How a “deep funnel” takes your online business to the next level
Scaling a $1M business is hard.
It doesn’t matter how many ‘success stories’ you read online, the stats don’t lie…
Only 9% of small businesses make more than $1M.
The odds are stacked against you. But the concept I’ll share with you today will help nudge them in your favor. This one “secret” may well be the difference between struggling to hit 6 figures… vs. skyrocketing to $1m and beyond.
It’s the same concept I used to scale my publishing company, RiskHedge, to over $10M in revenue in just 3 years.
But before I tell you, let’s start by looking at how a typical online business operates…
Most online businesses have a simple marketing funnel.
A “funnel” is simply the journey your potential customers go on. It’s how you get them from “never heard of you” to knowing, liking, and trusting you enough to buy from you.
Rarely it can happen in minutes, sometimes it can take weeks. More likely, it’ll take months for your average buyer to work their way through.
Most marketing funnels consist of 3 stages:
- Top of Funnel – the ‘Awareness’ stage – how your ideal customers first come to hear from you – like on social media, at an event, on a podcast, or through an ad.
- Middle of Funnel – the ‘Evaluation’ stage. This is when your potential customers are getting to know you. This stage is all about building trust and credibility, so your prospects will be comfortable buying from you.
- Bottom of Funnel – the ‘Decision’ stage – this is where they take out their wallet and spend money with you
The job of each stage of the funnel is to move the buyer on to the next stage. Your marketing assets should create a “slippery slide” that your ideal customers effortlessly go down.
But when your customer reaches the end and buys from you – your job is far from done.
Because this is where deep funnels can turbocharge your business.
When someone buys from you, it’s a precious moment.
Out of all the people they could have spent money with, they chose you.
Now you have 2 jobs:
#1: Delight them by overdelivering on what they bought.
#2: Sell them more
How do you achieve #2?
By creating a deep funnel.
A deep funnel is where you sell multiple products, in quick succession, while your customer is in “buying mode.”
Do you know when a customer is most likely to buy from you? Right after they just bought something.
At this moment, they’re paying attention to you. They’ve already entered their credit card. They’re convinced of the benefits of working with you.
It’s the ideal time to show them a properly structured offer to buy more of what they just bought.
Here’s an example of deep funnel:
In this example, you’re sending people to a landing page where they will take the ‘bait’ – normally a free ebook or subscription.
From there, they immediately see another page where you position your front-end offer. This is normally a low price anywhere from $49-$99.
For the people who buy this, you then immediately send them to another page where you offer an up-sell. This should be something closely related to the product they just bought, but for a higher price, normally anywhere from $299 to $999.
Most people won’t take the upsell – and that’s perfectly fine. You can transform your business by getting just 5-10% of buyers to take the upsell. The best upsells convert 25% of all buyers.
Want to discover the specific leverage points that will unlock growth in your business? In just 3 minutes you’ll understand the specific numbers you need to improve to scale your online business to 7 figures. Start the diagnostic.
Let’s run the math quick to see the difference it can make…
Example 1 – Simple sales funnel
- 1000 visitors
- 50% opt-in for your free guide – 500 leads
- 10% (50 people) buy your low price product at $99 – $4950
Example 2 – Deep sales funnel
- 1000 visitors
- 50% opt-in for your free guide – 500 leads
- 10% (50 people) buy your low price product at $99 – $4950
- 10% (5 people) upgrade to your up-sell at $499 – $2495
- Total sales – $7445
With one simple tweak, you made an additional $2495.
Now let’s ramp up the traffic to something a little more ambitious:
Example 1 – Simple sales funnel
- 10,000 visitors
- 50% opt-in for your free guide – 5000 leads
- 10% (500 people) buy your low price product at $99 – $49,500
Example 2 – Deep sales funnel
- 10,000 visitors
- 50% opt-in for your free guide – 5000 leads
- 10% (500 people) buy your low price product at $99 – $49,500
- 10% (50 people) upgrade to your up-sell at $499 – $24,950
- Total sales – $74,450
That’s a huge boost of $24,950!
And it’s not just extra cash in your pocket.
In many cases, deep funnels are the key that unlocks much faster growth for a business.
Because deep funnels allow you to spend more to acquire a customer.
As legendary marketer Dan Kennedy says:
“The business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins”
Think about it…
If you’re only selling a $99 product, what’s the most you’d be willing to pay to acquire a customer? Not only that, but how competitive is that lower-end of the market with everybody else trying to acquire customers as cheaply as possible?
Acquiring customers at that cost is hard. In the financial newsletter industry where RiskHedge operates, it costs roughly $150 to acquire a paying customer. If I was just selling $99 products I’d have been out of business a long time ago.
That’s why deep funnels can transform your business. They allow you to pay more to acquire a customer. If you can afford to spend $199 or $299 to acquire a customer, you’ll dominate your competition.
By now, you’re probably thinking, “this sounds great, but how do I do this?”
Here are some proven ideas:
1. Sell more of the same
If you’ve only got 1 product or subscription for now (nothing to upsell), then get creative.
If you’re selling a 1-year subscription, sell a 2-year subscription. Or even a lifetime subscription with some bonuses.
2. Sell multiple products
All of the products in your funnel should complement each other.
For example, let’s say you sell an in-depth guide for $99 which shares a strategy for getting 10,000 subscribers on Twitter in 6 months.
The next product could be a more advanced guide on how to monetize these subscribers.
Beyond that, you could sell a coaching or mastermind group that gets the buyer closer access to you. This could easily be priced at $999 and up.
3. Sell affiliate products
Another option if you don’t have multiple products is to sell affiliate products. Ideally, these are from trusted strategic partnerships that you’ve built and the products are complementary to yours.
Most online businesses can easily make an extra few $000’s taking 50%+ commission on products that aren’t yours just by putting them in front of your buyers at the right time.
Email marketing is the glue that holds this all together
For your deep funnels to convert well, you’ll need to set up automated email sequences to catch people at different points.
For example, let’s say they opt-in for your bait but don’t buy your low-priced offer on the page. Enroll them into an email sequence and remind them of the offer. Many will end up converting later.
The same goes for the later stages of your sales funnel. Remember to use urgency, scarcity, and social proof to your advantage in these sequences. You want to be persuasive… but not pushy.
Hope these ideas help. Until next time,
– Dan Steinhart, CPA
P.S. Deep funnels consist of several ‘leverage points’ that can unlock revenue growth in your business.
Take this simple 3-minute diagnostic to identify the specific leverage points that will unlock growth in your business. Start here.