#176: 5 Simple Steps to a High-Converting “Challenge” Funnel with Tammy Cannon

On the show today I’m joined by one of my students, Tammy Cannon. Tammy owns a business called Cannon Social Media, and she creates online courses and manages Facebook ads for creative businesses.

In this episode, Tammy is going to break down a simple automated sales funnel that she created which allowed her to grow her email list and also generate revenue through an Instagram challenge.

We’ll look at where she got the idea to run the challenge, what her objectives were with it and why she went the automated route to deliver it. Tammy also shares how she was able to get a 60% conversion rate on her opt-in page and what she did in terms of an upsell.

The big takeaway I want you to get here is the simplicity of it all. You’re going to hear how she started out promoting her challenge to her Facebook group by listening to the members’ feedback and then refined the funnel from there.

You’ll notice that Tammy only spent about $300 over two weeks to test it out against cold traffic, and her future plans this year to re-run the challenge with some adjustments. This really is something that anyone can do!

On the Show Today You’ll Learn:

  • Why you should be matching your ad image to the one used on your landing page – plus what to consider when choosing the file name for the images
  • Whether or not using long-form copy when targeting cold traffic is a good idea…
  • How to keep your landing page simple – and the advantages of doing this
  • What Tammy did with her Thank You page to generate upsells of $47
  • The often-forgotten step that can increase your funnel’s success tremendously if implemented

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The Accelerator Group Coaching Program

I’m super pumped to introduce and invite you to my brand new exclusive 12-month group coaching program — the “Accelerator” — to help you finally take your business to the next level.

I’ve been getting a ton of requests for more direct business building mentorship and coaching from me, so I’m excited to announce this new program!

I’m living proof that when you surround yourself with bright, driven, like-minded entrepreneurs, you create an opportunity for enormous growth.

And I want the same for you.

The exclusive Accelerator 12-month group coaching program is based on the framework of High-Level Coaching, Community, and Accountability.

Links & Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Click here to learn more about the Accelerator Group Coaching Program

Visit Tammy’s website: CannonOnlineMarketing.com

Click here to download Tammy’s 5 Steps Landing Page Success worksheet

Learn more about Tammy’s course here

Connect with Tammy on Facebook

Connect with Tammy on Twitter

Connect with Tammy on LinkedIn

Connect with Tammy via email

Connect with Tammy on Pintrest

Connect with Tammy on YouTube

The #1 Landing Page Builder: Leadpages.net

Increase your website conversions with social proof: UseProof.com

Connect Your Apps and Automate Workflows: Zapier.com

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Transcription of Today’s Episode:

[00:00:06] This is the show where I bring you the best tips, tactics, and strategies for using paid traffic to grow your business on autopilot.

[00:00:12] Yo’ll also hear what’s working and not working right now from the top minds in online marketing so that you can get more leads and sales every day without having to empty your wallet in the process. All right let’s jump into it.

[00:00:28] Welcome to the art of paid traffic podcast’s everyone. Rick is already here. This is episode number 176 thank you so much for giving me your time today. Hope all is going well whatever you’re up to whether you’re out walking the dog or on the treadmill or on your way to work. Thank you so much for tuning in. Really appreciate it on the show today. I’m joined by Tammy Canada. Tammy is one of my students and she owns a business called Kennan’s social media where she creates online courses and manages Facebook ads for creative businesses and in this episode Tammy is going to break down a simple automated sales funnel that she created where she’s growing our e-mail list and also creating revenue through an Instagram challenge. We’re going to break down the funnel including where she got the idea for the challenge in the first place. We talk about what Tami’s goal was with the challenge and why she admitted it. She shares how she’s getting a 60 percent conversion rate on her opt in page which is sick and also she’s doing for an up sell. She breaks the whole thing down for you. The cool thing about this. And a big takeaway that I want you to have with what Tammy is doing is the simplicity of it all as you’re going to hear she started out promoting her challenge to her to her Facebook group. She listen to the feedback and then watch her stats and then refined the challenge and refine the sales funnel from there.

