Creating Sales Funnels That Convert with Marianna Carlini

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, funnel, book, email, marianna, business, audience, page, selling, landing page, simple, link, talk, platform, clients, build, automation, website, post, webinar

SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Voiceover, Marianna Carlini

Marianna Carlini  00:00

Talk about what you offer as much as possible. Every context every opportunity you have, just talk about it because the more people that will hear about what you do, the more people will remember.

Voiceover  00:14

Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. So you can increase your reach, have more impact and work with great clients. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.

Alastair McDermott  00:30

Before we get into today’s episode, I just want to briefly let you know about a free email course that is available at TheRecognizedAuthority.com. It’s a free seven day email course on how to become a recognized authority. You can subscribe to that just by visiting TheRecognizedAuthority.com/homepage.  So today, my guest is Marianna Carlini from Wit Virtual, and Marianna works with online business owners who don’t have time or technical skills to build high tech funnels that convert, and she’s a funnel expert. And she helps people to take control of tech and plan out funnel strategy, which is exactly what we’re going to talk about. So welcome to the show, Marianna.

Marianna Carlini  01:10

Thank you how you pronounce my name really well. Well done. And thanks for inviting me. I’m really looking forward to our chat. And yes, we are here to talk about funnels.

Alastair McDermott  01:24

Yeah, I’m really interested in talking about this. Because it’s something I think that that we need to talk a bit more about in, in kind of the the experts community. So can you tell me what a funnel is and describe it for people who are not familiar with the term?

Marianna Carlini  01:41

Yeah, sure. So when we hear about sales funnel, most of us must have thought, oh, my gosh, what’s that? That’s a really complicated, that’s a lot of tech involved. Because usually where people get stuck in the tech side, and in the even come up coming up with a strategy, but you need to see it from another perspective is more about how to make your clients, your audience journey easier, so that they can they can buy from you.  So it’s not, it’s not so complicated, especially if you’re starting out, you need to think about, make things really simple for your club for your audience, how to get in touch with you, for example, one of the basic, really basic funnel is booking a call with us. And how do you get people from the first time that they see you, they remember you, and then actually taking them to book a call with you. And the first thing you need to think about is the ending.  I was talking nationally with a worm, with our client today, and she was telling me what kind of lead magnet or free, free free stuff she should be putting out there. So she can grow her email list. And I and she was like, she was so focused on thinking about what kind of free content I can give my audience so that they can sign up and I can grow my email list. But I told actually think about the opposite way, you need to think about where you need to take them. So our handle result was to sell a new program. So obviously, a lead magnet, the free content that she’s going to put out there is related to that program. So there’s no point in giving your audience a free piece of content that it doesn’t relate at all with the program, or course or, or service that you’re sorry, but that you’re promoting, because it would be like you sign up, it’s like you sign up, I don’t know, to your podcast, you want to know more about recognizing talk about recognized authority, an expert in people expert in their field, and all of a sudden you’re gonna talk about, I don’t know your list of shopping. It doesn’t make sense. If if you know what I want to say.

Alastair McDermott  04:03

Yeah, and I think I’m guilty of this one, and maybe not. So giving people my shopping list. What I what I have done is is I have a bunch of resources that I’ve created for myself over time. And I know that that some of these are useful for my audience, but they’re not related to what I sell. So for example, I have a list of questions that I use in a sales meeting.

Marianna Carlini  04:29

Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  04:29

And I have had people telling me that it’s very useful, but it’s not directly related. Like I don’t help people, typically with sales meetings. So does that fit like, should I have that in my funnel at all? Or does that set up the wrong expectation when people start to work with me?

Marianna Carlini  04:45

It’s related to what you do, though, right? It’s not like you’re offering something that is not related at all.

Alastair McDermott  04:51

Well, it’s definitely useful for my audience, but I don’t think that it’s directly related to you know, helping people pulled to build authority because it’s kind of it’s kind of a different part of the of the journey, and it’s not something I work directly with people on this is typically sales?

Marianna Carlini  05:08

Well, I don’t know, maybe you need to start to find a new, free piece of content.

Alastair McDermott  05:14

Yeah, I think so. Um, and I have this isn’t, this is just one of many of these kinds of, if you’ve been in business for a while, you end up with lots of these things that you’ve created, that might be useful. And so like I have a harddrive cluttered with them of things that might be useful for people. And suddenly, you know, people say, hey, that would be that would be really useful. But I wonder, is it if it’s not in alignment with what I’m selling right now or should I be actually even promoting it?

