You’ve attracted new potential customers to your brand and begun to pique their interest in what you have to offer. It’s now time to show them and turn them into paying customers.
The funnels involved in the Convert stage are often overlooked under the assumption that leads will buy products and services on their own once you’ve exposed them to your offerings. The fact is, it usually takes six to eight touches before someone is ready to buy.
It’s important to stay in touch via nurturing funnels that gradually and strategically convince your leads to convert, beginning with an entry-level offer and then moving up to an offer of your core products and services.
Your Entry-level Offer
Depending on the price point of your main product, it may not make much sense to start offering it to people who have just opted in for your free value offer. Instead, offer them something at a lower cost to focus on initiating the buying relationship.
For example, a coach or consultant might sell an introductory online course or a book. A massage therapist might sell a 15-minute chair massage. A nutrition counselor might offer a short phone consultation.
According to Digital Marketer, an entry-level offer “is an irresistible, super low-ticket offer (usually between $1 and $20) that exists for one reason and one reason only … to convert prospects into buyers. The goal of the entry-level product is to fundamentally change the relationship from prospect to customer. The conversion of a prospect to a customer, even for $1, is magical.”
There are two important criteria to keep in mind for your entry-level product:
- It needs to be extremely valuable. In fact, your product should overdeliver on your promises about it — this is your lead’s first buying experience with you, so it’s critical that you make it remarkable.
- It needs to be priced irresistibly low. Before purchasing from you, your leads may not fully trust you or know your value. A very low price for something highly alluring will help break down those trust barriers. Offer your entry-level item at cost or even below cost; just be sure that in your sales copy, you explain that it has a much higher value than they’re paying so as not to cheapen the product.
It’s important to note that although you’re offering your entry-level products at a low price and not necessarily seeking to make a profit on them, you can use the revenue they generate to offset your costs of generating leads (such as your Facebook and Google ad costs).
Using Entry-level Offers to Segment Leads
Just as your free value offer served as an initial step in qualifying and segmenting your leads, so does your entry-level offer — on an even deeper level.
Once people pull out their wallets and make an initial financial commitment to a company, they’re much more likely to feel comfortable doing so again with your more expensive products down the line.
Similarly, the entry-level product they purchase is a signal to you of their interests and which particular core product they’ll be likely to purchase later so you can place them on funnels promoting that product.
This improves your chances of a sale, and it builds your relationship with customers for the long-term — you’re making it clear to them that you care about their needs and interests. Rather than cluttering their inboxes with irrelevant offers, you’re speaking directly to their pain points as if you were having a personal conversation.
Personalization is the key to commanding leads’ attention. According to Smart Insights, “72% of consumers say they now only engage with marketing messages that are personalized and tailored to their interests.”
Your Entry-level Offer Funnel
You’ll begin offering your entry-level product to your new contacts after they’ve received all the bonus content from opting in to your free value offer during the Attract stage.
To promote your entry-level product, we recommend this proven series of emails, each pitching your product from different angles. You’ll send out one a week so as not to pester your leads but still remain top of mind, and include a link to a sales page in each email.
- The “personal gain” email: Focuses on the benefits, emotions and positive outcomes that will occur after responding to the offer
- The “fear of missing out” email: Focuses on the undesirable outcomes that could occur if no action is taken
- The “logic” email: Focuses on concrete reasons why the reader should respond to the offer, in quantitative terms
- The “are you still…?” email: Reminds the recipient that if they’re still dealing with their problem, it can be solved by taking action now
- The “have you yet…?” email: Asks recipients why they haven’t taken action yet and reminds them of the urgency to respond to the offer
If a lead responds to any of these five emails by purchasing the product, you’ll remove them from the entry-level offer funnel and move them onto a post-purchase funnel for the product.
What’s a post-purchase funnel? Part of over-delivering after their purchase means sending your new customers more content or offers after they purchase. These funnels are very similar to the free content you sent after free value offer opt-ins. Each day after purchasing, for three days, send them a bonus that’s similar to the entry-level product and adds even more value. This is where your segmentation comes into play.
For example, a massage therapist could send offers for half-price aromatherapy. Coaches could send free ebooks that help solve their clients’ challenges. Whatever it is, it should build trust and reinforce that the customers’ initial decision to do business with you was a good move.
Your Core Offer
Now, it’s finally time to offer your core product — the product that your business is built around or the product you are known for. At this point, you’ve built trust and begun to cultivate a meaningful relationship with customers, preparing them for taking this bigger step and larger investment.
Your promotion for your core offer should speak to your audience’s pain points and describe how your product is the solution. It should build upon the authority you’ve built in your niche and hint at how your customer’s life will be improved after purchasing your product.
Here’s an example of how moving from your free value offer funnel to your core offer funnel might look: Say you run a high-end web design agency. In the Attract stage, customers opt in from your site and download an ebook about website design. After sending them a few promotional emails, they decide to buy your entry-level product — a $10 online web design course. After another set of emails in which you promote your core offer — your agency’s web design services — your customers ideally decide to hire your agency to help them rebuild their website. You just secured a client by doing very little work; all you did was give away some free content and sell an inexpensive training course online.
Your Core Offer Funnel
After contacts receive all three emails from your entry-level product’s post-purchase funnel, it’s time to add them to your core product offer funnel. This follows the same process using the core product instead of the entry-level product: the five offer emails, delivery, and a post-purchase funnel.
Now that you’ve learned about the Convert stage, you’re ready for Part 3: Fulfill.