[00:01:45] She then spent about 300 dollars over two weeks to test it out against cold traffic and she had great results so as you can see here she didn’t spend a whole lot of money to do this but she saw great results from it. And this is really something that anyone can do. But before we dive into it Tammy I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my accelerator group coaching program. This is for those of you who would like to grow your business more quickly with hands on help. So if you like mentorship and coaching from me and my team then you’re gonna want to check out the accelerator group coaching program. This is a 12 month program that’s designed to help you more quickly take your business to the next level and I’ve designed it around a framework of three key elements that have really helped me grow my business quickly over the last couple of years. High level coaching community and accountability. Basically when you surround yourself with coaching bright driven like minded people that is where you create an opportunity for big time and quick growth in your business and that’s what I really want for you and that’s why I created the accelerator program. So if you think coaching support and accountability is something that can help you fast track the success of your business then I invite you to check out for all the details. My new accelerator program over at Rick Mulready dot com forward slash accelerator also link it up for you over and the show notes page which is Rick Mulready dot com forward slash 176. All right without further ado let’s jump into it with Tammy Kanun.

[00:03:13] Temi welcome to the podcast. How are you.

[00:03:15] I’m good Rick. Thanks for having me.

[00:03:17] Absolutely I have been trying to get those for a little while I was sick for a couple of weeks and I appreciate the flexibility but really excited to be talking to you today about this funnel that you’ve got going in your business and you’re getting the leads and sales on autopilot which is why I talk about all the time here. So are you breaking that funnel down. You’ve got to up sell in the fall you’re getting an amazing conversion rate on the landing page everything so I’m really excited to dive into that break down all the different facets of the funnel what’s working what’s not working we know what you’ve been testing and all the different type of stuff. Before we do that though. Tell us a little about yourself who you are what you’ve been up to and what you do these days.

[00:03:56] Oh great. Thank you so much. So I’m Tammy Kanun. I have a company called cannoned social media which isn’t really relevant as much anymore. Mr. companies know five years ago when social media was brand new and nobody knew what to do with it. Now of course it’s basically online marketing. And so in the past I managed over 100 clients especially in my community here north of Seattle just getting people started on social media Facebook ads were a new thing. In 2011 2012. And so now what I do. I got to be so busy with clients that now I just create online courses and I do Facebook ads management so I no longer do social media managing because that’s a lot. It’s a full time job on its own and got 10 clients it’s like oh my goodness this is overwhelming. So now I just focus on online courses to teach people how to do it themselves and then I can also help you manage your Facebook ads funnel from beginning to end.

[00:04:57] Right. OK so you are so you’re managing your degree in both Ukraine courses and you’re managing as for clients.

[00:05:04] Yes guys it’s pretty exciting.

[00:05:06] Let’s get into this final here. You’re getting leads and sales on auto pilot which I love when I talk about all the time. What is this funnel for. Let’s first start with that. What’s the goal of the funnel and then let’s start to break down all that all the different elements.

[00:05:21] Oh my goodness I’m so excited. Okay. So I have a Facebook group a private Facebook group and I in the summertime do a social media series. And so this summer I asked everybody what would you like to learn during the summer. Because they’re you know lazy summers and I have a name for the entire month. So it’s really easy for people to dive into the content they can take their time so on and so forth. And Instagram was the thing that everybody wanted to learn more about. So I decided OK I will go ahead and put together an Instagram challenge. And so I started doing that. And at the time I was planning a trip with my family for about three weeks we’re going to be out of the country. And so I had to batch all the challenge weeks and so I had a podcast episode for each challenge task for the week and then I had a worksheet or maybe a video. So I had to badge all this stuff so I thought why don’t I put everything in. I have a teachable school so why don’t you just make a class put it all in there and then give people an opportunity to buy that or go through the great challenge that they went on to take the month long. So I did all this work in June to put this whole entire challenge together. And so I didn’t at that time advertise this challenge I called up inside a sprint. I offered it to my group. Anybody who listened to the podcast episodes could join.