Marianna Carlini  05:44

You need to check for, for example, one thing about funnels is that you don’t put them out there and just let them be, you need to do something with it. There’s work behind afterwards, like, for example, you need to check for example, in your case, how many new clients this list is giving you how many people are downloading it. And maybe you can find even a new niche for your business, if who are the people who are actually downloading this list of questions that you have. But you said something really important before you started that your audience likes it. So and that’s another really important thing, when you do anything in business, we tend to just throw things out there. But how many of us, including me, as well, How many of us have actually done a marketing survey before? How many of us that has asked questions to our audience to find out what they need, and what we’re, if what we are offering is actually what they need, or we are offering something that we think that they might need? That’s that’s a big difference sometimes on what we are giving them thinking that they need it, and then they don’t actually don’t. But if you ask them, they might be able to punch you in the right direction.

Alastair McDermott  07:01

Yeah, I’m a huge advocate of asking people and serving and doing research, I think it’s one of the most useful things you can do. And it’s something I’ve done myself a lot. So let’s dig more than into the funnels because you talked about like a simple how to get in touch book a call type funnel?

Marianna Carlini  07:21

Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  07:21

So can you can you just so that we can start to layer things on top of this? Can you just explain, like, in a book a call funnel? What are the separate components that you might think about in there? Because when you break it down, I think it’s probably there’s probably a bit more than people would think about, right?

Marianna Carlini  07:37

Yeah, that’s correct. Behind that funnel is not just oh, I sold, I sold the one, I booked a call, or I have, oh, I sold the one part one place in my course. Now, there’s a lot of work to do. I do mainly the tech, I set up the tech, which means having like, if you want to set up a funnel to get people to call you, so you definitely aren’t gonna need a landing page, where you’re going to say people or you know, what, if you want to speak to me, let’s book this free call, obviously, don’t pay attention to my copy. And but you’re gonna give them a direction and say, Okay, if you want to book a call with me, this is the link, you press the link. And they might be redirected, or even in the same page, maybe there might be a form, this is even easier, because the last steps you have, the easier is for them actually to get in touch with you. So even a form the same way that you do like join my newsletter is more or less the same. You just book a call, live here, your email address your name. And obviously, it’s really good that if you start doing that, you ask them some questions, because obviously, it might not be from the question that you asked how you want them and try to get out to as many as much as information as possible from then up front. It might save your time and their time, because they might not be a good fit for you. So you know, before jumping on a call.

Alastair McDermott  09:11

Right. You actually try and filter them filter them out before you get my call. Yeah, that’s a good idea.

Marianna Carlini  09:16

Yes, absolutely. Obviously, every business is gonna have different questions. I don’t know, depending on what you sell. Where are you from? Where are you based? Or? I don’t know. How old are you? If I don’t know it depends, really depends. What’s your budget is a big question.

Alastair McDermott  09:33

Do you have a budget? Yeah, of course. So the landing page is the page where people actually will take action. So that’s like the first step in the whole process, right?

Marianna Carlini  09:42

Yes, the first page where there is a button and they need to click in order to submit the request and get a call with you after that. Obviously, if they book a call you need to be connected to you need to use a scheduling tool. There’s plenty out there. I use Calendly I think Calendly is the most well known between my clients and the coaching business, or are you study Carl as well? I mean, there’s plenty out there.

Alastair McDermott  10:11

Yeah, there’s shedule ones Calendly, Book like a Boss is the one that I use acuity scheduling, there’s, there’s tons of those. Yeah. And I think I think I think that, you know, I’m a big fan of calendar links. And I have this this debate with my friend Brad all the time, because he thinks that calendar links are impersonal. And I think it’s completely the opposite. Because I have had like, eight email back and forth conversations with people trying to book a time without without a calendar link. Or what Brad does is he asked me to talk to his assistant. And I think that’s impersonal. So we argue with this all the time. But ya know, I think in the context of a website and having people contact you, I think, I think shedule a call booking on a calendar is a great idea. So okay, so So is there any other steps then? So somebody picks a time and they booked onto a calendar? Is there any other steps in that in the book, a call type funnel?

