SFB Newsletter #11

Hey 👋

If you’ve been following along over the past 3 editions, I’ve been sharing the three types of Marketing…

Organic: Good to get your first $10K month. You can read it here >

Lead Gen: Good to scale from $10K to $50K/month. You can read it here >

& Sales Funnels: Good to build a multi 7 figure business. That’s what we’re diving into today.

As it currently stands I’ve build 3 sales funnels that have processed over a million in sales through them. Each one sequentially has become more profitable as I’ve understood the process more deeply.

I’m currently working on my fourth and fifth that I believe will be my most important and profitable yet.

I usually don’t recommend them as a first standing point as you’ll want to have a basic understanding of marketing and sales concepts, before tackling it.

You’ll want to understand what the following terms mean before diving into sales funnels.

ALTV = Average Lifetime Profit Value of a Client.
AOV = Average Order Value.
CPA = Cost Per Acquisition.
CGS = Cost of Goods Sold.

One of the problems with lead generation marketing… It’s expensive and there is no certainty as to when you’ll get your money back. For a period it’s cash flow negative.

That’s all well and good if you’re a VC funded company - but I prefer to bootstrap businesses and own them 100% - hence, I need to overpower the constraints of risk with better strategy.

For example - say you develop a lead magnet (free guide/ebook) and you run ads to build your list. The best case scenario is that you’ll get leads for $1.50 each, but it’s probably more likely you’ll be spending up to $5 per lead.

Every 100 people you add to the list it’s at least $150-$500 going out.

Say you run Facebook Ads - you’ll be charged immediately.

You now have leads you need to convert…

The average time to conversion in my Lead Generation Funnels is 90 days - there is an average 90 day lag time between the spend and the ROI.

All meaning: anytime you want to scale quickly you need to spend a lot of money.

What if there was a solution that was ROI positive on day 1 - profitable even - so you could compound and dump even more in tomorrow?

Turn Your Slow Inefficient Lead Generation Cost Centre into a High Performance Scalable Profit Centre With… Sales Funnels

There is a simple mathematic equation here, that if you understand and master… You’ll have unlimited free leads for your business.

Let’s break it down.

1. The Average Order Value.

With a sales funnel you put a small paid offer on the front end of the business. You also include 3 more opportunities during the checkout process for the customer to add extra products to their purchase.

The goal here is to Double the Average Order Value - if you sell a product for $49 you’ll want to use these upsell offers to get the AOV up to $98.

If you sell a product for $20 you’ll want to use these upsell offers to get the AOV up to $40… etc.

It’s at least 5x easier to improve your Average Order Value than it is to reduce your Cost Per Acquisition. So spend 80% of your initial efforts trying to increase the AOV, and 20% trying to reduce your CPA.

Once your AOV is within KPI - switch your efforts to reducing the CPA.

2. The Cost Per Acquisiton.

The CPA is the average amount you spend in Ads to make one sale. The goal here is to be at least half of the AOV, if possible less.

If your AOV is $100 you can afford to spend $50 on your CPA.

If your AOV is $40 you can afford to spend $20 on your CPA.

If you hit these numbers your ROAS (return on ad spend) is 2x or 200%.

This is why the AOV is so important. Focus on your AOV - get creative with your product and your offer, because it makes your ads so much easier - I’ll detail this in depth later on in the newsletter. (I have three other 7 figure + funnels I’ve sourced to illustrate how systemised these things really are)

If you spend $1,000 in ads to market your sales funnel you want to make at least $2,000 by the end of the day.

If you can do this you’re well on your way to mastery.

3. The Cost of Goods.

Depending on what your offer is you may have a small Cost of Goods to deliver the product. In fact I advise it. The best Sales funnel offers are physical offers - they will convert at a higher rate as the packaging is better, and they are easier to market and sell.

If there were a series of important things to understand to master this process… Packaging is up there.

It might be the only thing actually. It might all be packaging, depending how you define that.

Anyways, it’s much easier to package a physical product in a compelling way than it is a digital product. Don’t get me wrong - it’s possible, but it adds a layer of complexity.

Say you sell a book… Which is my personal favourite Sales Funnel Offer the cost to drop ship the book within 7 days will be approximately $20.

Let’s run the numbers…

Say you get smart and you package a book together with relevant offers and bonus materials so you can drive the front end value up to $49, then you can add a series of upsells to get that Average Order Value up to $100.

You spend $30 in ads to sell the book (my historical average) and now you’re left with $70 in operating cash flow. You spend $20 to drop ship the book. You’re left with $50 in gross profits.

