Maria Lloyd (00:00.418)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. I'm Maria and in this week's episode, I want to talk to you about funnels, a bit of a contentious topic. A funnel is a model showing a customer's potential journey through your company from where they first found out about you to becoming a paid customer and beyond. Having something like this in place is important because it ensures that your business has all the systems and processes in place to help you best serve your customers.

Now, there are perceived negatives with a funnel. To name a few points, it said that funnels prioritise sales over customers and the customer experience. It's also said that funnels don't account for the importance of the customer's role in driving business into your business through word of mouth. And it said that funnels focus your metrics that don't matter to your clients or customers.

HubSpot, that's a software system that brings together marketing, sales and customer support, has even put forward a circular flywheel model to replace the funnel with three phases, attract, engage and delight, which they say focuses more on the customer and the customer's importance in your business. Now, personally, I'm focused on developing relationships with customers and partners, and I love a funnel. They help me to think clearly about different stages where a client may need help

and what help they may need when they go through my business journey, which I find really useful. So I think it's more about how you use the tool or the model and what works for you rather than having a model in place that's circular rather than fun alike. So I'm going to talk you through the model that I use today, but I'll also link to the HubSpot model in this episode landing page so you can take a look and find out what works best for you. So the funnel that I use for my business is called

ICAL, A-I-C-A-L, which stands for Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Action and Loyalty. Awareness is how someone initially becomes aware of you and discovers you. Interest is how you keep someone in your ecosystem. Consideration is when someone comes to make a decision or a purchase at some point, do they go for you or for someone else? Action is how easy it is for someone to go with you.

Maria Lloyd (02:22.252)
And loyalty is when you get to the end and it's how good the customer experience has been. So would they recommend you? So let's look at these different phases. So awareness, how someone becomes aware of you. Now this could be a variety of things. This is reach. So this could be through social media, through articles, boards, whatever you like. This is how someone initially becomes aware of you. Personally, I like the idea of going to different relevant groups and doing talks.

because I find it really helpful and it shows your expertise at the same time. In trust, how do you keep someone in your ecosystem once they discover you? Now they could follow your content on social, your podcast, any videos you do. They could be on your newsletter list. This is some form of regular content that you are putting out that aims to help your audience and give them value. So they keep coming back to you for more. Now this will help you to build trust with them over time.

There are many people who come to you and they may stay in this area. They may never purchase from you your product and that is absolutely fine. If you're putting out helpful content, then people could still be recommending you to others. And because they're listening or engaging with your content, that just ups the views on your content. So that will show that it's actually valuable content. So that is fine if people come to you and they just want to get the free value from you. It's good for you. You can just keep demonstrating and putting out content.

and how many views for different content will indicate to you what content people need more help with. Now, if someone wants to go with you though, and they want to make a purchase from you, this is where they enter the consideration phase. So if or when they're in the market for your product or service, why should they go with you over another company? I find this phase useful personally, because it helps me to consider what I offer and how it differs from similar services and companies around me.

So what is my unique selling proposition, my USP? How do I stand out from my competitors? And similarly, where do my competitors differ from me? If someone comes to me and one of the competitors is better suited to them, then that's fine. You can help point someone towards someone who's better suited to service their needs. In that case, you'll be able to get a boost and increase in trust. And you'll also be able to focus on working with clients who are more suited for you.

Maria Lloyd (04:42.205)
Here you can offer things like discovery calls with potential clients. If you have a service, you could offer samples of products, trial phases of products. You could put out articles showing how you're offering differs from those around you. And you could say about the different features or budgets and where you fit in in that potential market. All these will help people make a decision if you are the best person to go with or if they should go with someone else. Action.

Now, if someone decides to go with you in your product or service, how can you make it as easy for them to cross the line as possible? And are there any hindrances that would stop them? So this includes where and when something can be purchased or for example, if it's an event, where is it held? When is it held? If there's any tech involved in this process at all in the purchase or registration, how easy is it for people to use? Is it on a platform that they likely already use or do they have to sign up to a totally different platform?

If it's an event, do you send reminders about an event, for example? And what if people can't make it to something? Do you have multiple offerings or is it just a one-off thing? I always recommend testing out the processes and systems that you have in place so you can gather feedback and make adjustments where necessary. So that was A for action. Finally, L is for loyalty. So once you've had a client or a customer and they've been through your process,

Are they so happy with their experience with you that they'll recommend you to others? Will they make further purchases from you? Do you ask people to leave you reviews? Do you have a referral scheme in place? Do you gather case studies? So once you've finished here, how can you continue to provide them with value? If they aren't already following you, then I'd encourage you to get them to follow or tune you on one of these different options. So there you are. Those are the phases I like to call iCal.

That's AICAL, awareness, where you attract people, interest, where you keep them in your ecosystem to provide them with value, consideration, where you help them make a decision if you're the right option for them to go with, action, how easy is it for them to do business with you? Do you have the right systems and processes in place? And loyalty, have they had a good experience with you? Would they recommend you? And if so, how are you capturing this? Now, let me add at this point,

Maria Lloyd (07:06.305)
that this is hard, there's no doubt about it. To have systems and processes in place where you are simultaneously serving people at different stages in their journey with you, this will take you a long time and lots of testing to get in place, and it will be constantly developing. The trick here is to focus on one small part of your journey at a time. Perhaps you spend a month looking at how to attract more people into your ecosystem, the awareness phase.

Perhaps you spend a couple of months at one point looking at how to generate value for people once they're in your ecosystem through a newsletter or a podcast. The point of your funnel or whatever model you use is to show the purpose of every activity in your business and how it feeds into everything else. You need to be aware how everything is connected and the purpose of each part. Don't create a podcast for the sake of creating a podcast. Consider if it's the right thing for you and if it will help your audience.

because you can't do everything. Do a small number of things well, rather than a lot of things partially. I now recommend that you grab a piece of paper and think about your own business and how you serve your audiences at different stages of the journey with you. Once you have the basics in place, there are other steps to consider later. For example, how you measure the effectiveness of the different stages and how you find ways to insert delight for your audience at every stage.

But that's for another discussion. Let me know if that's something you're interested in for another episode. For now, I hope that you have a wonderful week and I'll catch up with you next time on the My Local Marketer podcast. Bye for now.