Marianna Carlini  11:10

So a lot of people think that just by luck, but they book the call, and then they land on us on a simple page, say, Oh, your appointment is booked? That’s really impersonal to me. So what I normally do, I would instead, build another page, on my website, or I don’t know, depending on what platform you’re using, I wouldn’t build it personally, because I’m using WordPress as my website. So I build it there. And that is an I will send them back to a WordPress page, they say, Thank you, thanks for contacting me, someone will be in touch with you or your appointment is booked? And why don’t you do this? In the meanwhile? Which would be I don’t know, if you have a Facebook group, and you will tell them? Or do you’d like to join my Facebook group or depending on what you’re offering the time what you want your audience so the people hot leads to do that in the time, or you wanted to tell them out, follow me on LinkedIn, or I don’t know, join my newsletter, whatever, you know, so you they have something to do in the meantime. And yeah, and then, because this is her whole clades, once they booked the call with you in means that they are really prone to work with you, and you don’t want to lose that momentum.

Alastair McDermott  12:29

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there is some, there’s some data that shows that the quicker that you respond to an inquiry, the more likely somebody is to work with you. And vice versa. And so following up quickly, and having having that momentum, I think that’s really important. Okay, so we have a landing page, which, which basically, either does the call booking right there or has a button that takes somebody to do the call book booking. And then after that, they get redirected out onto a thank you page. And that thank you page also has other things that they could do another call to action, maybe.

Marianna Carlini  13:08

And this is this really the simplest, book a call with me funnel? Because obviously, depending if what stage you are in your business in mind that this simple funnel can be more more specific. Like you can you can also, for example, is you saw your friends send their assistant or to book a call with them, or their people that they have a big business, they might have a team members, which they might be able to filter the calls and or filter, the hot leads, depending actually on the on the survey that they fill up and the question that they fill up. So yeah.

Alastair McDermott  13:49

Yeah, that makes sense. And I could even see how you could do some other kinds of stuff. If you wanted to get really geeky about it. You could filter them maybe by the answers that they that they give in the kind of the survey, you could send them to a different call. You could send them to a shorter call, for example, if they seem like not as good a fit, whereas he could you could schedule a longer call for somebody who seems like an ideal fit. But yeah, again, that’s adding more complexity to it. And I’m sure there’s plenty of complexity out there already. So let’s let’s talk about like, what, what, what other types if that’s, if that’s the really basic book a call funnel? What other types of of funnels do you use? Like you talked about lead magnets, what else is out there?

Marianna Carlini  14:32

Lead magnet, lead magnets, sales funnel, webinars, there’s loads out there. Bear in mind that the basic is going to be always a landing page, call to action button, a form or a cart and then the thank you page. They receive the email the welcome email, or the email confirming their purchase or their attendance to the webinar. Whatever. And then they get the deal, the products that they purchase or the signup form. So the basic is going to be always the same one page, welcome pay, welcome email, and the thank you page. And then after that, there’s a billion other things you can do. For example, emails. I mentioned before about lead magnet, for example, a normal lead magnet comes with 5-6-5 to seven sequence seven email sequence, where you’re trying to introduce yourself, your introduce your expertise as well, and trying to warm up the person to finally buy your product, which is, which is basically you are going to sell them something at the end of this sequence. And so yeah, basically, basically is, this is going to be always the basic of every funnel.

Alastair McDermott  15:59

So can I can I dig into that email, because, like, you talked about five to seven emails, they’re in that sequence, for example. So obviously, the first email that they get is probably going to be delivering the download or whatever it is that the actual lead magnet itself that they that they want to access. And just for anybody not familiar with the term lead magnet is that is the term that we use in online marketing to mean something that that attracts leads to you. So it’s usually a resource of some kind, like a checklist or a guide, or something like that. So the first email is probably going to be like the delivery of that guide, or that PDF, or whatever it is that you’re given to people. So what are the other four to six emails, then?

Marianna Carlini  16:41

The first thing that obviously is said is going to be the welcome email, telling them here is your goods. Have a look. And maybe you can invite them as well already whatsoever. Look, reply to this email, let me know what you think. Because it’s important that you give them as always, a call to action what’s the next step. And after that is like you can you introduce the the other emails usually are sent one day after another. And also people do them like every after two days in between, but I mean, this is really depend on, on you on your business, your audience, etc. Because you know, everybody’s fed up for receiving so many emails. So it really depends. And in this in the other emails, you introduce yourself, your business, try to make your audience, make, make them feel that you are like them, try to find the account points in common. I don’t know, for example, I have a dog, I would say, Oh, by the way, this is what I do. But this is me, I’ve got a dog. And maybe I would add a picture of him just because I know people always love a nice picture of a dog. And and plus, my dog is a part of my marketing strategy.  In the other emails that started, then you start to talk about what you can do about maybe introduce maybe, maybe using one of your experiences in life or in business, to say, Okay, I was doing this, this and that. And then I finally find out that this works better. Maybe you want to know you want, what do you do instead? And you ask questions in order for them to reply, they might find you might found that a lot of people in your audience have already your experience so that they feel like already that you can also relate to you and your experience. And for I think, you know, I want to know how she did it or how she did this because I was in the same position. So basically, yeah, you keep me warm them up. teasing them some of the sort of that you’ve got kind of a solution to their, to the problems.

