How to Build a Better Content Funnel

A big part of being a creator is learning to get strategic with your content. The strategy may not come to you naturally, but the sooner you adopt a strategic mindset with your content, the more it leads and revenue you’ll generate long-term.

In today’s episode, I’m covering how to build a better content funnel to get more leads and conversions in your content. I’m sharing what I look at when identifying opportunities and how I improve my funnels.

This episode is a little more advanced, but it has all the foundation principles I follow whenever I see the need to enhance the content in my business. Whether it’s blog posts, podcast episodes, or YouTube videos, there are specific things you can do to optimize your content to the best of your ability. 

Let’s dive into those strategies today.

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

You know, one of the things that really surprises me is how much content you can create around the topic of content. Because I'm looking at the things that we've been talking about the last few episodes. And I gotta tell you, if you would have told me two years ago that I'd be creating consistent content around selling and funnel strategy and content strategy, I would have said, What are you talking about? That's not what I do. That's, that's not the direction that I really want to take my content. That's not the evolution or the next step of this podcast. But the truth is, it is because it's why we're here today. And it is the evolution and just the journey that this podcast has been on. And I'm so grateful to be able to grow with you continue learning with you, and to deliver something that is not the same, like you will never hear the same message twice on this podcast, you may hear things that overlap. And you may hear me talk about something that we've talked about before, but it will always have a fresh spin on it. And I think that it's just one of those things that I hold very, very sacred in this podcasting space. I don't know why I'm very much against just, you know, rinse and repeat, do the same thing. Talk about the same thing all the time, even if you've talked about it, share it again. And again. And again. I just feel like a broken record at that point. And I know that if you really need to hear a specific message on this podcast again, you will go back and listen to that episode. I know because I've done this too. I'm like, what did they talk about? On that one episode, I'll go back and listen to it again, if I need to. But I'm really excited because today we're gonna step into a place that I haven't previously talked about as much. And to be very honest, I think it was simply because I didn't feel expert enough to speak about the things that I'm going to share with you today. But now, like, you know, four years later, here I am, having created so much content created so many funnels and created so many different journeys with you as my audience, you as my customers, if you've ever purchased anything that I've sold, like, I feel very comfortable talking about what we're talking about today, because funnels, it's a thing, like it's a thing that I'm really excited to talk strategy, talk, content, strategy, talk, funnel strategy, and all the things and we're going to specifically be talking about how to build a better funnel with your content today. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Prophet podcast where we teach you how to start launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal, Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we?

Let's Talk Content Funnel Strategy: 3:27

All right, so content strategy with a funnel. If this sounds familiar, it's because in Episode 350 of this podcast, we talked about what is a content funnel strategy. So that was the intro episode to tell you all about what a content strategy is, and like what a funnel can look like with content, but I also break down exactly what my funnels look like. So I'm gonna link in the show notes to that specific episode. If you're like, I don't know what that is. I actually did a YouTube video about it as well, if you're more of a visual person, I'll link to that in the show notes too, because I have this drawing. And it's really funny. I actually I love that I took a picture of it because I have so many notebooks in my office. I don't it would take me probably a month to track down where that picture is actually what notebook it is in in my office because I have so many but you get an original Krystal Proffitt drawing that is pretty pretty laughable. It's it's not very good and like let's just call what it is. Okay, um, no Picasso here to can't draw very well. My handwriting is total garbage, but it does convey what a funnel is whenever it comes to your content and having an online business. But what we're talking about today is building on those Initial principles of what it is and how to create one. So again, I'm gonna link to those in the show notes for today's episode, which is go to KrystalProffitt.com/episode368. All that's going to be linked there. But what we're talking about today is how to build a better funnel with your content. So maybe you listen to that episode. And slowly over time, you've been implementing some of the funnel strategies that we talked about or that were introduced. And now you're like, Okay, how do I make this better, or maybe you haven't created one yet. And maybe you're getting all the pieces of the puzzle to implement everything, and you're gonna have like a really good strategy for it. Either way, it works. Or if you're someone that's like, oh, Krystal, I got lots of funnels, but they're not working well, and I need some help, then it's weird, from the for everybody today, like this is this is wherever you are in the journey, you're gonna find something helpful. But I did want to talk about three specific things that you can do to build a better funnel with your content. And again, I've talked about this so many times, but your content could be your podcasts, your YouTube channel, your blog post, it could be your social post, or it could be the weekly emails that you send to your list. But I just want you to think about content in however that applies to what you're creating. But the first thing that you have to do so this is number one, if you're taking notes, or you need to go refer to the things that are in the show notes, this is what you're going to find.

