In a previous job, we had a program focused on helping freelancers grow their businesses. And on one of our weekly calls, there was a student who was struggling to find new clients. He dreaded creating content, and the Instagram/LinkedIn route would absolutely drain him. However, every time he spoke, the zoom room would light up — he was incredibly charismatic. My boss, noticing this trait, suggested: “Why don’t you go check this app here that works like a chat roulette for business, you train the algorithm to match you with your potential clients and you create your marketing funnel through calls?”. Long story short - he did just that and it worked brilliantly! This for me is the perfect example of how adapting a framework to ourselves and our business, allows for it to grow faster while making work more enjoyable. Whether we’re freelancers, solopreneurs or have a team, we sometimes forget that our businesses should be designed in a way that works for us — aligned with our strengths and with what brings us joy. This is easier said than done though — creating a business is hard, there are a ton of decisions to make and things to think about. Thus, we end up following an easier route, usually doing what's normalised. So today we would like to play a bit with a framework and make it ours. Maybe this will spark ideas on specific areas of your business that aren't working for you. Okay, so considering that we’re in a time where content creation is taking so much from us, I thought we could rethink the marketing funnel. |
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If you’re not familiar with this model, it sheds light on all the different phases that a person from your target audience goes through until they acquire your product or service; and then how they move from the onboarding and first use to retention and advocacy. There are many models with different phases, sequences and naming, but we picked this very intentionally because: - All the points of contact of your audience, clients or community are considered, including those after acquisition — which creates clarity on all the customer journey's phases. This is relevant because some phases have a bigger influence on performance marketing (generating leads and sales) while others are more branding marketing (building awareness and creating an emotional connection with the customer) related.
- It makes us question pre-conceived notions like those of believing that a bigger audience, number of followers or subscribers will mean higher conversions. Better quality of leads increases the chances of a higher conversion rate.
- We’re not limited to short-term thinking. Depending on the type of business model you have and the values you want to uphold, putting most of the weight on the pre-purchase phases can harm you in the mid and long-term. The referral phase for instance, which might be dependent on the onboarding and retention, is critical for service-related business and for any business focused on scaling. The first part of the funnel gets to a point where it becomes a bottleneck, while having people promoting your business doesn’t follow this outcome.
- We can use all of these phases to listen to our audience and customers — this will not only allow us to improve our product and experience, but to better promote it as we’ll be able to better understand the value that we’re bringing.
First things first, we start by filling the model with what we know, what we're doing and what we could potentially be doing. Then we question everything: - Are we doing this because it works for us, or because everyone is doing this?
- On a scale of 1-10, how much energised I feel about doing this?
- Is this something we're doing out of ego/feeling insecure/etc.?
Okay, so looking at the model, when we see awareness, we immediately think “Social media posts or anything press-related”. This is about awareness of you and your business. There are many ways in which someone can learn about your business and anything that will get your business onto their radar is valid. Word of mouth is one. A comment on a group is another. It doesn’t matter if it looks cool or if it’s what others are doing. Pick the thing that has been working for you or has the most potential to work without you having to do so much work. The next step is all about having complete disregard for the model and experiment. We can rename and merge phases, collapse them or change their shape. The use case of the student using the business chat roulette app is a great example on how to collapse 3 phases (Awareness, Interest and Consideration). If you are a service-based business, you might prefer to create an inverted funnel by doing the bare minimum on the pre-purchase phases as most of your clients come through referral. This way you'll prioritise a delightful customer experience and leverage different techniques for your clients to refer you to other potential clients — and by the way, don’t forget to quality those referrals! Another thing that we can do is merge the model we're using with other frameworks and lines of thought. This usually happens after a while when we notice that some information is missing or we feel like integrating a new tactic into our processes. For us, with a background in design thinking and UX, and pretty much focused on developing delightful user experiences, we overlapped the marketing funnel with the customer journey map. In the “Something to do” segment I’m sharing an example of how I did this for Humankind Works. All the different areas of the business are connected — things that are done in marketing will impact product, customer care and operations. They will also impact the team. If it doesn't create too much noise, it's only practical to put them together. And that's a wrap! We hope today’s topic was able to bring you some insights. It was a bit different from our usual topics, but we're very passionate about helping social and planet-conscious businesses grow. Every day that goes by, it becomes more and more critical that business like ours create products, trends and healthier ways of doing things — so keep being awesome and doing what you do! |