Alastair McDermott  18:56

Yeah. So you’re making you’re making this connection with them. And you’re kind of humanizing yourself. You’re telling stories, and all of that kind of makes makes this connection with them? Yeah. Cool.

Marianna Carlini  19:09

Yeah, definitely. Because, you know, what they say that people buy from people. And the most important thing and they realize that you’re a personal like them that you have the same struggle as them or them, you might have the same liking same habits, hobbies, etc. So they kind of feel related and closer to you. Other than see you like someone an influencer on Instagram or YouTube that is like somewhere out there and they don’t don’t feel that connection.

Alastair McDermott  19:39

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay, so So that’s the that’s like the email sequence that goes along. So I’m just thinking back to everything that we’ve talked on so far. So in terms of creating these effective funnels, there are some bits of technology that we need to plug plug together. So for example, you probably need a calendar booking service. So that will be like calendar book like a boss, you probably need somewhere where you can create a simple web page. So for example, your landing page, your thank you page, so you probably need your own website. And I’m sure there are other tools that you can use to replace that. But there is something to be said for having your own website where you can control the look and feel of everything and have total control over that. Then there is the email service provider software like like ConvertKit, which is when I use or MailChimp or

Marianna Carlini  20:39

ActiveCampaign. mailer light, I mean, plenty to choose from.

Alastair McDermott  20:44

Yeah, so so there is. So all of these things have to be put together and configured. And in that, that’s what you can help people with. So what So what else? Is there are other? Oh, yeah, so the next thing then, is some sort of CART if we have a sales funnel,

Marianna Carlini  21:04

Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  21:04

Where there’s actually a product directly for sale? Because that sounds really interesting to me as well having that automated. Yeah. Actual shopping cart hooked up to that. And that could be, I guess, you could do that with like Stripe invoices or something like that.

Marianna Carlini  21:21

Yeah, I mean, I mean, that’s plenty. What I like is keeps being easier and as much as possible. And obviously, depending on the size of your business, depending how long you’ve been in business as well, it’s really important. Depending on your budget, it depends on so many aspects, I would recommend a platform rather than holder. And oh, and also, because this is all techie stuff, a lot of people get scared of tech, they get really frustrated. And they actually ended up not selling their offer, because they get a massive headache about after trying to connect all this small bits together that they just give up. So depend on techie people are as well and how much they look how much they like to playing around with platforms, I would recommend a service rather than others. I’m well, I’m a Cartwright expert, I use kartra, mainly for courses and carts and landing pages. So I like to I like an online system that has it all in one. So you don’t have to think about, Okay, I’ve got my landing page, then I have to make sure that this is connected to my calendar, oh, and then I have to send an email and the email is coming from a third platform. And then you have all for example, the cart, you’re selling your program. And now the cart, again, is in a third use in a fourth platform, and how you connect on this platform together, we met mainly using Zapier, which is the fifth platform. So I mean, you are there just to do something simple, you’re already five platforms that you’re paying for it because every every much every single one of them’s got a cost. And plus, if something doesn’t work, you have to go in each single one of them and see where the problem is, before fixing it.  So it’s a lot of a lot of work to do. So I rather have an online system that does it all together where everything is already connected inside. So you don’t have to worry about too much you just build your page, and then automatically ticking boxes that you can connect everything together by to understand this on some platform are more expensive than others. So the basic basic starts in you is using WordPress, because mainly we mainly start with a website, usually people go, I don’t know WordPress, Wix, whatever, just build a page on your website that’s already included in the price. You don’t have to pay extra just build a page there. You might need the calendar if you want to if you want people to book a call, so but there are a lot of free option for calendars. So you just need to integrate your calendar and and that’s it. And then you can use a friend for the emails in the market. You can use mailer Lite, mailer Lite is really simple. When I started using it, I didn’t go through any YouTube tutorial on anything. It’s really friendly, user friendly, and it’s really simple to use. Plus, it’s, it’s free, the free version helps you to do so much that is just just with it. So, I mean, this is the first thing that you can start with them when you grow and you start selling your programs or your courses or you’ve got more webinars and everything that you can move To more expensive platforms such as car truck or Kajabi, or similar,