1. Optimize Your Current Popular Content: 6:36

So number one is you have to optimize your current popular content. This is something I wish I would have known to do in the beginning of my podcasting journey, because honestly, it was probably 10 or 12 months in of creating episodes of my very first podcast. And people would say, Well, you know, what are your top episodes? And I would look and in Buzzsprout, there is definitely part of the stats that are on there, it'll tell you which episodes have been downloaded the most. But it didn't really tell me anything else above and beyond that. So what do I mean by this? I mean that there were no signs of what are people engaging with this outside of just listening to it? Like, were there actual comments on the show notes, which were technically my blog posts for these episodes, did people comment on it on social media. And so what I recommend you doing is going back looking at all of your content, so you can look at your Buzzsprout stats if you want, but this is really where the shownotes on your website will be so much more powerful. And this is one of the reasons people ask me all the time. They're like Krystal, I hate doing show notes. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. And I'm like, but there's so much opportunity, if you would do show notes on your website, like treat them like a blog post for all of your podcast episodes, because here's why. It strengthens your funnel, so stinking much so so much, multiple ways. But what I want you to do is if you don't have show notes right now, on your website, you don't even have a website for your podcast, I want you to write it down as a goal for 2023. I know I can't even believe I just said that out loud. Here we are, we're in September 2022, I want you to write it down on a post it somewhere, put it on your screen, put it on your monitor, and it says hey, I will have a website for my podcast in 2023. Because you're missing out on so many opportunities for you to have lead generation on your website to really capitalize on the SEO on the content that you're producing. But also, you're missing opportunities to go back and optimize that content for whatever it is that you're promoting today. So if I were to go back and do this, right, if I was going to go back and optimize my content, which I do once a quarter, once a quarter I'll I'm gonna give you a very specific example here in a second. But I go to my website, and I have my analytics. You can use Google Analytics, whatever you use, but I will go and filter from year to date because I do this on a pretty regular basis. But I'll still go from January through today. What are my top 10 pages on my website? I did this just the other day. And Holy smokes, y'all this is this is where the example comes in. I noticed and I think it's from Pinterest. I'm still trying to pinpoint exactly where these are coming from. But I was getting about 400 hits at Every single month on this page, I did not even use any more, y'all. This is a big deal, like 400 different, like these were individual users. So 400 people were going to my website, and they were logging into something that I don't send traffic there anymore. I don't even maintain that page, like it is just kind of there. And it's not something I want to continue to make better or something that I even want to go in that direction. So it's an old resource library that I've had, if you've been around here for a while, you're like, oh, yeah, I know, the resource library. It's really not that good. It's okay. You can say it, I said it. I said it, I'm agreeing with you. Okay. It's not a good resource library. But I got started somewhere. And that's what I did in the very beginning of my journey. And I don't maintain it, I don't add new resources there. So I was like, Oh, my gosh, I've got to optimize this. What am I going to do instead? And I'll be really honest with you, I was trying to make it as the least amount of technical, like technicalities as I could, I was like, I really don't want to do a redirect and have broken links somewhere. If you know, if I changed this one link, what if all the traffic from Pinterest just stops, and it goes to a 404 error page, or like, I just thought about all these other things, and I was like, You know what, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to create a new resource page. And I'm gonna link to this in the show notes. So you can see what it looks like. But what I did is I put a simple picture on there, that's kind of one of my silly ones that I really like. And it says, the resource library has retired. That's all it's all it says the top. And then it says, but don't worry, I'm not gonna leave you hang in, check out my favorite resources today. And on there, I put the things that I want people to see, I put my podcast, I put my YouTube channel, I put the profit podcasting course I put my book on there, I put a link to our free Facebook group. But I put all the things that I want people to see, because I know that that is cold traffic, people are likely coming there from an old link that's like several years old, and instead of saying, oh, I need to go fix that, and I need to do a redirection. I'm not mess with any of that business. It's just going to be too complicated. So instead, how I fixed my funnel was I said, What can I put in front of them right now that matters? What can I put in front of people that are cold, they're brand new to me. And I can say here is still something of value, like maybe they're disappointed, because I really wanted this resource. But at the end of the day, I don't want to maintain that library anymore. I don't. And so instead of making things harder for me, I was like, You know what, I'm just going to switch up this content and change it up a little bit. So what I recommend you doing, go through your website, come through all the pages, see where your top 10 pages are? And say, How can I optimize this for whatever it is that you're currently doing? And you're like, Well, I don't have any products, I don't have any services, what can I put here, put your top three books that you recommend on Amazon and put your Amazon affiliate link in boom, you could be making some money. Or if you're a Buzzsprout user, you could put your Buzzsprout affiliate link there, or if you have, you know all the other different kinds of ways that you can make money with affiliates. But I recommend optimizing these pages. Again, it's why I want you to have 2023 is the year of having a website for your podcast, because you can do so many more things. Or you could just have your lead magnet on that page, say, oh, you know, this resource was moved. Now here's my favorite lead magnet, and you can have it there. The idea is to take advantage of having traffic going to a site and make sure that you've optimized it for whatever it is your biggest goal is if you're trying to get people on your email list, and then that's what you need to do. You need to route them to your best lead magnet. If you're trying to get people to listen to your podcast, you need to have that mentioned on your optimized content. If you want people to go to your YouTube channel, like you see where I'm going with this right? You want to make sure that you have all of your content optimized so that is number one for how to build a better funnel with your content.

