How To Guide Your Clients Through The Six Stages Of The Client Journey | Funnels For Freelancers

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I get how it feels when your website doesn't bring those sought-after leads. It's frustrating to spend so much time and care building a beautiful site, only to be greeted with crickets.
 
The thing is, your website is likely more like a confusing labyrinth for potential clients… All those options, paths, and choices can be overwhelming.
 
It's like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, where you're never quite sure if you're heading for the jackpot or a dead end.
 
So what happens when your clients can't navigate this maze? When they're faced with too many options, they don't stick around.
 
They abandon your site before even reaching out. It's a lose-lose situation, and it's costing you leads and clients.
 
Fortunately, there's a better way…
 
Did you know you could guide your clients purposefully through their journey instead of leaving them stranded?
 
The key is understanding the six critical stages of the client journey. And once you master that, you can use carefully crafted funnels to guide your clients through each stage.
 
Curious about these funnels? You'll be excited to learn they are two of the best-performing funnels for freelancers – the Lead Gen Funnel and the Opportunity Funnel. They're no magic tricks but clear, straightforward strategies to turn more leads into clients.
 
This week's episode of the 6 Figure Creative podcast talks all about the 6 Steps of the Client Journey and the two best funnels for freelancers. Learn about this, and you'll be on your way to creating a great experience for your clients.
 
In this episode you’ll discover:
  • Why websites are not optional in 2023
  • The reasons your funnel may be leaking
  • Three types of funnels for your business
  • The importance of explaining your offer to leads
  • Manipulation vs. influencing
  • Proving you have the solution
  • Explaining next steps

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[00:00:00] Brian: Hello and welcome to the six Figure Creative Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood. If this is your first time joining us on the show, first of all, welcome. So glad to have you here.

[00:00:07] Brian: This podcast is for you. If you're a creative freelancer, you're really good at what you do, and you want to earn more money from your creative skills without selling your soul. If that sounds like you, you are in the right spot for my returning listeners and viewers on YouTube So glad to have you back right now. If you're watching this on YouTube, especially, you know that something's different, something's changed in here. What has happened? A, I got a new camera. I'm borrowing my wife's camera right now. So I wanted to, to try some stuff out to see if I can make my video look a little bit better.

[00:00:30] Brian: And I also got a new standing desk in here, so I'm standing up. So the angles and stuff are a bit different. So if I look different, sound different, feel different. It's 'cause I'm standing up. I've never stood up for a podcast episode before, so it's a little weird right now I've got a lot of trial and error and experimentation to do to see how I wanna have things set up permanently, but this is just the quick and dirty. If you saw what was behind me right now, you can't really see a lot 'cause it's blurry.

[00:00:49] Brian: But if you saw what was behind me, it's a wreck. My office is disgusting right now. Getting an old desk outta here, getting a new one in here and set up. It's a lot. And for anyone who's ever set up a standing desk before, you probably understand my pain with [00:01:00] this,

[00:01:00] Brian: But let's jump into what we're gonna talk about today on this show. already hinted at this on the last episode when I realized I didn't have a dedicated episode to talk about funnels.

[00:01:08] Brian: But I wanna have an entire show dedicated to this one topic because freelancers are way behind the game when it comes to funnels. You've probably heard of this term, you may even have funnels of your own People in the freelance community are all across the spectrum when it comes to absolute funnel nubs to funnel pros.

[00:01:22] Brian: But in the grand scheme of things, we're generally on the beginner end of this because we have either not been convinced of the power of it or we don't really understand how these really fit into our businesses. Because if you try to set up a funnel like you're an e-commerce company or a course seller or a software company, or you saw some Russell Brunson stuff and you try to set up something like him It might fall flat for you and there's really only two funnels that we should be running as freelancers and not get overwhelmed by this.

[00:01:44] Brian: So if you've ever felt like you've been overwhelmed by this, or you've tried and failed at having a funnel or creating funnels for your freelance services, this episode will be super helpful. I think the main mistake most freelancers make is they never even try funnels.

[00:01:55] Brian: They set up their website kinda like a choose your own adventure. If I go to your site right now,[00:02:00] there's half a dozen things that I could do on your site right now, and I have a couple examples for my YouTube viewers right now. You get the little treat here. And for my listeners, I'll try to talk you through what I'm seeing right now.

