The only marketing funnel you need to succeed in 2017 (and beyond)

Hey there,

This is going to be a long one, but the strategies presented below are well worth the read.

The internet is overflowing with ninja-tricks and funnel-hacks which constantly ignore the essential fundamentals of selling online.

Now the snake oil salesmen of yesteryear have shifted online along with the crowd to continue preying on the flawed, yet deep rooted desires we humans have for ‘instant gratification.’

Well-meaning Entrepreneurs around the globe are lured in by tempting gilded opportunities which claim they’re just “one weird funnel” away from a fountain of cash and everything they’d ever dreamed of.

Here’s the reality: Success boils down to deliberate & hard work.

We’re surrounded by “smart” people who end up broke (both financially and mentally), while “dumb” people excel with less training and fewer resources.

So why is it so easy for dumb people to make stupidly large amounts of money, while smart people struggle?

It’s simple – They don’t overcomplicate things.

Instead, they stick to a simple business strategy that has worked for thousands of years.

Ready for it?

Find a problem -> Sell a solution

I know you may be thinking, “Duh, that’s obvious, but how do I actually do that online?”

Well, I’ll show you down below.

Don’t forget: we’re living in an unprecedented and incredible time to be in business.

Since it’s almost Halloween, here are a few scary thoughts of how it could be:

Imagine if you had to drive to a library and comb over dozens of books in order to do simple market research?

Or if you had to put up hundreds, or thousands of dollars on the line to test out an advertisement to a group of people you hoped were your ideal customers (and also ready to buy)?

If you had to spend five figures between recording a commercial and the air-time along with it, just to show your message to a group of people you hoped were watching a particular channel at a particular time?

I’m shaking in my boots just thinking about it.

Thanks to the power of the internet, there are exponentially better ways to do all of this.

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As you are likely aware, there are about 8-10 more months of planned future trainings.

While these trainings are powerful on their own…

… The real magic is in how they all work together.

When combined, the trainings form The Essential Parts Of Creating A Sustainable & Scalable Online Business.

It’s sort of like Voltron – The Defender Of The Universe

While each of the astronaut piloted robots are powerful on their own, their true power shines when they combine together.

Each of the parts has their own unique strengths, but when combined into the mighty Voltron, their power is unstoppable.

Okay, that’s enough nerd talk…

Here is the breakdown of the only marketing funnel you need.

Ready?

Traffic -> Opt In -> Convert

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That’s it.

When you break it down like this, your entire business & marketing strategy becomes very simple and easy to execute on.

You’re not wasting time trying to sell ice to eskimos (or sweaters in Texas).

Instead you’re laser-targeting on your ideal customer, bringing them into your world, then showing (and selling!) them your solutions to their problems.

Even though we’re focusing on Traffic -> Opt-In -> Convert, the steps after that are what turn a simple sales process into a business that can really grow.

So let’s get moving and break the strategy down even further so you understand the big picture.

1. Traffic (A hungry audience with a problem that needs solving)
2. Opt-In (The perfect solution for your hungry audience’s problems)
3. Convert (Continue to advertise to your perfect audience until they buy)
4. Back-end (Create more products for your audience and scale them up)

Simply put, the idea is to get your problem-solving solution in front of your ideal audience as much as possible until they buy.

Step 1: Traffic

Here’s the thing about traffic: It doesn’t really matter where it comes from.

There’s countless marketers selling countless traffic generation methods which often ignore the other important parts of the puzzle, like how to capture your traffic or actually convert the visitors into sales (essentially leaving you up the river without a paddle).

Or worse, they’ll rely on short-lived blackhat methods that can work for a bit, but end up with your accounts flagged or shut down (leaving you up the river without a paddle or even a boat!)

This is why I keep my strategies as “white hat” as possible.

