Master the Art of Creating a High-Converting Marketing Funnel for Coaches, Course Creators, and Spiritual Teachers

Wondering how to create a marketing funnel that drives conversions and boosts your business growth? We’ve got you covered.

Recently, we published a 40-minute masterclass to share the way we help membership site owners and business entrepreneurs – including life coaches, course creators, and spiritual teachers – market their online content.

And while the webinar format is one of the more digestible ways to understand our process for creating lucrative marketing funnels, we thought it might be great to develop a companion article for the course.

That way, you don’t have to take as many notes; it’s all right here for you!

The secret to increasing sales for your online programs, and growing your email list is…

…a fool-proof, repeatable, and sustainable marketing strategy.

That’s why today we are going to address a few specific training objectives that will help you increase your sales, get leads, and grow your email list.

Why?

Because this is the strategy that is going to earn you the future sales you need to exponentially skyrocket your online endeavor.

Not only will this help you create more effective ad campaigns, but you’ll increase organic traffic with subtle search engine optimizations.

In fact, we’re giving you the exact steps we use for our clients on how to create a marketing funnel to help you explore the basics of creating marketing campaigns that make you more money the longer they’re available online.

Then, once you’ve got these basics down, you can begin applying what you’ve learned to other types of funnels in your marketing stream.

Why Webinars?

We like to use the webinar scenario because it can be used in a ton of different business scenarios to maximize conversions.

It’s also a great way for us to fuse in the website fundamentals that are a big part of the marketing process–though of course you can work with one of us directly to:

Our help might actually be an option for you right now, particularly if you are looking for a little peace of mind.

Often the clients who come to us looking to improve their marketing, end up discovering they’re really looking for a trustworthy person or team to help look after their business.

That way, if something happens, they have support in resolving the situation as quickly as possible, without having to wait on hold.

Plus, we can always help you measure the success of what you’ll be learning in today’s training, and help bounce around different marketing ideas and strategies to gain you even more long-term profits.

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Still, we’re writing this article for those of you who want to work a little more on your own, and who want access to an expert’s opinion on the best way to create a high-converting marketing funnel.

So without further ado, here is almost a decade’s worth of expertise distilled down into a short guide on mastering the art of creating a digital marketing funnel for your online course, membership, coaching or consulting business!

4 Marketing Funnel Foundations to Prepare Your Next Campaign

In the course of our work at The Digital Navigator, we’ve come up with a pretty straightforward framework for how to create a marketing funnel.

This framework is based on four foundational marketing principles: build awareness, engage, convert, and ascend.

For the purpose of exploring the actual steps you’ll need to take to create a lucrative marketing funnel, let’s take a quick overview of these key marketing funnel principles to better equip you with a vision for what successful marketing looks like.

The first step, building awareness, is all about getting discovered by new prospects and cold leads by posting blogs, social media content, videos, podcasts, infographics, memes, paid ads and more.

Then, you can work on engaging with those prospects further through video training series offered for free or for a small fee, or through email marketing or social media groups.

The idea here is to build a stream for two-way communication between you and the prospects you’re going to convert in the next phase of your digital marketing funnel.

To successfully convert those prospects into leads through your funnel, they must first share their contact information, and from there invest their time and/or money into your product or service.

Keep in mind this conversion process does incorporate multiple steps, so be sure to check out our companion article, Sales Funnel Stages: Step by Step Guide to Building a Sales Conversion Machine), where you can learn all about the importance of graduated sales tactics like Entry-point offers and Profit Maximizers.

The last marketing funnel stage, ascending prospects, is therefore about offering additional products and services that align with the products being purchased through your digital online business.

“Typical offerings for the ascend stage are products and services that will help your clients reach their goal faster or more easily.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

These ascension offerings often look like ‘self-learning’ options for existing programming, paired with an ‘upgrade’ that gets students live access to you, group call options, or Q&A sessions.

For example, you could host solo or group mentoring sessions to support your student as they go through your program or course.

As we then return to our webinar example, it is possible to see the marketing funnel roadmap looking somewhat like this:

1. Distribute free content to build awareness of your product, service, or brand. This could be an article on social media, a guest post, or a paid post that promotes your webinar registration page.
2. Engage cold and warm prospects with ongoing emails and outreach about different ‘highlight’ aspects of your webinar. When people watch your webinar and even ask questions while you’re live, you will naturally develop more opportunities for two-way communication.
3. Convert engaged audiences into leads and customers with contact forms and purchasable product options available on webinar landing pages and communications. Keep in mind that there are several conversion events that can happen during the engagement process. Anything from a prospect booking a discovery call (time-spend), to them purchasing a course or coaching program (money-spend) counts as a conversion!
4. Offer your personal expertise as a package deal to add value to existing products and services (think beginner, intermediate, and advanced options), and ascend new and returning students who were drawn in by your webinar. They may even refer you to other people, or provide testimonials you can use to build authority about your expertise!