[00:02:08] Brian: So I've pulled up two sites to pick on for this episode, and apologies in advance if this is your website. I just Googled design agencies in Nashville. So these are the two I'm going to focus on for now. These are, as far as I can tell, reputable good agencies. and I chose agencies because I feel like I can pick on agencies without it being too personal.

[00:02:25] Brian: 'cause agencies typically are a lot of people, but they're still representative of how we as freelancers typically have our website set up. So if you're watching on YouTube right now, you're seeing a lighter on a screen and a small little headline that just says, captivate and convince A. This is not a good headline.

[00:02:40] Brian: This is not how we should set our things up, but this is the first one I clicked on, on, on Google and I wanted to show this. And if you look at the site right now, just as it stands, look at how many things you could do on this page. we can click on their work. We can click on their about, we can click on their team, their contact.

[00:02:55] Brian: We can click on a menu item that just says Thoughts. I'm very curious about that. I'm gonna open that up. A [00:03:00] video series with no real other info, just as video series. And if I continue to scroll down,

[00:03:05] Brian: there's just a lot of things popping up and probably not a lot of information about what they actually do here. But this is not a website breakdown. This is to make a singular point of how many things we could do on their site.

[00:03:15] Brian: Something popped up down here where I can grab drinks with them.

[00:03:18] Brian: But either way, there's at least 1, 5, 6, 7 different directions. I could go just from landing on this page. That's what I call a choose your own adventure. If you remember the stories from back in like the seventies and eighties is kind of when this peaked when you could read a book and it would say to choose option A, go to page 77 to choose option B.

[00:03:36] Brian: Go to page 91, and one option would lead to death, and one option would lead to success. That was basically the gist of choose your own adventures. If they go over to Volt Creative, It's another creative agency in Nashville.

[00:03:46] Brian: it's a similar thing. They have the nice image on the page. They have Vault Creative is a design in development agency based in Nashville and New York City, so they're probably pretty big, but let's look how many things we could do just right here on the landing page without even scrolling down.

[00:03:57] Brian: We have work about [00:04:00] services, which actually drops down to four different services. So design, web marketing, motion. Then when there's the news tab, there's a contact, a hire us button, and then there's links to their Facebook page. Instagram, Spotify, phone, email, and a search. That's 15 different things that I could do without even scrolling down on their site.

[00:04:19] Brian: this is what most freelancers do with their sites. If you even have a site, if you don't have a site, my God, get a site. It's essentially your business card in today's age, and they're way more valuable than business cards. I don't even think business cards are a thing anymore, but people are overwhelmed with the amount of choices they could take.

[00:04:32] Brian: Again, it's just like a choose your own adventure and there's a reason that you don't see, choose your own adventure books anymore. again, they peaked in the late seventies, early eighties from what I could tell. And even the ones that have come out recently, they're not very popular.

[00:04:42] Brian: You look at how many reviews they have, which you can roughly equate to sales. It's very small compared to what most books these days that are considered bestsellers would have.

[00:04:50] Brian: And that's because when people are overwhelmed with choices, they make no decision at all. So if I go to a site and I see 15 different things that I could do, I end up taking no action at all. [00:05:00] And that sounds stupid because you're like, if I'm going into a site, I'm going to take an action. This has been proven time and time and time and time again in studies. The more options someone has, the less likely they are to take any option at all.

[00:05:10] Brian: This is likely the reason that choose your own adventure. Books aren't a thing anymore. You don't see these anymore. 'cause people want to be guided through a story. And this has been popularized a lot over the last five, six years by Donald Miller and the StoryBrand.

[00:05:21] Brian: When you look at Hollywood movies today and fantasy books and any sort of fiction book, they typically follow one of just a few different storytelling frameworks

[00:05:29] Brian: the StoryBrand framework looks like this. A character, a k a, your client, a k a, the hero of the story.

[00:05:34] Brian: They have a problem

[00:05:35] Brian: and they meet a guide to a k a you who gives them a plan and calls them to action that results in either success or failure.

[00:05:43] Brian: That is the StoryBrand framework, big movies like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or Insert, probably some of your favorite movies, have followed that same or similar type of framework for a story. and if you understand that framework and other frameworks like it, you'll start to understand why funnels can be so [00:06:00] powerful for us. So let's dive into this. What is a funnel? First and foremost, let's talk about what a funnel is, because this can be confused by a lot of people when they think of granular funnels, like a landing page, and then you sign up for lead magnet and then buy and there's an upsell and there's cross sells and all this crap.