[00:06:50] And so I just had a kind of an organic opportunity for people to join in at that time people were loving it. They were making comments they were attacking me and things you know sending me reply emails saying thank you so much or I did this task and this is what happened. And so I thought wow okay great. This is a great topic. People are really interested. So by September when the kids went back to school everybody’s you know work and school mode. I thought why don’t I take that challenge and start advertising it. Why don’t I put some advertising dollars to it and see what happens. So what I decided to do was write an ad send them over to a landing page and send them to think your page after they opted in. And so I can take you through that if you want to go there because some pretty exciting things happen. I was really surprised about.

[00:07:41] Yes deafly want to break that down but I want to kind of get clear on so this is a free challenge that they could go through. But you said they could also purchase it because it’s set up a teachable that this is something they could access it at any time. Tell me more about that. So you were trying to get people to see Iran in your group and then you’re like OK I want to now advertise this. So the ad was for the free challenge and then once they opted in for the free challenge what was the ultimate goal was the ultimate goal to be selling the challenge.

[00:08:11] And at first I thought well I mean since I was having to batch everything I thought why don’t I just create a school and I’ll put a price tag on it and it was 27 dollars at the time and I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t run any Facebook ads to it. It was all organic people joining. And at that time in the summer people did buy on the thank you page and they thought wow I thought twenty thousand dollars was a lot for a thank you page upswell 7. You hear about seven dollars and I tried that and that worked. So I was pretty like excited that people even though it sounds like a small number. But when you’re testing things out and you’re not even running ads to it’s all organic it’s like oh there must be something to this. So by the time September rolled around I decided to put advertising dollars to it and I decided to change up the challenge a little bit. Updated more worksheets I’m giving people like 65 free images they can use on Instagram just a lot of value and then I raised the price to forty seven dollars. So they could either jump in and take a month long challenge or they could have the opportunity to jump right in. And even a quick question Would you like to Netflix binge on this challenge. All up. And so to my astonishment people actually did purchase on the forty seven dollars on the thank you Page took hold traffic.

[00:09:33] Got it. OK. So you are. This was free for them and they were opting in. They could opt in but they did have to go through it over the 30 day period. All right. Once they opted in. You gave them the offer to pay you can have bolthole challenged right now.

[00:09:49] And Ben I love that the 40s for forty seven dollars.

[00:09:52] Yeah yeah exactly. So I ran the ad from September 10th to the 24th so it was just about a two week ad run and then I was only spending about twenty five dollars a day. So I’m still I’m going to revamp this and scale it. I just wanted to test this out and see what would happen. So it was just exciting Rick to have people resonate with it and then to get the 60 percent landing page conversion rate. I thought oh my gosh OK there is something here that I want to explore a little bit more.

[00:10:28] Yes let’s stop right there. Yeah this is called traffic. You said yeah 60 percent opt in rate. What are we doing to get such a high.

[00:10:37] I know it’s so crazy and I and I got a worksheet for your listeners. It’s the five steps to landing page success because I really think I’ve figured out a formula that I think is going to work. And it didn’t work just for this challenge it’s working for my clients and it’s also working for multiple challenges that I’ve done. And so I think there are some pretty specific things. So if you want me to start I can start with that. You ready for it yeah. So I really think the image is hugely important. Not only just for the ad itself but I think your image has to match your landing page image. I can’t tell you how many times I go to a landing page. And it’s not the same feeling or the same experience that I was getting in the ad. And so you feel like you know you’re walking through a beautiful path and then you click on over to the landing page and you’re like in the desert somewhere. So there’s a disconnect. And so I really think that your image plays a part and not only how it looks but I think and I don’t know this because I’m not I don’t have a Facebook fairy telling me what what they look for all the time but I really think if you change the name of your image and you’re using it on both the landing page and on your ad I think that makes a difference. It works on Pinterest and other search engines. So if you change the name of your ad the algorithm is just kind of like OK this relates.

[00:11:58] It’s streamlined. It’s like it’s the same it’s cohesive. And I think that makes a difference.

[00:12:03] What do you mean by that so you’re changing the actual name of the ad itself.

[00:12:07] Oh I’m sorry the image itself so instead of like one two three four here can’t pay. You’re calling it Instagram challenge or. Mine was called the insta Sprint Challenge interest. So I named everything the same the landing page you know thank you Page. Everything was the same. So I really think that cohesiveness makes a difference. I don’t know. I just think it does.

