Who is watching The Great British Bake Off? 

(That’s the Great British Baking Show for those of you across the pond.)

I mean, are you even British if you don’t watch it?

Our favourite bit is always the Technical Challenge – where you have to create an obscure bake, usually not knowing what it even is, with sketchy instructions.

The results are predictably chaotic. The bakers do things in the wrong order, they skip crucial steps, there is a lot of guesswork. These people are STRESSED.

Makes great TV though. 

The outcomes really vary. There is usually one smug winner who knew what the bake was meant to look like and was able to make an educated guess.

There are the middle bakers who muddle through or get lucky, but the results are far from perfect.

Then there are the utter disaster bakers where things start to go wrong early on and they never recover.

The business equivalent of the Technical Challenge is building out your marketing funnel.

You need the right ingredients, the right tools and you need to put things together in the right order.

And without the right instructions, you’re going to struggle, risk spending a lot of time that you don’t have and build out a system that doesn’t really work.

You definitely wouldn’t get a Paul Hollywood handshake.

So in this post, I’m going to explore the content you need to plan before diving in and building your funnel.

We’re going to look at:

• Planning Your Email Capture

• Planning Your ‘Know, Like & Trust’ Content

• Planning Your Authority Content

• Planning Your Conversion Content

Let’s start by talking about the moving parts. 

Planning Your Email Capture

Every funnel starts with some kind of email capture, which is the first step in building a relationship. 

You have some juicy info that your ideal clients are willing to hand over their email for. It might be a quiz, it might be a downloadable ebook or checklist or a content upgrade on a blog post. All of these are great examples of lead magnets. 

When it comes to lead magnets, you need a captivating hook – your unique take on a subject that will stop someone scrolling and start reading. 

And that hook needs to lead to your genius zone. Your genius zone is the area of expertise that you can confidently explore through your whole marketing funnel, to build authority and establish your expertise to your audience..

Your lead magnet is simply going to be the ‘tip of the iceberg’. 

And the job of every lead magnet is to bring about a ‘lightbulb moment’ or a shift in understanding that leaves your audience wanting more. 

Planning Your ‘Know, Like and Trust’ Content

As you move your audience out of the lead magnet stage, it’s time for your new audience member to get to know you as both an expert and as a person whom they can like and trust.

During this phase, usually 2-3 emails, it’s time to tell your personal story (in a way that benefits your reader), introduce your expertise in your genius zone and clearly communicate your service or product.

But at this stage, there is no selling at all. You are in the early stages of building a relationship and you don’t want to rush things. 

Instead, it’s all about setting the stage and creating curiosity.

The best way to close out a ‘Getting To Know You’ sequence is to tell your audience what’s going to happen to them next by explaining what you are going to send them and how it’s going to deliver value for them.

Planning Your Authority Content

As you move into the authority stage, you still aren’t asking them for anything in return, apart from their attention, though it’s natural to start to make reference to your product or service as you tell stories about your experiences as the expert they need. 

This is your opportunity to dive deeper into your genius zone and clearly demonstrate your authority. At this stage, your only job is to make choosing someone else seem too risky. 

Use this email series (and paid retargeting ads on social media) to paint a picture of where they could be, the obstacles they will face and how you are the trusted guide who can help them achieve their desired result. 

(If you’re interested in reading more about the ‘trusted guide’ theory, I highly recommend Storybrand by Donald Miller, by the way).

Planning Your Conversion Content

At some point you’ll have to pitch your product and ask for the sale, but before you do that, this final email sequence is designed to give your audience the confidence to buy from you. 

Conversion content is designed to reassure and should include stories of transformation, testimonials, ‘social proof’ (ie. comments on social media), case studies and behind-the-scenes tours or footage. 

Depending on your business, you can use some or all of the above but having that content is crucial. 

Putting It All Together

It can take time to plan, write and gather all of the content you need for your marketing funnel, from creating your lead magnet to choosing or asking for testimonials and quotes.

I highly recommend using a mind mapping tool like Plectica or a Kanban-style planning tool like Trello, to map out your funnel content before you even think about building it.  

Your content is likely to include PDF lead magnets, images, videos and sign up and landing pages. Getting a clear visual plan together will help enormously. 
Interested in getting help building your own marketing funnel? Check out our membership programme, The Marketing Fix.