[00:06:14] Brian: Please throw that all outta your mind right now. I wanna simplify what this is because there are macro funnels and there's micro funnels, and I wanna focus on the macro before we even consider the micro a funnel. In general, if you just look at a funnel, everyone knows this, so if you have ever used a funnel or cooked before, funnel is a lot of the top and a little at the bottom.

[00:06:30] Brian: That's what they look like.

[00:06:31] Brian: Depending on where you go and who you, follow, there are generally about six stages to a funnel, which conveniently lines up with the six steps in the store. Brandand framework, they don't exactly line up perfectly, but there's a six steps in most marketing funnels. The first step is awareness, and this is just where potential clients become aware that you exist.

[00:06:48] Brian: The second step is interest. That's where they have become interested in what you have to offer or interested in something that you've promoted or given away. The third step is consideration, and that's where they're considering whether or not you might be a good fit for [00:07:00] them.

[00:07:00] Brian: The fourth step or fourth stage is intent. That's where they've shown some sort of intent to working together. Maybe they've asked pricing or availability. It's different for everybody. But the fourth stage is intent. The fifth is evaluation.

[00:07:12] Brian: They're evaluating you of whether or not that you'll be the right fit for their needs.

[00:07:16] Brian: And this is basically where they decide, do I go with you or do I not? And then the sixth step is purchase or monies exchanged hands. They've decided to work with you. if you look at those six stages, you have a funnel, whether you realize it or not. Every single business on earth has a funnel. Certain number of people are aware of you.

[00:07:30] Brian: A certain percentage of those are interested in you. A certain percentage of those are considering working with you. A certain percentage of those have shown intent to work with you. And a certain percentage have started the evaluation process and a smaller percentage has actually purchased.

[00:07:43] Brian: So if you look at it like that, It's actually less like a funnel because if you pour a gallon of water through a funnel, a gallon of water comes out of the bottom of the funnel. So it's really not a good analogy. It's more like a leaky bucket. If you try to move water from point A to point B in a leaky bucket, not all of the water will make it to point B.

[00:07:59] Brian: [00:08:00] the amount of water that makes it from point A to point B is determined by how many leaks are in your bucket. And many of you have a very, very leaky bucket right now. So if we talk through these stages, again, there's two areas that most freelancers are horrible at, and those are the two areas that I recommend. You build, what I call micro funnels. We've got the macro funnel. Those are the six stages of a macro funnel, but these two micro funnels are what actually help you with the two most lacking parts of most freelance businesses. I. the first stage, which is awareness.

[00:08:27] Brian: Most of you, especially the people who've been listening a while, especially those of you who know you're great at what you do, but you're not booked solid, it's because not enough people know you exist.

[00:08:34] Brian: So that's the first key area that most of you struggle with, So we create awareness funnels, and I'll talk about those in a second. I actually call them lead funnels. And then the second area most people struggle with is actually the fourth stage, and that is intent.

[00:08:46] Brian: Getting people to show intent. most freelancers specifically, you sit around until clients come to you. You sit there and wait for an inquiry to come in. You wait for pricing. You wait for somebody to sometimes even buy on your site. problem with that is you're only picking up the lowest [00:09:00] hanging fruit, not people that.

[00:09:01] Brian: Might've been interested, but then they forgot or might've been interested, but then the project fell through because no one was really pushing them forward. This is another huge leak that most people have and I've built what I call opportunity funnels for that.

[00:09:12] Brian: and the entire point of building these funnels is to get more people from the top, that first awareness, stage more people from that and actually create more people who are aware of you and get more of those people to the bottom, to the purchase section, or becoming a client for you.

[00:09:24] Brian: so let's talk about these two funnels, the lead funnel and the opportunity funnel. And then we're gonna talk about a bonus third funnel That's actually kind of a best of both worlds.

[00:09:32] Brian: So first, let's talk about the lead funnel. This is the thing that fixes that big gaping hole in your entire business, which is creating awareness that you exist. And then more awareness will create more opportunities for you, which will be the next funnel.

[00:09:44] Brian: But the first thing we do, and this sounds basic, but most people haven't, is the first thing is you create a lead magnet.

[00:09:49] Brian: and a lead magnet is basically just something that you are giving away in exchange for a name and an email address. and there's different variations of it. For those of you who are struggling with this, I would highly encourage you to buy the book, [00:10:00] $100 million Leads.

