Good Sunday 🌞!
Welcome all the new subscribers here! If you're not familiar, Sunday Beam is where I share my most immediate learning in building up my Internet business.
My goal is to help you move forward through sharing my journey transparently 💪
This week, I have no update on my family and Avery. Generally a quiet week - not bad to parents of newborn 😉
I've been spending a lot of time this past week on optimization. This includes the positioning of my offerings and the marketing-to-sales funnel.
And I want to share my biggest learning here with you - Lead Nurturing Funnel.
If you don't know what Lead Nurturing means
Just a quick line for those who don't have a Marketing background.
It means when you bring in new visitors, you have a designed journey to give value and build trust with them over time. Then when time is right, that's when you mention some of your paid offerings to turn them into customers.
I won't bore you with a Marketing lesson here. But since this is super important for entrepreneurs and creators, I'll share my learnings below.
My lost opportunities
Many of you have taken my free course Making Twitter Friends to learn the basics of relationship building online.
By numbers, it is one of my best creations to date. Over the last 4 months, over 600 people have taken it and it's still growing without any active marketing.
BUT - I haven't been doing much with the course takers after they finish the 7-day course.
Most of them are early in their journey to put themselves out there and make friends online, there certainly are many ways I can continue to help them!
What happened? I was very focused on building my courses and things like Use Twitter Meaningfully in the last few months and I didn't put enough attention on the nurturing funnel.
This is a common mistake for entrepreneurs because our heart is where the revenue is. After all, we are fighting to keep going. We go straight to creating new things and hope that one would generate growth.
Then this week I came to realize - all these people are brought in by my creation already, am I just leaving opportunities on the table? Why didn't I do a better job doubling down if this is working? Why didn't I do more with these people? Why am I creating new things looking for more people?
That was when I realized going forward, it is time to revisit the system and optimize.
I'll give you an example.
Let's say Disney - they bring in so many visitors to their park already. Once you finish a particular thrill ride, they have their stores at your exit letting you buy their merchandise when you're the happiest. It would be crazy for them to think about how to bring in new revenue than finding ways to give the park visitors what they want.
How I'm going to do it. 4 steps you can do too
1️. What is your lead generating product?
The best way to bring in people is through giving them value for free. A lot of people have the so-called lead magnets giving away an eGuide or PDF.
I'm soso about this approach. I think the best way is to give away a 7-day email course. Think about it, people love to learn and a course can clearly teach more than a PDF!
Plus, you can split up the content to share a little bit every day, you're in this person's mind 7 days in a row!
Think about what you can teach your audience across a week!
For me, I already have it - Making Twitter Friends.
2️. Where is your traffic coming in?
Okay, having a free offer doesn't mean you'll bring in lots of people. They need to see it!
Where do you get the most exposure these days? Is it your Twitter? Your Instagram? Your newsletter? Website via SEO?
Do everything you can to give maximum exposure to this free offer. This is where most people get to learn about your work.
For me, I've just updated my Twitter bio and pinned tweet to include a link to Making Twitter Friends. Now that I know this is my best entry point, I don't really need them to go anywhere else.
3️. What's next that is super valuable to them?
This is what you need to put more effort in. You're giving them a starting point, then what do most of these people need afterward?
What's the next step?
Will they get more value via an intensive course? What about a private community? What about 1:1 call? What about a PDF?
You need to figure out the best choice here.
For me, I made a huge mistake to ask them to subscribe to my Sunday Beam newsletter. WHAT?! Why would someone interested in Twitter + Making Friends be interested in hearing Kevon talk about building businesses? I wasn't thinking!
It is reasonable to think that these people don't learn enough in 7 days, they would want to get more information and practice. So if I can continue to guide them towards things like relationship building on Twitter, audience building, and authenticity, I think they'd like it!
So, I am planning to compile my best content and send them weekly tips. Again, value + free + across a longer period of time.
4. When to mention some paid offerings?
This is tricky. Mention too early and you're sale-sy. Mention too late and you lose opportunities.
I never like to keep telling people to buy this and buy that. I really hate those people who keep pushing me by having deadline, promo code, last offer in their emails. And they send every 2 days! God.
"I'm not ready. Stop pushing me!" I unsubscribe right away.
Let's say the weekly tips go on for about 12 weeks, I think the important step here is to find out the few moments that they'd feel a need to level up and you share the reasoning and story behind why you think this is your suggestion.
Again, be genuine and transparent. If they don't need it now, don't push it.
Of course, this is my preferred approach. If you talk to someone with more sales and marketing background, they'd probably disagree with me. Find your own way based on who you are!
For me, I'm currently planning to consolidate all my knowledge around being yourself, making friends, developing your voice, growing an audience etc. into a 100+ page book.
After running a number of courses in the last few months, I have a much clearer picture of how I can give so much value to the people around me. And writing is still my favorite + best medium. This is a good time.
Are you still here?
Oh my! You're still reading. I'm glad!
To summarize the big lesson here:
- Don't expect to sell a complete stranger immediately. Do you ever buy something you just discover? Ask yourself.
- Use a series of content to give so much value to build trust. People say content is king. No it's not. It is really just about helping people via a non-live format: text, audio, video.
- Creating new things is fun. We all fall into the trap of creating more and more. It's time to learn the art of mise en place (google it if you don't know what this means)
If this sparks new ideas in your mind, please shout back at me! I'd love love love to chat more! (I need friends too 😅)
💡 Inspirations
Successful entrepreneurs are like lobsters
If you're scared to put yourself "in public", this tweet offers 15+ good answers from the community to help you get over your fear!