As you can see from this process, there is a multiplier effect that occurs as you take a hands-on approach to building a strong (and lucrative) marketing funnel.

And while we are of course here to take all of the implementation work off your hands (you can schedule a consultation with our strategic experts)…

…we nevertheless want to expand more on what you need to build a money-making marketing funnel that ends up paying for itself ten times over!

So, what are all the things you need to implement this four-step framework to develop a webinar that draws in new prospects and customers?

There are eight things you need, but first, let’s take a quick look at the software we use to support a sustainable marketing funnel process:

Our Top Recommended Tools to Create a Lucrative Marketing Funnel

To build your webinar campaign, you’re going to need a few tech tools in your arsenal. Here’s a short list of all the tools we keep close at hand as we create lucrative marketing funnels for ourselves, and our clients:

1. Website or Webpage Builder. We recommend using WordPress.org, since it’s going to enable better analytics tracking, great cost savings, and a better paid advertising experience. That said, you can also use page builders like ClickFunnels, Kartra, or whatever system you’re most comfortable with. (Click to find out why we recommend Wordpress.org vs Wordpress.com)
2. Email Marketing System. This is how you’re going to build out automated messaging and great email campaigns for your marketing funnel. Here, we recommend you utilize ActiveCampaign since it is so flexible, and yet not overly complicated. Other tools you could use include systems like MailChimp, Drip, or Ontraport.
3. Webinar Application. This is the tool that you’ll be using to create the webinar video in the first place. Most of our clients prefer to use Zoom, since it’s very easy to navigate–and we agree it’s one of the best options out there to provide free content to students fast.

With the three tools above, you’ll be well-situated to create a webinar that ultimately leads customers to your business website.

In the meantime, feel free to check out our full list of recommended tools for online businesses, or to contact us to pick our brains about what tools might be best for you.

Otherwise, it’s time to start collecting the eight things you’ll need to create your webinar-centric marketing plan.

Let’s go!

8 Key Steps to Create a Successful Marketing Funnel

When you want to make money from your content without a ton of hassle, we recommend your process look a little something like this:

To summarize, your pathway for how to create a marketing funnel or your webinar starts with building a main offer, not with promotions and ads.

Once you define that offer, then you can start to create your webinar and begin the process of making a landing page, a thank you page, confirmation and reminder emails, a sales page, several sales and value emails, and finally, your checkout page, all of which should lead back to your webinar and main offer.

It bears repeating again: our marketing process is different from most others since it does not in fact start with marketing at all, but with the development and synchronization of your main offer.

We do this because, as you center your entire marketing campaign around that main sales offer, you’ll find the resulting webpages and marketing materials will be much more consistent throughout.

These are the kinds of consistencies that lead to more sales in the long run. In fact, about 68% of businesses attribute around 10% of their revenue growth to brand consistency!

Here’s how that is going to play out as you elevate your main offering with a webinar, summit, multi-day video series, download, or audio meditation:

As you map out your offer (what you want to be selling), you’ll naturally come up with a topic that can be used to create your webinar or other free offer.

You’ll also find great catch phrasing and other related content that you can then copy-write into your landing page, thank you page, sales page, and checkout page.

From there, and along the way, you’ll be able to expand on the value of your foundational content (the main offer and webinar) by adding similar themes, testimonials, and content to your sales and follow-up emails.

In other words, the refinement of your main offer and development of your webinar content will create a rolling stone effect that makes building your lead funnel much easier.

“Normally, clients seek out our marketing experts at The Digital Navigator to help them with the lead and sales emails, only to discover the benefits of creating an entire marketing funnel and campaign that leads to an existing product offering.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

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Is this really the most effective way to build a lead-generating marketing funnel?

We think so, and our opinion is based on over a decade of combined marketing experience for digital businesses online.

Basically, by reversing the process and leading your marketing efforts by starting with your main offer, you are not only marketing, you are also:

With all that said, it’s time to officially begin learning how to create a marketing funnel for your digital product business.

Let’s start, as promised, by learning how to map out your main product offering!

1. Map out your main offer

One of the reasons we begin the marketing funnel process with mapping out the main offer (otherwise known as a ‘paid offer’) is to ensure you are clear on what it is you’re actually offering.

This emphasis is also going to guide the creation of any free material you develop with the intention to lead back to your paid offer.

When you are assured about the value of your main offer, your marketing material will reflect that clarity.

This clarity is what helps prospects feel fulfilled when they purchase your digital product, since they are getting exactly what was advertised.