[00:10:01] Brian: I think by the time this episode airs. That book will be out in a week or so. It's by Alex Hermo. I have not read it yet. It's not even out yet, but I am greatly anticipating this because Alex Hermo knows his and the entire book is about lead generation. So this is the area that I would encourage everyone to go buy the book.

[00:10:16] Brian: I'll be buying it, I'll be studying it, I'll be implementing things, and I'll be pulling out the insights that I think work best for freelancers. So if you wanna get ahead of what I'll be teaching on this podcast in future episodes, just get the book yourself and start figuring out what makes the most sense for you.

[00:10:28] Brian: And if you have any questions once you've read the book, just email me podcast@sixfigurecreative.com. I'm always happy to chat and see what you're doing with your business that we can bring to our listeners, but create a lead magnet This is something that a lot of freelancers struggle with and they make a couple mistakes with this mistake. Number one is you create a fast, Throw it out there, kind of lead magnet that does nothing more than just damage your reputation.

[00:10:49] Brian: Mistake number two is you create a incredibly valuable lead magnet that is attracting the wrong type of audience to you. In my space, the music production world. Many, Many music [00:11:00] producers will put out lead Magnus around music production, which attracts people who care about music production.

[00:11:05] Brian: Well, The problem is most artists, unless they have a, desire to learn music production, do they eventually make it their career like I did. do not care about music production. That's not their interest. So giving away a lead magnet around music production is not attracting the right people. You're gonna get more music producers to download those things than you will musicians.

[00:11:20] Brian: So those are the two big areas of confusion.

[00:11:22] Brian: The two best types of lead magnets that I found that work for freelancers One is you share some sort of framework around your process as a freelancer. so if you have a proprietary process or some sort of framework that you follow this is what Donald Miller did he built a $30 million a year business off of StoryBrand.

[00:11:37] Brian: He has a framework, he shared it. He had free PDFs, video series he gave away, all based on this framework. That's option A. Or option B is you look at your entire process of what you walk a client through from number one through number six, and you look at the first one to two to three things that you can help them solve and you give it away for free or you give it away for very cheap.

[00:11:57] Brian: You can charge for a lead magnet. By the way, this [00:12:00] doesn't have to be a free thing. And then the big ticket item. Your service is steps four through six. Those are the two easiest ways to do this. Every business is different, so I can't tell you exactly what you should do without speaking to you personally.

[00:12:11] Brian: This is why we have a coaching program. should get you started. And if you want a whole episode on lead magnets, just email me podcast@sixfigurecreative.com.

[00:12:18] Brian: But once you have a lead magnet, a good lead magnet, we need to now create the pages to promote this thing.

[00:12:23] Brian: And if you remember what I showed you before with the other websites they had the choose your own adventure pages, where there was anywhere from 10 to 15 to 18. Different things we could do on that page. Guess how many things we can do on this?

[00:12:33] Brian: Well, lemme show you, this is one of my funnels right here, and this is for the lead magnet for the client acquisition toolkit. You may have seen ads for this. You may have found me through an ad promoting this, but if you look at this page, my question is, how many things can you do on this page?

[00:12:45] Brian: really, we have about two options. leave the page or close the page or hit the back button. That's really just all one option.

[00:12:51] Brian: Or option two is to move forward in the funnel and click the next step. And what can you do on this page? It's asking for a name and email address. It's a little popup box If you're listening on your [00:13:00] podcast app right now, if you look at this page, what can you do?

[00:13:02] Brian: You can either hit the X button and back out of this. You can close the page. or option two. You can put your name and email address in and hit get this toolkit and it'll sign you up.

[00:13:12] Brian: That is a basic lead generation funnel. It is a landing page. where you collect name and email address, and it is a thank you page where you say, thank you for signing up, and then there is a delivery mechanism of some sort.

[00:13:22] Brian: Usually an automated email that goes out. This, by the way, was all if you just saw that. It was all created through my software, easy funnels.io. This is what I use myself.

[00:13:30] Brian: and just looking at the backend numbers here. If you look at the stats for this funnel, you can see generally speaking in this timeframe, this is an old funnel of mine, but I had about a thousand people land on the page, and I had about 350 of those sign up and join my email list.

[00:13:43] Brian: It's actually gone up since then. I'm, I'm usually around the 55 to 60%, conversion rate mark on my funnels at this point. ' cause I've changed some things around, but that's generally speaking a much higher percentage than if someone lands on your website. what percentage of people become a contact on your website?

