In today’s episode, we speak with Stockton Fisher from Funnelytics.
We discuss some common problems that marketers and business leaders experience, and talk about how Funnelytics can help you map your marketing funnels easily.
Funnelytics is truly transformational, so click here to learn more.
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Additional Resources:
2) Connect with Stockton Fisher here: Facebook; LinkedIn
3) See a real example of setting up a campaign using Funnelytics:
Read Full Transcript:
Stockton:
They already had this spreadsheet set up, right. And so my job was just to kind of fill in the blanks and kind of continue reporting on these metrics that they were already collecting and oh my gosh! There was probably 100 rows of different metrics that I had to pull from seven different platforms and calculate and ugh. That is when it gets way too complicated. When you’re focusing on all of these tiny little metrics, that really isn’t moving the needle in your business, then you know you need to take a step back and focus in a little more on what is important. What are the five key metrics that you need to analyze in order to make a difference?
Lionel:
Hi folks. This is Lionel Johnston with the Master of Modern Marketing podcast and that was Stockton Fisher with Funnelytics. If you want to get better at planning and launching marketing campaigns, or if you struggle to visualize your marketing activities, or if you’ve ever had trouble actually seeing where your traffic is coming from and going to, or if you’ve questioned the ROI on your marketing activities, then this is the episode for you. Stockton dives into an amazing new analytics tool called Funnelytics. When I first saw it I was like, “Wow! This is an amazing tool that I’ve been waiting for years, yet I didn’t even know it.” It truly is a transformational tool for marketers and business leaders. But enough about that from me, let’s queue the intro and dive right in.
Announcer:
We really love marketing, telling stories, and sharing ideas with others to help them achieve their goals. If you enjoy growing businesses through digital marketing or would like to learn how to take your knowledge and skills to the next level, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the Master Modern Marketing podcast with your host, Lionel Johnston.
Lionel:
Hi, Stockton. Hey, welcome to the Master Modern Marketing podcast. How are you doing today?
Stockton:
Doing great Lionel. Thanks for having me on.
Lionel:
All right. Thank you very much for joining us today and Stockton I know we’ve had a chance to work together on some projects over the last number of months and you’ve been really instrumental in helping me build the business and be able to help out my clients. So I appreciate you taking time today. We’ll dive right into what your skillset is and what you’re talking about here and people will be able to see the value that you are able to bring to businesses for sure. But anyway, thanks again for taking time out today and could you just, how about just say introduce yourself and if you could tell us a little bit about the company that you’re with and if you have an interesting anecdote, something that people don’t know about you that you want to share that would be awesome.
Stockton:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for having me on and hopefully some people can find value from this. So my name is Stockton and I work for a company called Funnelytics. It’s based out of Canada, right. So that’s where you’re at, right Lionel?
Lionel:
That’s right. I’m in Winnipeg, right in the center of North America.
Stockton:
Nice. Yeah, so the Funnelytics is based out of Toronto. And I work for them. I kind of head up the technical troubleshooting. I help all of our users make sure that they can get the most out of the platform and really succeed with their online funnels. So that’s kind of … Funnelytics helps digital marketers further their funnels. Right. It helps them map out, visualize, and analyze how their funnels are performing.
Lionel:
How did you first hear about Funnelytics?
Stockton:
Yeah, so Funnelytics. Kind of a funny story. If you have been wanting to get into online marketing, you for sure have seen people draw out boxes on a whiteboard and they have behind them and they draw the arrows and map out kind of all these different pages. And I was like, yes! I want to do that. I wanted to kind of get into this marketing, internet marketing, and have my own funnel and so I had just gotten married. And we moved into just this small little studio apartment, right. So if you could imagine, my wife wasn’t too excited to put up all these whiteboards around. I wanted to put above my computer and have a rolling one. And being in a little studio apartment, she wasn’t going to go for that. So I was-
Lionel:
Hard to believe. 🙂
Stockton:
Yeah, I don’t know why she wouldn’t want that. But I was looking for alternatives, right. So I could just draw it out on a little notepad, but then I’d have just tons of papers flying all over the place and I couldn’t really save it and it wasn’t that visual. And so maybe there was something on the computer I could draw it out in Paint or I could use a mind mapping tool, but none of them really served the purpose.
And so one day I saw someone else had posted a video of them mapping out a funnel using this tool and I was like, “Oh my gosh! What is that?” And I was trying to read all the comments and see everyone else was like, “What is that?” I was like, “I need to know what that is.” And so I went and found what it was. It was Funnelytics. And I was like, “Oh my gosh! It’s even free.” And so I went and signed up and sure enough, I could map out all the funnels I wanted. I could visually see everything on the canvas. And so it made my wife happy, to say the least.
