If you’ve ever wanted to create more consistent revenue in your business or found yourself booked out, burnt out, and looking for more freedom and flexibility in your life, this episode is for you! Today I’m diving deep into my area of expertise (+ probably my favorite thing to talk about!) – the evergreen funnel, what it is, and how it can impact your business.
In this episode, I share:
- The goal of a marketing funnel
- The three main phases of marketing funnels
- Why I think every business needs a funnel
- The 4 questions you should ask yourself before building your evergreen funnel
- Find it quickly:
- 3:02 – Marketing funnel basics
- 5:33 – What is an Opt-In?
- 9:51 – Optimizing Your Funnel
- 11:40 – Evergreen Funnels
- 14:14 – Does Your Business Need a Funnel?
Resources mentioned:
- Grab the Free Funnel Guide!
- Which Type Of Opt-In Is Right For You? (Blog post at Jordanjones.co)
- 9 Steps to Creating Your First Opt-In (Blog post at Jordanjones.co)
- Freedom Funnel Intensive
- Building A Story Brand by Donald Miller
This site contains product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links.
So without further ado, let’s dive into the chat! You can listen to the full episode with the player below or continue scrolling for a full transcript.
Hi friends!
So in the last episode, I got super personal about my own testimony and walk with the Lord. If you haven’t gotten a chance to listen to it yet, I’d love you to bookmark it to tune in later (it’s episode 9). While that last episode was much more personal and faith focused, this episode we’re going to be shifting gears for and focusing more on the work-side.
I’ve really loved interviewing so many of my friends and “colleagues” if you want to call them that. I’m not really sure what the term is for that in the entrepreneurship world is..
But it’s been so fun getting to share all about their businesses, expertise, and lessons learned.
So today I wanted to dive deep into my own expertise and probably my favorite thing to talk about business-wise: marketing funnels.
I’ve actually been getting a lot of questions lately of being asking me “what even is a funnel?”. So I wanted to start this episode by sharing a bit about funnel basics so you can understand what they are and how they can impact your business. Then, I’ll be sharing some of the reasons I think they’re incredible tools in our online businesses – and why you may want to build one for your own.
Before I dive into the specifics though, I wanted to let you know about a free resource I created to help you build your very own funnel. Now, I’d recommend downloading this guide AFTER you listen to today’s episode, especially if you’re still unsure of what a funnel is and how it can work in your business. But once you’re ready to give it a go, you can head to jordanjones.co/funnel to download that guide for free.
Okay, on to the fun stuff! Let’s start at the beginning.
What Is a Funnel?
What in the world is a marketing funnel? We’ll talk about the word “evergreen” shortly.
First, let’s talk about a basic marketing funnel and what it is.
Try to envision a physical funnel in your mind – one you’d use in the kitchen for example.
It’s wider at the top, and small at the bottom, right?
A marketing funnel looks just like this and it usually has 3 steps or phases.
The goal of the funnel is to lead people to the very bottom phase – similar to how you’re pouring liquid in a kitchen funnel to get a larger amount into that small space at the bottom.
At it’s core, a marketing funnel is simply a system designed to lead potential customers through a series of steps in order to convert them into paying customers.
Like I just mentioned, the funnel is typically divide into three phases: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Throughout each step, your goal is to gradually build like, know, and trust with your potential customer until they are ready to buy from you.
So any time you hear the phrase “marketing funnel” just think of it as the system you’re leading people on to become aware of you and your offer all the way to saying “yes” to whatever that offer may be.
We’ll talk about the different types of funnels in a minute, but first let’s walk through each step.
The Awareness Phase
At the top, the widest part of the funnel – that’s the awareness phase.
I’ll let you take a wild guess here at the goal of this phase – ready for it? It’s to create awareness about your brand and your offer.
This is where you’ll attract your potential customers or leads with things like content marketing, social media, ads, etc. Usually, this phase will include your opt-in (often called your top-of-funnel opt-in).
Your opt-in is a free piece of content you offer your audience in exchange for their email address. The key here is to offer the right type of opt-in and get it in front of as many of your ideal clients as possible.
An opt-in can look like a free guide, a webinar, a challenge, or a quiz. There are a lot of ways to create opt-ins. The right type of opt-in really depends on your audience, their pain points and needs, and what your offer is at the bottom of the funnel.
I actually have a few blog posts that will help you figure out what type of opt-in is right for you, and help you walk through creating your ideal opt-in.
So now that you’ve gotten your ideal audience aware of your free opt-in and you’ve gotten them to sign up with their email address, let’s move on to the next phase. The second phase of a funnel is called the Consideration phase.
