Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie: Everything You Need to Know About Sales Funnels

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A lot of people have heard of sales funnels, but may not really understand what they are or how they work.

At its core, a sales funnel is simply a series of steps that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase. And when done right, a sales funnel can really streamline the entire process, making it more efficient and effective at generating sales.

I am super excited to have my good friend Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie on the show to talk about everything you need to know about sales funnels.

In this episode, Kwadwo and I dive into what a sales funnel is, how it works, and what kind of numbers you should look for to know it's working. We also talk about some common mistakes people make when setting up their sales funnels and what you can do to avoid them.

So if you're ready to get the lowdown on sales funnels and learn how to generate more sales for your biz online, then don't miss this episode!

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• Fine-tuning your ads for optimal performance
• How to connect your lead magnet to your ultimate solution
• Keeping your email list engaged with regular communication

Links from this episode:

• Visit Kwadwo’s website: quayjo.com
• Know more about Kwadwo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quayjo

Want to give your podcast the boost it needs to stay ahead of the competition? Check out honestpodcasts.com and take the first step toward achieving your podcasting goals!

And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com. 

Transcript

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  0:00  
A funnel is something that enables a business to do more business with the people that the business owner was meant to serve. And like I believe we are blessed to use our talents or passion to help people. And so that's what I believe a funnel does. It helps us serve more people selling is serving, it's an honor to do both because it's a win win for the customer and for our businesses.

Travis Albritton  0:28  
Welcome back to the honest Marketing Podcast where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Allbritton. And in today's episode, I got to invite my good friend quedo on to talk about funnels, and ads, and really how to generate more sales in the background automatically for your business really streamline the whole process. demystifying what a funnel is, how it works, what kind of numbers you're looking for, to know that it's working, what kind of tweaks to make if it's not working, and everything that you need to really dial in the automatic sales process that you want to have for your business. And we dig into what that means and what it doesn't mean and all those kinds of things. But in this episode, just know we're going to be taking a big picture, look at how to generate more sales for your business online and do it in a way that's ethical and driven by integrity. Now, make sure you stick around to the very end of the episode where I'll be revealing my number one takeaway from my conversation, but here it is. Let's dive right in. quedo happy to have you on the show, man. Hey.

Thank you. Thank you. So we're gonna dig into all kinds of awesome marketing goodness, specifically, funnels. Now funnels. Yeah, so funnels has like a, what we call an internet Zeitgeist personality. And there's also just like a practical like what it is, like, I know, when I hear the word funnel, I immediately think like, what's the magic website that turns your money into my money? But, but it's actually it's actually a much more practical thing that when businesses kind of figure out the difference between just like a website that has a bunch of stuff on it, and like a sales process that involves multiple steps, it can become useful. So I'm just curious, how do you define the term funnel, and its usefulness for online businesses and people that want to do business online?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  2:16  
Well, I'll tell you exactly how I define the term funnel. And I want to say something so that everyone listening is clear. In marketing, we use like these harsh, cold terms, like converting leads into sales and its squeeze page. Do you remember that crude oil? Yeah, like way back in the early 2000s. Right. And so I just want to state, like, a funnel is something that enables a business to do more business with the people that the business owner was meant to serve. And like, I believe that like you, as the listener, and you traveled said, we like, we are blessed to use our talents, or passion to help people. And so that's, even though we do we will go into those marketing terms. Like that's what I believe a funnel does, it helps us serve more people selling is serving, it's an honor to do both, because it's a win win for the customer and for our businesses. So in the online business world, let's just say the funnel is how you get your leads. So how do you get leads to an opt in page Facebook ads, in this case, since I'm a Facebook Ads Manager, organic is fine. And then they opt in. And then the funnel is just a series of steps that that lead would go along to do business with you. So the opt in page followed up by whatever you deliver, that's a value that's going to be a lead magnet. Or it could be like a live webinar, and then the follow up email sequences and the sales page and the checkout cart. And that would be that would be a standard funnel.

Travis Albritton  3:51  
Yeah. So think about a funnel less like, we're going to jam a bunch of people in the top, and then the winners or the losers, depending on your perspective, eke out of the bottom, but without any money left in their wallet. Right. So that's how a lot of people think about a funnel. The way I like to think about it is it's a curated conversation. It's a curated either sales or warming conversation that you're having with somebody that's starting at a certain place, and then ending in a certain place. It's very deliberate. It's a very linear conversation. And so rather than, you know, a lot of websites, you go to a website, and there's like, read our blog, check out our new lead magnet. Oh, did you know we're over here? Oh, by the way, we do this thing over here. And, oh, we just opened a new, you know, shop and oh, here's our company's history. And there's like a million things you can do. There's a million different entry points, million different exit points. And it's very hard to optimize or refine anything in that kind of environment, because there's just so many variables, you can't control them all. And so what a funnel in my mind allows you to do is to tweak one thing at a time to really fine tune what that conversation should look like to help someone who is in a position where they have a problem and they're looking for a solution where you're able to have a car versation with them automatically, in their own time to help them decide if you're the best solution for them. That's how I like to think about a funnel. And it's separate from platforms. So it's not just like you have to be on Click Funnels to have a funnel, or LeadPages, to have a funnel. A funnel is just any kind of process that you set up, that takes a large group of people that kind of discover you at the top, and gradually Windows them down to the few core people that really do need what you have. And you transition into a long term business relationship.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  5:30  
Right? It invites at each step the right person to take another step forward.