Lionel:
I bet. Well, that’s the most important part of the story. So, not that’s great … Thanks for sharing your personal story there. Whiteboards all over your house would be pretty awesome, so maybe one day you’ll still get your way there. But it’s interesting hearing you tell that your story about finding Funnelytics because my story was very similar. And I’m sure I must have been a Facebook that I would have seen.
But I have a lot of experience in marketing automation and setting up workflows and funnels and one of the challenges that I had was being able to see how everything was connected. And I tried similar things like mind mapping, Sketch It, but I think Google owns them now. But it was really a challenge and then I saw this tool and I was like, “Wow! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.” But I didn’t know it and then actually since then I’ve used it with all of my clients. And what I found is really helpful is actually showing them what the campaign looks like and how the campaign flow and I know we’ll talk more about that on this podcast. But it’s been really very, very helpful. So I was quite happy to come across a tool.
Lionel:
And then you were really the face of the business for me. We got connected fairly early on. And you helped me get up and running and ultimately help out the clients that I was using it with. So thanks a lot for that.
Stockton:
You’re welcome.
Lionel:
All right, so I can just give you some background. As we talked a little bit on the podcast. Generally what we’re doing is we’re having a small and medium-sized business owner or leader on the podcast where we do a digital marketing audit so they know where they stand in terms of today’s modern marketing and then what we’re able to do is have a live coaching call at the end of that call and that podcast they know what their priority is and how to actually tackle it. They can then choose to do it themselves or they can work with another marketing firm or they can choose Farmer’s Marketing. But that’s generally a big bulk of what this podcast is all about and who our typical audience is.
Lionel:
So if we look at those types of people, Stockton, those small and medium-sized businesses, what do you generally find in terms of how they’re planning out campaigns and mapping things? Are they doing a bunch of disconnected activities or are they taking time out to actually plan something? What’s your experience and maybe if you could talk about what’s some best cases, or best practices would be there, that would be great too, please.
Stockton:
Yeah, for sure. So I was thinking to myself you said do people plan? And I said, “Planning? What’s planning?” Typically what we see is yes, there is a huge disconnect, huge confusion on what’s happening. And the reason I think this is because whether you’re the CEO of your own start-up, it’s just you, solo-preneur type deal or you’re working for a medium-sized business, the difference is or where the disconnect I think is every person has their own peak, right. And there’s a lot of disconnect between different people’s jobs and who’s going to do this and that.
And so when you start trying to put together this marketing campaign, everyone’s thinking billboards and posts and we’re going to send emails. So the company that comes to mind when I’m thinking about this is like a credit union or bank, right. Medium sized and so there’s kind of the bureaucracy there where it’s going to take a week to get this letter approved. When it comes down to it though, if you’ve ever tried to sell something, right, you’ve had a funnel. So there’s been a traffic source and they have to go somewhere and take an action. So that’s basically a funnel.
And what I see typically is that people provide too many options for their users to take. So for example, we can look at websites. There might be a billboard that says, “Hey, come visit our website.” Well then once they’re on the website there’s like a million other links they could go out and go to the About Us page, go to the Contact Us page. There’s not clear messaging and there’s not a clear action.
So that’s why if you start learning more about funnels and you maybe follow Russell Brunson and Steven Larson and everyone else that it’s kind of blown up now, it’s kind of funny. They talk about having your one clear thing. What’s the one action you want to take and that is the purpose of your funnel. It’s not a website where they can go a million different directions. It’s the one clear thing. So I think that’s where it gets confusing and hard for businesses. They’re not clear on what’s the one thing they someone to take and what’s the one way they can deliver on that.
Lionel:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I can definitely see in a corporate environment or a larger business, right, where maybe the campaign starts with a specific intent but then another group in the company, they have their own interest and they’re like, “Well how about we add on this or we need to add on more of our products or we need to add a recruiting function and add this third other thing on there.” So I can see where you just have this behemoth with lots of confusion for the actual person going through the funnel.
Stockton:
Yeah, and as the user going through something like that, it’s not a pleasant experience and they’re most likely going to drop off.
Lionel:
Exactly. All right so looking at that as something that’s quite common for small to medium-sized businesses, what can they do differently to be at a better position?
Stockton:
Yeah, so what they can do is know what is something … What value can they provide? Right, so it’s all about an exchange of value. And the name of the game really is you need to get people’s email addresses. So what value can someone provide in order to exchange for another person’s email address? Right?
