Today we continue with our five-part series on the E5 Funnel Architecting Framework.
By this point you should have at least a basic level of understanding of the first two stages of E5: (1) Examine and (2)Engineer.
In our third stage, we put your new funnel to the test.
Our objective?
To quickly confirm — with as little risk as possible — the viability of the idea behind the funnel. The idea we developed in Stage #2.
The way we do it?
With something called a Minimum Viable Funnel (MVF).
This Pyramid Tells You How Long Your Funnel Should Be
The Prospect Awareness Pyramid shows you the perfect length for your marketing funnel. No more guessing how long your funnel should be or how many steps it should have.
Stage #3: Evaluate
A Minimum Viable Funnel (MVF) consists of the following four funnel pages:
1. The Lead Capture Page
2. The Marketing/Sales Page
3. The Order Form Page
4. The Thank You Page
These are the only four elements of a new funnel we create when going through the Engineer Stage into the Evaluate Stage.
Why? Because within those pages we find the most impactful elements of every funnel: The funnel idea, the lead (headline and first 500 – 800 words), the sales argument (Funnel Thesis & Sub-Beliefs), and the offer.
Plain and simple: Those are the four elements that can make or break a funnel.
So before doing anything else, we need to prove their viability.
We do not create any upsells at this time. Nor do we set up any follow-up emails…
Not yet. Not at this stage.
With our Minimum Viable Funnel set-up, we can begin to drive prospect traffic to our lead capture page.
If you have an email list of prospects, you can begin, first, testing your MVF with them. The benefit? It allows you to test your new funnel without the risk of buying media.
If you don’t have an email list of prospects, you can set up some ads on something like Facebook.
I recommend, when testing a MVF, you use a performance-based traffic channel or platform. Something that allows you to run traffic with a CPC or CPM model.
I recommend you stay away from fixed-cost opportunities, at this time, like solo email ads.
The reason? With performance-based you have the ability to turn it off or pause it in the middle of your testing if necessary. With fixed-cost you don’t have that option.
Once you’ve driven enough traffic into your MVF, we look at the level of Return On Investment (ROI) produced.
We don’t look at optin rate, sales conversion rate, order form abandonment rate, or upsell take rate. Those are all “optimization metrics”. And, we don’t use them at this stage.
The only metric I care about when Evaluating… is… ROI.
How much did the MVF earn back for every $1 of traffic? That’s it. That’s what I care about at this time.
Just remember: The only thing you can deposit is ROI.
You can’t deposit optin rate, sales conversion rate, order form abandonment rate, or upsell take rate.
We’re not in the business of increasing those metrics. We’re in the business of increasing ROI.
We’re In The ROI Business!
If your MVF returns anything lower than 50% ROI, we go back to Stage #2 for some Re-Engineering.
If your MVF returns anything greater than 50% ROI, we go on to Stage #4.
It’s in Stage #4 where things start to get really exciting. And really profitable.
And I’ll cover it all in the next installment of our series.
So, keep your eyes peeled for that post tomorrow.