(Full disclosure: I will toe the line on specific platforms that I don’t mind eventually losing, or are easy to regain. For example, if you could have got millions of hits from relevant traffic on Myspace in a ‘grey hat’ manner, would it really matter if your account got ‘slapped’ since Myspace is gone now anyways? This is a bit beside the point, as the forthcoming workshops are more effective than these ‘grey hat’ tactics, which are better used a supplements – although I’m open to doing one if I receive enough interest)

With that said, the following is a breakdown of different traffic sources, along with their pros and cons:

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Google Ads

Pros: 👍

• Laser tight targeting. You can show up for extremely specific search phrases.
• Easy to turn passive. Once it’s dialed in, you can mostly ‘set it and forget it’
• Can quickly scale overnight. Once you have a profitable ad, you can increase your budget and scale dramatically.

Cons: 👎

• Pay to play. Once you have everything set up (which takes time, too) you have to pay for your clicks. Better be optimized!
• Cold audience. They don’t know who you are yet, so you need to get your information across quickly and try to capture an email asap.

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Blogging / SEO

Pros: 👍

• Same pros as ad targeting, except a little better. Once you are ranking on the first page, you will be getting these specific & relevant clicks for free instead of having to pay.
• Builds your reputation. Showing up organically in google and then providing a great resource or post for whatever the search is for will make you look great to your prospect. The next step is to capture their email and keep them in your world.

Cons: 👎

• Takes time. You’ve got to create great content, which means you can’t just outsource it out to cheap writers. And unfortunately good writers are not cheap at all. This can get very expensive, or time consuming, depending on how quickly you write.
• Not instant gratification. Yes, the main cons of SEO are the time involved. For a brand new site, you’ll likely need several months before you even start to show up in Google, and you can only hope to rank for low competition keywords until you build your site’s reputation.

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Social Media

Pros: 👍

• Costs no money. You can get in front of prospects with only the cost of your time.
• Stealthy. It’s pretty easy to capture people’s interest and even drive lead magnet traffic without looking like a blatant advertisement.
• Easy to build reputation. Join the right groups and be open with valuable feedback and you will quickly build a reputation and etch yourself into people’s memory.

Cons: 👎

• Takes even more time. There’s no way around this. If you want to do social media correctly, you will need to be engaged and involved. This can be done in 30-60 minutes a day, but it can gets out of hand and really suck you in.
• Not advertiser friendly. The more specific your targeting gets (namely with groups), it can be tougher to advertise. Most group owners don’t want you doing promotions, so you have to be a bit sneaky about it. However if you put out great content, you WILL get private messages, where you can be as pitchy as you’d like 🙂

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Communities

Pros: 👍

• Variety. Your people are in communities around the internet. Find the right forums, subreddits, and other relevant places to become a star member of.
• Largely the same points as social media – each community will have its own specifics in how they function.

Cons: 👎

• Takes time and can be more transparent. In many communities (like forums and reddit), your “join date” is obvious, as well as your posts. So you can’t only post about things related to your offer. You’ve got to become involved and seem like a “regular” user.
• Resistance To Selling. Just like social media, you must approach selling delicately. It’s best to try to drive people to ‘message you’ or check out info-packed pages with unobtrusive opt-ins.

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As you can see, traffic is traffic, and each source has pros and cons.

The best strategy is to combine every traffic method to maximize your exposure to your potential customers.

And you should be relentless.

This is a time-tested concept that has been proven time and time again to work.

Jay Abraham says, “If you truly believe that what you have is useful and valuable to your clients, then you have a moral obligation to try to serve them in every way possible.”

So don’t be shy about contacting your idea customers if you have a real solution to their problems. You owe it to them to give it your all.

Step 2: Opt-In

Now that you’re getting in front of all of this shiny new traffic, you need to capture the leads.

This will allow you to focus your efforts on advertising specifically to your ideal audience.

I cannot overstate this importance, so here’s an example…

Imagine you’re selling makeup.

If you tried to sell makeup to an audience of 100 men, how many sales do you think you’ll get?

Guys don’t know about the specifics of makeup, and probably don’t know the exact brand, shade, and other specifics that their wife prefers.

So they don’t buy.

And they probably don’t even listen – in fact the room would probably be empty 10 minutes into your sales pitch.

Now consider trying to sell the same products in the exact same manner to a group of 10 women, an audience only 10% of the size as before.

