Marketing Ecosystems: How To Turn Your Sales Funnel Into A Marketing Ecosystem

Written by on

Marketing
Marketing Ecosystem
In this blog post I’m going to talk about why the old model of linear sales funnels is slowly dying and what you should do instead. A lot of people are obsessed with sales funnels right now, but the problem is that sales funnels, in the way that most people are using them, are becoming less and less effective. Why?
  1. Market saturation is happening in many markets and more and more competitors are entering the space.
  2. Advertising costs are increasing.
Sales funnels work, but are not as effective as they used to be. They don’t capture the entirety of your market.

Why Traditional Sales Funnels Don’t Work 

There’s for example, an opt-in page, where people can leave their e-mail and their name to receive some type of gift or free webinar. Then usually, after about 7 – 14 days of free content, there’s a pitch or an offer. It’s a linear process, a linear sales funnel through which people are taken. The goal is to get them to buy a product right away. Traditional Sales Funnel Now, the problem with linear systems is that people don’t buy in a linear way. Think about the way you buy. When you buy something, usually you opt-in or you click on an ad, then you don’t show up to the webinar but you somehow follow the person on social media. For months you don’t buy anything but get exposed to the person’s posts. You start liking them and you build trust with that person. When that person does a big product launch, for example, several months down the road and you’re retargeted by an ad, there is already a much bigger probability that you’ll end up buying something. That’s how most people buy. It’s a zig-zag type of behavior, not linear. If you have a linear sales funnel, you are only capturing around 10% of the market. Because only 10% of the market is ready to buy from you right away Around 90% of the people, need between 3 to 6 months, to become a consumer or a client or even to consider becoming one. Traditional sales funnels and linear systems capture the 10% of the market that’s ready to buy right away. Sales funnels can be good to capture those people, the problem is they’re leaky. A lot of people drop off, some people opt-in but don’t use your free content, they don’t show up to the webinar or they do show up, but they never buy… Without expanding on this system, you will leave a lot of money on the table. A lot of clients and customers and leads will fall from the cracks because you’re not optimizing for the long term, you’re optimizing for the short term. And although it’s possible to do really well with a linear sales funnel, it gets harder and harder to pull it off. Specifically, because there are more people entering the market, there are more competitors and the ad costs are rising. To remain profitable, and to be able to scale your business in a profitable way is getting more and more difficult with this kind of set-up.

Let’s Talk About What You Should Do

Let’s talk about how you could scale your business profitably and sustainably by really building out a marketing ecosystem. A marketing ecosystem is a whole interconnected ecosystem with different processes, different platforms and even different offers. Ecosystems capture 90% or even 100% of your market versus the 10% of people that are ready to buy from you right away. What a marketing ecosystem looks like So, one more time, 90% of people are not ready to buy from you right away, they don’t know you, they don’t like you, they don’t trust you, so they’re not going to buy form you. To capture 90% of the people, you need to have an ecosystem in place that’s nonlinear.

It All Starts With A Strong Brand

To create a marketing ecosystem, you need to create a strong brand and position your business properly in the market. Markets constantly mature, we are constantly exposed to so many claims and so many promises.  There are so many competitors bombarding the market space with similar products and offers. If you don’t have a strong brand you will simply go unnoticed. Even if your product is selling well today, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to sell well in the next 2, 5 or 10 years. To avoid that drop in your product sales, you need to start with proper messaging, proper positioning and build a real brand. We use the M.A.P. Framework. M.A.P. stands for unique mechanism, unique audience and unique promise. Markets are constantly evolving and maturing. Your message, your marketing and your positioning need to evolve as the market evolves. Your messaging needs to mature, you need to have something unique, that makes you stand out from all the other messages. Otherwise you will not rise above the noise. It all starts with the right messaging, the right positioning and the right brand. That’s the foundation of proper scaling. Getting the foundation right, getting a proper brand and really understanding what’s the maturity of your market. How you can make a new promise that’s different, how you can position yourself and your business in a new way that makes you stand out. That’s a huge part of the scaling process. We’ve had clients, that we’re able to dramatically scale their businesses, just by getting this right, just by doing a lot of work on their brand.

