Relationship Funnel — resembles the usual Sales Funnel, only it is more effective in the B2B, Infobusiness, and training niches. Like most trends, the relationship funnel came to us from Western countries.
In this article, we will consider a new type of relationship funnel and ways to apply it in business.
How does a relationship funnel differ from a sales funnel?
The classic sales funnel uses many tools to attract an audience: letters to the mail, the use of lead magnets, free webinars, super favorable terms for the deal, repeat calls, and discounts.
The relationship funnel consists of two components: the first is building a strong relationship with the client, and the second is solving the client's problems with the help of your product. Moreover, the sequence is as follows: first the relationship, then the second sale. The value of the funnel is that you don’t impose discounts, promotions, or super-duper offers on the target audience, but simply share free materials, consultations, and valuable knowledge. It often happens that the client is ready to buy a product from you even before you prepare an offer.
Where to use Relationship Funnel
A relationship funnel is suitable for startups and teams with new interesting products. In addition to this niche, the funnel is also suitable for other segments.
Infobusiness sphere
If you conduct training courses, master classes, or coaching - a relationship funnel is perfect for business. Good relations with the client eliminate unpleasant questions about "... are you a professional to conduct courses?", "Why is it so expensive ... and your competitor's ...". If the client buys your product, trust in the brand will grow, so you can easily sell other products.
Let's consider a relationship funnel using the example of the work of the famous editor and author of the book "Write, Shorten" Maxim Ilyakhov. Everyone who is interested in infostyle will definitely read the author's book. After reading the book, the client thinks: “Great material, useful. I want more…”, starts studying what else the author has to offer, and ends up on the free Glavred email list. Every week, the user receives excellent cases on working with a client, creating strong text, and errors when writing articles.
When the user receives the last letter, he is offered to subscribe to the paid "Advanced Course of the Editor-in-Chief". The user has developed a high level of trust and respect for the author. He knows that this will be high-quality content, and subscribes to the paid newsletter.
Scope of study
The funnel is great for private schools, academies, and various courses. It is much easier to build trusting relationships when communicating offline. The combination of a good product and trust in the brand will lead to word of mouth and advertising from satisfied customers.
Scope of services
It is difficult for potential customers to determine the value of the product and why they should buy from you. As a result, they may be dissatisfied with the price and conditions and refuse to buy. If you give a potential customer the opportunity to pre-test your product or share knowledge for free, the probability of a sale will be much higher.
If the classic sales funnel is aimed at constantly finding and attracting new customers, the relationship funnel works differently: you inspire trust in the target audience, so they regularly follow your content and offers. New customers come thanks to positive reviews.
Advantages of the funnel
Even if your prices are several times higher than those of your competitors, but good relationships have been built, customers will choose you. Relationships are valued much more than the cost of services, so with a relationship funnel, you can increase customer engagement, and increase the reading of your email newsletter and conversion. You will also lose the feeling of intrusiveness and falsity when communicating with the customer.
If a customer has bought your product and is satisfied, it is easier for you to resell additional books or courses. The main thing is that the quality of services and materials remains at a high level, otherwise, the customer will be disappointed and stop trusting. The relationship funnel perfectly filters out users who are not interested in your product or those who are disappointed in it.
Implementing a relationship funnel into your business does not require large financial investments. You can save money by not using additional tools to increase sales.
How to use Relationship Funnel in business?
The strategy of trusting relationships in business is carried out in four steps. Let's understand it step by step.
Attracting and keeping customer attention
Attracting the attention of the audience is not difficult, but keeping it ... We recommend:
- Create valuable and informative content on your resource. These can be interesting blog articles, audio and video clips on Youtube;
- Create author's content that is not available on social networks. This way, users will evaluate its quality and subscribe to the newsletter;
- Test useful materials to study the target audience and its needs in more detail.
Segment your audience
Details are the most important thing. If you know what your audience is interested in, then you will be able to offer what is really important. For this, it is not necessary to conduct interviews. We recommend:
- Highlight several segments of your audience. For each segment, identify problems, fears, goals, and desires. It is advisable to also work on character portraits;
- Develop a pop-up window with questions that will help determine which segment the client belongs to.
How it looks in practice.
A potential client visits the site and answers several questions to receive the most useful newsletter.
For example, if you teach time management, the funnel for relationships with the parents of your target audience may include questions:
- how many children (1, 2-3, more than 3);
- What factors take up a lot of time (work, public transport, household chores);
- what there is not enough time for (walking with a child, playing sports, meeting friends);
- What materials would be interesting to read (how to have more time, how to plan correctly, how to introduce new habits)?
The answers to these simple questions allow you to establish that your client works a lot, so he cannot devote time to friends, a child, and sports. He will be interested in reading about the competent distribution of time in order to have more time and live a more fulfilling life.
Support users' interests through personalized content
Even a few basic questions allow you to identify what content will be useful to the client. We start working with the audience:
- create useful content for all segments;
- Set up an email newsletter (or even ask the client how often they want to receive emails);
- Test different feedback methods to better understand the user's interests.
Prepare the user for the sale
Don't rush: think about how much content and time the customer needs to start trusting your brand and warmly accepting the offer.
Try:
- come up with an action for customers. If users are ready to write about your newsletter on social networks, they most likely trust you and are ready to buy;
- set up sequential emails;
- Create a unique offer for each segment.
Next, you can start driving traffic, collect at least 200-300 communication contacts and analyze the funnel.
Conclusions
Trust in the brand is an effective tool for business development and sales growth. While other companies are trying to make as much money as possible with promotions, discounts, and super offers, try giving customers free and useful information to gain their trust.