“A common mistake I see pretty frequently is that people will pick out a webinar topic (or freebie topic) without thinking how that will directly connect to the paid offer they are trying to sell. So many people get this wrong, and in the end the promise of the paid offer distracts prospects from actually signing up for the webinar itself.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

So how do you go about cultivating a paid (main) offer that students really want to buy?

Notice how at the beginning of this article, I mentioned who this article is targeted towards.

That is, I said right from the get-go that I am focusing on the ways life online coaches, course creators, membership site owners, and spiritual entrepreneurs can develop high-converting marketing funnels.

Defining your target audience is where you’ll also start as you begin to formulate (or re-formulate) different aspects of your offer to make it more marketable.

Get help finding your target audience

Not only are you going to want to call that audience out directly in your offer when you eventually market it, you’ll also want to use this time to define…

As you fill out this list, remember to keep it close by for later, as you begin to expand on your marketing funnel build.

Actually, you can likely use the answers to these questions right now as you develop new (or update existing) landing pages for your main offer according to the process used in our Free Sales Funnel Planner.

Then, you’ll be able to use them again when you next create the landing page that eventually leads to your webinar and back to this main product offering.

Talk about sustainability!

But what about pricing?

How do I price my main offer?

We have a few articles on our blog that talk about how to price your digital products (see: How to price online courses for maximum enrollment), but to sum it all up, you want to keep your audience in mind (what is the perceived value of your product?) as well as determine a pricing strategy.

Where the latter is concerned, we recommend starting with a lower price, and then increasing the price later on down the line once a few sales have been made.

The benefit here is that, if you start with that lower price yet are not getting sales, you know it’s not the price that is deterring students from buying your product.

“I actually tell clients to use that lower price point as a part of their marketing strategy, using phrases like ‘introductory price’, ‘early-bird pricing’, or ‘beta program’ to entice students and give them a time-based incentive to enroll.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

What do I do once I’ve (re)defined my main offer?

Ideally, you already have an existing offer with existing sales. This scenario is called having a ‘proven offer’, and is the easiest because you already know that people like what you have, and that the price point is good.

The only difference now is that you’ll be using free offers, like a webinar, to get more people to that paid offer, and enroll in your programming.

If, however, you don’t have a stand-out ‘proven offer’, and it’s a new offer that you’ll be making, then I would recommend doing a little bit of work to get it to the proven offer stage first.

For example, you can reach out to past clients or students and try to sell to them directly without any fancy marketing or automation. This is a great way to gain some initial traction to validate that offer.

You can also do meetings with cold prospects if you don’t have existing clients or students–just making sure that you continue to sell using a one-on-one approach.

That said, if you’re really stuck on realigning your main offer, you might benefit from some expert feedback on what you have out there already.

Whether you decide to reach out to us for help with your main offer, or use some of the resources listed below to help center your paid digital product or service, your next step will be to come up with a complimentary (and complementary) free offer to boost the value of your marketing and draw in new leads.

For the purposes of this article, your free offer is going to be a webinar relating to a topic from the main offer you just developed.

Let’s take a look at how to make the content of that webinar truly successful for all your marketing needs!

2. Publish a successful webinar (or free offer)

Most paid offers and memberships surrounding course and training content will consist of more than one module or chapter.

If, say, you have a main offer that hones in on peace and mindfulness practice, you might then have a module in that offering for a simple morning meditation.

But what happens if you copy that module or chapter from your content, and transform it into a stand-alone product?

You get the next step in your high-converting marketing funnel!

As we mentioned before, the basis of your free or paid webinar is going to be something that is tangible.

The primary focus of your webinar should be an experience that is otherwise very concrete and hands-on, while naturally leading to your offer, as with the morning meditation leading to a larger meditation series.

Make sure you’re also keeping your subject matter well within the realm of your main offer to keep everything flowing. You can even showcase the ways it does so in the webinar itself!

Not only does this double as a marketing tactic, but it will help students situate your webinar content within the scope of your entire digital product portfolio, and will likely introduce new organic leads to your courses or content.

“I know a lot of people say tell them the what and the why, and then sell them the how, but I completely disagree, nor is this the approach we use with our clients. What sells best are products that lead with value first – the how – and then to present the what and why as a continuation of that journey. That way, even if they don’t continue, these leads will remain a part of your email list, waiting for the next product or offering that really speaks to their needs.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

What do I include in my webinar?

Your basic webinar flow should be simple and uncomplicated. To start, your introduction should include the benefits of the webinar, who the webinar is for, and what will be accomplished during the webinar.

From there, you’re going to want to take a few moments to establish your credibility or experience. Mention how long you’ve been in the field or industry, and other points of interest that support your expertise.

You can also identify where to access additional resources and case studies to improve that credibility even further.

