Welcome to part one of my ‘Master the Basics’ series where I’ll be sharing answers to some of the most frequently asked questions I get about websites, marketing, and the tech that ties them all together.
Even if you’re not techie and plan to outsource the actual “doing” of these things, it’s important to get familiar with the basic concepts because they’re what will help you succeed when starting, running, and growing an online business…. so you can make a living doing work you enjoy that taps into your unique talents, on your own terms. ✊ Hell yeah!
Ok, now I’m all psyched up, let’s do this.
I’m starting this series with funnels because they are one of the main foundational concepts of online business, no matter what you’re selling/promoting/giving away, or who you’re selling/promoting/giving it away to.
You might have heard them referred to as sales funnels, marketing funnels, landing pages, or even squeeze pages (that one’s pretty old-timey now). They’re all basically the same thing, so for simplicity I’ll be using the term ‘funnels’ in this post.
When someone signs up for NurtureDash (my all-in-one marketing automation platform), they get a 60-min 1-1 onboarding call with me. After we’ve got acquainted and they’ve met Walter 😼 (my office meownager), I usually start things with this question:
“Are you familiar with the concept of funnels?”
I’ve found asking this is a great way to establish how much online marketing knowledge they already have, which helps me know the best place to start explaining and contextualizing the things we’ll cover in their onboarding call.
I never want to “firehose” someone with features (“it does this, and this, and….”) or use words and concepts they’re unfamiliar with; nor do I want to have them bored and wishing I’d hurry up and get to the stuff they don’t already know. The Funnel Question helps me find the right place to begin their journey and talk about it in a way that’s most relevant and valuable to them.
So, what is a funnel?
- A funnel is a type of marketing strategy. It’s the desired journey your visitors will take through your content, as they move from not knowing who you are and what you do, through learning more about you, all the way through to making a purchase or booking a call – whatever the ‘goal’ of your strategy is.
- A funnel is also the term we give to a collection of web pages we use to build that strategy in the real world – turning the customer journey into actual online pages a person can visit, read, and interact with.
So, class, to recap: 🧑🏼🏫
👉 Funnels are your customer journey as a concept, and…
👉 Funnels are also what we call the collection of pages that will take them through that journey.
What’s the difference between web pages and funnel pages?
There’s actually not a huge difference between web pages and funnel pages, and you can even build them in the same tool (either a website page builder or a dedicated funnel building tool). It’s a terminology difference based on what we intend to do with them…
Web pages make up most of the Internet, and they can contain any type of content. They will typically have a ‘header’ section at the top where there is a menu for you to access other pages on the website (the term for a collection of web pages that live at one website address).
Funnel pages are designed to take your visitor through a very specific series of action steps, and they do not have a menu or links to any other pages. It’s like you put them in a corridor with only one exit. Either they Do The Thing you’re asking (click the button, book the call, take the next step) or they click out of the page completely. You’re forcing them to make a very conscious decision around whether they are interested in working with you, or they are not. Yes or no.
Pages that do this are called funnel pages because we are “funneling” them through our marketing/sales journey. The idea is we want them to focus on what’s on this page, not click away – hence no menu or links to other places. If you add a navigation menu to the page, it’s technically no longer considered a funnel, it’s back to being a regular old web page.
Don’t worry though, the Funnel Police 👮🏻♂️ aren’t gonna come and arrest you if you add a menu to your funnel page (I won’t tell ’em).
Quick recap: 🧑🏼🏫
👉 A collection of funnel pages is called a funnel.
👉 A collection of webpages is called a wunnel.… wait, no, it’s called a website.
Personally, bring a touchy-feely sort, I prefer to think of funnels as ‘flows’…
Funnels to me sounds so industrial and tornadic. 🌪️
Flows feels more gentle and natural, like drifting down a meandering stream.
🦦
You are guiding your visitors through a recommended course of action. I think this should feel like an invisible, natural path, not like they’re being sucked through a riptide – but that’s just me. 🤷🏼♀️
So, I hope this has helped un-pretzel your noggin a little bit around funnels. Shoot me a text if you have any questions (my number is on the top of this website).
Another question I ask new customers is, “Have you used an email marketing tool before, for example something like MailChimp, Active Campaign, etc?” If they answer yes, we can dive into the email marketing features of NurtureDash and move their contacts and tags over (a surprisingly painless process of downloading and uploading a simple .csv file).
If the answer is no, not really, or a blank stare 😶, then we’ve found a great place to begin teaching another online marketing foundational basic: list building. This concept builds on top of funnels, and so it’s what we’ll dive into in the next post in this series.
Talk to you then!
🦦
In the peace of the grove (via the gentle flow of the meandering stream),
The Website Sherpa 🧙🏻♀️🌳