[00:12:31] It’s interesting because I’ve actually not heard that before but I mean heck it makes sense. I mean I wouldn’t put it past Facebook to be looking at those types of things so interesting and obviously was working for you. That’s awesome.

[00:12:44] Yes I think that’s a big deal. I’m just making sure there’s a cohesiveness there for sure and then step two I think is the copy. So I did something different in the copy that I don’t normally do. I’ve been told by you know quote unquote experts that if you’re advertising to cold traffic don’t do a long form ad because you know they don’t know you you’re wasting their time you’re taking up space on their Facebook feed. But I went against that and I decided to just do long form copy. And that was a very strategic and specific and I have a website for your listeners to where I have the exact copy that I use the exact and the landing page image. Everything is on that page so they can check everything out. But I think the long term copy gave them a sense of relaid ability to what I was talking about. I was pressing on their pain points and by the time they got to the end of it they were like oh my gosh yes I want to join this challenge click. And I think it was just then a no brainer to go ahead and sign up on the winning page.

[00:13:49] Yeah I mean I I’m not sure who out there is talk I mean granted when it comes to a copy it’s all about testing right. You just asking stuff but I’ve always said if you’re if you’re looking for like you know everyone’s always like just tell me what to do. Right. I definitely for cold traffic and you know again it depends on what type of commitment you’re asking the person to take. But for cold traffic I definitely like the Langar fan copy because it’s going to just it’s going to take more flack a better word convincing. Right. You talked about cold you know the person doesn’t know who you are as opposed to a copy. Now granted again it comes under testing. But you saw the longer full copy work really well.

[00:14:31] It seemed to work really well. And so moving into Step Three because these two relate to each other is to keep the landing page simple then. So you know you’ve already explained everything. They’re resonating with it. They get to the landing page and it’s like OK they don’t need to scroll anymore. They don’t need to read any more about it. It’s just OK. I’m ready. And so they literally just a little bit of copy. And then the Button to Sign up.

[00:15:00] I love it. I love it.

[00:15:01] And so do you have on that Linny page there. Do you have links and stuff like that you know that you know privacy policy terms and conditions. What did you do for that.

[00:15:10] No I don’t I didn’t have any of that stuff. I literally used a template that has worked for me in the past. I use lead pages and so I used you know a template that has been working for me or other challenges. So it’s very simple. It’s the same image that I use in the ad and then a little bit of a text overlay with the button that it and then I also I’m not using it anymore but I was using proof so they could see someone so just signed up from behind the world. Yes so.

[00:15:43] So there was that there to explain like Rick what proof is to people who don’t know.

[00:15:48] OK so proof is something you can sign up for you a little piece of code on the back of your landing pages and then it’ll say like I’m looking at mine right now. Lydia from Springdale Arizona or Arkansas just recently joined the insta Sprint Challenge. And so it’s just kind of proof that people are opting in. You know that so and so they’re not the only person opting into this thing like other people are loving it. And so I think it’s a really great service. I’m just not using it like in the moment I’m kind of taking a break for things for the rest of the year and that I’m revamping in January.

[00:16:20] Nice. Nice. Ok cool. That was step’s number three right.

[00:16:23] Step three and then stop for which I just started doing probably mid-year this year is to actually be thoughtful about may think you pages. I used to just get people going to the default leave page landing page like think you know you have opted in. And so now I’m very strategic about what I want people to do so normally I send them to my Facebook group like join the facebook group blah blah blah but for this one what I decided to do was a thank you page upswell. And so they were able then like we talked about to get the entire challenge for forty seven dollars so it just basically said you know now that they’ve opted in and quick question Would you like to get a whole month of lessons upfront as an Netflix binge style than a little asterisk for challenge weeks plus tutorial videos more worksheets templates 65 stock photos for only 47 start today. And then my button says Heck yes I’m eager to learn and then that’s it. I mean super simple but I was able to convert people not only 60 percent on the landing page but then also get the APSO on the back end. So my plan in January is to take this whole test revamp it and scale it.