2. Take Advantage of Every Touchpoint: 14:39

Number two, take advantage of every touchpoint of your customer journey. Now customer journey isn't something that I've really touched on a ton here because we're more high level strategy when it comes to your content. But if you're selling something, you have customers, right and it's likely that if you have a funnel in place, you've kind of mapped out what that journey looks like. So maybe it's very simple. Maybe it's they listen to the podcast, they go to my show notes, they grab my lead magnet, they go to a thank you page, right? That's a very simple, like four step funnel that someone could follow. Well, how are you taking advantage of every single one of those touch points that someone would follow to get that lead magnet? So my question that I like to ask whenever I'm creating these different pages, or I'm looking at these different touch points in the funnel, is what can I do to surprise and delight people in a very unique way? And one of the things that I did a few years ago is I wanted to add a video to my thank you page. And you're like, well, Krystal, that sounds that sounds kind of cool. Like that. Sounds simple enough. Yeah, it was in, I think that it made a really big difference. Especially we're talking about cold traffic. Again, if somebody comes to my page, like, let's say, they heard me on someone else's podcast, I talked about a resource, they go grab that resource, and then boom, they land on the thank you page. Well, not only does it say, Thanks for you know, signing up, make sure you add Krystal@krystalproffitt.com to your approved senders list, like it has all that, but I wanted to add a video on there. So they get that extra special touch of interacting with me, maybe they've never seen me before, maybe they've never heard me before. But now they have this perfect, like personal reference point of who I am, how I speak what I'm all about. And I think that anytime, you can have a personal touch point in your funnel along the customer journey, it's just it's going to make it better, it's going to make it where they are more likely to buy from you in the future, if they feel comfortable with who you are, what you're creating, and the type of value that you can offer them. So I want you to think about this, like look at all of your funnels, even your free funnels, your paid funnels, anything, I want you to look at them, whether it's your lead magnet or a low ticket offer, I want you to be examining all the different touchpoints that someone goes through and ask yourself, How can I surprise and delight them during this whole process, because what this is going to do is it's going to build a better funnel, it really will maybe it's giving your people that listen to your podcast, or watch your YouTube channel, you're gonna give them a special discount code that they could use to sign up for your brand new program. And maybe you don't really talk about it too much. Maybe you mentioned it, like in the episode, but you don't put it in the show notes. So that way when they go to, you know, check out on the page, it says, Hey, do you have a special code from listening to the podcast? And then the people that do will be like, Heck, yeah, I got my 50% off code right here, they put it in, while other people may see it and say, oh, what code? Oh, and then you put the link there, hey, go listen to this episode, go listen to the code, you're going to get more downloads, you're going to get people that are excited to buy from you because hey, now they get a 50% discount. Like there's so many different sales tactics and sales techniques that you can apply to this. But at the end of the day, it's all about taking advantage of these different customer touchpoints. And making sure that you have a little something special, something that is unique, not just like everybody else having these cookies, cookie cutter, can you say that right? Cookie Cutter, sales funnels? What can you do that's different? What can you do that special. And for me, like I said, it was adding a video on my thank you page and making sure that I have not just the resource that they asked for. But other resources that would be super helpful, that are related to that lead magnet or that low ticket offer. All right, so that is number two, I want you to take advantage of every touchpoint in the customer journey, every single interaction that you have with someone make sure that you are capitalizing on it.