Travis Albritton  5:35  
Absolutely. So in this episode, what Pedro and I are going to do is we're going to dig into some, some best practices for how to optimize these kinds of sales conversations. So whether you have a website with a lead magnet, which is simply just something you're giving away for free, in order to gain someone's email address, so you can continue to follow up with that conversation. Or if you're doing some kind of live training, or live webinar, or even evergreen webinar, and all the different things that you can do to really dial in that conversation, and some of the common mistakes that you'll want to avoid. So first of all, let's get right out of the picture, like at the front people coming into the funnel. If you're not getting good cost per lead, or good cost per click or anything like that, do you even start worrying about the funnel? Or do you just focus on getting the right numbers in your Facebook ads? or however you're driving traffic? How do you prioritize the two those two things if you have to focus on one over the other?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  6:33  
Oh, it's so no business situation or metric exist in a silo? Okay, it's all a complicated, jumbled mess. But in general, the best way to prioritize is first buy profit. If I can bring in a lead into my business, and I haven't quite figured out the equation as the lead makes its way to a sell. And I look at my profit, am I profitable? And if I'm not profitable for me, then I look back at first my Facebook ads, and see the concept here is one of leverage. So I want to look at my ad account and see oh, what has my lowest cost per lead? Been? Am I anywhere near close? If I'm pretty close, then I'm not going to spend too much time there. And I'm going to dive into after the ad and the other funnel steps that I can control inside of my business. So it's a bit of it's a bit of looking at, it's a bit of looking at both. Was that a clear answer? Oh, sure.

Travis Albritton  7:42  
It's definitely a clearer answer. Because you know, you can have an atrocious conversion rate on your website. But if you're getting leads for like three cents, it doesn't matter, you just keep throwing more money into it. And eventually, you'll make money on the back end of it. You know, but if you're only able to optimize down to like $2 per lead, because you're in a really competitive space, then it's like, well, you can't really squeeze that much more. So you might as well focus on but let's make sure we have, you know, our eyes set on really optimizing the sales conversation. So that way we're answering the right objections that we are speaking to the pain points of the person is experiencing. And we're positioning ourselves as a helpful guide to help them in the journey. So I think it was a very, it was a very honest answer, which I appreciate on the honest Marketing podcast. So let's just walk through the main funnel steps. So like the common steps that people will see in a funnel or business owners will want to have in their funnel, and then what are the things that you look at when you're optimizing each of those steps?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  8:45  
Okay, do you think it's useful to talk about the ads part of the funnel? In addition to let's say, the the post ads part of the funnel?