So I work a lot with coaches and consultants and course creators and so that’s a little easier. Right? They have the expertise, they can exchange some expertise whether that be a PDF, an e-book, a mini-course, a video. They can exchange their expertise, their knowledge, and their information for that person’s email address. Another corporate environment needs to have some sort of value they can provide in exchange for that person’s email address. Maybe it’s to learn more about their products, maybe it’s to get a free consultation, whatever it is exchange value for their email address. And just thinking of that most people probably don’t have something in mind for that. Just right there. Could be something they give away for free-
Lionel:
So some sort of lead magnet or value they can exchange for that contact information.
Stockton:
Exactly.
Lionel:
Okay, very good. Well I realize we’re on a podcast right now, so and we’re talking about a visual tool, which can be a little bit challenging for people that are listening right now and maybe they’re driving or on a stair-master or something like that and can’t look up in the show notes or look up Funnelytics directly, could you explain a little bit about what someone would actually see right in the tool? Like what does the dashboard look like? What are they doing there? What does it look like and how are they utilizing the tool? You can talk about the free mapping part and then even where the paid analytics part comes in as well.
Stockton:
Yeah, absolutely. So once you’ve discovered what you can give out, what value you can provide in exchange for someone’s email address or in exchange for someone’s money, right, then what’s the next step? So where Funnelytics comes in is it allows you to visually see this is my traffic. So, imagine opening up Paint and on the left-hand side you have a bunch of folders … and there are folders one of them for Pages, Page Icons. One of them for Traffic Icons like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And then there’s actions and offline icons and some other things.
But you can open up your Traffic Icons folder and you can just drag your traffic icon onto the canvas. So you could say maybe we’re working on a Facebook campaign. You can drag your Facebook icon onto the canvas and you say okay, this Facebook campaign, whether it be a post or an ad or whatever else on Facebook is going to lead people to this page. So you can go to the page’s folder and grab a landing page and drag that onto the canvas and it will connect the traffic icon and the landing page icon together with an arrow. Right? So it’s really visual. It’s really simple. All you did was drag two icons on and it’s now connected with an arrow.
You can now see, okay now we know we’re having our campaign. We want to push people in this traffic source over to this page. And then you can design that page. Right? We know in the traffic source, so Facebook, we told people about this and this and this. Let’s design our page to kind of match that message. So there’s no disconnect. Right? So from there, maybe on the landing page, there’s an opt-in. Right? Say, “Hey we’re going to give you our free mini-course. All you have to do is tell us where to send it.”
So they give them the email address and then from there, what happens next they go to a thank you page. It says, “Hey. Thanks for opting-in. We just sent you our mini-course. You can expect in the next five minutes. Here’s something else that we’d like to offer you.” Right? Here’s some more value, maybe this is a lot more value and you need to pay us for this. Right? But it’s another chance to kind of monetize that traffic, to break even, or whatever it is, make money. But now what just happened is you can visualize that whole process. So we have our traffic source, Facebook, we’re sending them to our landing page where it’s trading them value, and we’re going to provide more value. Right? It’s all about value and offers them something else.
Lionel:
I see.
Stockton:
But see that was just the one objective, the one goal. Right? We didn’t send them to our home page on our website where they could go everywhere and what not. We want them to take specific action. And that’s why funnels work.
Lionel:
Okay, right on. So, how would someone have, you use the term canvas, which basically I guess is the screen that you’re looking at? Would they have multiple canvases for their business or would you want to have all of your funnels all on the same canvas and they all are connected? What’s generally the best idea there?
Stockton:
So typically what I would say is focus on one funnel at a time. You don’t need to have five, ten, fifteen. You’re not building a new funnel every day so probably what I would say is this: Start with one funnel, work on that until it’s really fine-tuned and honed in. Right? Then maybe you could do your next funnel and that could be a different funnel. Right?
So in Funnelytics, you have projects and each project has multiple funnels with it. So you might have one funnel within a project for funnel A, and then another one once that one’s going good for Funnel B. But then you might want to see how all of it is working together, so you might create a third funnel and kind of map Funnel A and B on to that canvas and see how it’s all working together. But also have them separate to see each one individually.
Lionel:
Okay, interesting. So from my experience, and I initially used Funnelytics under the free program and that was really all that existed if I remember correctly. So I was using it really to map out the flow of traffic and the campaign and where the different actions were. And I ended up, I was one of the founding members with purchasing the beta version and that really opened up a whole nother level with the tool because that introduced the actual analytics and tracking part, which ultimately is what the tool is all about, right, is being able to answer that question of what is the ROI and where’s the traffic going and what’s happening. So you could maybe tell the audience a little bit more about how does it work on the paid version if they do want to go down that road? What could they actually see and how could they use Funnelytics in that capacity?
