From course to purchase: The idea for my first sales funnel for my plugin

To deal with Google advertising for my WordPress plugin after all made me think over the weekend. As a reminder, I had planned to do this already, but I didn’t do it because my mastermind buddy stopped me. My target group was not well enough defined (which I had made up for in the above article, of course). Time to think about it again.

At the beginning, as always: this blogpost comes about because I read Russell Brunson’s book “Traffic Secrets”, in which he wrote that it would be a good idea to share my own story (and especially the way to get there) with my (future) customers. I liked the idea because first, it creates new content and second … no one else is doing it. No one of my direct competitors at least. That’s the reason of the articles in the category “The journey with my plugin“.

Sales Funnels

When people talk about Russell Brunson, they usually talk about Sales Funnels. I don’t want to explain this term long and wide at this point, because his books already do that very well. Even if only in English. In short: A sales funnel is supposed to direct people through a kind of funnel, which always should end with a sale. Ultimately, this is the only way a business can survive, right? And that’s also the reason why I’m doing all this. Without moss there is nothing. And if I don’t manage to increase my sales within 6 months, I’ll really have to change something (sell the plugin, do some client work, whatever). That would be a pity, because I love the work on SNIP and I would really miss it and the contact with my clients.

Become an expert

Back to the topic. I am currently reading the second book by Russell Brunson (Expert Secrets). Of course, many sections of the text are similar and ultimately overlapping. Nevertheless, I found one idea really great: frameworks!

What is a framework?

From the customer’s point of view a framework is a training, a program or a course, which you do in order to be smarter at the end than before.

As a provider of a framework you logically become an expert. You teach something to someone who knows less than you do. In fact, I’m already doing that:

I do teach my customers already. But actually only after they have already bought the plugin.

The SNIP Framework

When I read the relevant text part in the book, it hit me in one fell swoop. Why not turn the tables and offer the course beforehand? In other words, before a customer becomes a buyer.

Ultimately, I would have everything needed to launch a framework:

  • I have the free course whose videos I can use. Without editing them if need be.
  • I have a free plugin which someone could use to try everything.
  • Usually after a few days people start seeing results.

BINGO! Could I have mentally created my first sales funnel here? I hope so!

Google Advertising

And this brings me back to the topic I mentioned at the beginning. My idea was to invite people (after they’ve clicked the ad) into an email series where they learn what Structured Data is and (what I think is totally awesome) how they see results within a week or so.

I think this would be the ideal starter package for someone who is just looking to incorporate Structured Data into their site using a WordPress plugin.

Lots of work to increase traffic

As you can probably tell, I’m just full of ideas. It’s hard to stay on track and not lose focus. I don’t know how much my sales funnel idea can increase my traffic. Probably not really at first. But it could make people find my plugin, find me, get to know me and end up building a relationship already through the framework training. That could make selling the plugin easier in the end.

But one after the other.

What’s next

  • I definitely want to finish coding my setup wizard first.
  • Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying to generate a larger stream of visitors with Brunson’s traffic strategy.
  • After that I want to focus on the sales funnel.

Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it?