Next, you’re going to deliver the promised actionable insights through the remainder of your webinar. This is the bread and butter of the whole package, so it’s important to translate steps, tips, or tricks that your audience can actually use.

Once you’ve shared the main points of the webinar, you can continue the ‘course’ by sharing how what they’ve watched will help them gain momentum towards their own goals.

You should also use this opportunity to present your offer, relating what you’ve presented back to your larger scope of work. This can be anything from scheduling a complimentary consultation to enrolling in a program or higher-end offer.

From there, you’ll be free to record your webinar, and then create the marketing and sales assets you need to support the funnel that extends from your new webinar material.

Just don’t forget to use some of the webinar time (or webinar, registration, thank you page space) to tell your audience what to do next–say, joining a community-based Facebook group, or heading to their inbox for a discount opportunity.

How much should my webinar cost?

More often than not, your webinar will be offered for free.

And while I will quickly explain how much you should charge for your main offer below, or now note that offering paid webinars is a bit of an advanced strategy where marketing is concerned.

Indeed, hosting paid webinars is something you’d only want to take up if you already have a larger audience, say, through Facebook and Instagram followers, your email list, or your website visitors.

That said, for your paid main offer, we recommend a price range of between $297 and $1497.

If you go above that $1500 mark, we would suggest planning on scheduling sales calls to increase conversions and sell your programming ‘sweet spots’, but if you’re new to the webinar game, start closer to the $997 mark.

The idea here is to keep your price high enough that you get a good return on your investment. Only if you have a larger audience size should you consider lowering your costs to the $297 range.

“We recommend our clients put out at least one hour of content for every $100 to $300 they’re charging. If the product is an online course or program, we also recommend giving your audience the option to sign up for a (minimum) three to four-month payment plan. This will increase the chances that your target market will be able to enroll in your program!”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

Then, once you’ve reached a point where you’re comfortable with your sales and want to start charging for a webinar option, you can do so at the $33 to $297 range.

Keep in mind that the value your students are getting should remain in line with the price you set.

While a customer might pay $33 for an hour-long session, as soon as you hit the $97 mark you’re going to want to up the hour count to somewhere between 1.5 and 4 hours so cold leads can see the value of your product!

3. Build a Webinar Landing Page

Once you’ve created your webinar, your next step will be to create a landing page that explains the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of your webinar (or free offer) to help build sales.

This page is super important, since it is the page where every one of your visitors is going to decide whether they want to sign up to receive what you’re offering.

The main focus of this landing page, however, is going to be the content that appears ‘above the fold’, or, at the very top of the landing page without having to scroll. This is going to be the what, why, and how of your webinar, and a link to register.

“We use heatmap software to see how audiences interact with our client’s websites, and have found that 80% of prospects will sign up without scrolling down through the whole page. In theory, you could include only the above-the-fold content and nothing else on the landing page with a decent amount of success. Sure, the extra page elements will maximize your investment to capture the last 20% of registrants, but if you’re stuck, or aren’t putting ad money in to promote it, then above-the-fold-only is fine.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

Here, you’ll want to include all the essential information your audience needs to know about the webinar on offer, including a headline, tagline, the date, the style (on-demand or live), and the main topic.

If you can manage, it’s also best to address some of the objections your audience might have right at the top of the page. This is where you’ll explain in short-form how your webinar, offer, or solution will help them overcome, say, a time-based objection.

Don’t get stuck here if you can’t actually find a way to fit all that information above the fold–it’s perfectly fine if a person has to scroll slightly to get more information. So long as you’re giving a summary of what’s to come, and a sign-up link, you’re golden!

But what comes next?

Just below that top section, we recommend transitioning into a columned view that features three blurbs, much like the one that appears on our website (pictured below):

As you can see, these blurbs highlight the three main benefits of taking the course using a visual image or icon, a header, and a small block of text to explain what that benefit is.

In fact, we trust this style so much, we’ve adopted it with the marketing funnel webinar that goes along with this article!

Depending on whether you’ll be offering the course material live or on-demand, you can include the webinar video via email, or provide direct access to a calendar link, both of which will increase your show-up rate.

Note of course that the information above is just a brief overview of how to build a great landing page for your webinar.

If you want a more in-depth article on the subject, or if you’re really a fish out of water with the whole landing page business, then I suggest you checkout our expert guide: 3 Steps to Create a High-Converting Landing Page.

Low-Converting Landing Pages Waste Time, Money, and Energy.

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HIGH-CONVERTING LANDING PAGE CHECKLIST!

4. Create a Thank You Page for Your Webinar

Creating your thank you page is probably the simplest task on this whole list, and it creates such a positive impression on subscribers that it’s worth the time it takes to make one.