[00:13:57] Brian: It's likely three to 5% [00:14:00] at best, in most cases. So to see 30 to 40, to 50 to 60% of people that land on this page sign up and become a lead,

[00:14:07] Brian: That is an insanely powerful thing.

[00:14:09] Brian: Once you have a lead, you now have the ability to nurture that lead, to grow your relationship with that lead, to push them to other pages, promote other content or whatever you want, just send them emails.

[00:14:20] Brian: The goal is to move them through those marketing funnel stages until they become someone who is actually interested in having a conversation with you.

[00:14:29] Brian: And that's where the opportunity funnel comes in. The opportunity funnel is very similar to a lead generation funnel. But it's usually something that you only promote to people who are already leads, who are already warm to you. A lead generation funnel is something that you actually promote to cold audiences.

[00:14:45] Brian: So that's the way I do things. If you may have found me on ads, you may have seen my ads, but I promote my ads to build an email list and then that email list, I do a lot with it. I promote this podcast, I promote other content. I promote my software,

[00:14:58] Brian: you can do the exact same [00:15:00] thing in your freelance business. And I actually got an incredible email from one of my cl coaching clients today, and I had to reply to him because it was such a good email with such a good hook that drew me in and made me read the entire email.

[00:15:10] Brian: so once you have the lead, you have the ability to email them or text them. You can do also do s m s lists as well. That's beyond the scope of this conversation. We need to create an opportunity funnel. That's what takes these leads, this big email list that you've started to grow and turns these into opportunities.

[00:15:23] Brian: A k a sales opportunities, sales calls or phone calls or quote requests, inquiries, people that are interested in working with you. That's that second stage that people struggle with, which was interest.

[00:15:34] Brian: So to create an opportunity funnel, first we have to create our version of a lead magnet for this type of funnel. And it's not a lead magnet, It's actually something called an offer video. It's a video. of you talking through specific framework. I'll walk you through the framework in a second. A specific framework for what it is that you're offering people and how you can help them. the goal of this, is to take people that are in these earlier stages of the overall marketing funnel and help guide them further down the steps. Again, think [00:16:00] about StoryBrand. It's an intentional framework that's walking people through steps. Think about your favorite book, your favorite movie. Those people have spent a lot of time and care crafting, a really good story that pushes people along this journey. This is part of that story. This is part of that journey for you to help your clients weave through the decision making process.

[00:16:20] Brian: Understanding what they need to know what is important to make the decision so that they know if you are the right one for them. Most freelancers do nothing to help their clients with this. They just put it all on the client to figure out on their own, and you just hope that you're the one they pick.

[00:16:34] Brian: Hope Marketing is an ineffective solution. It does not work. Hope marketing's what leads you broke. So the first step of an opportunity funnel is an offer video. What are you offering them? And here's the framework that I recommend.

[00:16:44] Brian: You can do a bunch of variations of this, but this is the most simple one that I know. It's a really good way to get you started. And if you struggle with writing video scripts or you just struggle on video overall, consider using tools like Chat, G B T to help you outline things like this. I'm working from this episode on an outline. That's how I can talk for 20, 30, 40, 50 [00:17:00] minutes at a time, and I'll refer back to it occasionally to figure out where I'm at in my journey on this episode. But you can do the exact same thing for this offer video you're creating.

[00:17:08] Brian: I. You don't even have to be on camera by the way. You can create slides, you can use B-roll, you can do whatever you want. I've seen some really cool creative things. And the good news about this is you are a creative. You can figure out what you want to do if you don't wanna be the one on camera. And I've actually had a lot of different offer videos in my life and my most effective ones are the ones where I'm not even on camera.

[00:17:26] Brian: It's just slides or B roll or things where I'm talking through or visualizing the journey that they're going through.

[00:17:32] Brian: So here's the easy framework to follow.

[00:17:33] Brian: It's six steps. I promise I didn't plan for everything in this episode to be six steps, but it is attention, problem, agitate, solution proof, call to action. Those are the six steps. I'm gonna walk you through each of those. And I want you to think through what are some of the talking points you could have in your offer video for each of these six steps that guides someone who is

[00:17:54] Brian: maybe interested in what you're doing interested in your work interested in your lead magnet [00:18:00] or your framework. and moves them from interest to consideration to intent. Those are really steps we're trying to walk people through here from interest I'm considering this, this is interesting. to I'm gonna show intent. Let's book a call and have a conversation to see if this person's the right person for me.