[00:17:40] I mean why not. Right. Yeah that’s right. Do you know what the percentage of people taking the APSO was.

[00:17:47] Oh that’s a great question. I know that I had. And these numbers are going to seem small too because this was a two week test. I was only spending. I got I have the numbers here. That was a dollar 30 per lead. I only spent three hundred nineteen dollars on my ad 245 new subscribers. And then I had four purchases in those two weeks for hundred and eighty eight dollars. So basically then I had an e-mail sequence that we’ll talk about which I also had sales of. So I profited 245. And so I was able to basically for nothing add all those people to my e-mail list plus profit. So now I just have to turn that into something scalable. I mean I can I need to just work the numbers and go from there. So was it all worked out really well and on this website that I made for your folks here you can see screenshots of the landing page and then all the Facebook ad results. The amount they spent my relevancy was nine of which I’ve never heard about before is right for traffic. Yeah I know. My clickthrough rate was four point forty eight percent. So everything seemed to align. And so in January I’m just going to revamp and scale.

[00:19:05] I love it. I love it. The fifth step.

[00:19:08] So the fence up was then the e-mail. So I know you love things on audio which I’m taking a cue from you after being in Facebook advantage. And so the post opt in email was huge because like I said I was leaving the country for three weeks. So I was able to then send the e-mails out on automatic. And I think some people forget to actually put that step into place not only just the first e-mail but like an onboarding sequence. So they get you know in my case I was doing a challenge so they were getting an email every week from me. But then if they purchased I used something called zap ear to take them out of the challenge. Because now they’re a student. Right. But then I’m still nurturing them with a weekly automated e-mail that I’m sending out to then get those you know just to nurture them and to add value and then for the people who did opt in after the month was over I still had a whole e-mail sequence for them so that they could still have an opportunity to get more value. I think I added like a surprise video tutorial maybe some more photographs that they could be used in stock photos and then an opportunity again to purchase on the back end.

[00:20:21] I love it. I love it. And so this was a smartasses. Two weeks yeah weeks. Three hundred bucks. Not huge yet.

[00:20:31] What do you think you’re going to do differently once you start things in the new year.

[00:20:35] So I think what I’m going to do is and this is already running so I had the monthlong challenge which is really too long. And so I have narrowed it down to just a four day challenge. So I went back and changed all my e-mails. I kind of added more stuff to the class kind of revamp things. I think what I’m going to do is switch up the podcast episodes there’s two hours of audio in there because each week was like a 30 minute podcast episode explaining the task and so I think I might ditch those and then do video. So that way and current for 2013 you know all my strategies that are in the class are still relevant in the tutorials and all that stuff. I think that’s not too much. And then I’m going to probably start out at a hundred dollars a day and then see what happens.

[00:21:24] So this is this more of a lead generation tool for you. Are you looking for profit or both.

[00:21:32] I have both but mostly lead gen because I feel like I have a lot of other things to offer besides Instagram so I’ve got I guess that that Facebook ad management. I’ve got a whole other Etsy thing that we won’t even talk about. So I’ve got so much in my world. I’m a multi passionate printer. I’m like this is a point of entry to then all the other things that I think are valuable to help people really get from point A to point B and plughole their whole social media strategy Facebook ads strategy and so on.

[00:22:05] How to take you to put that original charms together. Like with the podcasts and all that good stuff you just kind of curious like what it’s like a really big you know a ton of effort. Or was this something that was pretty light and easy for you to do. And you just kind of you know you put together like high quality it sounds like. But did it take like I’m just sort of getting a sense because I know other people ask. Ok awesome I’d like to love to do this. I’m just wondering like how much effort I have to put into doing something like this.

[00:22:34] I know that is the big million dollar question isn’t it. And I. So here’s the thing. I love this stuff. And so I love putting together like my podcast and I love putting together the video so it’s easy for me to take say a week and do 12 tutorial videos and for podcast episodes and I designed all the worksheets that are involved in everything and then I already had the sixty five images created that’s kind of one of my freebies for people as well. And so some of it I already had. I had to create everything from scratch. So for myself I think a week for me but for other people I would say take three weeks and go slowly. Do you know bachelor recordings that your videos if that’s what you’re going to do Create Your worksheets. All at once and that’s going to be the best way to get your courses nailed.