Alastair McDermott  25:05

yeah, yeah. And so I’m, I’m a website guy, so, and former software engineer as well. So I can make stuff really complex and I have done in the past, but my philosophy recently has been try and keep everything as absolutely simple as possible. It, it builds up very quickly into a ball of technical debt that you need to try and control. It can get very messy so, so really, I try and keep some stuff as simple as possible with as few moving parts. So I’m with you on that one. Okay, so So, so we’re talking about the different types of funnels, and then the different components in those funnels. So let me let me just change gears slightly and ask you what kind of mistakes do you think that people make with funnels when you’re trying to set all this stuff up? What What mistakes do you come across?

Marianna Carlini  25:58

Oh, how much time have you got? There really? The first one that I noticed is that some people think okay, yeah, oh, I knew that my business grow is growing, I’m gonna get someone to do my funnels. Okay. What does that mean? Who knows. So they come to you that they that don’t have any ideas of what they’re doing or what they want to achieve. Another problem is that, that, for example, they know more or less what they have. But as you said, they don’t start from simple as from simple thing for me, everything has to be simple in my life, in work in tech, and everything I like, the simplest it is the better. And they account with a lot of ideas, a lot of things that they want to do that. Like, for example, hi, the client that she was building, she was released in this course, it was divided in three tiers. And she wanted to do a lot of automation segmentations. And I asked her, okay, that’s fine. How much is the course. And basically, it was 97 pounds each course. And they asked, and it would have taken so long to do everything she wanted to do, that I said, I mean, for the course is kind of low cost offer, there’s no point in doing so much in going through so much struggle in building all these pages, all these emails, all these automations all this sequence for what for a low cost offer. I mean, it started really small start from the basic and then after, when you start building courses that they are like 1000 2000 3000 or more then start thinking about different segmentation and automations and emails, that because it takes so much time to do it is not the cost of the course is not it’s not going to cover the amount of hours you put in putting it together. So there was one and one example that too much. Yeah, there was too much going on behind it instead of making it as simple as possible, especially when it’s the first course that you’re doing the simplest, the better. In my opinion.

Alastair McDermott  28:21

Yeah. And it’s, it’s, there’s kind of this disconnect between the value of the cut the cost, versus the amount of effort that you’re putting into it. Maybe if you’re doing something that can scale up to you know, a million customers, maybe you want to put a lot of effort into it. If but, you know, if you’re gonna have 50 customers or 20 customers, yeah, and you’re selling it at, you know, $50 or whatever, then you need to rethink how much time you put into it.

Marianna Carlini  28:47

Yeah, exactly. Especially because she was the first time that she was putting it out there. And you don’t even know if you’re putting something out there for the first time. You don’t really know how well it’s gonna work, right? Even if you even if you did your your customer research, or your marketing questionnaires and everything, until it’s out there, you don’t really know what’s going to happen. So that’s why starting from the simplest thing, it can actually save you a lot of headache and time in the long run. Another thing that you say about you said What’s one of the error or common error that people do about funnels and think about Funnels is that okay, now your funnel is zero, you contacted someone or you did it yourself, your funnel is ready. And it’s like, okay, it’s ready. So I can sit down for the next six months for the next year. I’ve got a funnel, right? Well, it’s not it doesn’t really work that way, unfortunately, because there’s a lot more work to do behind and after that, not just about obviously advertising and sharing the link and say what you’re doing and where people can find your service. It’s about as well. Tracking and tracking your data. Because if you, you need to know, once the file once you for example, you you’re sharing your landing page for booking a call, or to download your fragment lead magnet or I don’t know, even to buy my service, you need to check and and see your state’s or your zip code data and start to see is it working? And if it’s not working, why it’s working, I know that not all the free tools or more simple marketing platform, track that so you might have to pay for it. So that then you can see actually why people are not buying my product, where do they stop? So if there is a supplement, there’s a problem in the landing page and might want to see the copy, for example, or the design as well to see, do I have? Do I ever put enough information on the copy? Is there enough links, actually, because sometimes there is no many links that people can click on. And another thing is that when you put a landing page out there, you also need to think that you want people to go and click just one button. So there’s no point in leaving a header or footer with the redirecting people to another page on your website or another or your Facebook or Instagram page. No, there has to be one link only one button only. And then the Yeah, or maybe I don’t know, they get into the cart, and they don’t press pay. Why I don’t know, the price is wrong, that there’s no many alternative. There’s no many. They can only pay full price. There’s a lot of things that you need to check. And by checking the data is gonna tell you more or less, where you’re losing your hot leads. Yeah,