The Consideration Phase
Now that you’ve attracted your ideal audience, you want to lead them into the sale by nurturing them and serving them through an email series. There isn’t a set timeframe for this stage of the funnel. Again that kind of depends on if you’re leading them into a $50 product or a $500 product.
But the goal is the same. You want to serve them through your emails, build those like, know, and trust factors, and ultimately have them decide that you have something that will help them with whatever problem they have that you solve.
Honestly, this is probably my favorite part of the funnel. One, because so much of it involves storytelling and serving people well. And two- because so many people do it wrong or in an icky way. This means there is SO much opportunity to do it well.
Without getting into the specifics of what to write in your emails, the best advice I have for you here is that you want to answer one question. How your offer will help them with their problem. Then show them that you are someone who is an expert they can trust to help them through it.
If you need help with the storytelling part of this phase, I highly recommend the book Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller. This book is a best-seller for a reason. It will help you craft your message in a way that keeps the audience and their needs or wants at the forefront, making THEM the hero of the story and helping you step in as the expert guide to overcome their problems.
The Conversion(or Decision) Phase
So now that you’ve led your potential customers through the consideration phase, the next and final step in the funnel is the conversion or the decision phase. This is where you actually convert those leads into paying customers or clients. This phase will involve your sales page and your call-to-action. This will get them to take the step you desire – for example, buying your course.
The reason it’s called a funnel is because the shape mimics the flow of leads to sales. Meaning, you’ll have way more potential customers at the top of funnel (awareness stage) than the bottom of the funnel (conversion phase). This is totally normal. Not everyone who sees your initial opt in will sign up to receive it. Not everyone who receives your email nurture sequence will buy. The goal of a funnel is to get people to go all the way through to conversion. In order to best optimize your funnel you can do two things:
First, you can get more people in the top of the funnel.
And the second, is to increase your conversion rate at each stage of the funnel.
There are a lot of different ways to do both, so if you have specifics on a certain stage or strategy, be sure to send me a DM and let me know. Maybe we can record some more episodes diving into specifics here.
Or if you want help with your funnel, shoot me a DM and I’ll share more about my funnel-building services with you.
BUT If you want to get started building a funnel yourself, I’d recommend starting by going to jordanjones.co/funnel to grab my free guide (aka OPT-IN) on how to map out your first marketing funnel.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through my go-to tool for building funnels and share my simple 5-step framework for mapping out your first marketing funnel (without the overwhelm).
Why You Need an Evergreen Funnel
Now at this point, you may be thinking – ok great, I understand WHAT a funnel is, but I’m not sure WHY I would need or want one in my business.
Well first, I’d argue that every business needs a funnel. As we covered before, at their core they’re simple systems to lead potential clients into a sale or purchase. So even in a service-based business, you want funnels because you want to attract your ideal clients and book them.
An EVERGREEN funnel though is a little different. I promised you at the beginning we’d eventually talk about how they’re different and why I love them and teach them.
The term “evergreen” refers to a funnel that is automated and running ALL of the time,in the same way that an evergreen tree stays green year round. It’s not one that you need to launch live or take manual steps to keep working.
So an evergreen funnel means that your marketing system is automated and designed to continue generating leads and making sales, even when you’re not actively promoting it or working it.
Now that isn’t to say that an evergreen funnel is totally passive or takes no work. I’d actually argue that they take quite a bit of work to set up. But what it DOES mean is that once it’s setup, an evergreen funnel will do most of the heavy lifting for you, without ongoing effort from you. This allows you to scale your business, serve more people, and earn more money – without more of your continuous effort to run it.
The goal of an evergreen funnel is to be able to scale your business without more of your time or energy, and I’ll just add to this from my own goal for funnels – to serve your people really well.
If I’m being really honest, I avoided funnels for a long time in our own business. They just felt really icky to me. It felt super removed and inauthentic to sell to people in that way
I think a lot of that had to do with the people who were promoting funnels as a way to “make money in your sleep” or showing off their fancy cars from all the money they made that really turned me off.
It wasn’t until I started thinking about funnels differently that everything clicked. When I shifted my mindset to realize funnels were a way I could scale, which means yes – more revenue in my own business and income for my family – but it also meant I could serve more people in new ways.
Does Your Business Need an Evergreen Funnel?
Which brings me to the last part of this episode. Figuring out if you need a funnel in your own business.
I’m sure it’s not going to surprise you when I say that I think everyone needs funnels in their business. We’re all in business to serve people and make money, and funnels are a system to do just that.
But let’s just focus on evergreen funnels for this part.
Does your business need an evergreen funnel? Or better yet – how could an evergreen funnel help you, your business, and your audience?