[00:18:13] Brian: So here's the offer video framework. First is attention. We're trying to hook someone in. This is a short portion of the video and all we're trying to talk through here is either a result you've helped someone else get that would be appealing to your ideal client. It can be a problem you can help them solve or some sort of goal or outcome you can lead them towards.

[00:18:30] Brian: this has to be all about them. This is not the place for you to talk about yourself. It's actually you don't talk about yourself till near the very end of the video. This is about how you can help them. The second phase of this, you can look at these as phases.

[00:18:41] Brian: 'cause this is not just a step, it is like a phase A conversation, a dance you're having. The second phase is the problem phase face. Bringing up problems is a really good thing to do. It sounds bad, but it's good. And here's why. People that you're working with are either walking towards pleasure, a K, they're going towards a goal or [00:19:00] they're running away from pain.

[00:19:01] Brian: They're moving away from something that's painful for them Depending on what niche you're in and what industry you're in and what service you're offering, you might be offering a more goal oriented service or more of a pain solution service, either way, there's a problem they're trying to solve.

[00:19:13] Brian: It's the problem of there's a roadblock on my way from where I'm at now to where my goal is, or there's a pain chasing me that I need to get away from that I need solved.

[00:19:22] Brian: But once you've brought up the problem, the third stage is to agitate it. Again, this sounds really negative, but this is an important part about helping someone understand the value you're going to help them with. If you just bring up the problem and then instantly go into the solution, there's no real emotional buy-in here. And as much as people don't wanna admit this, people buy with emotions and then they justify with logic later on. So if you don't incorporate some sort of emotions into your offer video, Then you're doing yourself a disservice by not helping them understand the true impact of what that problem is causing to them.

[00:19:53] Brian: So the agitation phase is just to try to stir up emotion around really diving in and agitating that problem.

[00:19:59] Brian: An easy [00:20:00] example for me to give right now, because this is my business, is I can say, do you struggle to get clients? I have a solution. It's called client acquisition. Cool. That's not really that appealing to people, but Do you struggle to get clients?

[00:20:10] Brian: That's the problem. Now for agitation. Do you wake up each day stressing over where your next lead or client's gonna come from? Are you going through feast or famine, rollercoasters? Have you gone long stretches of days or weeks or months without clients or without leads?

[00:20:24] Brian: You know, You're great at what you do. and you even see people down the street charging more than you but they're not as good as you are. That's because you've been sitting around waiting for clients to find you.

[00:20:34] Brian: You are a victim of Hope marketing because even if you're the best in the world at what you do, if no one knows you exist, you will never get the gig.

[00:20:42] Brian: So the solution is something called client acquisition. See how much more powerful that entire thing is when I sit there and agitate the pain a bit longer help them stir up those emotions. This isn't manipulative and I want to really point this out.

[00:20:56] Brian: Manipulation is when you are. Coercing somebody to do something that is [00:21:00] against their best interests. Influence is when you are doing some of the exact same things to help improve someone's life. So if you are genuinely helping people, using psychology to get people to do the right thing for themselves is actually a good thing.

[00:21:13] Brian: And the reason most freelancers don't do this sort of stuff besides not knowing how to or not knowing they should, is because they feel like they either shouldn't have to because their work should speak for itself, which it doesn't always, I'm sorry. That's not really how it works.

[00:21:25] Brian: That's why your friend down the road, who is not as good as you can charge more than you sometimes.

[00:21:29] Brian: But the other reason is you feel like you're manipulating people. And I just wanna say that when you are helping people emotionally buy into something that is a solution to their problems and helping them, that's not manipulation.

[00:21:40] Brian: But let's go back to the offer video framework. We've got attention to hook them in a problem that you're pointing out and helping them with, either away from pain or towards pleasure. You're agitating it to stir up emotions so they fully understand the impact of what your solution, which is the next step is going to bring them.

[00:21:55] Brian: that's the fourth phase solution. How can you actually help them?