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P.S.1: Thank you so much for reading! We're open for requests — what topics should we cover next? 🤗 (By the way, when you click, you can suggest specific topics or make questions — not mandatory though.) P.S.2: And before we go, how did we do today? |
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Adding a wild card question — after you're done with creating your own custom framework, ask yourself: ”What if I went all out?” We’re not talking about investing a ton of resources and money into your marketing funnel. We’re talking about you owning how awesome you are and not playing small. Commit to play big independently of how scared you are and the results. Whatever happens, you’ll come out of the other side. You got this! |
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Instead of the usual book, we thought it might be more helpful to learn how other people have been leveraging their marketing funnels. Here are some videos and publications, hoping that at least one might be helpful for your type of business or customers. |
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As mentioned above, we at Humankind Works are using a merged a marketing funnel framework with a variation of a customer journey map to work on our marketing phases. Grab the template here! |
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LET'S CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION |
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Besides the usual newsletter posts, our free community has “Ask the Community” channels focused on business growth. It's the perfect place to share insights on what's working for you and also to pick on other people's brains. P.S.: Access to this post is limited to community members - to become a member please apply here. |
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Reads, podcasts, short videos, documentaries, anything on our favourite topics. Enjoy! - In Copywriting for Designers: A Guide for Getting Started, Ana Wang explores practical copywriting tips and techniques for people who aren't professional writers, but believe in the power of (written) communication. (Article)
- What If Climate Change Meant Not Doom — But Abundance? - Rebecca Solnit explores how the daunting vision of the future is promoting not only innovation and action, but also a sense of deep connection and generosity. (Article)
- On his podcast, If I Was Starting Again, Jim Huffman invites his Co-Founder, Yonathan Ayenew, to discuss How They Are Validating Startup Ideas, by exploring how they are identifying, quantifying, and increasing product-market fit. (Podcast)
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COOL THINGS PEOPLE ARE DOING |
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Companies, orgs and products that are making the world a better place today. - In October 10th-12h, more than 5000 executives will meet at SaaS Metrics Palooza ‘23 (Virtual Event) to discuss SaaS metrics and benchmarks. Don’t forget to save a spot!
- CascataChuva, a startup founded by two Ukrainian twins and their mother, created a solution that produces electrical energy by direct conversion of humidity adsorption energy.
- Steven Hoffen, now 16-years old, is feeding up to 600 families of asylum seekers in Tel Aviv, twice-a-month, with Hydroponic Gardens - and he is not stopping there!
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Funds, scholarships, grants and crowdfunding projects for you to get funding or support others. - Bethnal Green Ventures BGV is an Europe early-stage VC that believes in ambitious and diverse founders that want to use technology to create a positive impact at scale. They launched The Tech for Good Programme to offer investment and three months of intensive learning - if you want to be notified about the next co-hort programme, you can fill out this form.
- Fresh Start Business Grant If you’re based in the US and you want to start a business or boost an existing one, you can apply for a grant to ease your startup costs, plus access to Incfile's Gold plan for a year. The last 2023 deadline is August, 30th.
- Energy Communities XIV Cleanwatts is looking for crowdfunding to develop a renewable energy community located in the center of Portugal, Coimbra. This a piece of the “100 aldeias” project, that aims to fight energy poverty, through clean local energy production.
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Remote and hybrid jobs, contractor projects and collabs. |
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Speaking about marketing, in this video, a father asks his son to be in an async (fake) interview video while he talks about his routine. This is a hilarious reminder on how honesty is so innate to humans. (Click the gif to watch the full video) |
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COMMUNITY LOVE Little by little more people are applying to the community and we couldn't be more happier. Thank you for your support! If you've haven't joined our community, apply here! |
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We hope you enjoyed today's newsletter First name / friend! We're sorry for this week's delay — we had a bit of a setback this week. If you any thoughts or feedback for us, we'd be super grateful to hear from you! Have a wonderful weekend, Ana, Catarina and the Humankind Works team |
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We offset the carbon emissions of this newsletter, community and events by supporting initiatives that preserve forests and sea life. To sponsor or book classified ads, please email us to:
sponsor@humankindworks.com. |
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Humankind Works is a project by 3101. |
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