With this specific audience, you can focus on an individual level, getting to know your customer, answering questions, and providing product demos.

Think you might get more sales this way?

Even though the traffic stage is already focused on what you’ve researched to be your ideal audience…

… It’s much more powerful to advertise to someone after they’ve asked for it in form of an opt-in.

They’ve raised their hand, indicated interest, and are now waiting for more from you.

Opt-In Breakdown

Here’s a few ways that people opt-in online, along with their pros & cons.

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Email List

Pros: 👍

• Cheap. You can contact list at a ridiculously low cost. Active Campaign is only $9/mo to contact 500 leads, as often as you’d like.
• Effective. Email puts you directly in your prospects inbox, so the odds of your message being seen are high.
• Personal. You can treat email a bit more casually than other marketing mediums. This allows you to create a personal dialog with your leads, with each touchpoint increasing the likelihood of a sale.
• Likely to buy. If someone is on your list, they have raised their hand to show you that they’re both part of your ideal audience, and are interested in getting more from you.
• Soft Teaching/Selling. You can still give away great information in your emails, with a link to buy from you to get an even higher level of service/info. Chet Holmes says “You will attract way more buyers if you are offering to teach them something of value to them than you will ever attract by simply trying to sell them your product or service.”
• Automation. You can save up your emails that you write and create a long autoresponder sequence that can condition your audience and sell to them without your involvement.

Cons: 👎

• Writing. You have to write your emails. These cannot be outsourced, but the time investment is nothing compared to writing an authority blog post. You’ll want to put some time into developing your copywriting chops.
• That’s about it. Emails are pretty great. If I had to pick a con, I’d say don’t put all of your eggs in one basket – you always want to have a diverse source of leads and sales channels.

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Facebook Groups

Pros: 👍

• Low barrier to entry. Joining a group is easy, and people often enjoy being a part of a community.
• Can run itself eventually. Once you have a thriving community, people will start to ask and answer other members questions, and generally keep it running without your constant input. You’ll still need to be around to be the ringleader, though.
• Notifications. As of now in 2017, Facebook will notify your group members when you (the owner) post, or even when others post in the group. This is an easy way to stay top of mind.
• Easy to sell in. If you’re the group leader, you obviously get to pitch and sell anything you want, however you’d like. You can do many different tricks to show up in people’s notifications to make them aware of your pitch, and do all of your selling within Facebook.

Cons: 👎

• Based on a 3rd party platform. You never know what Facebook is going to do to, for example cutting groups’ reach or engagement. If they disable notifications from groups and cut their frequency in the newsfeed, it’s very likely the posts will start to go unseen.
• You have to be around. While groups CAN run themselves eventually, most successful groups have a leader who is constantly and consistently available in the group. While this works for some people, others may find it tough to keep up with.
• Limited audience. Believe it or not, not everyone uses Facebook or checks social media on a daily basis. While there is a large audience on Facebook, you could be missing out on a lot of prospects if you neglect emails.

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Viral Contests / Giveaways

Pros: 👍

• Combined Traffic + Opt-In Since this method has sharing built in, it brings you both traffic and leads at the same time.
• Cheap, cheap, cheap. Given the viral nature of this contest, the views and leads you get will come at a very low cost (assuming your prize is good).
• Built-in validation. Ther’es a big difference between a company recommending their own sauce, versus someone’s friend recommending it to them. Since this technique incentivizes sharing, it transforms your audience into advocates.

Cons: 👎

• Broad Audience. Depending on the prize you give away, your targeting could get very broad. For example, if you give away a Macbook Pro, everyone and all of their friends is going to enter to win, regardless if they’re a part of your audience or not. Keeping your prize related to what you’re selling will keep your targeting more relevant.

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Step 3: Selling

Once you’ve got the opt-in, it’s time to sell them something.

And yes, I mean right now.

After all, they’ve entered your world…

Said they want in….

And in today’s instant-gratification hungry world, it’s time to give them what they want, now!

Do not pick from the never-ending pile of potential excuses to avoid selling.