Travis Albritton  8:54  
Uh, yeah, I think so. Because the ads part of the funnel is kind of like how you get their attention and what piques their curiosity even enter the funnel in the first place, right? So it's like, if your ad creative is way off, then your conversion is gonna be way off, right?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  9:08  
Okay. So what I want to do then is just give you three key metrics that I would look at to gauge the health of an ad, there's more but three key ones that I look at first, right so that you're equipped at a glance inside of Facebook Ads Manager to know the we'll call it the health of your ad, and then I'll go through a number of things that can help the conversion from your ad to your landing page. Sound good? Sounds great. Okay, so inside of Facebook, ad manager of all the things you can look at, make sure that you have the cost per result column there. Make sure you have your CTR link, and that stands for link click through rate column visible and make sure you have your frequency column visible, there are other things, but this is going to be really simple. So when I look at the cost per result, that is the cost per lead that you were referring to earlier, right. And I want that to be as low as possible, the lower it is, then hopefully, the greater the gap between your cost per lead down here, if you can see the podcast, I'm holding my hand at the bottom of the screen, and your earnings per lead, which would be up here. If you have a cost per lead, that's higher than what you're earning per lead, that's where your business is in trouble. So look at your cost per lead, and track that. All right, now looking at an ad, I want to know of all the things a link, click through rate 1% is good, like 1.5% is phenomenal. If you're below 1%, you should start changing the components of your ad, link, click through rate just means if somebody was to click that dot, dot dot see more, I believe is what it is at the top. Right above the image or video of your ad, there's a way to expand those first three lines or first two lines that show up in an ad. And if somebody clicks their reads through your ad copy and clicks on the link, that is the link click through rate. And that is a much better measurement of your ad success than say the CTR all, which measures a click anywhere on your ad. So those are the three metrics to metrics you can look at frequency is the other thing you want to look at. If it's two, or below, great if it's four or above, not so good. And what do I mean by frequency, that number refers to the number of times someone in the audience you're targeting has seen your ad within the define or selected timeframe. So if it says to and you're looking at ads from yesterday, then that means on average people in your audience saw your ad two times. Okay, I've given you those three metrics. But what do you do to bring down your cost per lead? Before we go, and we talk about the rest of the funnel? Well, it's actually pretty straight forward, you want to test combinations of the components that affect your ad the most, I start with AD, copy the words that are in your ad, that are speaking to the people who you're hoping to help, the better you do your research, and the different ways that you arrange those words, the difference you'll see and results for how well your ads convert. So when you start ads, try to have two pieces of different different written ad copy to test with one image, and then see which ad copy works best with that image and you have your winner. Okay, and then pick different ad creative to test is the next step. And don't overcomplicate it. But don't buy into that general wisdom, which says, Instagram and Facebook love video, video is the best ad creative. Like I can tell you right now, honestly, for let's say 40%. And that's not off the top of my head, it's a little less than half. But graphics, which would be an image with text on it are working better for them, then video. And sometimes it's just because when you look at a graphic, you see everything there is right there versus a video you have to stick around and watch. And we all have the attention span that shorter than a goldfish, which is not very long. And so sometimes videos don't convert as well as graphic. Once you have your best ad copy from the first round of ad testing, put that copy with a picture, no text, another graphic that has text and a video, see which performs better for you as in which gives you the lowest cost per lead. If you can't really tell by cost per lead, because they're all similar. Look at the next metric that CTR link. And then once you're done with that, if you haven't reached a cost per lead that's acceptable for your business. Then, the third thing I would do is look at a different audience that you could test audience being ad set, audience and Ad Set being a group of people who could be interested in your offer. You could target them by interest. You could do things like if you have a big email list, you could build a look alike audience of that email list. look alike audience, for the uninitiated, just means you have your core audience that is a value to you. And then you say here Facebook, here's this audience, please show this ad to another 2 million people that have the same attributes or nearly the same attributes that look alike like this. audience and Facebook will do that. So that's the things that you can do on the ads part of the funnel at the top of your paid funnel to optimize to lower your cost per lead. Travis, did I miss anything?

Travis Albritton  15:16  
I'm curious about the higher frequency? Meaning somebody is seeing your ad a lot. Do you at that point, say, okay, either the audience is too small. So we're having to target the same people and over and over again. Or that, you know, we don't have enough ad creative options. So we can't show them more than one kind of ads, we need to have multiple ads? Or is it that, you know, the click through rate is low and the frequency is high, which means it's not a good fit? Like we've targeted the wrong people? How do you interpret that higher frequency? If it's that four and above to get it down? To two? What kind of adjustments do you make there?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  15:56  
Good question. So I'm assuming that solid audience research has been done, so that you're not targeting the wrong people, maybe your targeting needs to just be tweaked some. So assuming you did your audience research, as in, let's make a really simple example. You have an online business that trains folks how to train their dog by themselves, right? We're hoping you did audience research, and you're not targeting cat lovers, or people that are allergic to dogs, okay. So if your frequency is high, First, add in another ad, because variety is the spice of life. And by the way, what it means when your frequency is high is someone could get tired of seeing your ad in their Facebook or Instagram feed all the time, which means that they're more likely to hide that ad, which is a bad signal towards Facebook, you don't want people hiding your ads, or they're just going to skip over it and skip over it. And you don't want that. So add in new creative first, assuming your targeting is on point. And watch that frequency come down. Now, as far as the audience size, I did say one to 2 million is a good size in Facebook world right now, as of the date that we're recording this video, which is April 6, bigger audiences are better if you have a really large audience of, say, 2 million people, you're probably not going to have a frequency of four somebody in the audience, seeing your ad four times unless you're Coca Cola and your ad daily ad spend is like 550 $1,000.

Travis Albritton  17:41  
Right? And I imagine it'll vary from business to business, right? So for some businesses, if you're in a b2b niche, and it's like, well, the total number of people in my industry that even cares, like 10,000, so I'm okay with a higher frequency, I just need to compensate by having more ad creative. So it doesn't tire out the person on the other end, write or adjust your ad spend. So maybe, you know, you just hit a certain ceiling. And it's like, it doesn't matter how much more you spend, you're not going to get better results just because you've tapped out your audience, and all the people that you can reach with it. So you know, there's certainly lots of fine tuning you want to do on the ad side. But to your point, it's optimizing for profitability, and scaling by spending more money on that. So does that necessarily mean you're gonna make more money? Oftentimes, it means you lose money, because there is a sweet spot somewhere.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  18:29  
So speaking of profitability, should we move to the rest of the funnel?