Basically, your thank you page is going to be a webpage that conversions land on once they’ve completed a form or clicked a sign up link on your webinar landing page.

What the thank you page does is increase the show-up rate (or watch rate for on-demand webinar).

Apart from a simple thank you message, and an acknowledgement that they should soon receive a confirmation email to their inbox, your thank you page should therefore include:

Automate Webinar Confirmation & Reminder Emails

When someone clicks to receive a product, service, or freebie from your website, we recommend confirming their enrollment or engagement with a confirmation email.

This is an email that reiterates the information from your thank you page, and invites excitement about the fact they’ve signed up.

The obvious reason for this is so that prospects and converts can rest assured that their engagement has gotten a response. The quicker you can provide this ‘confirmation’ the better!

The added benefit of a confirmation or reminder email is that your audience is less likely to think there’s a problem.

This can reduce your communications load as you won’t have to wade through emails wondering if and when they’ll get their product. You’ll also avoid a negative build-up of comments or criticism on any ads or posts you create in relation to this webinar.

Once you’ve sent the confirmation email, then you can start building up a series of valuable reminder emails leading up to the webinar.

To write these emails, you can simply copy the sections from your landing and thank you pages, and then rewrite them to expand on:

If the webinar is on-demand, this might end up only being one email. Regardless, you can use these emails to keep prospects engaged as you share, for example, articles, videos, podcasts, book excerpts, or audio that relate to the webinar theme.

“If you’re doing a live event, we suggest sending reminders on the day before, the morning of, and an hour prior to your event start, and every subsequent day you’re ‘live’ for multi-day events.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

Not only does this provide more opportunities to scale a customer along your purchase journey, but this kind of communication will ultimately boost attendance (or watch times) for the webinar itself!

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6. Design a Sales Page for Your Webinar Funnel

Remember how in the beginning of this process, you learned how to create a marketing funnel starting with a webinar that takes a ‘chapter’ from your main product or service, and repackages it for quick returns in the form of leads?

Now, you’re going to ‘reintegrate’ that package back into the framework of your higher-priced offerings to increase your chances of making sales on your bigger-ticket items.

But wait, what’s the point of having a separate sales page, if I already have a landing page for my webinar?

There is one main difference between your landing page and the sales page: while the former is where your prospects will register for your free event, the latter includes all the details of the paid offer you’re promoting in (and with) your webinar.

In other words, your sales webpage is where webinar recipients and attendees land to access and potentially purchase the higher-priced programming you set out to promote with your webinar in the first place!

Here are two web page examples from our clients at The Digital Navigator to help illustrate this difference:

1. Webinar Landing Page Example: Amy Robeson’s Soul Evolution Journey Masterclass
2. Sales Page Example: Amy Robeson’s Sacred Awakening Certification

So how do you create a great sales page that is consistent with the messaging you’ve been marketing to prospects through your webinar (or free offer)?

The basic protocol is this: in the webinar you’ll create a high-level summary of your paid offer, which will lead prospects to your sales page.

You do have the option to present the offer verbally in the webinar, and can for instance share a few slides or go through the sales page with viewers using a screenshare tool.

However our preferred option in-house is called a ‘long-form sales page’, which goes into a ton of detail about the program or digital product offering.

What’s great about this sales page style, besides its advantages in terms of search engine optimization, is that it serves audiences who prefer to skim, as well as those who want to go in depth about what they’re buying.

Here are a few things you’ll want to explain in the main copy of your sales page:

One of the great ways to overcome objections is to design a little story to emphasize that the customer is not at fault for needing help or assistance.

If, say, a person is sharing meditation courses, the story could explain how most people have not been successful with meditation at first, and why it can be so difficult.

Next, you create a bond of understanding by emphasizing the challenges they may be facing. This ‘bond’ – more often than not – helps potential customers understand that YES, they do need your help.

What else should I include on my sales page?

When you start learning how to create a marketing funnel, know that you should use the same branding for your sales page as you did with your landing page. This consistency will even boost customer perceptions as visitors scroll through your offerings!

Otherwise, we recommend you include before and after stories from past customers or testimonials that emphasize the transformative effects of your programming.

If you’re still in the beginning stages of your sales journey, it is common practice to use your own story to highlight the challenges you’ve faced, as well as to share ‘the view from the other side’ now that you’ve overcome those challenges.

Just look at how one of our most successful clients, Jen Gilchrist, organizes testimonials to provide more detail about what the programming can deliver to students on her main sales page for Soul Success Unleashed.

(Here is Jen’s webinar landing page for comparison, if you’re interested!)

What’s fun about a sales page is that you can really begin to unpack the ‘what’ of your entire offering.