3. Look at Your Conversion Numbers: 19:30

And then the third and final way that I want you to build a better funnel with your content, is I want you to look at your conversion numbers. Now if you are on my email list, I just sent an email about this this last Friday, when this episode goes live like it was just last Friday. So check your email, you would have this in there because I talked about stats and how often I look at my nose numbers and the specific things that I look for when it comes to all of my different platforms. And I'm actually going to run down the list here with you today really quickly. But I want you to look at your numbers, because how are you going to know if your funnel is performing? Well, if you never look at your numbers, and I think that this is where I screwed up really bad in the beginning is because I felt the only numbers that mattered. Were my download numbers for my podcast. That's really what I told myself, I was like, well, these are the only numbers that matter. I know, I'm not making a lot of money right now, or none was making no $0 in the beginning. And so I was like, Okay, there's nothing to measure there. I don't have a big email list. Okay, not much there. I have like 200 people that follow me online. So that's probably not it. So download numbers, that's all I have. And those were minimal, minimal, they were so small in the beginning. So I didn't really know what to measure, or what to even look for, therefore, I didn't. So I have a few guidelines for some of the conversion numbers that you can use to measure how your funnels are doing. And I look at these and I went into more depth on this in the email, but I talked about looking at these numbers every 30 to 90 days, whichever works best for you, I think you can absolutely get obsessive about your numbers have done that in the past, raise your hand if you've refreshed your podcast page, or your YouTube channel 1000 times in a 24 hour period, just to see if you got another subscriber or you got more downloads. Yeah, I know you're raising your hand too. I'm not the only crazy one that does this. But it's okay, like you're in good company here. But I want to run through these because I think that they're super important. And this is what I do currently today. So number one, look at business revenue, these are going in like chronological order of importance. To me, these don't have to be the most important to you. But this is how I value each of these numbers. So number one, business revenue, I'm looking at my course and my product sells. So this is my big courses, my mini courses, my low ticket products, anything that I'm selling, typically through Kajabi. This is what I'm looking at my business revenue, then I'm looking at my affiliate income, what am I making from all my different sources, and I will go through at least once a quarter and look at my highest earning affiliate income because then I know, hey, I talk about this some more because it's performing well. And then the top contributing revenue source. And what I mean by that is, what is the thing that is making me the most amount of money, because you all at the end of the day, if you are a business, this matters, this matters, you need to pay attention to this, you need to look at where you're making money and where you're not. Because if you're not making any money in one particular area, then you got to start asking those hard questions. Is it worth continuing to sell this thing or continuing to promote it continuing to put a lot of time energy and effort into the thing that isn't making you any money? This is like something that's one of those harsh realities of you know what, like, I'm going to tell you the hard truth that if something is not making you any money, we need to evaluate? Do we need to have a version two? That's a little bit better? Do we need to scrap this whole thing? Or do we just need to not promote it that much and just have it in the background? These are questions that I can't answer for you. But they're ones that I asked very often whenever I have a low performing product or course. Okay, so that's number one. This is what I look at when it comes to business revenue. Number two, email, email, email, email, this is the second thing that I look at, well, it's not the second thing I look at, I look at my email actually a lot more than look at my revenue just because I'm in there every single week. And even when I'm in a launch, I'm in there even more. I'm in ConvertKit all the time. But what I look at is my number of subscribers. So how many people are actually on my email list? I look at my open rate percentage, my click through rate percentage, and the largest lead generation source. So what is bringing in new subscribers, right? I recently added a footer to the bottom of my website. And that's one of the things that I wanted to measure. I was gonna say the last six months, but really, it's this year that I implemented it because I did it towards probably the first quarter going into the second quarter of the year. And I was like Ah, yeah, why didn't I think of this before? I should have put somewhere on my website that people can opt in if they want to. So I'm gonna Wanna see how that performs over the 12 months that like after it was implemented and see? Okay, is that worth