Travis Albritton  18:33  
Yes, absolutely. And if you need to tag team in your web developer, were your marketing team. If you're listening to this, go ahead and drop this timestamp and share it with them. And we'll we'll dig into all the things you need to do with your website.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  18:45  
So with a super basic example, you're marketing a course to train somebody how to use their dog, the ad has a picture of a dog. And you might be laughing to yourself when you hear this. But you would be surprised how many people make this mistake, which is they show an ad with a picture of a cute puppy on it. But then somebody clicks because they want their dog not to bite people and to be well trained. They go to the landing page. And there's any old kind of picture on there that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the ad that was just clicked on. And the person clicking on the ad feels a bit lost. This is to say, yes, that's a very basic example, but design your opt in page in a way that it looks. Let me just flip that design your ad the graphic or video on your ad in a way that's similar to your opt in page. Also the language in your ad copy on your ad headline headline when I say headline is not the three written lines or two written lines if it's on Instagram, that's above the creative but the headline would be the words. Usually there's like 10 or fewer words. That's below the ad creative and right next to that got what we call a call to action button that says Learn More usually. So there needs to be congruence in your text and your graphic or your image to the opt in page, once we get to the opt in page, and just really basic principles to somebody know where they're at, we all are emotional people, which means in general, at the top of your opt in page is the problem, or how people feel because of the problem. And the problem is that put at the top of your opt in page so that I know when I click, want to have your dog not scare your seven year old neighbor anymore, go down here and opt in for my free tame your dog guide, it's very, it's very clear, right? We don't want people to get lost and then your opt in page should have a button for somebody to get whatever you very clearly presented above, let's say above the fold, that's old internet speak. But what I mean is on the first screen that's visible without somebody having to scroll down on their cell phone, they should be able to see a pain, a problem, a solution, and a button to get that thing. Those are some very simple things in addition to making the button, a bright color. For all of you design, folks, you might cringe because it doesn't match my color palette. But if it matches if it if it matches the color palette to well, people can kind of miss that button. Like I'm looking right now, as we're recording this podcast, and your logo. Honest marketing stands out so much against this bat black background, like your logo on this marketing, and it's green stands out so much against this black background that I'm looking at. And that's the concept of a landing page is clear. The problem you solve how they feel because of that problem, the solution you provide, and then the place they have to click to get the thing that you're offering.

Travis Albritton  22:05  
Yeah, and it's so easy to overthink the opt in page to make it like okay, how do we make the opt in page just like the rest of our website? Or, you know, how do they know that we're trustworthy? We got to tell them that's the story of our company and how it was founded by my great great grandfather in 1892. Like, no, nobody cares about any of that. All they care about, oh, you can help me with by my dog. All right. Oh, you really can't help me. Okay, here's where I put in my email to get the thing that that I need. That's all they care about. At this point, they don't know you from Adam, more than likely unless you're a Coca Cola, right. And so you're just operating in that initial relationship as you have a problem, I can solve that problem. Now you have to deliver on that you actually have to help them. But they're not grading your ability to help them based on how much your opt in page looks like your website, or how much it matches your branding or things like that. Or even if you use the same font, in your Instagram graphics that you do on your opt in page, like they don't care about any of that stuff, you can just use a simple webform white background black text, image, green button, because green means go. Don't make it a red button. It's gonna be like, Oh, I don't want to press the red button. That's bad things happen when you press red buttons. But other than that, like just make it really simple. And make it very easy for them to give you their email address. So you can keep the conversation going.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  23:28  
Yeah, and don't use Comic Sans font, because nobody likes that. In all seriousness, though, when you spend so much time and I say we because I do it too over like just obsessing about details that don't matter. I will give you one final detail at this step of the funnel that does matter, which is your research. I didn't say an easy way to do research for your messaging before. But the simplest way in my mind is, well, one, what are we going after? It's depending on who you're serving. What is their pain? Like? What is their problem? First, what is their pain? A pain would be a symptom of the problem. For example, Their problem is is that their dog is not trained. And a symptom of that is the neighbor's run across the street whenever they see the dog, or we'll leave it there. And then what do they want? And for research. Also, this doesn't need to be complicated. Go to a place on the internet where people who you're trying to reach, hang out and share stuff. For example, Reddit, Reddit, if great people love to complain on Reddit, you will find all the pain points are usually on Reddit or a forum that reaches out to that's about or for dog owners. You could go to YouTube. You could even go to amazon.com and look up Books for how to train your dog and then look in those reviews. And see when people liked the book, see why they liked the book. So you're collecting all this information and you're putting it into a document somewhere, and then you're looking for themes. But you still want to be able to communicate on your landing page, the symptom of the problem, the pain, right? And then how your solution helps that. And so that's a simple way that is where you should spend your time. And again, don't overthink it. Do the research, get it done. But don't worry, I've seen Travis I've seen some ugly sales pages and opt in pages. But they convert like crazy. And it's because the person that lands there, the the thing is clearly laid out. And the messaging is on point. And that's what matters.

