by Matt Valvano 
I’ll create a video for this very soon!
The problem is to streamline your new content marketing strategies with the right sales funnel to create new higher returns on investments (ROI’s). Let’s dive into how we can go about this!
Remember to create the perfect sales funnel there is no such thing as a “Right Way”. It is all about trial and error. Once you figure out what works and keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore.
Step 1 – Targeting the right customers
Other words get to know your customers at their level. What do they use your products or services
Think of this as your businesses ultimate marketing brainstorming session!
There are many ways to do this through Google, Facebook and Instagram marketing or other outlets. Ultimately it will always come down to your customers specific “How’s and What’s” to figure out the “Why’s”, because the customer normally has plenty of options.
Let’s take a look at this example of what I would do to create a marketing campaign to target specific construction companies.
Before creating any ads I would begin with my “How’s” and “What’s” to figure out the “Why’s”. Once the “why’s” are narrowed down you will have your core values!
In this example, our goal is to sell our fake product called the “EcoLight”.
- Asking “How” to find the core value for the construction company ads.
- How are construction company going to use my lights?
- How does my product compare to my competition?
- How do construction companies get my bid?
- How can I set my product up for success?
- How can I cut cost to make the sale or on shipping?
- Asking “What” to find the core value for the construction company ads.
- What are my top selling products for this type of customer?
- What type of return can I expect?
- What are my competitors doing to get in front of construction companies?
- What makes my services or products different?
- What can my customers expect from my services or products?
- Using the “How’s and What’s” to figure out the “Why’s” to find the core value for the construction company ads.
- Why do construction companies buy my top selling products?
- We use recycled materials and it’s called EcoLight.
- Why? It saves the environment.
- Why should construction companies use recycled material? It’s required to meet regulations for certain builds, like hospitals.
- Why should we meet regulations for hospitals? So we do not have issues after construction with HIPAA or unsatisfactory material being used in hospitals.
- Why won’t construction companies have to worry about HIPAA regulations with our products? Because they are 100% approved to be used in hospitals.
- We use recycled materials and it’s called EcoLight.
- Why do construction companies buy my top selling products?
Knowing this is a fictional example we will stop here and I am sure you see the point. Now we have our first concept for an ad to run for construction companies doing hospital renovations. Why? Because we are 100% approved by HIPAA and any construction companies using our light fixtures will save time and money because they will not have to worry about HIPAA regulations.
Brainstorming is the key to figuring out the key values about your products or services. Use these to create ads to be run
The more questions you ask the more specific you will get and be sure to involve other people throughout your company. For example, Helen in shipping could be aware of ways to cut cost on freight by suggesting an idea you never considered. Hell take 10 pages of notes and make it a team effort. You will find plenty of ads to run!
_Mattyval
Step 2 – Running the ads to target the correct customer
We can use the same concept with asking why, but we will rely on Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Instagram targeting our customers for this one. That is what we are paying them to do!
For this example, we will use a mix of all of these platforms to target and then retarget our desired customer. To do this we need to set up a plan of attack.
Using Facebook we will target our customer using ads that look for male construction workers that have hobbies in electrical or have clicked past links for electrical links, maybe even toss in your competitor’s page within a 30mile radius. You can get extremely specific and run the same ad in different areas!
We will then utilize LinkedIn to target the General Buying Managers of construction companies with similar contingencies advertisements. Keep in mind your core values could be different for the General Buying Manager. Targeting these parties you may need to create a similar, but a different ad.
Don’t feel bad if you’ve got to this point and have to stop to think about the General Buying Managers as a customer. If you have to go back to brainstorming – do it!
Now after the ads have been running and you see some great engagement from a few of them realize 80% of the potential leads will do nothing after they visit your website.
Step 2.1 – Fire up that re-targeting campaign
Hit them all with a series of re-targeting ads using Google Adwords and Facebook Retargeting! If your noticing a great conversion rate against your pay per click’s this is when you should then consider spicing up this ad funnel to include a YouTube pre-roll video.
The reason you do this is because that customer has already visited your store. They went from a “cold lead” to a “warm lead” and statistically you have roughly a 73% greater chance to win this customer back compared to finding new “cold leads”. This is based from my Return on Investment (ROI) strategies I use to convert any lead into a sale that has either been a “cold lead” or won back through re-targeted aka a “warm lead”.
Likewise, if you have an eCommerce store send a series of three emails to attempt to win the customer back if they leave an abandoned cart open. Free gift’s, 10% off or Free Shipping can pull back that customer for the conversion!