Stockton:
Yeah, absolutely. So you’re right, we’re still in beta as of right now. So in December 2018, we are in beta. But currently, we do have the analytics that work. So basically it’s just a tracking script that you can install on your site and then it knows your pages. Right? You have to input the URL into the page icon and then it will start gathering the data. Right? So you’re going to … You can just hit an analyze button and it will say, “Okay, you had 100 people come from this traffic icon.” Right? Traffic source, so Facebook, 100 people came from Facebook and landed on your page.
From your landing page, it’ll tell you just super easy to understand. You don’t have to dig into tons of reports. You don’t have to look at anything else, it’ll say of these 100 people 25 of them went to your Thank You page. Right? And so you say I had 25% opt-in rate. What can I do to increase that? Or maybe it’s super low. Maybe you have a 1% opt-in rate and that can clue you in to say what was the disconnect? If I had 100 people on this page and only 1% of them opted in, what’s wrong with my offer? What’s wrong with my messaging? What’s wrong with how I was communicating to my audience what I was offering?
And so just that visual view right there makes Funnelytics super powerful because it takes back the control from having to have a data science and making sure your analytics are set up right if you’re using Google Analytics or another platform. Right? It’s like I don’t really know if I set this up right. Can I trust my data? I don’t really know where to get these reports and so this just makes it easy and visual.
Stockton:
We have huge plans for the tool coming into 2019 with all of our deep integrations. We’re actually going to be able to pull cost data from different marketing platforms. So imagine being able to pull in I spent $1,000 on ads, I had this many opt-ins, I sold this much, this was the ROI from Facebook. This ROI from YouTube. This was the ROI from Google Ads. And visually see down the canvas it’s going to be like nothing else out there.
Lionel:
Wow! That’s exciting. I wasn’t aware of that.
Stockton:
Yeah, and then we’re going to have our custom KPIs and reporting and just tons of awesome, awesome features coming up.
Lionel:
Yeah, sounds exciting. So hopefully our audience is checking out the tool because it really is transformational, at least in my experience. So I’m actually glad you mentioned about Google Analytics. So let’s say I know lots about Google Analytics. I’ve been in there for years. Could someone find this information in Google Analytics without the tool? And if so, what’s the difference between using that and a tool like Funnelytics?
Stockton:
So the difference is the complexity and the ease of use. So yes, the short answer is if you knew exactly what pages you were looking at, if you knew exactly what the goal of those specific pages and set of pages was, yeah you could get the data from analytics. But I mean you would have to really love being in analytics, right. You’d have to know you set it up correctly, which I would say I’m very proficient in Google Analytics and I don’t even trust my data from them 100% all the time. Right? And so if that’s your thing and you want to be in Google Analytics and you want to be analyzing numbers and having to export and then do analysis, yeah that’s your thing. But for most people, we’re making it easy and we’re making it visual, which is something that Google Analytics is not.
Lionel:
Right. Okay, well great. Thanks for answering that question. So just to wrap things up do you have any final comments that you’d like to be able to share with the business owners out there that are looking to ramp up their business whether it’s some sort of pro tip or something that you’ve seen over and over again with your clients that you found this one nugget really helps them transform their business?
Stockton:
Yeah, for sure. I would just say don’t over-complicate it. Right? When you visually see, we have Page A, we have Page B, and Page C and we’re going to just focus on this. A lot of times people get way lost in the weeds with … And even when it comes to marketing automation you probably have experienced that. We’re going to have this and this and this. Let’s throw in this. Let’s make sure this is there. And x does y. And it can just get way complicated and convoluted.
Some people that I work with they hardly have some of the things set up correctly, like Facebook ads, they’re limping along on the Facebook ads, but because they’re keeping it so simple he makes millions of dollars a year. It’s just a simple … he has a webinar funnel, and so he knows I’m just focusing on this one funnel, my one webinar. I’m going to send people to my landing page, they opt-in, they attend the webinar, I send them to a sales page, they buy the webinar, they join the Facebook group. Right? That’s it. Simple.
Some people would tend to … There are millions of things they could do. Right? I won’t say millions, but people want to over-complicate it. Right? Because oh, this cool new tool. Or this cool new strategy. Right? But just keep it simple. Know what your value ladder is. So we’re going to offer this, then once they have that we’re going to offer them this. Once they have that we’re going to offer them this. And just lead people through your funnel.