Let’s run this on the daily…

You spend $300 in ads - you sell 10 books and you’ve made $1,000 in sales.
You have $200 in cost of goods and you’re left with $500 in gross profits.

Next day you could invest $500 in ads - you sold 16.66 books and made $1666 in sales (on average). You have $333 in cost of goods. You’re left with $832.66 in gross profits.

You see where I’m going with this…

You can use the cash flow and the profit from the funnel to fund it’s continued growth, expansion and market dominance.

** For every sale you’ll get from your sales funnel you’ll get 2-3 leads who don’t purchase but are still added to your email list. Those leads are all technically free as a byproduct of your funnel.

In terms of business, to me this is like the holy grail of marketing - because we haven’t even spoken about the most important profit centre inside this funnel…

4. The Back End.

The first sales funnel I ever build was for my book ‘The Business Owner’s Guide to Profit’ that I wrote in 2017.

I had no idea what the numbers should be - to be honest I did a form of well educated winging it - and it ended up working out pretty well…

You see it’s not just the front end, the customers, where you make your money it’s when you turn your customers into clients on the back end.

At the time I had a mentoring program where I was working with clients closely to help them implement the system in my book. I had a simple call booking page on my website and I was sending regular emails and content to my list that would share more insights and then invite people to book a call.

I started to notice a pattern of people that were coming onto those calls - they were physically holding up my book and telling me how much they loved it. Those calls were so easy - they were like conversations with friends… Almost all of them ended up turning into clients…

After a while I got curious and I ran the numbers.

10% of the people who bought my book booked in to speak with me.

9% of people who bought my book were turning into clients.
(90% closing ratio)

I was making over $560 on average for every copy of my book that I was selling!

Pretty crazy…

Here is why I think this is happening... Books are simply one of the best assets in the world to grow a business.

If you read the last edition - I spoke about the warm level inside a LeadFLOW and how a lead had to spend on average ~7 hours with you to know you, like you and trust enough to want to do business with you.

Well, I think Books are probably the most intimate, concise, strategic and most well positioned way to spend 7 hours with someone. If you’ve read someones book you certainly know them, if you finished it - you probably like them.

With a book the front end offer in your business (that you’re making a profit on) becomes the warm conversion asset to turn your new customers into clients.

Build a client offer on the back if you don’t already have one.

This strategy can work for any business that sells agency, professional services, accountants, lawyers, coaches, consultants, health businesses, even e-com, basically any ‘internet enabled’ business that can create a higher end back end offer - this strategy can work well for.

In comparison to everything else I’ve tried over the past 10 years… nothing comes close to it in terms of effectiveness.

»

Want to Have a Sales Funnel to Turn Your Lead Gen System into a Profit Centre?

There are two ways I can help you to do that.

1. My team and I can build it for you. We currently build 2 funnels / month.

2. I can mentor you on the process, and check everything as you build it.

Either way if you’re already spending money on ads and you know a sales funnel would be valuable for your business. If you’re open minded and you want to learn more about how it can work for you…

Click the link below and you can book in a free call with me - on the call I’ll help you map out a strategy to build a 7 figure sales funnel for your business.

»

For the rest of this edition of the newsletter I’m going to give you the strategic pieces of the funnel and the ads that you’ll need to pull this off.

Basically there are tried, tested and proven methods to do this. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel - what you need to do is package your offer in the right way.

Funnel Case Study: Yogabody 21 Day ‘Happy Back’ Challenge

I use social media to find businesses who are using funnels and ads that I know are converting. I currently have over 100 funnels that I know have generated over 7 figures that I use as reference material for my clients.

One that’s been on my radar for a while now, and is one of the most impressive is Yogabody. They are currently running ~ 530 different ads on Facebook and Instagram.

I love this business! It’s mindblowingly well done, I couldn’t speak more highly of the system they’ve created. Genius level across the board.

As a little exercise - Jump onto their page www.yogabody.com, take 10 seconds to click through all the links - you’ll be pixeled and added to their retargeting sequences - then open up instagram scroll through for 60 seconds and I bet you’ll see one or many of their ads.

Now this type of funnel and business will typically fly under the radar because they aren’t in the B2B space openly sharing their results.

However, based on what I can see in the traffic data, case studies on the landing page and ad views I’d estimate they’re approaching $10 million in sales through their just their front end funnels: 4 of which are still being run extensively, with a few more being tested as we speak.

This number could balloon massively if they have a back end offer and system to turn these customers into clients - which they probably do.