Alastair McDermott  32:00

yeah. So where the problems are. So one thing you mentioned, there was, you know, simplifying the navigation, removing options. And you’ll see this if you check out like an amazon.com or something like that, you will see that they once you go into the checkout process, suddenly all the sites search and navigation and shop by department all that’s gone. Angley seeing the you’re only seeing what you need to move you forward in checking out buying the products, because that’s because they don’t want to give you any distractions. And of course, you’re talking about the same thing with your with your landing page. Right? Yeah, in, in. So it’s basically a page, it can be a page on your website. And it can have an attractive design and things like that. But it doesn’t have all of the regular website navigation elements, which could potentially distract somebody away from taking action. So yeah, so that’s, that’s an interesting one. Okay, so, like, we’re talking about a whole bunch of different things here. It’s really interesting. So you talked about, at the start, you talked about the book a call funnel, we talked about a bit about the lead magnet, which is designed to get somebody to sign up for your email list. Talk a little bit about about selling, can you can you talk a bit about what a webinar funnel is like? And how, how the like, is there anything different about that? Like is, is a webinar, you know, how a webinar funnel works and why it’s effective? Can you just talk a little bit about

Marianna Carlini  33:29

that, um, there’s a lot of talk about if webinars still works or not, I think it was a big thing during the pandemic, where everybody was at home. And now people are kind of slowly moving back to a networking event or face to face event. But I think, again, it’s everything about your audience and what your audience prefer, and what your audience like, obviously, if your audience, if you’re in the UK, and your audience is based in the US, I doubt that you’re going to have a lot of participants to your live event face to face event. So a web and plus a webinar can be automated. So to start every No, no, you must have seen something like that they start every two hours is dead on automation. So basically, you can sign up anytime you want. It’s in there, blah, blah. So just make sure that people know what a webinar is. It’s a free content again, you participate to a lesson kind of a master class. And you listen what the expert is gonna talk about is obviously their expertise. And yeah, and obviously the end you’re gonna have a call to action again, join my program or do this do that they’re gonna tell you so yeah, webinars are kind of it’s it’s more for big businesses. The and there’s this cool automation, I think that they can start every two hours, free hour. So you basically have you can sign up now and Have the next session within one hour. And as always, there is less, it’s a good thing because it’s less work for you that you don’t have to do organize live event every month, or every six months or whatever is always there is pre recorded. And the difference between the other things is that obviously people can see you can see you talk, they can, they can look at you. And obviously, videos is always better than free that written stuff because they can, they can almost see your personality. And as we said, people buy from people. So this looks more much more personnel that they’re like talking to you. And again, there’s a lot of automations, too, such as, for example, in the video, you can put call to action, even in between, in them in the middle of the video saying, okay, click here to join the program now, or click here to do this for me or other things. So you can send people already while they’re watching you, they can take action straightaway. And obviously, then there’s all a lot of email, email automation email sequence that comes out which maybe one is about sending the replay to the webinar. And again, it’s it’s it’s, it’s more complicated. There’s a lot of automation sequence segmentations on how even for example, you can see how people going back to talking about starts in data, you can see how many people have watched your webinar, and how many people have went through the whole thing, or they stop in the middle? They stopped at a certain point, and you can see then, okay, why do they why most people stop at that point, and they didn’t continue?

Alastair McDermott  36:53

Cool. So it’s like, it’s like, your retention graph on YouTube, where it shows you, you know, when in the video did people drop away? Yeah, that’s, that’s really interesting. So, okay, so I know that there’s going to be some people listening to this, who are their b2b consultants, and they’re selling to like the C suite are selling to CTOs and CEOs. And they’re saying, okay, my clients are probably not going to have time to watch the webinars. So like, what kind of what kind of funnel would be useful for people like that? Is that the book a call funnel? Or do you have any any examples or suggestions for people with with kind of high end offers? Like maybe they’re selling a product or service for 20,000 50,000 100,000? Or maybe half a million euros, something like that? What kind of funnels would be appropriate in that scenario?