Travis Albritton  25:48  
So if the ad creative matches the opt in page, so someone gets to the opt in page and they think, Okay, I'm in the right place. And your messaging is really dialed in, what's a good percentage opt in percentage of people that come to that page? And then the number of or the percentage of people that actually give you their email address, what is the target that you aim for

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  26:09  
30% If you can just pull one number 30% And this is to cold traffic, okay, cold being people that are not aware of your brand yet, see, I'm using those harsh marketing term, people who have not encountered your brand before no zilch about you, they would be called cold traffic and marketing terms and 30% is what you want to aim for. If you're below 10%, opt in rate on your opt in page, you need to change something drastic, it could be that you're targeting apps that you're targeting cat lovers, again, if you're with at 25%, this becomes a question of, could you focus your energy or your team's energy on somewhere else in your funnel, to where if you fix it, it would give you a higher return on the investment of your team's resources or your personal time that you're spending?

Travis Albritton  27:03  
Yeah, that's really great to know, just as a general ballpark 30%. If you're hitting 30%, you know, certainly there are ways you can improve it. But you at least know that this part of the funnel is not holding you back from having something that's really high, performing at a high level. So then what happens after that after someone gives you their email address, what's the next step they need to have? Because typically, when I built the funnel in the past, there'll be some kind of confirmation or thank you page that will be next, in addition to some kind of automated email is that typically how you set it up as well,

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  27:36  
it actually is what I have spent 30 minutes yesterday, coaching a brand new ads client through that I'm onboarding, to make a thank you page because she has a form and you hit submit name and email goes in. And then the form just changes and says thank you. And I'm like you need a thank you page. Okay, so why is the question number one, which I believe is most important for paid traffic, you need a thank you page so that your your analytics knows that you've had a conversion. Google Analytics knows that you've had a conversion. So you can accurately measure your cost per lead. And then the Facebook pixel knows that you've had a conversion, so that the Facebook algorithm, let's call it AI somewhere in the cloud can optimize on your behalf and bring down your cost per lead because it knows more about the kind of people who have decided that they want the value that you're giving. So that's one reason to have a thank you page. The other reason is that you do want because remember, a funnel is enabling you to do business with and help more people. You want that person to know what's next. And even though this is 2023. And we all know that if we opt in for something, we should go into your email. Actually, we all don't know that. And so very simple message on the thank you page that says go to your email. And the simple Dog Training Guide is right there. That's that's necessary. Don't over

Travis Albritton  29:17  
Absolutely. Yeah, don't take it for granted. People love clarity. If you make it really simple and really clear about what the next step is, then they not only feel like okay, now I know what to do next. But they also feel more confidence that you are the right person to guide them, right that if you're kind of taking them by the hand through this whole process and saying here's what's next, here's what's next. Here's Windex, that really reflects well on you. Because now you're you're seen as being competent, right? Like it's not some, you know, investigation to try and figure out how do I continue this conversation with you? It's like, oh, like you've done this before. You know what you're doing. And so now that makes you more trustworthy even simply by having Thank You page says, hey, check your email, I just sent you one, have a great day, like just something as simple as that makes a big difference in the eyes of the person who's just entered into your world for the first time, think about

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  30:11  
a doctor, okay? The ones that we liked the best tend to tell us what's coming up. And that's because as humans, we like to know, we don't like the unknown. And so like Travis, you're saying, just outline the steps and say what's coming next, that does really matter. Thank you for downloading, head to your email where your dog training guide will be waiting for you, the doctor that says, Alright, I'm going to pick you it's going to hurt a little bit, or I'm going to put this cold little plastic to listen to your heart. It does help and you want the steps to be really, really simple. You're not going to offend anybody for oversimplifying it. The reason I'm chuckling about my mom is because I remember, back in the day, when I visited her from college, she I taught her how to use a computer, I go home, and then I go out with my friends. She calls me up. And she's like, irate because I've messed up her computer. And so I go home, after I hang out with my friends to look and she can't get on the internet. She can't get on it. And I've messed up the whole thing. You know what she did Travis. She she had a window. And she had drugged, dragged drag it she drugged that window, she dragged that window over the one way that she knew how to get on the internet, which was the icon on her desktop, she never to her, it was completely gone. And she had no clue about moving the window around the click on it. And again, she couldn't go to the Start menu, we were using PCs windows back then yeah, she couldn't do anything else, right. So assume the person who you're speaking to really doesn't know much and make your directions crystal clear. And you'll be good to go with a thank you page. Perfect.