Again based on the data and the traffic my guess is they’re returning at least $3 per every $1 they spend on ads on the front end - perhaps even more impressively they’re selling a purely digital product that has a fixed cost of good sold so the only real costs could be some hosting, apps, video production and remote staff.

At least a few million dollars a year in profit running through this system - just purely on the front end - there’s a lot to learn here.

The ads they run are some of the best I’ve ever seen. Their pattern interrupts in particular are perfect.

In the last edition of the newsletter I spoke about the importance of a pattern interrupt in the first 3 seconds of an ad… Here’s what the mastery looks like…

Each ad uses the exact same script structure - very similar to the one I use for my ads - they also use the exact same landing page structure and script. They are evidently serious students of the game of sales funnels.

How to Design a Landing Page That Converts 5% of Unique Page Visitors.

If at least 10% of visitors add your product to the cart (become leads) and 5% of visitors purchase your product you will probably have a winning landing page.

Here are the elements that I’ve split tested and found to positively impact those numbers.

** Note: I use Clickfunnels to build the landing pages, checkout systems, bumps and OTO’s - I use it because all of this functionality is built in. In my opinion it’s the best system in the market to build these funnels quickly and easily.

1. The Breakthrough Product

The first element of your landing page is for a basic outline of your product. Depending what sort of product you have you may also get a ‘Hero Video’ done for the top of your landing pages.

In most cases this will increase the conversion, but it’s tricky to get right, so I’ll cover it more at the end of the list once you understand all of the pieces.

If you have a physical product you may not need a video to start off with just like my journal page above.

2. PPS… Pain > Problem > Solution

In the next phase you’ll outline and connect the Pain to the Problem to your solution.

This is some of the most important real estate in your funnel - the big mistake people make here - they put this section towards the end of the page…

Don’t do that. Put it up top.

This is what tells the client they’re in the right place and you can build interest for your solution and your product. You want to have this section right under your hero section so it’s the first thing they see when they start to scroll.

Here’s a small screenshot of the Pain, Problem, Solution section of a ‘Yogabody’ landing page…

Here’s an example from one of my funnels…

Pain = Being chained to the desk. Feeling burnt out.
Problem = Personal life and business life are in opposition.
Solution = Use proven system’s that free you up in both areas.

Again this is something that is so frequently ‘glossed’ over when it comes to marketing - the pains, the problem and your solution come before any deep dive into your product. Make sure those lines of communication are set up appropriately. You’ll get more leads and sales.

3. The Hero’s Journey

Next you’ll introduce yourself. A big mistake people make is to have this section at the front of their ads, landing pages, emails etc.

If you find yourself saying, “Hey, it’s ‘YOUR NAME’ here” - you’re doing it. Try instead to start with a pattern interrupt, then lead that into pain, then the problem, then the solution - then you can introduce yourself after that.

Some tips here - if you ‘are the dream client,’ meaning you’re selling to a previous version of yourself - tell the story of the exact moment you were experiencing the pain and the problem your dream customer is experiencing now. Then tell the story of how you discovered the solution.

And then keep going - share what happened in your life as a result: This is what I call positioning.

The Hero’s Journey has a downswing and an upswing - make sure you share the upswing - how many clients you’ve been able to help, how many people now use this solution… In property? How many properties you now have. In finance? How much wealth the system generated for you. In health? What the new state of health has meant for your life and relationships.

Positioning is what brings authority and increases trust, it’s an essential ingredient for a successful funnel, yet so frequently I find it missing.

Downswing example from Yogabody…

& the positioning from Yogabody…

4. 10x Bonuses

Next you’ll create a series of bonus materials that are worth 10x more than the investment. You will want to strategically create and package these bonus materials so that you don’t add much or anything to your cost of goods sold.

Digital content here reigns supreme.

Also with the bonuses you’ll want to position them in such a way that they add value to the original offering and compound together in a meaningful way.

1 + 1 = 11

I have my books listed on Amazon, but almost no one buys them there because the bonus materials that I give away when people buy from me are well beyond the value on amazon.

I recently found a funnel from a guy called Dan Koe, who I thought did this very well. He’s packaged together a nice book funnel at https://theartoffocusbox.com/#checkout 

Interesting take on a book funnel considering the order value is $250-$500.

There are a couple of elements missing from the page, however because this seems like a brand new product my guess is he’s doing a soft launch to his warm audience to generate some case studies, social proof and user generated content which will be on v2 of the page and funnel shortly.