Step 3 – Ok everything ready to run, but where do I send them to convert?
Once a potential customer makes it to this point we put them into a sales funnel and this will open up multiple ways of reaching back out to them, even if they don’t convert the first time.
Securing a customer after they’ve clicked on one of our ads is a delicate game of tag and here’s one way we could do this!
I cannot stress this enough. Look at the work you’ve put in and absolutely do not send this potential lead to your homepage or contact form EXPECTING them to do the rest. YOU MUST simply this process or they will not give you anything of value in return for the free content you provided – In this case their contact information for a quote.
You need to send them to a page with some sort of value, reflecting the ad that could state something like “New Discovery with LED’s to save THOUSANDS” and after the potential leads clicks on this send them to a proper
This page should consist of additional value to the ad you are running with something like “Would you like to save $2,500 on all CURRENT OR FUTURE hospital construction bids by switching to our latest creation called EcoLight? If that’s a yes put your email here:___________________ and we will contact you within 24 hours.
Don’t stop here because if the customer is hesitant to give them 1000+ words under that sign-up field about why it is valuable the make this switch and why they should sign up. Video is great here and can then be used on YouTube.
Step 4 – Holly crap Batman. Someone signed up and are now in our sales funnel! Now what?
After this research the new customer and learn about their company. To do this I use a separate content management system or CRM – I absolutely love PipeDrive because it works perfectly for me and automates 60% of my tedious tasks (There are plenty of others out there – I’ll add more soon).
In PipeDrive you have a little button called “Smart Data Search” with the Gold/Platinum plans and it will allow you to import customer data. I love this little tool and it will allow you to tap into more information to prepare your closing sale with that customer.
If that potential lead has made it to this point it is up to you to close the sale! In the future, I will add my top over the phone closing tactics but for now this is where I say, “You Got This!”
The reason I love PipeDrive is because you can track what your sales teams are doing, create automated tasks (literally you can set it to prompt a call when that contact form from the ad is filled out and after the customer fills it out it will send them a welcome email) and you can easily track when email containing proposals are open – Nothing beats calling a customer knowing they are looking at the proposal.
Creepy?
Lastly, PipeDrive always prompts a follow up after a task is complete. You will never forget about follow up with a customer ever again!
Overview – 2020 Content Marketing is King
Creating valuable content within a structured sales funnel will get you sales – Always focus on creating great content. There are no tricks to cheat Google with keyword stuffing like in the past. Without sharable content, you will not rank next to your competitors. Backing up content with a solid sales funnel will create more leads than you can imagine.
Step 5 – Learn to say “No” in sales
When you take on more work than you can handle or the potential customer does not seem like a good fit, don’t be afraid to say “No” to them. You could save a future headache, but when you do this you are also setting a value on your services or products.
By saying “No” you are actually relieving stress. There’s case study’s about this and we touch base about this in future blog posts. For now, I suggest you read The Power of a Positive No: Save the Deal Save the Relationship and Still Say No. This is a wonderful book that goes into detail about why saying “No” is a powerful tool to use in sales!
Are you struggling to generate content?
If content creation is not your favorite thing to do you can provide the topics and then pass the work to someone else. You can hire someone on Fiverr for $5/hr to do this and they can even go through the website content to optimize your current content by fluffing it up or by writing new pages for you based on what is core topics you send to them. If I know I don’t have time to write some content I will send a bullet-pointed list over as a guide for them to follow. Make sure to proofread everything before setting up your ads if you are having someone assist you with the conversion page (aka landing page). I suggest making your first ad campaign first so you can see how everything works together in harmony!
Step back and look through the current website. Would you consider this great content? Go through each page and evaluate them by picturing yourself as the customer. Ask yourself the, “What’s and How’s” and most importantly the “Whys”.
Each page should have a minimum of 500 characters. Ask yourself, “Why does my customer want to be on this page? Then ask yourself, if I was my customer “Would I read all of this or am I missing the key reason(s) that are on this page?”
In other words, am I creating value or is this just me stating technical jargon about “ME” my super cool EcoLIGHT? When you talk about “Me” and this involves your products or services the current customer will not get the value to they need.
During this phase, you must think story time and emphasize technical jargon with a sweet downloadable link that requires someone to provide you an email in exchange for the downloadable PDF. I don’t see this being used often at this stage, but sometimes that customer wants that value; so get something in return!
Focus on creating content to capture leads because you have the potential customers viewing your website – Give them a value to contact you!
Enjoy crafting up content and I hope the guide helps you with your business!