Travis Albritton  31:59  
So now they've given you permission to talk to them by giving you their email address. And if you use any modern client relationship management software CRM, like a MailChimp or ConvertKit, or something like that, they'll also make it really easy to unsubscribe from the emails, which is actually a blessing because then they're telling you, hey, I'm not interested anymore. And you're like, Great, now I can just focus my attention on the people that still are. But now you're going to typically send a series of emails that goes out automatically. What typically goes in those emails? What do you put in those emails to connect the dots from somebody who has just downloaded a lead magnet that's maybe addressing a surface level problem or something that's very present in their minds towards the ultimate solution that they'll end up needing to invest in order to truly solve that problem? How do you have that conversation? What needs to go into those emails and, you know, we can talk for philosophically we can talk 30,000 foot view or tactically like email number three, you say this, this and this. Anywhere you want to go with it, but I think just having more of a framework and clarity around, okay. They said, Yes, we can go on first date. Now what? Like, do we just drop the bomb and say, How many kids do you want? Or are there things in the middle that we need to talk about first, before we go in for the proposal?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  33:13  
I'm gonna I'm the guy who does not just Russian if you want to call it that, these are people oh my gosh, the terms we use. This is really turning into a funnel masterclass. Like, this is good. This is this is good. Alright, so. So there is no magic number of emails to send, I'm gonna say, to follow up with somebody send five to seven, okay, if you send six, you're not going to mess up your sales sequence. If you send four, you're going to be okay. But there are, there is a concept that you want to follow, which is the first email delivers what you promised to deliver. And please make it good. You're the expert. They came to you for value, give them value. But here's what you do. Don't give them an 18 step process to do to help begin to train their dog, right? promise one thing, and then very simply, very quickly, very efficiently. help them do that one thing, this is what we call a quick win. They're not going to train their dog overnight, but they just might with your one secret, get their dog to stop when they say stop, you know, just that one thing, right? And so now they're happy because after they looked at your PDF guide, or maybe it was a video and now before whereas before they open their dog and or they open their front door and their little dog, a yapper Pomeranian named Bonnie is running after The old lady neighbor, now they're like Barney stop, and the dog, it stops, you know, it's like, great, you gave them a quick win. Now, what do you want to do in your emails, they don't know you. And they don't know the real problem they have. And they don't know how good you are at solving that problem. So what I would like to do in emails, and what I advise people to do is use your previous customers to share or highlight a story that focuses on and this is basically what a case study is that focuses on a problem that they had. And what problems do you pick, you pick the problems that your research told, told you that your ideal customer struggles with the most. So a problem that a previous customer had? What that problem meant to them the pain, right? Why they hated that problem? What you taught them, how it solved their problem, and how they felt just that simple framework and an email, don't make it super long. And then at the end of that email can be a call to action to your sales page. Let's not overcomplicate this, right. And and also, let me let me insert something really quick here, Travis, lead magnet, let's call it the thought process in a lead magnet. If there are 10 things that your offer solves for somebody's problem, and we're assuming your offer what your program whatever sells, okay, if there's 10 things, the lead magnet should only solve one or two of those things, right? And then you need to make it clear that there's more issues to solve. And those are in your main thing, which is not a sleazy thing. It's like, it could be as simple as, hey, now your dog stops at the sidewalk. Because you say halt. Well, guess what? Does your dog still like pee everywhere? Does it still poop everywhere? Like Does your dog tear up your house when you leave on a vacation, so on and so forth. All this is in my other program. So in the other emails that follow, you know, it's still the same pattern, another happy client who had another relatable problem, and they did what you told them to do, and gave them a solution. If you dot fellow dog lover have this issue, click right here, you can go to the sales page and and buy don't say click and go to my sales page, your dog to click on new people, no joke, my friend back when I lived in China, which is if you didn't know I lived in China, I lived there for 12 years, his dog whose name was Guinness, I won't name my friend because there could be many friends who have a dog named Guinness. Every time the dog saw me, the dog would like get super excited and start peeing on like, either my feet or right there. And it was like the most annoying thing, because I don't like dogs actually. And the dog wouldn't give the time of day to any other visitors. But whenever it saw me, it would just come over and get super excited. And just like start paying, and I'm like, they never fixed the problem. And so um, I don't know, I said that if your dog does that, please go get a course for your dog. That's the general that's the general process, an email sequence would follow, deliver, deliver the thing that somebody downloaded, thank them. Hint in that first email that there are more issues that need to be solved. But they're going to be super happy when they just follow the simple steps. Then, of course, they do what you say they got that one, when in the next email, talk about a previous client who had a problem, follow some steps gotta win in the following email, do the same thing. By the time you get to the last email. If you have five total, by the time you get to say the last two emails, you can do something which is a little more direct. And by direct just list problems that you help. Go to the link to get these problems solved. That's all I mean by direct. Let's not overthink about it or overthink it.