Marianna Carlini  37:45

Depends on their on their audiences, we said, I think the font that we talked about are mainly the basic funnels, but obviously they can grow to wherever you want them to be, especially according to the size of your audience, your budget, etc. So yeah, I mean, it really depends on their audience what they like, and what if they rather have, I don’t know, videos? Or calls? Or maybe for 20,000? People know about? Yeah. I don’t know, it’s difficult to say, because obviously, you need to see business by business, and what what’s working right now and what isn’t working and what it can change. And then, and then we need to remember that there’s no one size fits all. A lot of people, especially when you start I guess it’s it’s normal that people tend to copy someone else’s strategy. But it’s actually it doesn’t, it doesn’t work. And you will find out eventually, that it doesn’t really work because you’ve got your own audience. Your business is specific to you. So it’s, it’s totally different. You need to find out what works for you and for your audience.

Alastair McDermott  39:03

Yeah, okay. So I’m interested in and I’m jumping around a little bit but I’m, I’m fascinated by this topic. I’m interested in the other aspect of this is, you know, we’re talking about creating these really effective funnels. How do we actually get people into those funnels in the first place? So I’m sure that’s something you talk to your clients about a bit, right?

Marianna Carlini  39:23

Yeah, of course. Well, there’s plenty obviously you need to advertise people you’ve done if you have a link, it’s like your website. I mean, okay, you have your website you have your funnel, okay, that’s it. I’m done. I can now sit down, put my feet up and hope for the best. Well it doesn’t really work like that. You need to advertise like I don’t know even like the big companies do like Coca Cola does. Amazon does. They keep advertising what they do and what they sell. So that after, when you What did they say is it like seven after seven times that people see You, they recognize you and they remember you. So imagine seven times. And sometimes we feel so you need to keep saying and keep telling people what you do, and where they can find you and show your links. So it’s really important. I had the same issue the beginning thinking, Oh, I, I posted once on Facebook or Instagram on LinkedIn I posted once last month, last week, and no one contacted me. And I’m still like waiting for someone to contact me. And you’ll end you you think, Okay, just one just months. So you need to be basically every day you need to repeat, you can use obviously, social media, which is the most common use, you can use ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads. YouTube is a big one, because it’s another search engine. Obviously, you’ve got Google Google ads, there’s plenty, plenty your way that you can advertise your business and what you’re selling and what you do. And remember to do it all the time. Even though you’re even though you think, oh, gosh, people aren’t gonna be bored of me, because it’s not the case. Because if people if you post something today, on social media, people might not see the same people that they see their your post today, they might not see the post that you post tomorrow. So you’re not boring anyone to death. Just keep going. And the more you do it, the better. And the more you talk about what you do, that’s, that’s the real thing, the more you talk about it. And the more help you give people, the more they because this is the end of the day is free content, social media, blogging, YouTube, it’s all free content that you give to people. So the more you the more you do tell. And the more people will remember you.

Alastair McDermott  41:54

Yeah, and just on that, like the stats are crazy, particularly with things like Twitter, you know, if you put out a tweet, like maybe 1% of your audience is going to see it in their there and now. And so yeah, you can repeat yourself, and it’s okay. And not only is it okay, because a lot of people won’t see it the first time. But even if somebody does see it the second time, they probably won’t even remember it from the first time that you posted it. So I’m not saying that post, you know, continuously have the same stuff on on auto repeat, but it’s okay to post something, you know, a few months later, I think it’s an important part. And I recently had a guy called Justin Simon on talking about repurposing content, which is like transforming content into different into different types of content. But I think you can also just straight up, copy and paste your old posts, because if they’re still relevant, it’s, you know, that’s legit, to your audit.

Marianna Carlini  42:53

And this saves a lot of time, from creating new content all the time. And plus, if you think that creating one piece of content, then you can actually turn it into a YouTube video, social media post, blog. So we are doing basically the job once, but you can actually use it to do many other things. Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  43:16

100% 100%. Yeah, and I’m all about that. And that’s why we’re recording this on video as well as, as audio. Okay, is there any question that I should have asked you about funnels that I didn’t?

Marianna Carlini  43:30

I don’t think so. I think we talked a lot about it and trying to think, yeah, I don’t think so. Probably I will. I will finish this interview. I’m thinking, Oh, I should have said that.

Alastair McDermott  43:45

That will be for next time. Okay, well, let me ask you the question that I that I like to ask everybody. First off Marianna, what’s the number one tip that you’d give somebody who wants to build authority?

Marianna Carlini  43:58

As you said, I would say talk about what you offer as much as possible, every context that every opportunity you have, just talk about it, because the more people that will hear about what you do, the more people will remember. And yeah, and as soon as they think about it, as soon as they see something that is ready to watch, you know, they’re gonna think, Oh, that girl actually does it. Yep, that’s what you’re that’s what you’re what you want your audience to get to that point.

