Darrenk

Hi warriors

Long time lurker here, finally a member, look forward to being part of this great community.

Hoping to get a bit of guidance on marketing funnels before going down the path blindly.

We run a business creating custom artistic products (high end/bespoke/physical) - think 'sculptures' and you're on the right track. We're high priced and fairly prestige - understandably forming that relationship is crucial rather than an immediate sale. We have a great core offer, direct marketing and partnering with other companies works well for us - we're now looking to go down the B2C path but the sheer amount information/options with respect to IM is boggling. Guidance most welcome.

The following is our plan thus far, although there seems to be holes aplenty and we're unsure how to bring it together.

Funnel initial Plan/Setup:-
1) FB ads (perfect for our niche) with FB custom audiences for later retargeting -> Content page. Introduce to customers, non intrusive. Customers "pixeled" by FB and other retargeting software such as perfect audience.

2) FB/other ads to that audience ("hi again") -> send to lead magnet (capture details for later email marketing) -> Send to Tripwire offer *problem 1 - tripwire/lead magnet*. Use of lead pages or similar.

3) Email and retarget marketing until -> Core Offer (not this includes options for add-ons or different presentation options as part of the order process)

4) Post sale retargeting - discount codes and offers to their friends and family (most people will only buy 1 or two products from us over their customer lifetime)

4a) Abandoned cart - followup email sequence for those that abandon at checkout


Problems/Questions:
- Our product is a single, custom, bespoke item made for the customer. They choose the aspects they would like as part of the order, we make it, job done. There really isn't a second smaller item/element we can offer as either a tripwire or as an up-sell/profit maximiser - shipping/presentation/wrapping etc etc is fully inclusive.

- Lead magnet ideas - offering an ebook or other digital information product really does feel 'wrong' considering the artistic nature of our business. Its possible, but feels quite apart from our core "We make sculptures, but here is an ebook with the 5 best XYZ from [sub-niche we are targeting]".

- We had considered offering some graphics work at cost as part of our tripwire, but this would he heinously admin-heavy but on the other hand would get us in touch personally with our customers which is a positive. Unsure.

- Our eCommerce backend is Hikashop on a Joomla site. We can't really make this work with a funnel as a holistic process - the funnel would eventually put the customer on the order page but that's the best we can manage. Remember our product is physical and custom- once ordered our team works with them direct via phone/email - it's quite personal.

- Email automation - how do we move customers from various email loops (EG, customer has purchased, they no longer need early funnel emails)


So I guess the big question is are we on the right track with this, should we be looking elsewhere, what can the warriors suggest.

Appreciate everyones time and look forward to offering our own insight elsewhere.


Cheers
-Darren

savidge4

Lets talk about the trip wire piece first. A free whatever.. you want that piece in some way to answer a question.. develop a need for your product, or develop trust in you as a company. I would say that Art becomes an interesting market.

Because you said it is like "Sculpture" lets say you are "creating" busts I am in the market for a bust of my Grandma. What questions do I have? How can you as a company develop trust with me, that you are going to deliver a great bust?

Almost the same as in many other business' you would deliver a bit of a case study. Where do we get our stone. How the stone is selected. Who are the artisans that develop the stone. how exactly does the process work. In the case of a "bust" you would show an image of grandma, and the final product.

In the realm of PDF's there are crappy, yeah I made this in word and went crazy with the text color quality, and then there is refined, well thought out and artistic. This piece alone could do wonders for your business. In the footer you want to add the note that it is ok to share.. with facebook twitter etc buttons ( IN THE PDF ) to do so.

Here is where things get dicey with me... I am a oddball in this area.. the area being commerce. I am not a big fan of a "List" when I am selling a 1 off item. I sell $10,000 Tv's without a list.. and I sell $4.99 bracelets the same way. Sure the option to get on the list is there.. but it by no means is my main effort.

The effort should be in the SALE.. and the e-mail should be the back end just incase plan. That is what exit intent pop-ups and software is for.