Don’t waste your time with long indoctrinations or autoresponders to “build up value”.

“Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” is a popular mantra in this decade of online marketing, but many folks often use it as an excuse to constantly just “jab” instead of ever delivering the knock-out blow.

In fact, boxing isn’t even that great of a metaphor for business.

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In business, there’s no winning by points or decision.

Good-will messages, weak pitches, and selling from your heels does not magically add up to sales.

And actually, selling somebody something isn’t some painful battle like delivering a knockout blow.

As we discussed before, the core business philosophy here is that we are selling people solutions to their problems.

Remember: We’re not trying to convince somebody to buy something that they don’t want, or need.

Instead, we’re providing a solution to their problems.

There is no reason this should be painful.

To sell effectively, you must shed any preconceptions about selling being a negative act.

We have years of being fed messages about advertising being evil or manipulative.

Famous comedian Bill Hicks says in one of his specials, “By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself”

He goes on for several minutes to explain how he’s absolutely serious…

… And soft-skinned marketers will take the comedy act personally, ignoring the fact that at the end, he clearly references he’s talking about rip-off artists who sell arsenic to babies in order to make them sleep more.

To be clear, if you are selling a product that is unethical, scammy, doesn’t work, or makes unproven claims…

Then I’m with Bill Hicks.

And if you’re full of don’t-have-a-reflection-in-the-mirror level of evilness, please do one good deed and let me know so I can block you from all of my lists and products to prevent you from using these strategies for evil.

Buying something is usually a pretty pleasant experience, hence the term, “Retail therapy”.

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So why do good businesses and good products struggle to generate sales?

It boils down to a lack of selling (Assuming there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the business).

This is the result of hoping the product will “sell itself”.

We’ve all heard “build it and they will come”…

But most people haven’t heard that the quote is from a fictional movie… about a baseball field.. made in the 80’s.

In reality your sales are a direct reflection of your effort in selling.

Here’s a simple breakdown:

• Great Marketing + Bad Product = One Time Sales & Returns
• Bad Marketing + Great Product = No Sales
• Great Marketing + Great Product = Sales, Repeat Customers, & Referrals

Now that we’re on the same page about the ethics and importance about selling, here are a few ways to do it…

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Selling Breakdown

You’ve gone through the work of building an audience and capturing leads – now it’s time for your work to pay off.

Here are a few of the best ways to sell, along with their pro’s and con’s.

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Emails

Pros: 👍

• You can sell every day. If you use the proven strategy of sending daily emails to your list, you can simply work in your relevant offer as a P.S. with each broadcast. This works like
• Simple to automate. As you write your emails, you can easily load the heavy-hitters into an autoresponder. This lets you take time off with the confidence that you’ll be selling on auto-pilot as you get new leads and subscribers.

Cons: 👎

• You have to write the emails. This is a weak downside, but I had to pick one, right? You don’t have to be an A level copywriter to sell through emails, in fact I’ve seen plenty of poorly written emails make quite a bit of moolah, even when selling high ticket.
• You’ll need copywriting chops. Copywriting is often put in a pedestal as this mystical artform of persuasion through text… Which isn’t entirely inaccurate. But it’s definitely not unattainable – you’ll be able to sell effectively in no time with just a small amount of study, training, and focus.

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Webinars

Pros: 👍

• Infomercial Power. A webinar is 2017’s infomercial, where you’ve got a captive audience who’s decided to watch your presentation. You can demonstrate your product’s effectiveness and answer questions during the hour of your webinar (the average webinar length).
• Possible to automate. The ethics on automating webinars is debatable, but the bottom line is: it works. I’ve run paid traffic to an auto-webinar for an expensive niche to sell 4-figure digital products on the back-end of the presentation like a hot knife through butter. An automated webinar has mostly the same effect as a live one (aside from hotseats, Q&A’s, etc). A live event speaker will often perform the same ‘routine’ event after event, so what’s the difference in automating it online?