That is, you can list all the details of each module or chapter or perk buyers will get from the programming–so long as you follow-up with the benefit that opportunity provides.

This is also a great opportunity to sell the nuts and bolts of your offering by giving stats such as:

(Just make sure you’re always giving a benefit to everything you share!).

Then, using the same copy from the material you’ve created already, you can explain how many customers you’ve helped, as well as expand upon their objections to your programming, and how you managed to surpass those objections.

Fool-proof Sales Page Formula to Address Objections from Leads

A good formula for that is to provide a series of bullets to explore the wants of your target audience, paired with the objection.

So in the meditation example, you would for instance say “You can succeed in gaining peace of mind, even if you’ve never meditated before”, or, “It’s possible to quit smoking, even if you’ve tried over a dozen times without success”.

At this point, you might want to provide a section that explores the ‘bonuses’ that are available to those who sign up to purchase your offering.

This could be a free membership to your online community, a free eBook, a free live session, or anything of that nature.

The idea is to increase the perceived value of the overall offering by showing how these bonuses can help them achieve their goals more easily and faster.

Learn How to Price Product Bonuses

Going back to the previous meditation examples, the bonus here might involve a breathing technique that can help regulate and calm intense thoughts.

In seeing that on the page as a bonus, your customer might think, oh, yes! I do have a ton of racing thoughts that keep me from being able to meditate.

That way, your bonuses do double work of subtly reducing customer objections by offering solutions that target those objections straight out the gate!

Plus, if you include the original prices of these bonuses, and explain that they’re getting that value free, your chance of making the sale is sure to go up!

This is a great opportunity to then include the pricing section of your sales page, which should give full details about opportunities for payment, payment plans, and potential refund information. Be transparent about your payment systems as well, and be sure to note that all payments are secure!

“One section we sometimes recommend clients add to their sales pages is a personal letter. This kind of ‘letter’ should convey your hopes, expectations, and excitement about their path to success through your program, and improves your potential connection with a future student!”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

Finally, your closing section should include a FAQ area. This is a great opportunity to reframe much of the content you’ve shared already into easily digestible points.

7.Develop a Checkout Page for Webinar Leads

Simply put, the main goal of your checkout page is to maximize sales, and keep customers from bouncing.

All this page really needs is a link to pay, but to increase conversions, you’re going to want to add a little more than that.

Now, this webpage creation process may start to seem repetitive as we continue to use our collected testimonials, pricing plans, and bonuses on different pages of our webinar funnel.

Yet we like to see this process as more sustainable than repetitive. Why use valuable time starting from scratch, when you already have a lot of the material you need at the ready?

That said, it is recommended that you copy-write each page to target the same content from a slightly different angle.

Don’t extend these changes to your branding however, as you don’t want your customers feeling as if they’ve been transferred to another site.

“If hackers do attempt to bug your site, they’re going to do it on your checkout page to gain access to your customers’ personal credit information. The interface these bad actors use will often look different than your site as it often involves redirects–which can be a good thing as customers protect themselves if you’ve been hacked, but a negative thing if your page makes a customer suspicious.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

Actually, this might be a great time to point out the importance of finding a developer or website designer that can put your checkout ON your website–this is something we often do for clients with WordPress, which is why we know the benefits include:

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How to create the perfect checkout page for a marketing funnel

Our recommendation is to look at examples of other checkout pages to survey the different styles, messages, and approaches each uses.

Then, you can choose one or two that you like, and begin formulating similar sections that match the wording of your own offer.

If you like, here are a few shots of a checkout page from thedigitalnavigator.com:

As you can see, our messaging includes similar branding to our other site pages, has a ‘why buy from us’ message style, as well as testimonials along the side.

There are also different types of plans that customers can explore (without having to exit the page), as well as recaps on what they’re getting, and what they’re paying. Finally, the page includes a Terms of Service section, which is a must to protect yourself and your customers during all transactions.

Whatever style and layout you should choose for your checkout page, please customize your page experience at the checkout stage just a little bit. Without any affirmative branding or customization, you risk losing sales right when the sale is almost complete.

Unfortunately, this has been a huge risk for Kajabi users in particular, as the platform doesn’t allow much flexibility at the point of sale for online businesses, course creators, and membership sites, even though this is basically the only market they serve!

In fact that’s why many of our eCommerce clients end up with us in the first place: because they’re experiencing a ton of technical inflexibility or issues using learning management systems that just aren’t sustainable for many online businesses.

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In response, we translate key course material into a WordPress website with LearnDash compatibility on these clients’ behalf, both streamlining their offerings and improving their internal processes all at once!

That said, your webpage creation part of this process is over.

By this point in the customer journey, they have paid for your product, and are on their way to enjoy your services.

