Online marketing funnels are highly effective. That is, of course, if you are targeting successfully first. In other words, are you ensuring that the right people are being exposed to your marketing messages? How are you making certain that the people who find their way to your funnel are the right kinds of prospects for what you have to offer?
This is called ‘targeting,’ and it is actually the difference between making massive profits and making no money whatsoever.
What Happens When You Don't Target?
The best way to demonstrate why targeting works so well is to think about sales. In sales, you have the people who start out their careers cold calling and selling things like cruise vacations or vacuum cleaners. These are people who will be knocking on doors or picking up the phone and trying to sell something expensive to a random stranger.
Most will fail.
Now, some people will be very good at this ‘cold calling' approach and have the potential to do well no matter what they are selling or who they're selling it to. These are the folks who, as my neighbor likes to say, can sell ice cream to Eskimos. As they progress in their career and in life, they'll be earning big bucks for selling lots of people things they don't need (and maybe don't even want).
But those kinds of sales don't often result in lifetime customers or returning clients.
Earning Lifetime Customer
But when you are selling to qualified prospects, well that's another story. Qualified because they're part of a certain demographic. Qualified because they've demonstrated certain buying habits. Qualified because they have money to afford what you are selling. Think about it: if you can sell something to strangers who probably don’t have much money, it will be child’s play to sell to wealthy individuals who have already told you they want to buy!
This concept of profiling and pre-qualifying is the basis for a successful marketing funnel… because you're message is getting in front of a specific, targeted audience. And that message, because you know who you are talking to, can be very specific and very instructive.
Whit an online marketing funnel, the process is simple – it means finding targeted customers and sending them to your website. It means finding people who are interested in your niche, who are the right age and gender and who have the right income.
How?
Using PPC of course! PPC stands for Pay Per Click and this is a type of advertising where you only pay each time someone clicks on your links. PPC ads can be placed either on Google searches (through Google’s ‘AdWords’) or they can be placed on Facebook, where they will target people based on not only their age, gender, and location, but also on their hobbies, interests, and job title (among MANY other criteria)! Frankly, for marketers, Facebook is a gold mine.
If you can do this, then you can find the exact kind of person who is likely to buy from you and then make sure that these are the people who start their journey through your sales funnel. That way, you are destined to succeed!
Targeting Your Funnels
A well-constructed marketing funnel starts with good targeting. And creating the perfect funnel formula is an important part of marketing in all types of online business. Want to discover a complete formula for yourself? Check out our case study video on how to automate your marketing funnel to get more leads and make more sales like clockwork.