leaving there? Or is it like not really bringing in that many things? Plus, I also get to see these different promotions. And I've done like several, like affiliate bundles like BC stack podcasters kit. I've spoken on stages. I've done guesting like, I want to know where my leads coming from. Because as of right now, the BC stack promotion for this year has brought in the most leads to my email list. why did why is that important? Well, because if they asked me to do something, again, I'm gonna say heck, yes, yes. Because those were emails like brand new subscribers, maybe you're listening to this, and you're like, oh, Krystal, I heard about you from the BC stack promotion that you did this year. Well, I'm so happy that you're here. And I'm glad that that worked. Because it has just been a great way to add email subscribers to my list, bring new people into this community so that I can give them helpful resources, hopefully convert them on a product or a service that is going to work well for them. And the last thing I want to say is when it comes to my email list, I also scrub my list at least once a quarter. If you're not really familiar with email marketing, what that means is, I will go through and delete people off my email list and you're like, oh, my gosh, Krystal, why would you ever do that? I deleted and it was so painful. I can't remember if it was 400 or 600, I deleted hundreds of people. This one time on my email list. And it hurt my stomach. Because I think I had just gotten to 1000, I had just gotten to 1000 people on my email list. And then to find out, when I went to scrub it, I want to say it was around 400 People like they were just gone. Gone 400 people because I scrubbed my list, they were cold, they had already unsubscribed. But they were still there for some reason. And some other people had bounced, like, there's all these reasons why people would be on your list still. And oh my gosh, it is gut wrenching to scrub your email list. But it's also necessary. It's the spring cleaning that you needed to do at least once a quarter. And it's what I do. And it's really important because it keeps my cost down. I don't want to pay for 10,000 people on my email list, when in reality, there's only 2000 People actually engaging in opening my emails, why would I pay that extra money? When in reality, that's what it is, by the way, I don't have 10,000 people on my email list I have 2200, something like that. It's like a little over 2000. Like, that's where I am on my email list. If you're if you're curious, because I'm always curious to see, like, you know, how many people should I have? I don't know how many you should have, right? Because I don't I can't tell you how to run your business. But this is where I currently am with my email list. And again, that's scrubbing it constantly. So it's a pretty healthy email list. Alright, so that is emails. The next thing we talk about is podcast. So what I look at, and remember, we're talking about your conversions, right, your conversions in your funnel, why this matters. I look at my downloads over 30 days. And y'all I get so excited when I see Buzzsprout has added a new feature. They just recently updated their stats. And now you can pick a custom date range. So you can look from like January to May, or from March to July like you can select so because previously it was just seven days, 30 days, 90 days or all time well, what if the 90 day period you wanted to look at wasn't the previous 90 days? What if it was a very specific point in time where you can do that now. So go play around with that if you're a Buzzsprout user, but I love this because I can go and see oh, look, I got this huge spike in this one particular episode habit or make sure that the show notes or the episode description at the very least is optimized for the thing that I want to promote. Right? You could go in you could add a brand mention or you could add a different type of dynamic content on that particular episode. Like there's so many different things that you can do if you know that you have a top performing piece of content, but it's just really important that you're looking at these numbers again, at a minimum on a 90 day basis. Once a quarter you need to be looking at the stats. Then I look at where is my show in the podcast charts if it's there at all because sometimes it's not right sometimes it falls out of the chart sometimes, like the other day I was in the top 100 Y'all I was at like number 100 on how to charts in Apple Podcast, which is awesome, which is I love it when that happens, always take a screenshot, I get so excited, I get giddy, I share it on my social, because it's like the hard work, right, the hard work is paying off. And I love to see that it's so fun, I hope that you celebrate anytime your podcast gets in the charts. But one of the other things I look at is my most downloaded episodes, year to date. And again, it's for the same reason I'm optimizing, I'm constantly optimizing, do you want to talk about how to build a better funnel with your content, constantly be optimizing. That means if it's an old episode, maybe it's something you talked about two years ago, but it was a guest that you had and all of a sudden that person's in the news, or that person's really popular, they blew up whatever, and then