Cons: 👎

• You must present to a group. This is a presentation, which means that you will be covering your subject for around an hour. You often have to prepare slides or a live segment, as well as be confident in presenting to a group. Notice I said confident, not comfortable. If you feel any pressure, use it to stay sharp, instead of as an excuse not to do it. After all, pressure makes diamonds.
• Takes preparation. Unlike a quick 1 on 1 phone call which you can pretty much ‘wing it’ on, a webinar takes preparation. Making a slide deck really upgrades your presentation, but it takes time to outline your content and make sure it looks good.

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Consultations

Pros: 👍

• Very powerful. Being on the phone with someone in real time gives you a chance to interview your lead about their needs and figure out exactly where and how you can help them.
• No preparation needed. It may be a little nervewracking if you haven’t done consultations before, but I promise the nerves go away. Once you’ve done enough, you’ll be able to confidently do them on the fly, which is a huge time saver (and can make for a pretty good dollar per hour rate given the total time investment).

Cons: 👎

• Requires you in real time. You’ve got to clear time in your schedule to take these consultation calls, and you need to be on your “A Game” during them. This also can’t run without you – so if you’re busy or sick, you probably won’t be eager to hop on the phone for business.
• Hard to scale. Like the point above, requires your time on an individual basis. This works really well if you have the time for it, but it’s likely not something you’ll want to do forever.

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Retargeting

Pros: 👍

• Advertising to a warm audience. For someone to see your retargeting ads, they must have visited your website before. You can advertise to these people even if they haven’t opted in yet. This is a great way to convert someone from just a visitor into a lead so you can continue selling to them through email.
• Selling in your ads. This is a unique opportunity to advertise directly to people who are already aware of your brand, to past purchasers, and a ton of of other criteria. When you’re targeting a warm audience, you can directly advertise sales offers to them with greater success, as opposed to trying to sell to a cold audience. Don’t forget: Traffic -> Opt-In -> Convert.

Cons: 👎

• Takes time to build the audience. You can’t run retargeting (or remarketing as Google calls it) ads until you’ve built up your audience to a certain number, depending on the platform. Your audience is built by your website visitors visiting your site and being ‘pixeled’ (which is how your visitors are tracked). This allows you to advertise directly to people who have seen that pixel, however you’ve got to build that audience up first by other means.

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This isn’t a end-all list of traffic generating, lead capturing, and selling techniques. These are just the techniques and strategies that should provide the best return on your time and ad spend.

I didn’t plan for this to be an information overload, but once the ball got rolling I kept uncovering more and more details that are so important I wanted to be absolutely sure you didn’t miss anything.

If you’re feeling like I just unloaded a dumptruck’s worth of learnin’ onto your front lawn – don’t sweat it.

Just give it a couple more reads so you can begin to internalize the concepts, then keep this handy to use as a resource whenever you find yourself wondering what your next steps should be.

Remember: Keep it simple, stay deliberate in your actions, and soon enough you shall reap the rewards of your hard work.

The whole point here is to provide some clarity and guidance for your business and marketing strategy. I am here to help you, and my only goal is to help you reach your own goals.

So if you’re feeling stuck or confused, let me know and we’ll have a chat about your sticking points and how to get past them and move on towards bigger and better things.

Just shoot me an email at morgan@morgancrozier.com and we’ll take it from there.

If this opened your eyes to anything or gave you any “a-ha!” moments, well I’d love to hear about that too, so give me a shout and let me know what you think.

P.S. – The next workshop is coming up. Save this coming Sunday (November 5th) for starters. I’ll poll the group to figure out what the best time is to get eveyone on live and keep you updated.

P.P.S. – I’m considering doing the next workshop on my productivity & personal accountability system. But I don’t want to just stop there… I think it would be really cool to include a month of guided accountability along with it.

I’m imagining a daily check-in to make absolutely sure that we’re taking steps towards all of our goals. Success doesn’t come overnight. It’s the result of continuous effort and small wins. No drop of rain feels responsible for the flood – and the same goes for the little daily tasks that must be done to reach the finish line.

Let me know what you think of this bonus idea and if you’re down for the challenge by emailing me or just leaving a comment here.