If I’m correct he also has the advantage of generating cashflow from his warm audience to then pump into ads to the cold audience. I don’t know much about Dan beyond the page itself but that’s my guess.

Awesome funnel actually - very well done - I’m sure it will drive 7+ figures into his business in the next 12 months.

5. 10x Proof

Here you’ll want to have at least 10x different case studies, testimonials or pieces of proof that illustrate the power of your solution and the product.

When getting testimonials ask for solution based testimonials that way you’ll be able to use them across different products that feature that solution - in particular when you’re testing your funnel these are incredibly useful.

Another tip here: Capture Real Social Proof - slack messages, social media comments, emails, texts, stories all are incredibly valuable forms of social proof.

Here’s an example of real social proof from one of my funnels…

& for educational purposes here’s Yogabody’s again.

6. 10x Guarantee

Here is where you’ll offer a guarantee that the client will receive at least 10x the value of their investment - or it’s free.

Another business to introduce you to here who are masterful at ads and have grown an 8 figure business on the back of it…

Pipdeck - they produce boxes of cards that can be used as thinking tools for business. They have different decks on strategy, innovation, storytelling and running workshops.

Again this is a business I love. But one thing that stood out to me was their guarantee...

Would also be worth jumping onto https://pipdecks.com/ and sacrificing yourself to their pixel so you can see their ads and study them with me 😁 

7. The 10x Offer

Here at the bottom of the page you recap the offer, everything they get when they take action. It’s really an addition of the added bonus materials, with the offer itself as a final call to action.

Here’s an example from one of my funnels…

8. Hero Video

I’ve left this until last because your ‘Hero Video’ that will live at the top of the page simply walks through the landing page in Video Format.

Here is the script I use for it. You’ll notice I slightly shift the order to make sure the video flows a bit. For example I think the guarantee towards the end is more powerful.

So to recap these are the elements that drive conversions (in order) for your Sales Funnel Landing Page.

1. Breakthrough Product / Hero Video

2. PPS.. Pain into Problem into Solution

3. The Hero’s Journey

4. 10x Bonuses

5. 10x Proof

6. 10x Guarantee

7. 10x Offer

You could also add an objection handling section in the form of an FAQ’s Section (Frequently Asked Questions) at the bottom of the page however in my testing I haven’t seen any uptick in conversions from doing so. That’s not to say it’s not valuable to do so, I just haven’t managed it… yet!

You can also add Scarcity and Urgency to the page - however this can negatively impact trust if it’s not done correctly, so I’ve decided to leave it out for now.

In fact Yogabody are going hard on urgency in their funnel which I thought was interesting… I did find myself wondering if the timer just resets everyday… I guess it does?

Anyways those 9 elements I’ve mentioned are what have been proven again and again to drive conversions.

Another thing to mention here - if you’ve spent any time in phone sales - you’ll know these are the exact same strategies that work there also. Marketing is salesmanship by print. Sales is marketing by conversation. Same thing different medium.

This is why I advocate so heavily for business owners to master the 6 pillars in order - they work together and build on each other to provide the next breakthrough.

Someone asked me the other day if I use AI to write these newsletter. No I don’t use it at all for this - I sit down at the screen with a dot point plan of the concept and the models I want to share with you and I write these newsletters out often drawing the models on the ipad in real time.

With that in mind, I often have no idea where they will go or how long they will be - It was my original intention to also talk about bump offers in depth, the OTO offer in depth and also how to run ads into the funnel and scale them up.

I’m afraid that may send us beyond the reasonable limit for this edition…

So here’s what I’m thinking instead - I’m going to extend this series (inception style) by doing a series on sales funnels within this series on marketing.

I’m enjoying going a bit deeper into these concepts and I don’t want to pull short on any of these concepts because I believe it will be more valuable for you to truly understand the nuts and bolts.

These systems have been worth millions of dollars to me at this point and they’re coming up on $100M for my clients, so I want to give them their proper dues.

Talk soon,

Ben Slater.

»

Want to Have a Sales Funnel to Turn Your Lead Gen System into a Profit Centre?

There are two ways I can help you to do that.

1. My team and I can build it for you. We currently build 2 funnels / month.

2. I can mentor you on the process, and check everything as you build it.

Either way if you’re already spending money on ads and you know a sales funnel would be valuable for your business... If you’re open minded and you want to learn more about how it can work for you…

Click the link below and you can book in a free call with me - on the call I’ll help you map out a strategy to build a 7 figure sales funnel for your business.

If you want more details on how we work - click here - other wise you can apply to book in via the link below.

»