I’m going to share 4 things for you to consider when thinking about building an evergreen funnel:
1. Do I need more consistent revenue in my business?
There are a lot of hard things about being an entrepreneur, but that feast or famine cycle of booking 1:1 services is one of the hardest ones in my opinion.
When we were running our marketing agency, it felt like we were either totally booked out (and burnt out). This left no room for any time for rest or play outside of our client work. Or there were crickets and we were stressed about getting new leads and clients.
I was really tired from the feast and famine rollercoaster ride. I wanted to find a way to have more consistent revenue month-to-month. Then we could stop stressing about how we’d pay ourselves and actually have reliable income as entrepreneurs.
If this is a pain point for you too, I’d definitely consider building an evergreen funnel. They will help you bring in more sales and revenue in a more passive way.
If you’re not longer in a feast or famine cycle but you’re constantly booked out and burnt out – here’s the next question I’d consider:
2. Are you at capacity for your 1:1 services?
For us, this was one of the driving factors to build our first evergreen funnel. At the time, we were doing all 1:1 services. While I really loved working with clients in that way, I knew it wasn’t sustainable. First, I knew we weren’t going to reach our revenue goals unless we significantly increased our pricing. I honestly didn’t want to price out the people who I knew needed our help most. But at the time we were trading time for money. Unless we raised our prices or hired a team underneath us, we couldn’t serve more people with our maxed-out time. This meant we were hitting a revenue ceiling.
This was also the point at which I found out I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, Ellie. I also knew that I didn’t WANT to be working on so much 1:1 work. I was on calls for hours a day, and I really wanted to build a business that would allow me to do the work I loved without sacrificing this new role as mama I was about to step into.
That was actually the kick in the butts for us to build our first funnel. I wanted to take maternity leave in 9 months without taking a huge hit in our business revenue while I wasn’t working. I knew even after maternity leave that I wanted to be as present of a mom as possible. Funnesl were a way to continue my work with much less time involved so I could have MORE time with my family.
I’d say this is probably a huge reason for a lot of us who utilize evergreen funnels in our own businesses – and it’s the third question I’d ask yourself:
3. Do you want more freedom and flexibility in your business and life?
Whether it’s to spend time with your children or travel full-time in an RV or have every Friday off to adventure with your spouse, evergreen funnels can give you more time back for the things you love outside of your work – while still earning money and serving your people well.
I’ve actually called my funnel-building services the Freedom Funnel Intensive for that reason. That’s what it’s about for me and for the clients I work wit. Building funnels that give them the freedom to be with the ones they love, doing the things they love, without sacrificing the work they love and the people they love to serve.
And last but not least, I’d ask yourself:
4. Do you have the time to invest in building an evergreen funnel? And does it make sense to focus your time on that right now?
Everything has a cost. Spending time building a funnel may mean taking on less 1:1 clients at the moment, so that you can serve more people when it’s live. This time investment is actually what stopped us from building out that first course funnel. We were so booked out with 1:1 clients that we never prioritized the upfront work to make it happen. That was, until we got pregnant.
That was a defining moment for us. It made us finally take action on something we said we wanted in our business, because we knew there was a deadline for making it happen.
Because here’s the thing. Funnels DO take time and energy to build, especially if you want to do them the right way.
But if you can invest that time now, what would that mean for your life and business in the future?
For some of us, that time invested may look like one month – others it may look like 4. It really depends on the time you have and the other priorities in your life. Can you dedicate a few weeks to cranking it all out? Or do you need to go at a slower pace and dedicate just 2 hours a week to it?
Regardless of the speed of your funnel build, it will take time and energy.
But the amount of time and energy that it will give you BACK once complete is so much more.
I will give a quick disclaimer here – I don’t think evergreen funnels are 100% passive. I will say that a significant amount of the effort is upfront work. So I’d just consider when you can create some time and space to dedicate to building your evergreen funnel.
Phew okay – that was a LOT about marketing funnels and how they can work in your own business. If you couldn’t tell, I really geek out about this stuff and could talk about this topic forever. So if you have any questions specifically, feel free to shoot me at dm @jordanjones.co . Especially if you have any other topics you’d like me to cover related to this on a future episode.
And if you want to learn about my Freedom Funnel Intensive or how we could work together to build your evergreen funnel, I’d be happy to connect with you about that too.
And lastly, if you want to dip your toe in building your own funnel, be sure to check out the blog posts I mentioned. I’ve linked them at the top of this blog post. I’ve also linked my free guide to map out your first funnel – and that can be found at jordanjones.co/funnel.
Thanks for geeking out with me today on one of my favorite topics. I can’t wait to chat with you more again soon!
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