My client, Matt, was making great progress writing his web copy and asked me what I thought about his introductory offer.

Matt helps small business owners get better organized and get more done.

He had a three-step “what to do next” offer:

1. Download an excerpt from a book he published—people who downloaded would also automatically be subscribed to Matt’s free monthly ezine
2. Complete an online assessment about their time management habits
3. Buy his book

I liked the first step and told Matt. But I wasn’t so sure about the other two. I wondered whether clients were getting what they really needed.

Matt was disappointed. People loved his book, he told me. Why wouldn’t that be the a natural next step?

Revisiting the Marketing Funnel

What my client and I were discussing—what to offer and when to make the offers— is often called the “Marketing Funnel.”

The Marketing Funnel is a very useful concept and can be summed up like this:

When people first learn about your business and products, most won’t be ready to make a purchase and if they do buy, they will buy something very inexpensive.

As they learn you deliver what you promise, a percentage of prospects will trust you enough to purchase from you.

And an even smaller percentage of folks who buy will fall in love with your products and services. They will buy your most expensive items and they’ll come back time and time again.

The funnel shape makes sense. At the lip of the funnel you have lots of folks checking you out and trying free products. As the funnel narrows you have fewer and fewer people but those smaller numbers are spending a lot and buying a lot.

The key lesson of the marketing funnel is this:

As a business you want to offer products at different price points so that you can serve customers who are at different levels of commitment in terms of the time and money they’re willing to spend.

I’d Prefer a Walk in the Garden Myself

Useful as the metaphor is, a “funnel” isn’t the friendliest image. As customer it’s not exactly appealing to picture yourself pushed into a funnel.

Nor does the marketing funnel reinforce the notion that our profit is based on effective service. When someone says they’re “trying to upsell customers” they coming from the mindset that we somehow have to push our customers to buy more of something that they otherwise wouldn’t buy.

Which is why I’d prefer to use the concept of a walk in the garden to explain how to think about serving your customers at higher levels.

Designing a Profitable Walk through the Garden

I imagine you’re familiar with gardens and know there’s quite a variety of gardens: big, formal gardens; small, semi-wild gardens; vegetable gardens; flower gardens, and so on.

Since we’re talking about your small business, we’ll assume a small, simple garden. And your business garden has the following features:

• a gate to enter
• a path that takes people through the garden
• a few point of interest analogous a water fountain, or a pond, or an apple tree

I did use the word “profitable” and here’s how you design a profitable walk:

• To enter the garden, people need to do something so they know about your business and solutions. Some examples: they download a free white paper or they sign up for your weekly ezine, or they sign up for a free teleclass.
• A profitable path means that you have designed points of interest that are appropriate to visitor’s level of interest and commitment.
• As they use introductory products and services some visitors will want to journey further into the garden. Not everyone will; some will get so far and then stop; some will rest awhile then proceed.

So far so good.

Now, here’s the trick to designing a path that continues drawing visitors into and through your garden: knowing what products and services are most relevant to your customers at different points of their journey.

To explain how this works, let’s go back to the client I mentioned at the very beginning.

Example: Designing a Profitable Path for a Time Management Consultant

Doing this requires you understand what your customers need at different points in solving their  problems. Here’s how Matt, explained a typical sequence to me:

“When people first contact me, they’re usually overwhelmed to the point that they’re not thinking very clearly. They just want relief.

“The excerpt they read from my book is actually an exercise that helps them see it’s usually a few key areas that need organizing; not their entire life. Just doing this calms people down so they can take more thoughtful action.

So the first step in Matt’s offer makes sense.

“After they read the excerpt which includes a subscription to my monthly ezine, 4 out of 10        people want something more. They like my approach and my style and they’re willing to spend more time and energy to get help.”

“These people aren’t ready to hire me to come in and set up businesses processes but they definitely want some support and guidance.

“I’m thinking an economical way for me to provide more support would be to offer a low-cost teleclass; maybe 3 or 4 on different topics. Then people can pick and choose ones that fit their particular situation.”

“Once people take the class, hmm, what would they want? Some may be ready to hire me to do a customized consult but maybe others don’t need such an intensive service.

“Maybe I could offer a one-day workshop in which I teach them how to assess and improve how they do their work. And I could include a free copy of my book as part of the workshop materials.”

Can you see how Matt has created a garden path with three points, each offering a higher level of support and service?

Entry: Book excerpt download & ezine subscription

Point 1: Low-cost teleclasses

Point 2: Mid-priced one-day workshop

Point 3: High-priced custom consult

Compared to his initial offer this new progression enables Matt to:

• Provide customers with meaningful, relevant options
• Earn more revenue by including low- and mid-priced services

Bottom Line

If you are a small business owner and are struggling with the question “how do I best serve customers who want more from me?” Use the idea of designing a path to develop additional offers to serve customers at higher levels of commitment.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Marketing Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.