You use this word Funnel a lot – I do not think it means what you think it means.
Building the killer funnel that will turn your business around is all the rage these days. But hang on – do you really even know what your funnel is? And are the courses and products promoting the newest magic funnel really delivering a funnel at all?
No, I am not going to name names, but let’s look at what these purported magic business building funnels define as the *top* of the funnel. Is it “add to cart”? Is it “email opt-in”?
Those are “top” in precisely the same way the ceiling is the top of a bottom floor apartment! Yes, your “buy now” button is the top of the selling funnel, but it is the bottom of the marketing funnel.
Your funnel is not your checkout process! Your funnel is how you get people into your checkout.
Marketing is what happens to make selling happen. Improving your cart conversion is not marketing. Improving your lead conversion is not marketing. Improving your lead follow-up email campaigns is not marketing.
All activities that take a lead (either opt-in or add-to-cart) and convert them to a buyer are selling, not marketing, activities. Marketing is how you create more opt-ins or add-to-cart actions.
Okay, so now what sort of “funnel” are all those products seling and courses teaching? Is it your *selling funnel* or is it your *marketing funnel*?
Don’t take this the wrong way – you should make your selling funnel the best you can, but that’s NOT marketing, and without good marketing, your selling will suffer. In fact…
“The purpose of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” — Peter Drucker
Marketing primes your cart-clickers to complete the purchase because they know, like, and trust you. Without that advantage, your cart adds are more likely than not to be price-checkers and tire-kickers. It is only the people that are fully indoctrinated and signed up to your own tribal brand that are most likely to sail through your cart – even if it’s half broken!
It is marketing that breeds buyers. Selling just makes it possible for them to pay you.
So what the hell is your marketing funnel, you ask? That’s the other thing that is all the rage these days – Content Marketing – and it really is marketing. Even before it was called Content Marketing, like back in 2009 when Dan first taught Link Liberation, it really was the only marketing. Oh wait, that does sound familiar…
“Content marketing is the only marketing left.” — Seth Godin
I knew I’d heard that somewhat. 🙂
Link Liberation is our unique methodology and we have reasons – dozens of clients and hundreds of students – to think that it’s the best, but even if you don’t do exactly what we teach, at least do something! Yes, improving your cart is important, but even the worst cart will make more money, if you just do more (real) marketing.
Yeah, I know, that does seem… inconceivable!