[00:23:30] Gotcha. I love it. I think a big lesson big take away here from what we’re talking about here Tami is that you had this idea you put it together and you’re like you know what I’m going to start this off and do it for my facebook group. Totally free. Get some feedback or even before that you ask for it you ask people like what they wanted to learn more about. And you know Instagram was one of those things Jake. Ok cool. So you use their feedback to putting out this challenge. You’re like are you going to use it as a lead magnet and start to build my list from it sort of search refine it from the free audience if you will here. You kind of worked the kinks out a little bit and it was working pretty well for you had the up sell in there already that was converting you. Okay cool I’m going to run ads to this try to get some cold traffic going here. Not going to spend a whole lot of money to test this over two weeks and increase the price of the upswell and you really get results and you were you know awesome results on your converged on your opt in rates and and your cost per lead in everything. So it was a success and you’re like okay cool this worked really well. Now I’m going to refine it even more.

[00:24:37] Increase the price on that up sell and just take everything I’ve learned over the past sort of two different stages if you will and fix it and do some other cool things and build it up it for 2018.

[00:24:48] Yeah. And I learned so much of it from you. Seriously with you know everything that you teach in the Facebook all it well now you’ve got so many Facebook ads courses but I was in the original one and so being able to you know put things on auto was such a huge timesaver I think people forget that part of it is such a big deal. And then also you know asking you’re always talking about you know ask your people talk to them sit down with them try to get a call with people so that you can understand where they’re coming from. And I wasn’t doing that before and so gosh now I’m doing like free 15 minute phone calls with folks just to kind of hear them out. And I’ve learned so many great insights from doing that. So thank you because it’s such a huge part of it. And I wasn’t doing that before so yeah. Now I’m doing.

[00:25:36] I love you’re taking action. You’re not me you’re not you’re only learning but you’re actually taking action on it and testing things out. It’s working so I love that. Thank you so much for taking us through this final and breaking everything down for us. You keep mentioning that the page here where you have all these assets and stuff like that examples of what you did which is awesome. Where can people go to connect with you and to want to check that out.

[00:25:58] Yes. So I mean the page just for you. So it can an online marketing dot com forward slash Rick and my name is spelled Thayeb and then O.N. so canon online marketing dot com for its Sharik. And on that page you’re going to get to download the five step Lanni page success workshy and then you’re going to see everything from the entire. I’ve got a screenshot of the copy and the image then the Landy page the copy the image and the thinking page copy image and then all the analytics and stats and everything are there for people so go and copy what I’ve done and I’d love to know if it works for you.

[00:26:36] I love that you’re going to be doing that so thank you so much for doing that. I really appreciate that and thank you again Tim for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

[00:26:42] Thanks so much for having me Rick. I’ll talk to you soon.

[00:26:46] All right. Thank you so much for listening to the show today hope you got a lot out of Tammy before we wrap up though if you like to win a 30 minute strategy session with me. I’d love to hear from you over on Facebook Messenger. All you have to do is give me your feedback on the podcast here. And specifically I’d like to hear what you’d like to hear more of like topics or guests style of the show frequency of the show length of the show. Any ideas that you like to share with me. I’d love to hear them so to share your ideas and feedback. You could message me over on Facebook and I’ve set up a redirect link that will pop your messenger right there. Rick Mulready dot com forward slash messenger. And when you message me with your ideas and feedback I’m going to pick one person at random at the end of each month to win a 30 minute strategy call with me we can talk about your Facebook ads or growing your business or online marketing strategy growing a team whatever it is you like to talk about. We can cover it in that 30 minute strategy call. So thank you so much in advance for your feedback. Again it’s Rick Mulready dot com forward slash messenger.

[00:27:51] I’d love to hear your feedback. And again thank you for doing that. And thank you for listening to the show today really appreciate it. Got another awesome episode coming your way in the next episode. So until then my friends keep testing your paid traffic to find out what works for you and your business and then do more of what’s working and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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