Ecommerce in college station texxas

Black Friday is around the corner, literally next week at the time of writing this article.  Do you have a working ecommerce marketing funnel? No? Yikes - you better get on it!

Let me show you how to create a simple one. This is going to be what I call a Texas Two Step Funnel – and yes, Marketing Heroes HQ is in Texas!

Target Audience

First, we need to identify your target audience: what are their problems and where do they hang out? We do this using a worksheet called the Avatar worksheet that asks a few questions:

  1. What is the name of your avatar? It works really well to name your avatar, know how many kids, profession so you can really get into her shoes. Let’s call her Sally.
  2. Where does your avatar hang out online? What groups does she belong to? What magazines does she read? What conventions does she likely attend?
  3. What are the problems that she faces? What are the challenges and pain points?
  4. What are her goals? What does she value?

Before And After

Once we have the Avatar completed, we typically move onto the Before and After worksheet. What is a Before and After? Basically, all good marketing moves the target audience from before they worked with you or bought your product to after they worked with you or bought your product.

For instance, before Bill the Ecommerce Store owner worked with us, he was hitting the ceiling on sales and felt stuck because he was losing to his competitors. After he worked with us, we grew his business by 3x which made him feel happy and on top of the world; he was able to work on his business and not in it. He also had an entire marketing department for the same cost as one single employee.

Click Here For A 3 x Business Revenue Increase Case Study!

The questions that need to be answered are:

  1. What did Sally your avatar have before and after she bought your product?
  2. What did Sally feel like before and after she bought your product?
  3. What was Sally’s average day before and after she bought your product?
  4. What was Sally’s status before and after she bought your product?

Entry Point Offer

Now here’s the fun part and honestly, the most important part. Do you have a small lead-in product that you can sell either at cost or just below cost that will lead to bigger products being purchased?

As a computer geek in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I was constantly on the lookout for computer parts. I found this one website that seemed to sell their memory a LOT lower than anywhere else online – at least that I could find. They were based in Houston and sold memory that usually cost in the $100’s for around $25. For a young and broke computer geek – this seemed like geek heaven!

So I bought memory and guess what? They sent me catalogs and emails all the time and I ended up purchasing other components from them.

I later spoke with the business owner and we discussed his marketing and website. He said that memory was his foot in the door product. His gateway drug as he called it. Once he got people in the door, he could market to them over and over and over and over again. He didn’t view the loss on the memory as a loss – it was a foot in the door.

It was genius really and completely how he built his company from a small business to a multimillion dollar one. I think he ended up selling to a much larger company for $100’s of millions around 2008.

So an Entry Point Offer is just that: something small that you can give away at cost or just below. Think the bigger picture here as you are really buying your customers and not trying to make a profit. That’s the next step.

Example Entry Point Offer - Candle Wicks

Another idea is something that I heard from a friend who sells candle making supplies. His entry point offer is a bundle of hundreds of wicks for super cheap on Ebay. He figures that if someone is buying wicks, they will probably most likely buy other candle-making supplies. Once he’s sold the wicks, he upsells to his core offer of candle-making supplies. Genius right?

So what can you offer that’s a no-brainer purchase for your avatar? Something at or below cost, super cheap and can be your foot in the door to a higher priced product?

What’s Marketing Heroes’ EPO?

Want to know ours right now? It’s a strategy session that I call the Growth Workshop where I consult with you and help come up with a complete plan for a working marketing funnel. We’ve found that the plan is the hardest part for most business owners.

Click Here For Eye-Opening Details About Our Growth Workshop!

Core Offer

The next step in the process is the Core Offer. What are you going to offer next? This is usually where you start making a profit, although really it is the next logical step in the funnel.

In the case of the above memory, it was the sale of another component. It wasn’t at full price, but was a chance to get me to buy something else. Then when it was delivered and I was happy with it, they would continue sending offer emails and catalogs.

Educational Pieces

Once you have the entry point offer and the core offer, then it’s time to start talking about things that related to that offer. I like educational articles or blogs as well as videos – or both. At this stage, you’ll put together a series of educational pieces talking about and solving the problems of your avatar.

I like to write, so the plan for my own business is to write up to twelve educational blogs that speak to the problems of the target audience; then release them over a period of 12 weeks.

Put it All Together

Now that we have all our pieces, we need to put it all together. I personally like to use Facebook Ads to do this.

  • Step 1 – Offer Pages - We’ll create the offer pages first. They need to speak to the problems your avatar has and how your product solves them.

  • Step 2 – Educational Pieces – Now create the educational pieces and set them up to drip into your website over a period of 12 weeks.

  • Step 3 – Boost Educational Pieces - Each week, boost your content to your target audience. Make sure there’s a custom audience set up for the people that read the articles.

  • Step 4 – Remarket to People Who Read Educational Pieces - Now remarket to the people who read those articles with the entry point offer.

  • Step 5 – Remarket to People Who Bought EPO - Once someone buys the Entry Point Offer, email them with the core offer and have remarketing ads running to them as well. I like to test different entry point offers and core offers.

  • Step 6 – Optimize

Now that the funnel is up and running – is it working? If not, be sure to test different things such as:

  1. Entry Point Offers
  2. Landing Pages
  3. Ads
  4. Pricing
  5. Sales Copy
  6. Email Copy

I tell my staff, “Test, Don’t Guess.” So you should always be testing. Test the above and then go through and test again.

Twelve Week Plan - Why 12 Weeks?

Why 12 weeks? Well, that’s a quarter of a year and is about as long as people generally seem to concentrate and work on one single item. When we work with clients, we designate the First 5 Weeks as set up and implementation. In Week 6, we’ll take a step back and see what worked and didn’t.

In Weeks 7 through 10, we optimize everything – campaigns, landing pages, sales copy, and email campaigns.

Weeks 11 and 12 are to regroup and plan the next funnel. Then we simply wash, rinse and repeat with a new offer.

Need Help with the Above?

I thought so - and I’d love to help. For some people, the planning of a working inbound marketing funnel is complicated. Let me help you with that! Right now, we’re selling the Growth Workshop for a measly $7 as compared to our normal charge of $995.

Why that low? For me, it’s not about the money. I want to help grow your business. That’s my personal mission and the mission of Marketing Heroes – to grow businesses by leveraging technology so we can help change the world one client at a time.

Let’s start with the Growth Workshop – a one-on-one workshop where we’ll help identify your target audience, your entry point offer, and your core offer - then put it all into a plan!

You Need Our Growth Workshop! - Don't Miss Out On This Important Information!

Marketing Heroes Can Help Grow Your Company!

Call Us Right Now at 979-364-0584!