Alastair McDermott  44:27

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Is there a business mistake or failure that you’ve experienced that you can tell us about?

Marianna Carlini  44:34

Plenty. Plenty. One, especially lately is being that in my first two years of business, I focused too much on social media. And as you might know, social media can be barking burnout. And so I experienced that and I’m changing my marketing strategies right now and for talking about the states that they stuck in there data, I had a quick look through from my clients, leads, etc. And I realized that where are they coming from? So I know where I need to focus, instead of wasting time and time on scrolling on posting and engaging on other platforms that don’t really give me anything. So I will be focusing more on other type of marketing. And that’s the thing, obviously, that if you don’t know things is just a trial and error thing, right? You try something if it doesn’t work, you try something else. And that’s basically.

Alastair McDermott  45:34

Yeah. And that’s why I call my group offering authority labs because I like the idea of making it you know, experimentation and failures, okay. And like testing all the time. We’re testing all the time. Is there a business book or resource that’s been important for you or that you would recommend?

Marianna Carlini  45:53

I love it. I personally love the Denise Duffield-Thomas books. I don’t know if you know her.

Alastair McDermott  46:00

No, can you can you tell me a little bit more.

Marianna Carlini  46:03

Denise Duffield-Thomas.

Alastair McDermott  46:05

Okay.

Marianna Carlini  46:06

Yeah. And I like her business books. I this is one of the copy I’ve got and she’s got a podcast as well. Chill, “Chill and Prosper”. And she called ourselves that she’ll printer because she kind of get things as easy as possible, because she’s lazy. That’s what she says. And the what I like about her books is that they give you practical tips. They are really clear. I like her tone of voice really light and funny as well. She’s Australian. So she’s really funny and light. And she gives you also she gives you tips of what she’s been doing before and what she’s doing now. And this really fresh air kind of way of talking that really kind of like…

Alastair McDermott  46:55

Yeah, and if I read the book title, I’ll have to put the explicit tag on the episode. So I’m not going to do that, because we’ve got the way so far, but one of our books is called “Chill and Prosper”. And I will link to the other ones in the show notes. So cool.

Marianna Carlini  47:09

That’s the last book, I think.

Alastair McDermott  47:11

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And then what about fiction is there I figured that you’re a fiction reader from looking at the bookshelf behind you.

Marianna Carlini  47:18

But you didn’t see behind the next to my next on my bed as well as like a big stack. I don’t know where to I don’t know, I can’t I could tell you what I read last. I’ve been really I’ve been on holiday. So I read like a couple of books there. But one of my favorite favorite of all time. It’s called “A Little Life”. And it’s by Hanya Yanagihara. I don’t know if I spelled it correctly if I do if I pronounced it correctly, but it’s a really quite sad book. And my partner always told me why all the books I love. They are so sad and make me cry. But it’s really I don’t know, I read it twice. Actually. I reread it because it was really I loved it. But I mean, are you looking for it?

Alastair McDermott  48:14

So okay, so that’s “A Little Life”.

Marianna Carlini  48:17

Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  48:17

Hanya Jonnie Yanagihara. I will link a link to that in the show notes as well.

Marianna Carlini  48:25

Yeah, nothing to do with marketing and funnels.

Alastair McDermott  48:28

Well, that’s great. That’s That’s exactly why I asked the question. Cool. Awesome. Well, that’s, that’s great stuff. Well, Mariana where can people find you if they’re interested in learning more?

Marianna Carlini  48:41

Oh, yeah. Well, I’m on LinkedIn. That’s where you find me. You found me as well. My name is Marianna Carlini, and you can find me there. I’m on Instagram as well, where I love playing with stories especially. And so if you want to, that’s where you can know more about my personality. And what I do in my spare time,

Alastair McDermott  49:02

And see a dog

Marianna Carlini  49:03

And see my dog exactly that. Yeah, then when my website www.witvirtual.com

Alastair McDermott  49:13

Cool. So that’s wit virtual w-i-t virtual.com. So cool. Well, Mariana Carlini, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Marianna Carlini  49:21

Thanks so far. Awesome. Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s really, really fun to talk to you and talk about sales funnels.

Alastair McDermott  49:31

Thanks for listening. If you gained any insights or tips from this episode, please leave a review. It would really help us out. And it’s very easy to do. Just click on the review link in the show notes on your device and it will bring you straight to a page with options for the device that you’re listening on. Thanks. It really helps. It’s much appreciated.

Voiceover  49:52

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