Margarita glasses are so cool and festive.
B ut you don't want your acquisition funnel to look like a margarita glass, wide at the top and then super-narrow at the spine. The narrowing needs to be much more gradual–more like an hourglass. Otherwise, you're wasting your marketing dollars.
A funnel is used metaphorically by many organizations to describe the path a prospective customer takes with an organization, from first learning that the organization exists and has services or products (awareness) to trying a paid offering (trial) to the moment of conversion to paying customer or even to forever transaction(buying).
When your funnel looks like a margarita glass, wide at the top, but narrowing very quickly, it means lots of people are aware of you, and know about your offerings, but very few are engaging at the next level.
There are three possible reasons that your funnel might look like a margarita glass.
- The jump from free to paid is too big. Could cost too much, could require too much information. "Wow, I can download your ezine for free, or I can attend your training program for $100,000 in Greenland?"
- They don't know about your paid offering, or don't understand the value. "What? I could buy that? From you? Who knew? Sign me up!"
- They understand the value of your offering, but don't want it. "Yeah. I know. Yawn."
No matter what kind of value you provide to your customers, you owe it to them to at least consider providing a range of options, so you can keep them actively progressing from being prospects to being customers.
If you have successfully moved your funnel from margarita glass to a nice smooth hourglass, please let me know. I'm always looking for great case studies to share.