You’ve delivered the webinar, and set them free to learn what it is you’re sharing with the world!

Now it’s time for the fun part, what we like to call customer after-care.

That’s right: now we transition into the more formidable marketing aspects of your new webinar funnel: email marketing!

8. Build Engagements with Sales & Value Emails

You’ve already had a bit of practice with email marketing at the confirmation and reminder email stage, but usually those processes are much more automated, and much less creative, than the marketing emails you’ll send from here on out.

Now, you get to share the full scope of your work with a new student who has already expressed their interest in your work via the webinar you created with valuable email content. How exciting!

The trick is to keep the momentum (and the enthusiasm) going from the moment your customer interacts with your expertise via your webinar.

The easiest way to do this is to include a replayable version of the webinar content you already shared, and then to recap the primary benefits of your main offer by pulling content from your sales page!

And while you might think it’s time to start addressing those objections again, we think this can tire out prospects quickly. If you keep trying to ‘sell’ your connections, these customers will inevitably fall off.

That’s why we recommend utilizing a 10 to 19-day sales email sequence that includes a ton of resources and tips in the niche you’re working in.

That way, as customers oscillate between opening your emails and leaving them unread (normal audience behavior), they will more likely be drawn in again by what you’re sharing.

“The idea is to add value to sales emails, instead of the typical approach of pitching non-stop throughout each sales campaign.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

These kinds of resources also offer subtle opportunities for you to expand upon different tenets of your main offer without being too ‘in your face’. Indeed, they should in some capacity lead recipients to that main offer, whether through CTAs, forms, or other digital content.

If you’re organizing your email marketing right, you’ll end up sending emails to certain ‘streams’ of subscribers every day, or every other day with well-calculated breaks in between.

However, with that kind of schedule, we recommend including a message at the top of each email that subscribers can click if they don’t want to receive any more emails about that program in particular.

This option makes it possible to maintain communication about other content drops and paid programming, and reduces any recipient frustrations that could crop up from an over-full inbox.

How do I get ideas for marketing emails?

One of the greatest recipes to start with for your marketing emails is to go through your sales page point by point, and use each bullet, phrase, or text box as a starting point for your next email.

Using that ‘theme’, you can then flesh out the details of your emails to write great content!

Another thing we might suggest is to intermittently send emails that announce an offer is ending, or that a special price is soon going to be available.

Then, if it’s a new offer or if you’re including a higher price, you can provide additional opportunities to book with you to talk about the changes or new programming, by adding a calendar link, for example.

“Actually, I would recommend creating a scheduling process that involves multiple steps, but which isn’t too complex. This can help weed out no-shows or prospects who just want to get free coaching and consulting from you.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

This isn’t necessary of course, but it will certainly help increase sales, especially for newer, high-priced offers. The target of that call will thus be to get clear on whether the product or service is a good fit for them.

How do I include more value in my sales emails?

We cannot underscore enough how important it is to make your emails valuable when you’re learning how to create a marketing funnel.

That could be anything from creating a quick 5, 10, or 15-minute video to expand upon different concepts relating to your main offering, or announce a new Live Event.

You can break down actionable tips into a series of emails that detail ‘step one, step two, step three’ and so on, providing prompts to encourage readers to think and reflect.

Or invite your community for a roundtable discussion with other students or experts from your pool.

Just remember, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience all at once, so take a slow approach. Spread this content out over a long period of time.

When you start looking into it, you’ll see that you have an almost infinite source of marketing ideas hiding within the content you already create.

So go ahead! Use those inspirational testimonials, personal stories, infographics, links, interviews, podcasts, and more as leverage into building a relationship with an excellent crew of future students.

Just don’t forget to intersperse messaging about your main offer at regular intervals, including more details about your paid offer and a link to the paid offer as well.

To do so without tiring out your audience, we suggest emails that, for example, announce a new payment plan, or provide a FAQ update on a particular course module.

We also suggest utilizing a calendar if you have a completely new offer on the line, as it gives you the chance to clarify anything you may have missed on your sales pitch.

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The added benefit here is that you get to personalize each ‘pitch’ to align your program to the client’s unique goals.

What this does is it catches those passive readers who have until then had inhibitions about purchasing your product, and gets them back into the digital marketing funnel for your main offer.

This also leaves you free to budget your time with a direct sales approach.

For instance, if you have more time on your hands you can create a simpler, one-step booking form. This allows you to maximize potential connections, even though many of the calls you end up making could be duds, or just people wanting free coaching.

Then as your business matures, you can optimize your booking form to include multiple steps such as a booking form to pre-qualify leads. In doing so, you’ll be able to protect your time by only meeting with people who are serious about your project, but who nevertheless want to engage a remaining doubt or question.