[00:21:58] Brian: this is where I've talked about this in many episodes [00:22:00] before, if you just offer, but in seat services, this sort of stuff is harder to make work. But in seat services, that's where it doesn't matter what but's in the seat,

[00:22:08] Brian: there's not a whole lot you can do. Oh, I offer video editing services. I'm a mastering engineer. You can do these things, don't get me wrong. There's plenty of pains. There's plenty of emotion and agitation from past people. They've worked over people that screw them over. There's a lot you can do there, But the solution should rarely be your service. That's the thing. It's not you. It's not your service. The solution, but should be some sort of framework or alternative method or some better way. And I think some of the most, Successful freelancers understand creating a transformation, creating an outcome is the better way to sell.

[00:22:37] Brian: Instead of selling services, selling butts in seats. So when you get to the solution section, if you're focused on frameworks, better ways, alternative methods, things that are different, newer, better, transformative, you're gonna have a much better time and a much higher conversion on this video than for people that are just ING seats offering copycat services that a million other people are offering.

[00:22:59] Brian: But the next phase [00:23:00] after solution is proof. People can talk all day long. People can say a lot of things, but the saying is show don't tell. So if you have proof, this is the time to show the proof the.

[00:23:10] Brian: This can be success stories you can share. This could be case studies with interviews or written. It can be testimonials. It can be anything that proves that what you say will actually work for them. ' they're trying to visualize themselves in these other people's shoes because you as the guide, unless you've already been through their journey, which can be the case for some of you, where you can say, Hey, I was in your spot before.

[00:23:29] Brian: This is what we did to get to where I am now. That's a little less common in the freelancing space. That's more like in, the coaching world, course world. That can be the same in the software world where I really struggle with this problem. So I built a software to solve this problem but the success stories, the case studies, here's all the testimonials. That's really where you can shine when it comes to proving what you say is true.

[00:23:49] Brian: So that's the proof section or the proof phase. And the final is the call to action. There are two rules with the call to action. One is make it clear. So what are the next steps? I've resonated with everything you've said in this video so far. [00:24:00] What are my next steps if this resonated with you?

[00:24:02] Brian: If you like what I've talked about in this video, you need to do is click the button underneath this video, book a call with me and we can chat about X, Y, and z. So make it clear. And then the second rule is make it easy. If you don't have a booking widget, get one Easy funnels.io. The site builder that I just promoted my own, that has a booking widget built in.

[00:24:19] Brian: You don't have to have Calendly, you don't have to have schedule once. But if you aren't on easy funnels, get something that allows them to choose a date and time to have a conversation with you. And if you aren't doing phone or video or in person, if you aren't actually talking to someone face to face or ear to ear, at least start doing that.

[00:24:34] Brian: It's a really important step taking someone through that entire evaluation phase so they understand the value you bring, how you're different from everyone else, how your pricing is justified because of X, Y, and Z.

[00:24:44] Brian: This is an important part. If you try to do everything through proposals and emails, sales and dms and texts, you're just not gonna have as high of a conversion rate.

[00:24:51] Brian: But that is the conversion video in a nutshell,

[00:24:53] Brian: or the offer video, or the opportunity video, whatever you wanna call this. but once you have this video in hand, once it's created, you need to [00:25:00] create what's called an opportunity funnel. and this is very similar to the lead generation funnel, but there's a slight variation you can do, and that is this. You have a landing page similar to the lead gen funnel, but you have option A.

[00:25:10] Brian: You can actually just have the offer video directly on the page. They don't have to sign up for anything. They can just watch it and they can book a call on the next page. Or option B is, they can register for the video to view the video, and then they watch it on the next page. It depends on what you're trying to do.

[00:25:23] Brian: It depends on how cold or warm the traffic is. my rule is if they're already on your email list, don't ever make them sign up for something. Again, that's the goal. Don't make them sign up for something. Again, it's impossible. On a podcast like this so sometimes you might sign up for multiple things from mine, my bad. If it were a perfect world, you would just have access to everything once you sign up one time. But if you're taking someone from a lead, they're getting a follow-up series of emails from you, which you can all do through easy funnels, and then they're, taking that next step to view your offer video.

[00:25:48] Brian: Don't make this a chore for them,

[00:25:49] Brian: the goal is once they've watched the offer video that's resonated with them, they book a call with you. Now you have a sales opportunity. A sales opportunity is what's gets added to the c r m, your c r m as a deal or [00:26:00] opportunity. There's a monetary amount attached to it, and you start tracking what's my close rate on these opportunities.

[00:26:05] Brian: This is basic sales. I have an opportunity. This come in, it's qualified. I've said, this is the type of clients I wanna work with. You do the phone call, you do the sales process, maybe send a proposal, maybe you talk numbers on the phone or on Zoom.