Lionel:
That’s a great insight. I appreciate you sharing that and sharing your real-world example of one of your clients. So it’s very easy to do that, right, because there are so many things that we can measure in digital marketing. And then you’re doing A/B split tests of A/B split tests. Right? And just adding in a whole bunch of levels of complexity. So that’s great advice to leave everyone with.
Stockton:
Yeah, I just … So I worked for a digital marketing agency. Right? I was going through college and I wanted to kind of get in this world a little more. So, man, I was crazy busy. I was getting married, I was doing an internship at the hospital, I had two jobs, and I was going to school. So it was kind of a crazy time, but the agency that I was working with … I first was just approached and I was like, “Guys I just want to like peak over your shoulder. Won’t that be cool? I want to help out with anything but I just want to learn what you guys are doing.” And then eventually they kind of offered me the job and I said, “Okay, I can’t work full-time. I have two other jobs, I’m going to school, I’m getting married, and I have an internship.” And he was like, “Yeah, cool.” So long story short, that didn’t really work out.
But before that, one of the clients I was assigned to was a recovery … What is it? A drug and addiction recovery center. And we were handling, of course, their online marketing. We were doing everything from Facebook to YouTube to their websites and optimizing everything for this client. I was the account manager on it. And so I was like, “This is kind of cool. I’m an account manager already.” But when it came to reporting they already had the spreadsheet set up. Right? And so my job was just to kind of fill in the blanks and continue reporting on these metrics that they were already collecting.
And oh my gosh! There was probably 100 rows of different metrics that I had to pull from seven different platforms and calculate and ugh. That is when it gets way too complicated. When you’re focusing on all of these tiny little metrics that really aren’t moving the needle in your business, then you know you need to take a step back and focus in a little more on what is important. What are the five key metrics that you need to analyze in order to make a difference?
So while some of these things would be important, yes, if we were really trying to deep-dive and get a really good analysis on some of the pages and stuff. But what if you did an A/B test of your headline, right? What is the message you’re conveying as opposed to what’s the button colour? What’s going to have a greater impact on the words you’re saying in the page or what’s the colour of the button? You know what I mean? So it’s like …
Lionel:
Wow. Great story for sure. I’m sure a lot of people can really relate to that exact scenario there. So how about we’ll wrap it up there Stockton. It definitely was great and you shared some great insight. How can people contact you if they either want to learn more about Funnelytics first of all? And let’s say there could be people like myself and my team, where we actually are already using Funnelytics but you’re looking for a little bit of additional handholding and help to be able to ramp things up and help even more clients? So how could we reach out to you?
Stockton:
Yeah, for sure. So I’d start with just joining the free Funnelytics Facebook group. You’ll see me popping in there sometimes. We also have our paid Facebook group, so if you do buy Funnelytics I’m actually a lot more active in there helping people with their analytics and tracking. But if you really wanted something from me or from us, then you could always use just our live chat and we’ll be happy to help you out. We have a VIP program where we help people make sure that Funnelytics is one, set up, and that too, they’re actually measuring the right stuff and kind of hand hold them.
Lionel:
Great. Well, I know in my experience over the last number of months using the tool the service you guys, you and the other folks, have provided has been excellent. It’s been very timely and I know it’s difficult sometimes using digital tools and sometimes they’re skeleton teams and getting answers or solutions is often difficult. But yeah, your team has always done a phenomenal job from what I’ve experienced so far. Well, we’ll have in the show notes, we’ll have links to be able to check out Funnelytics and the Facebook group and your information as well. So people will be able to find you all different sorts of ways. So thank you once again for sharing your insight and your expertise with our group here, Stockton. It was definitely a real privilege to have you on the podcast.
Stockton:
I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s been great. If anyone wants more information or to reach out and gets some help, then we’d be happy to do that.
Lionel:
That’s awesome. I appreciate you offering that. For all the small and medium sized businesses out there that are listening to this podcast, if you guys want to be on the podcast as a guest and receive a free marketing audit and live coaching call, you can apply actually at farmersmarketing.ca. We’ll be able to dive into your business, give you a good overview of where you’re at right now, what could be better, and then come up with some solutions to really drive leads in your business and take your business to the next level. So once again, Stockton, thank you very much. And thanks to everyone else for listening to this podcast. Until next time onward and upward.
Announcer:
The Master Modern Marketing podcast with your host Lionel Johnston. Podcast for lovers of marketing and growing small businesses. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please rate and review. We’ll catch you next time on the Master Modern Marketing podcast.