Single item ish mailing lists just throws a wrench in the options. I would say the Cadillac of choices would be infusionsoft.com. probably hands down no questions asked the software that would work best for you. Albeit overkill but it is going to do everything and anything you are asking for and probably more.

A thing to consider here. You have a website.. it has a cart... but with all this added layers of stuff, if you find that you are having difficulty with integration don't be afraid to create a cart that will work with the CRM you may choose to use. if you implement cart.yoursite.com from the outside looking in..no one is going to know the difference.

Hope that Helps!

Darrenk

^^ Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.

Im inclined to agree with the marketing via email given this market. It's interesting to meet a fellow 'oddball' looking at things a bit different. For informational products/services etc email makes complete sense particularly if you are giving great content regularly - for something like this there are only so many emails/offers etc we could send and it feels more annoying than effective. Post sale is entirely different and we do very well with customers recommending us (we make it veeeery easy to do so..)

Agree with the PDF, we have a bunch of ideas in mind there to act as lead magnet. You are correct - if done well its a valuable piece of info. T

The tripwire (paid) still eludes us - we cant really 'break off' a part of our offering (aside for graphic work which most of our customers request of us to get an idea of the finished product before work commences - we could offer this upfront near cost but it's admin heavy. That does put us directly in touch with the customer though so it seems plausible). Also with adding further offerings later, it's not really something we can offer at this stage - we are looking at highly custom presentation options but that'll be down the road..

Exit intent software isn't something we have looked at too closely so thanks for that - makes a lot of sense for us.

So we're thinking at this point to at least initially pursue a FB ads / retargeting strategy (EG, not sending emails to nurture - letting the ads to the talking) - monitor and see where that gets us initially. We can always branch out once we have some data to look at. Sensible?



savidge4 - could you go into a bit more detail on your infusionsoft thoughts? In terms of functionality are you suggesting this in terms of the ability to redirect customers to separate emailing lists based on their actions/clicking links etc or something else. Note "drip" is a good alternative for this a colleague is using if thats the case.

savidge4

I have to ask.. why bother? As an example this evening I went to my local metal shop and commissioned a piece. There was no tripwire.. I don't think in the line of business you are operating in it is needed or that it is even common. I would think that the overall reality is if they are in the very least interested ( which shows signs of motivation ) there would be no need to play the buy once and they are more likely to buy again game.

Your job at that point is to develop the motivation through Value and Incentive. I am taking a stab in the dark, but the Incentive in your case is going to be something along the lines of capturing what ever in stone for all of eternity or the like. ( Playing nicely with at least one of the seven deadly sins I might add - always good in sales LOL )

I would start with post boosting here to start to get the target down right. Again, I don't know specifically the product, and the ins and outs as you do, but targeting may not be as easy it may appear ( And I could be completely wrong here of course ) Boosting with some nice content ( PDF ) as the reward up front would be the low budget end way in.. to feel things out and get a better idea.

From there I would then focus on the ad / retargeting strategy. I am going to think based on some gut feeling factors that you will be targeting a primarily female demographic? I would look at Pinterest and instagram as well, since I am assuming your end product is visual? Both of these would still be hitting whati assume your target base demographic would be ( female ) but plays with the age a bit... but daughters want whats cool for their mothers and visa versa so word of mouth could be effective here.

Drip would be a low end basic e-mail platform. Customer.io is good in that space and so is sendloop. Taking the control up a notch you get into Contactually where you start integrating the social contact etc and your CRM base becomes more broad spectrum..

Then you get into infusionsoft... broad platform based... multiple start points and the ability to draw that traffic right through the sale. I haven't seen another product on the market that goes to the extent this does. It is truly a marketers tool, and not just a email management system. Like I said before it could be seen as over kill for what you are doing, but the flip side is the amount of control you gain from entry to sale.

Is that needed probably not? but there is something to be said for pre setting a entire sales process from start to finish.. and all you have to do is set it up, and test it to perfection.

Hope that Helps!