer’s sun glasses sales.
- Remedy PS – The remedy PS ia associated with complex problems that require cheap solutions for instance, cheap drugs that can be obtained from a pharmacy.
- Speciality – When a business provides an expensive solution to a complex problem then, such falls in the speciality section of the PS matrix. A ver ygood example is Coaching business.
DETERMINING THE RIGHT CONVERSION FUNNEL FOR A COACHING BUSINESS.
We have established the fact that a coaching/training business falls under the speciality business type.
However, the set up of the different stages of a conversion funnel is largely dependent on the following 3 major elements , Automation, Triggers and Education.
AUTOMATION helps customer journey to be seamless while helping you to have freedom as you attend to several people at the same time. Automation means you dont have to answer everyone of your hundreds of prospects directly on whatsapp, IG and facebook Dms, email. The automation can be partial, full or both depending on the problem you are solving.
TRIGGERS leverage on human natural psychology to engage their emotions. Examples are scarcity, reciprocity and authenticity.
EDUCATION Knowing the type of problem you solve as discussed in the PS matrix would inform the degree of the education your audience require. Education can be moderate or intensive.
Lets consider the 3 stages of building a sales funnel.
- ATTRACTION – This is the stage where you entice your customers with a lead magnet. This can come in form of a free or very cheap incentive . Ensure to give great value to your audience at this stageas this is a great opportunity to get your prospective buyers to like you or your product It is also important to get their contact information before they have access to the incentive. This can be done with full or partial automation as well as moderate or no education.
- ENGAGEMENT- There is a need for you to constantly engage with your audience by regualrly educationg them with content that would help them trust you more. This process can either be fully or partially automated depending on the businss type.
- ENROLMENT- At this stage you are ready to sell your product which has much more value than what you offered at the enticement and engagement stages. However , you need to do more to convince your audience to part with their money to buy from you. Depending on your product what you might need to do is to educate them more. Furthermore, a use of triggers is very vital at this stage.
Moreover, determining the best funnel type for your business involves majorly the automation type and the amount of the education you need to provide and these also have a correlation with the problem-solution matrix as illustrated in the diagram below.
FINDING YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMERS
Generally, customers can be found on your social networks like your closed groups and on social media. A good place to start is your whatsapp contacts as people who already know you are usually the first to trust you. You can then proceed to the social media platform where you already have the largest actively engaged audience. Exampls of social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, linkedin, you tube, tik tok, google, clubhouse, twitter, etc.
Finally, to fast track your result, it is advisable to do digital marketing in form of facebook Ads, google Ads, Instagram Ads, etc