You Need A Combination Of Organic Marketing And Paid Advertising

Your marketing ecosystem is a combination of organic marketing and paid advertising. Don’t rely on just paid ads. You will be in trouble if the algorithm changes or your ad account gets shut down or if the performance of your ads drops. You always want to have a combination of organic marketing and paid advertising. Never build your business on just one pillar. In the same way, you don’t just want to rely your business only on organic marketing. If you want to scale your business you need to increase your reach. You need to be able to reach more people with your message and that’s going to be hard with just organic marketing methods. You need a combination. Your paid advertising and your organic marketing need to work together as one unit. So you can make the most profit possible in your business.

Scaling Horizontally

Usually the first step of scaling comes down to scaling organically, by increasing the number of platforms you’re on. By duplicating what’s already working for you on a smaller level and increasing your revenue that way. Because scaling isn’t just a vertical process. You can’t just scale by just adding more input and expecting more output. It doesn’t work in a linear way like that. You need to scale horizontally and vertically, in a nonlinear way with an ecosystem. When you optimize your organic marketing, scale horizontally and you increase the revenue and profit you’re making in your business, then you can go and accelerate everything with paid advertising. Paid advertising is here to take what’s already working and accelerate it. Your business will be competitor proof and indestructible, when you have your branding, your messaging, your positioning dialed in properly. And once your organic marketing is dialed in and you’ve scaled horizontally, by going multiplatform, then you can start scaling vertically, by adding more advertising budget and more marketing power into the ecosystem. Which is going to produce more output for you, but in a nonlinear way.

Ecosystems Work In A Nonlinear Way

Ecosystems work together as one unit and clients and customers come from different places in a nonlinear way. With an ecosystem in place you can really capture the people that are ready to buy at this moment right now plus the people who are ready to become customers in 3 to 6 months from now. Whenever someone enters your ecosystem, it doesn’t mean that they are ready to buy right away. They might have joined your ecosystem from paid advertising or from organically. They often need some months being exposed to your organic marketing, to your whole ecosystem until they’re ready to buy. The sales cycle is sometimes very long. You need an ecosystem to be able to capture the people who will take longer in the sales cycle.

Ecosystems And Profitability

Having an ecosystem in place, dramatically increases profitability, because you can now capture 90 to 100% of the market. Your marketing gets so much more efficient, because you can pick up more money and a bigger segment of the market. While anyone else chases customers right now with their sales funnels, you have a nice well build ecosystem. Your ecosystem works together, is multiplatform, combines organic marketing and paid advertising, has multiple offers, has a customer and client journey in place that increases profitability and is retargeting people.  So people can not escape, there’s no leak in this whole ecosystem. Eventually people will become your clients or they’re probably not an ideal client in the first place. That’s how effective this whole ecosystem is and that’s the future of marketing.  With this system, you can spend more on advertising because your business is so much more profitable. Position your brand in a unique way and it doesn’t matter how many competitors enter the market. You’re always able to be the most relevant industry leader in your market, since you have everything dialed in properly. This is really the foundation of scaling profitably and sustainably in the next 2 to 5 years. The people who understand how powerful those marketing ecosystems are, will thrive in the next few years. People who are just following the old model in building this linear sales funnels, will eventually either go out of business or not be able to acquire more customers. They will just be pushed out of the market by people who implement indestructible ecosystems.
All Posts Website

Posted By Till Boadella

Till Boadella is an online marketing consultant with over ten years of experience. He has helped thousands of people start and grow profitable online businesses. He is best known for being the “influencer” of influencers, consulting and advising top-level content creators, social media influencers and high-achieving individuals. His clients include 4-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis, music marketing legend Adam Ivy and LinkedIn celebrity Liz Ryan.

Leave a Comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Other Featured Articles

Pitfalls to avoid when building your first business

4 Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Building Your First Business

Building your first business is tough. It’s really tough and a lot of people are delusional about it. I incorporated my first LLC with $20,000 capital and a bunch of naive expectations. One year after its incorporation I was at the brink of a nervous breakdown: I had burnt through almost all the money (making … Continued

Read More
Getting Funding for Your Startup?

Getting Funding for Your Startup? Read this First.

Are you thinking of getting funding for your startup? Read this first. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur these days. The startup scene is booming and yet few businesses ever succeed. Angel investors know that nine out of ten startups will fail so they often bet wide. It only takes one successful startup to repay … Continued

Read More