[00:26:15] Brian: Then you hopefully close, meaning you collect money or deposit from 30 to 60% of those. But this is where we get to the third bonus funnel. This is my favorite funnel. It's called a hybrid funnel.

[00:26:26] Brian: And this is where we combine the best of both worlds. And this is the funnel I actually have set up right now. It works really well for cold traffic, meaning I'm promoting to people who don't know me, they don't like me, they don't trust me, and I'm only using me as an example because I can show you all this stuff without violating any sort of trust with my clients or people that I know.

[00:26:41] Brian: And I also don't have the access to the backend of everyone's funnels. can just show you what I am doing right now with this. This is my hybrid funnel. It looks exactly the same on the front end. It's a lead generation funnel, and if you click on this, it's doing the exact same thing as promoting a lead magnet.

[00:26:55] Brian: And then it's popping up and saying, if they click the button, put in your name and email address, and then you can click to get this [00:27:00] toolkit. Now the difference is on the thank you page.

[00:27:02] Brian: You're saying thanks for requesting this toolkit. the link to the toolkit will be sent to your inbox, but in the meantime, here are your next steps and it says, step one, check out this special bonus training.

[00:27:11] Brian: And on this bonus training, it's just my offer video or my conversion video talking through a similar framework. This one's slightly different, at least this one that I'm showing right here. I have different variations of this, and then they can take the next step, which for me is apply for my coaching program.

[00:27:24] Brian: I don't just do straight book a call because of way too many people that would book calls and waste time if I did that. So I have a, secondary step, which is a apply. It takes them to an application page where they can fill out an application with more information for me, and then they become opportunity.

[00:27:35] Brian: And if you look at the numbers of this funnel that I have, I'm sharing on the screen right now. This is my cold funnel, so this is cold traffic. These are people who had never heard of me before and I sent 5,000 people to this page, roughly 5,000 people, just under 3000 people signed up for this lead magnet.

[00:27:49] Brian: That's the first step, and then the hybrid step, which is starting the application. About 5% of people actually took that step. They started the application, about 2.1% finished the application. So out of a about 2500, [00:28:00] 2800 people, that became marketing leads for me. I had about 101 people apply cold traffic that people have never heard of before.

[00:28:06] Brian: Now the numbers are way better if it's all warm traffic or some sort of combination of the two. but the reason this works so well is because people can just now learn about you and they can go through all of those phases

[00:28:16] Brian: from awareness to interest, to consideration, to intent, to evaluation, to purchase in a much shorter window than people realize. it takes someone from a stranger to a client in just a, few short days sometimes in a few short hours. If you do it well, is definitely possible. I.

[00:28:30] Brian: But here's my challenge to you. If you don't believe this stuff just go try it yourself. Look at the numbers yourself. Set up something like this, whether it's a hybrid funnel or just a lead gen funnel, or just an offer funnel. Whatever you set up, set something up that's helping guide people through that entire journey.

[00:28:43] Brian: Don't make it such a choose your own adventure. Choose your own adventures aren't really that fun. I would much, much rather just be engrossed and being guided through a story. Instead of every single page, I'm interrupted with a decision. People don't like making decisions. I dunno if you've realized this.

[00:28:57] Brian: How many decisions do you really make and do you [00:29:00] enjoy making those decisions? I have like a half dozen decisions I've just been putting off. 'cause I don't wanna make them, I don't like making decisions, so don't make me make decisions. If I'm evaluating you, the only decision should be, are you the right fit for me or not?

[00:29:11] Brian: Should I book a call or not? Should I sign up for this lead magnet or not? Those are really the only decisions, yes, I know I'm underplaying a little bit. There's decisions we all make every day. Should I click this link or not? Et cetera, et cetera. But if you do it right, you're guiding them through it versus making them decide which link should I click on?

[00:29:26] Brian: What should I do next? I don't know if you have 15 things on your site for me to do, a funnel narrows those things down and allows me to focus just on the most important things.

[00:29:33] Brian: If you are interested in lead gen funnels and opportunity funnels, and you want us to help you map it all out and actually build it,

[00:29:39] Brian: Then I would highly encourage you just go to six figure creative.com/coaching just to learn a little bit more about some of the frameworks and concepts that we work with our clients on.

[00:29:48] Brian: So that's all I have for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to the six Figure Creative podcast.

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