sales funnel Archives - Tara McMullin

Growing A Coaching Business Using Books with Your Kickass Life Founder Andrea Owen

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The Nitty Gritty:

Why Andrea titled her second book How To Stop Feeling Like Shit, plus what workarounds she used to promote the book on Facebook.
How she planned for and used podcast interviews to promote HTSFLS — and why she recommends them for promoting a book.
How she set up her sales funnel and email segmentation strategy for book #2.
What challenges Andrea faced during her first book’s launch — and what she specifically changed for the second book’s launch.

Listen On iTunes & Subscribe!

Today on Profit. Power. Pursuit., I chat with Andrea Owen, life coach, podcaster, and author of 52 Ways To Live A Kick Ass Life, and most recently, How To Stop Feeling Like Shit.

Andrea sat down with me for a quick interview where we dive into how marketing her second book differed from the first, the journey (and challenges) she faced while writing her manuscript, and what she’s working on next.

We release new episodes of Profit. Power. Pursuit every week. Subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode.

On working with — and embracing — success

I knew this book was going to be bigger. I knew that the publisher was going to ask more of me — and I needed to ask more from myself on a mental and emotional level. I really had to call myself out on it: just naming it, doing my own work, and leaning on my support system.

— Andrea Owen

An idea that comes up frequently when talking with Andrea is our rising above our upper limit. It’s the voice that dictates how successful and happy we can be. One step past that limit? The mind wants to self-sabotage. Andrea knows her upper limit well — but she’s learned how to outwit it.

It’s safe to say that most entrepreneurs face their upper limit at least once in their journey (and probably much more.) So too did Andrea — but she used the success of her first book as an opportunity to rise to the occasion, tap into her community for strength, and keep pushing forward.

On marketing a book through podcast interviews

Statistics show that podcast hosts tend to have more loyalty than, say, Good Morning America or The Today Show. So we sat down with our team nine months out and we started the process. It was researching [podcasts] and reaching out to my colleagues. I even asked on my personal Facebook profile. I knew it was just going to be for a season. In total, when this is all done, I’ve easily done 75 interviews.

— Andrea Owen

Online marketing strategies are constantly changing — and as an entrepreneur, you need to keep a watchful eye on new trends and adapt to them for success. For her second book, Andrea and her team looked at what worked for the first book and what didn’t, then tweaked the plan.

Where they saw an opportunity? Podcast interviews. Out of everything she’s done to promote her new book, Andrea says podcasts work best. If you’re promoting a new book or program, add podcast interviews to your strategy.

And like Andrea, put the bulk of your energy there, and see what comes back.

Listen to the full episode with Andrea Owen to hear more about how she used podcasts to promote her new book, how she pushes back on self-sabotage, and what her sales funnel and email segmentation strategy looks like.

Flip the “sales funnel” on its head.

Art of Growth, Customer Perspective Process

At some point in starting your business, you were instructed to consider what your “target market” is. You might have thought about your right people or your ideal clients. You might have even constructed a customer avatar.

You welcome everyone who might match your target market in at the opening of your sales funnel. That could be the home page of your website, an event, or the opt-in for your email list. Then you create filters through content and offers that narrows the scope of the customers you are dealing with at the core of your business.

That’s all solid advice.

And… I think there’s a better way. Our brains don’t do generalizations well. And generalizations are exactly what you need to conceive of the wide end of your funnel in the traditional approach.

When we generalize, we miss a lot of details. Those details are often the secret to unlocking a new level of creativity and effectiveness in product development, messaging, and sales.

To boot, your customers don’t want to align with generalizations. They want to feel like what your business has created was made especially for them. While mass solutions may have had traction in the industrial era, the social era demands a new level of attention to detail and specialization.

So how do you ensure that you capture those details?

In a traditional sales funnel, the details are all at the bottom. They’re processed later. And they’re rarely designed into the business as a whole.

What if you flipped it?

What if you started with the narrow end? What if you started with a single customer, user, client?

By beginning with a real person who has real needs that your skills, talents, and passion make you uniquely equipped to serve or create for, you don’t miss the details. You see her experience, you understand her process, you discover both acute and deep needs.

Once you’ve worked the narrow end of the funnel–by the way, funnel here is just a visual, I like to think of sales cycles more than funnels–by examining several individuals, ahem, individually, you can work to attract more clients just like them. Instead of needing to weed out the not-quite-right clients, you’re actively building a business based on the perfect individuals.

Of course, there will always be people who are interested in the value you offer who aren’t “just right,” but they won’t be your concern. You’ll be focused on the multitudes who found your business because you took the time to get the details right one person at a time.

Your business will be building towards scale based on specificity and precise service instead of just casting a wider net and hoping to get lucky.

What does this mean for you today?

You and your business have a treasure trove of information at your fingertips. The work you’ve been doing with individual clients and customers translates into a wealth of insight that can lead to identifying the products that truly scale.

This is exactly the process we undergo in The Customer Perspective Process. I’m leading a virtual boot camp May 20-23. Here’s what Amanda Blake, founder of embright, had to say about the last session:

“…blows the familiar ‘ideal customer’ approach out of the water. The CPP boot camp immediately revolutionized the way I approach product development, marketing, and even writing my book. It also makes me more of the kind of business owner I want to be: friendly, empathetic, and connected.”

The Customer Perspective Process boot camp is offered through Kick Start Labs, my microbusiness community & accelerator. Click here to learn more.