your episode gets in the algorithm or gets searched? Like, you need to make sure that if you notice a surge in downloads, it is optimized content. So so so important. All right. The next one is I'm gonna run through really quickly, your YouTube channel. Alright, this is similar to your podcast, but it is a little different in that I will look at my subscriber count to see, like, you know, is that still kind of on track for what it's been the last few months in mind typically is it's a, it's a little less than 200 a month that I get on my YouTube channel. So I like to kind of gauge and see what that is. That way I can project out how long it will take me and you're I'm I'm headed for that 10,000 Mark, I'm not there. I'm more than halfway there. But I'm like, I want 10,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. I cannot wait for that day to happen. But I'm at around 5300 or so on my YouTube channel. And I'm just like, Okay, this is like I just incrementally I want to see how things are going. But it's the same thing. I look at how many views like what are my top videos, are they optimized, I will look at where are the like which episode or which video is getting the most comments. And I like to look at how much money I'm making every month with having ads on my YouTube channel. This is really important. And then the website, this is something we are talking about, I look at my top 10 visited pages. And then I look at the top refer I can't say that right, the top referral refer, you know what I'm trying to say to my website. So this means are people coming from Instagram, Youtube for my email list from Pinterest from Google search, like these are all the different things. Because again, I want to know where people are coming from. That way I can surprise and delight them in piecing together this customer journey or this audience journey. And then the last thing is social media. So I told you all these are like the order of importance. We started with business revenue, email, podcast, YouTube website, social is last for me. It may be top of funnel for you. It may be the thing that you spend so much time energy money on. It is not that for me, social is at the bottom of my energy list. It is where I spend the least amount of energy. And maybe you're like, well, Krystal, that's why you have like only 2000 followers. Yeah, that's why that's why I only have 2000 followers on Instagram. You know why? Because when I look at my top 10 most visited pages and where they're coming from Instagram is not the thing. They are not coming from Instagram, they are coming from other places. And that is where I'm spending my time because I'm not directly selling from Instagram, I'm selling from my website, I'm selling from my podcast, I'm selling from my YouTube channel, all of these other places means so much more to me, then the social channels that I have, they are still important, don't get me wrong. But overall, they don't wind up at the top, they are not the stat that I look at, I stress over I worry about because at the end of the day, my revenue, my email list, my podcast, my YouTube, my website all take precedence over my social channels. All right, but I will look at my Instagram followers, My overall engagement, the number of reshares that I get on my content, as well as I look at our Facebook group, I look at the health of that group by how much engagement we have. How many members are there comments? Are there new comments? Have I answered comments? And these are all really really important to me whenever it comes to engaging with people on line. Oh, y'all, this was a long one. I really thought it was like Oh, I'm gonna get through all this in like 20 minutes. Here we are. We're over 30 minutes in and I still feel like I could go on about building a battle better. Can't talk now building a better funnel with your content, but we're gonna leave it at that today.

Outro: 34:51

I think that that was way more than I probably even should have put in today's episode but I got really excited because this stuff is really fun. Like I said in the beginning If you'd have told me two years ago, that I would be talking about funnels and selling on this podcast, I would say you're out of your mind, I would know what are you even talking about? Yeah, here we are. So I want to make sure that you get all of these notes. So go to KrystalProffitt.com/episode368. For the show notes for today, I'm gonna link to the episode about content funnel strategy, if you need to brush up on that, and I'm gonna link to some other things in the show notes there for you to check out. But that's all I have for you today. So make sure you are following this podcast or you're subscribed wherever you are listening. And I would love it if you would take a screenshot and share it on Instagram. tag me in your stories @KrystalProffittTX. I would love to know what you thought about this. Tell me if you want to hear more about funnel strategy, or just coming up with different types of selling strategies within your content that makes sense. Or if you want to know more about website strategy or social media, YouTube podcast, email, all the things let me know I cannot wait to hear from you. But that's all I have for you today. So as always remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.