Travis Albritton  39:08  
Yeah, people have busy lives, right? Sometimes you just need to come right out and come out with the ask you like, do you want to go study? You've seen that I'm not a dangerous fellow. I'm actually quite attractive. You'd like me, I like you. Let's make this thing official. Like people appreciate that level of directness and again it if it's done in a way that's consistent with your values, and, you know, not leading people on and really showing up the service mindset. People will appreciate that confidence. This is no no like I really I really can't help you. Instead of, you know, kind of waffling back and forth and kind of asking for the sale, but not really they're like, can you really help me because it doesn't seem like you're very confident here that you can actually do what you say you're doing. So I'm not sure if I'm confident in giving you my credit card information. So it's a good thing. It's important to be able to show up and say listen, this is a problem you have I fixed it. to come over here and let me show you how.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  40:02  
Absolutely, absolutely, you asked about metrics, I won't let you ask this time, I'll just tell you, if you're looking at your email sequence, and you want to know some standard metrics that will help you decide how effective your emails are working. Number one is the email open rate. And again, you're looking for around 30%. If more than that are opening your emails, wonderful, if like 5% of the people that get your email are opening it, you have a problem, what do you do you tweak that subject line, you change it, you wait for enough time to see people come through the funnel and see how the open rate changes. Also, you need to be looking at that link, click through rate, and specifically, the links that go to your sales page. Because you're saying, you have all these dog problems come here, I can help you. You want that to be anywhere from two to 4% 2% is actually high. If you can get 1%. That's great. I like to see two to 4%. If I see six, I'm thinking you're doing really well, super well actually, those are the only two things you need to look at for your email to gauge how it's going. If you see one email that's doing really well ask yourself, why is this email doing so well? What am I writing in sight of it or look at the frequency that the emails are being sent out, by the way, send one per day, that's fine. So you stay in the top of somebody's mind, if you want to send them every other day. Go ahead, you know, but let's say one of your email open rates dropped to like 5%. But the email was basically the same as a previous email. And then you look, this has happened before. And it's like, oh, for some reason, email number three that has a low open rate was sent like six days after email number two, even though email number two was only sent two days after email, number one, maybe I better shorten that gap between emails. And lo and behold, in our perfect business scenario, email open rate comes up.

Travis Albritton  42:11  
Perfect. So then now you're sending people to a sales page, where you're asking for the transaction. And similar to an opt in page where there's only one purpose for it and a sales page, there's one purpose, it's telling you about whatever your offer is. And then all the calls to action are sign up, go to the checkout page basic or the checkout form. That's it, like that's the whole point of this form. Right? You're not linking to your blog, you're not doing all this other stuff. It's just, here's what the offer is, here's how much it costs. Click here to sign up. And then testimonials, best practices, things like that, on a sales page, what are the conversion numbers that you're looking for, from traffic coming from an email sequence? For you know, to know that it's performing? Well.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  43:02  
Four fingers is what I'm holding up. For those of you that can't see the video and 4% on the sales page is what I'm looking for.

Travis Albritton  43:09  
Yep. So, you know, we start way back at Facebook ads, right, where we're calculating cost per lead. And at each one of these stages, we're going to lose people. And that's just totally normal, right, so you're going to have 100% of people that enter your funnel, they click the link, but then 30% actually give you their email address. And then from that 30%, maybe 4% of those 30% of the 100% actually clicks on your sales page. And then of the 4% of the 30% that click on the link to go to the sales page, only 4% of them actually make a purchase. So you start with like, you know, a couple of 1000 people coming into the top of your funnel, and maybe, you know, two to four, and they've giving you money. But that's how this whole process works out, we're able to have the automated conversation at scale with people that could become clients or could become customers and guide him through this process. And so you're able to find the two to four people that are ready right now to fix this problem with money out of the several 1000 that started the process. And that's a totally normal way of what you can expect a funnel to do. Now, what happens if they don't purchase right now? Maybe they do have the problem, but they're not in a position to pay for it. Or it's not a good time or they're about to go on vacation? Does that mean you just stop talking to them? It's like well, they didn't click the link those five emails and they went to the sales page. They didn't do anything so I guess they're not interested. How do you follow up with these people that are now on your email list and and keep them engaged with you so that you're top of mind when they are ready to make that decision? What does that look like?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  44:52  
Number one you follow up? You it's I'm laughing but I've spent Up till now, let's see, two years since 2020, coaching people and online business strategy, and it is surprising the number of people I have had the pleasure of working with. And you ask them, so what kind of regular emails do you send to people who opted in after they make it through that initial follow up sequence, and they're like silence. Okay. So if you don't send them regular emails, when's the last time you email your list, and then it's like, you start to see the sweat forming on the other end of zoom, and then like, last Christmas, and that's what you don't, you don't want to do that meaning, don't just not talk to the people who have opted into your email list. Until every two times a year when you want to sell them something, that's what you don't want to do. Okay, now that you're not doing that, and I know your your listeners, have honest marketing, you don't do that you use the conversation. So how about every week, you send out an email newsletter, again, keep it keep it really simple. Or if you are a YouTuber, for example, then, and you don't have time to write a newsletter? Well, what you could do is just take your video, include like a few highlights in written form, and then a link to go to your YouTube channel. That's still continuing the conversation, right? And there's still some value there. Because hopefully, you're making videos that a value if you want your channel to grow, which is a whole nother podcast episode. If you're like Travis, and you have a podcast, maybe you don't, at this point in time, have the time to write a separate newsletter. But do you think that in your podcast episode, part of it is a value? Hopefully the answer is yes. And you could take that, put it in written form, and put that into an email, you don't even have to have a blog. And that's what you do, you know, on a weekly basis, send out something of value. If you want to get fancy, you can write yourself another six email sales sequence that I every month, Now, not every month, two times a year, you send it to your whole email list. And that email sales sequence kind of like I described before, is and that email sales sequence kind of like I described before, is what's designed to well sell people on what you are selling and get them to buy it. But that's, that's fancy, you can send out an email every once in a while. It's kind of like Travis talked about dating, eventually, if things are going well, you're on whatever number of dates the point is, is the girl still wants to hang out with you. You need to say your intentions here. depending on whatever your values are. It's, I actually want to be with you like your boyfriend or we've been doing this a long time. I think you're serious potential. Let's spend the rest of our lives together. You do want to do that via email. What don't ask. You want to ask the people on your email list, to go ahead and buy the thing you're selling every every once in a while, too. You don't want to do it too often. Because then they're going to feel why is this person always trying to sell me something? They're here just to sell me something. So once in a while, we all this is the 21st century, we all know that if I got something for free, somebody's going to try to sell me something eventually. In fact, if somebody doesn't, I feel a little weird, like what's going on? So just be respectful and timely about it.