“To keep my value and sales emails fresh, I’ll use a ‘future self’ tactic in my email marketing, where I’ll say: hey, what will it feel like in 6 or 12 months from now once you’ve taken the program? I’ll present two paths, one if they take the program, and one if they don’t. Alternatively, I’ll use a ‘last chance’ approach, which focuses on an offer expiring, but these emails should be kept very short.”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

Congratulations! At this point, you can now consider the bulk of your marketing funnel complete!

Plus, with this new system in place, it’s going to be much easier for you or your team to create more marketing funnels for other assets you have, or ones you’ll create in the future.

Now, we recognize that this was a lot to take in, and while the webinar we’ve created will help guide you as you replay this process again and again for your business…

…and knowing that we are just a free consultation away from taking the reins on your webinar creation process to provide excellent content marketing support…

…we nevertheless want to leave you with a few expert content marketing tips to help you further promote your newly minted webinar campaign!

Expert Tips to Market Your Next Webinar Campaign

With your webinar all built out, it’s time to engage your audience with the right marketing and promotions.

This is a huge aspect of our client’s day-to-day operations, which is why we will work on their behalf (or alongside their teams) to cultivate a great marketing strategy and routine.

We say routine here because you’ll want to stay consistent with your ads and promotions over the long term. That way, your prospects and customers will become familiar with – and even come to expect – the content you present week after week.

Yet while you are doing routine social posts on your preferred platform, or curating invitation emails and affiliate marketing avenues, you should also make time for exchanges. This is our top tip to best market your new webinar funnel!

In marketing, exchanges are a lot like bartering. For example, you could invite someone to post in your group in exchange for posting in theirs. You might ‘guest post’ on their newsletter channel while they ‘guest post’ on yours, or even appear on each other’s podcasts.

“When I started off in business, doing interviews on other people’s platforms was one of the main ways I was generating leads. When I did in-person talks, I would even pass my phone around the room with the signup page open and encourage people to sign up if they were interested to learn more. If they weren’t, I literally told them they could just pretend to type and pass the phone along, and no one would know so they didn’t feel uncomfortable. Most of the time people would laugh, which created a positive social connection, and the perfect opportunity for me to start passing the phone around!”

 

– Pol Cousineau, Founder The Digital Navigator

Think of the other ways you might ‘exchange’ the content marketing you already produce to expand your reach on websites in your niche.

If you do Substack for instance, you can leave comments on other material in exchange for engagement with your own.

On the other hand, if you are offering a consumer-type product, then you might want to incentivize exchanges by offering rewards and prizes for sharing content promotions with their family and friends.

5 More Marketing Tips to Boost Your Webinar Funnel

At this point, you should absolutely have a good grasp on content marketing for digital products–but if you don’t here are a few free resources that should get you up to speed.

However, if you’re ready to dive right in, then here are five more tips to keep in mind when committing to your next webinar promo or marketing campaign:

What’s next for my marketing campaign strategy?

As you transition into measuring the effectiveness of your webinar funnel, and tweaking your processes based on those reviews, know that what you have done is created a repeatable process for all your online marketing.

What I mean by that is that once you have a top-performing funnel, you can easily clone it, replicate it, and then adapt it for other types of offers that you’re doing.

That’s because this strategy literally uses all the stages of a successful marketing funnel:

1. You’ll build awareness about the webinar through your media channels,
2. You’ll engage audiences with exciting and valuable emails following their webinar experience,
3. Then you’ll convert engaged leads into buyers of the product or program you are promoting in the webinar,
4. And finally, you’ll ascend customers with great programming that keeps them coming back for more and more content.

Now, we understand if at this point you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. We’ve covered a lot of material in this article, and want to congratulate you on your motivation to get this far!

That’s why, if you’d prefer a little hands-on support, we’re open to chatting about how we can help. Just schedule a consultation, and we’ll work to come up with some actionable steps for your marketing–no obligation necessary!

These calls are about looking at your headlines, your topics, and listening to your thoughts about how you’re planning to build it out. Then we can come up with a plan to work together that fits within your budget, based on your available means.

On that note, I want to mention that some of our marketing clients have expanded their services with us to include website optimization and other sales and SEO content marketing funnels.

What inspires further collaboration with our clients is that our values are focused on communication, and making sure we do quality work that we would be proud to own.

They often see our website and go: we want that too! And that’s what we deliver when we get into website creation and redesign services as well.

Whatever your next move looks like for you, just know that we are here to make sure you have an understanding of how we could help, or at least, what we would do next in your shoes.

That said, we are so excited to see how you put the tools we’ve shared today to the test. Be sure to reach out to us to chat about what worked for you, and what you learned following your latest webinar campaign.

I’m sure there’s so much more we can learn from your input, too!

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