Marketing 101: Brand Messaging and Sales Funnels

As a solopreneur, you know that marketing is crucial for growing your brand and attracting customers. But with so many channels and strategies to choose from, it can be challenging to know where to start. At The Marketing Concierge, we believe that a strong foundation is critical to successful marketing. This means investing time and effort into developing a clear and concise brand message and a well-designed sales funnel. Let’s take a look at each and the role they play in setting your brand up for success.

Step1: Brand Messaging

Investing in your brand messaging first helps you show up clearly to consumers and stand out among your competitors. We use StoryBrand’s 7-Step Framework to provide our clients with a brand messaging playbook and one-liner. It’s everything a brand needs to communicate in a way that customers will listen.

Step 2: Build Your Sales Funnel

Once you have a clear brand message in place, it's time to focus on your sales funnel, the process that takes potential customers from learning about your brand to making a purchase from your brand. A sales funnel is the basic foundation of a good digital marketing plan. Whether you run a small or large business, if you use words to sell your product, a sales funnel will work. By creating a sales funnel, your advertising can then support and feed into your sales funnel, saving you thousands of dollars on marketing that isn't working.

What does a sales funnel include?

Your sales funnel should include five pieces: a one-liner, a website, a lead generator, a series of nurturing emails, and sales emails.

• Your website is the cornerstone of your sales funnel, designed to capture leads and guide them through the funnel.

• Lead generators, such as free downloads or webinars, can be used to entice potential customers to give you their contact information.

• Nurturing emails build a relationship with leads.

• And, sales emails are used to close the deal and convert leads into paying customers.

By designing your sales funnel in this way, you'll create a clear path for your potential customers to follow, from initial curiosity to final commitment (more on these stages of the customer journey in a future blog post).

And, by using your brand messaging to create all of the copy in the sales funnel, you'll be speaking directly to your target audience in a way that resonates with them and breaks through the clutter.

Once you have your brand message and sales funnel in place, you can explore other marketing channels such as social media, advertising, and PR. But it's essential to remember that these channels should always be secondary to your core marketing foundation. Without a clear brand message and a well-defined sales funnel, your marketing efforts will be scattered and unfocused, and you'll likely struggle to see any real results.

At The Marketing Concierge, we offer The Basic Package and recommend it as a starting point to all of our clients, no matter what need originally brought them our way. It includes the creation of clear brand messaging, a messaging playbook, and a one-liner (the first item we recommend in your sales funnel). This package provides the ideal foundation for any small business and ensures that you have a clear guide to follow and that all your marketing collateral is consistent and cohesive. We also offer a free online assessment to identify your business's weakest links when it comes to marketing, providing customized recommendations on where to focus your efforts and a comprehensive printable report that you can use moving forward.

In conclusion, to start marketing your brand or service, invest time and effort into developing a clear brand message and a well-designed sales funnel. By doing so, you'll create a roadmap for all your marketing efforts and speak directly to your target audience in a way that resonates with them.