Travis Albritton  48:54  
Absolutely. So hopefully this epic masterclass that we've just kind of gone through this whole front to back process has given you some clarity around how funnels when they're working properly and operating properly can really help you generate more sales with the right people that are in a position to need help with anything that you do. So that way you can invest money in paid advertising, you can actually scale up the number of people that you're serving. So that way you can have a greater impact and help more people, which ultimately, hopefully, is the whole goal of your business is to help people overcome problems. Now, if somebody is listening to this, you're like, Whoa, that was fantastic. You seem like exactly the kind of person I do bring in to help me with refining my funnel, helping me with my emails, getting my ads together, and really just kind of a holistic approach to dialing in their paid marketing. Where can they learn more about you and where should they go to get in touch with you to learn more?

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  49:49  
Well, they can you can learn if you want to work with me more about me@quedo.com So let me spell that for you because it's weird to spell but It's the phonetic spelling of my name, qu a yjo.com. And what you'll see there is an opportunity where we can hop on a zoom call, and do some strategy if you need your funnel fixed, if any of those steps that we talked about seem foreign to you, but what you do know is that your business isn't making money, it's probably because of your funnel. You know, that's what you can talk with me about at the time of this recording. I'm doing a free 30 minute strategy call. And that is not a glorified sales pitch fest. It actually is me doing business or finding the right people to work with the old way. I'll give you tons of value and answer your question and help you for 30 minutes. With your ads, I can look at your ads, I can tweak your campaign and make it work better, we can dive into your funnel. And then if you like the value of delivered what to you, you can decide to work with me more and you'll have that option. But quedo.com quayjo.com, we can hop on a strategy call. And if you feel so inclined, I can manage your ads because I am an ads manager. But unlike many ads managers, I've done business strategy coaching for two years now, as of the recording of this video, April 6 2023. And I love discussing the other things that allow you to make more impact. Work with more people, and even work less your sales, your marketing your team dynamics, if you have a team. If you don't have a team, maybe it's time to start hiring somebody, we can talk about all that.

Travis Albritton  51:43  
Perfect, and that'll be linked in the show notes below as well. So you can click right over there and schedule your strategy call Quade with them. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your time with us. It's been fantastic.

Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie  51:52  
Thank you for having me on the honest Marketing Podcast, Travis. It's an honor, it's an honor.

Travis Albritton  51:58  
So my number one takeaway from my conversation with quedo is never take for granted that you need to explain something to someone who is beginning to explore a business relationship with you. It's easy to assume that people know to look in their email or they know what a sales page looks like. Or they know they need to click on certain buttons in certain places. Just assume they've never used the internet before. And they know nothing. Make it as easy and simple as possible for people to take the next step with you in your business. Now, most people won't need that most people will be somewhat internet literate. But what you're doing by really focusing on that and streamlining that process as much as possible is you're removing friction from the process of doing business with you and you want to remove as much friction make it as simple as straightforward as seamless as possible. So that when somebody has made a decision to do business with you, they can do it and there's there's nothing hidden there's no like hidden checkout page somewhere that nobody can find. It's very easy to take action and to begin working with you. Well I hope you found this interview really helpful. And until next time, be honest.