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Million-Dollar Funnels Aren’t Made With Ads

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Million-Dollar Funnels Aren’t Made With Ads

Having a million-dollar marketing funnel is nothing to scoff at. 

It’s a huge accomplishment that deserves its’ kudos. There’s a lot of automation, dedication, and ideation that goes into making something like that happen.

It’s the type of benchmark that says, “Hey, I was a serious business owner at 6-figures. But now? I turned my serious business into an EMPIRE.”

So listen, if you already have one: congrats, I commend you for the hard work. Feel free to kick back, put your feet up, and hang out.

For anyone looking to scale their funnel to that million-dollar benchmark, you’ll want to take a couple of notes.

But before I get into that, let’s talk about me real quick—just to make sure you know I’m not some random schlub pretending to know a thing or two about marketing.

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My name’s Yogev Almog, I’m a marketing consultant and copywriting strategist for 6, 7, and 8-figure brands. 

I’ve written for and consulted on funnels ranging from fitness, coaching, eCommerce, business automation, CPG, financial institutions, telehealth services, done-for-you businesses, chiropractors—name an industry and I’ve likely written something or at the very least given some advice on it. 

And just to put the cherry on top, my work has been a direct contribution to a handful of million dollar funnels. 

So, now that you know a little about me and my credibility, I feel pretty comfortable saying this next part:

If your end goal is simply “The Million-Dollar Funnel,” everything I’m about to say is probably going to upset you. 

In fact, it definitely will. And you know who I’m going to upset the most today? Ad experts. 

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Dearest ad expert friends of mine: I love you, truly, I do. I promise this isn’t a shot at you. 

The thing is, entrepreneurs are especially obsessed with social media ads right now.

There’s this instant gratification that comes with an ad campaign because you can pretty easily track where a sale is coming from.

“Person sees ad. Person clicks on ad. Person spends time on site. Person buys.”

You can see how it might get addicting to watch as your phone blows up with sales confirmations but what people tend to be super quiet about is: 

  1. The amount of ad budget you need to kickstart a campaign
  2. All the creative you constantly need to test (Both the visual and written) 
  3. Following community guidelines to make sure your account doesn’t get shut down for saying the wrong thing
  4. The inevitable upward trend of ad spend due to market saturation

Talking about this often makes me think of a conversation I had with a client. 

On a call, she mentioned a competitor of hers in the coaching space who paraded around their million-dollar funnel. 

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What’s important to note is this competitor went on a podcast talking about the $1.2 million they made that year but admitted to spending over a million on just ads alone…

…yea, that’s not what you want. 

Don’t get me wrong, loss leaders can be helpful in business, and turning a $200,000 profit is nothing to be ashamed of but the fact of the matter is that’s not $200,000 in profit. 

They still had to pay out employees, cover operating expenses, and ONLY THEN could they pay themselves out…  

…That’s a lot of work just to say you have a million-dollar funnel. 

Still, we see a few industry leaders truly killing it with Meta and Google Ads and all of a sudden that means everyone flocks to it as “the way” for every business to grow. 

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Listen, there’s some truth to this. Ads can definitely grow your business and reach audiences you wouldn’t typically have access to. 

And sure, taking a loss on the frontend makes plenty of sense if you’re re-engaging repeat customers or people who didn’t initially buy on the backend—but how many people actually have that dialed? 

How many have figured out exactly what their ideal customer wants with organic traffic before putting money behind paid traffic? 

Ads are great, but only when they’re used the right way and only when you’re ready. 

(There’s nothing wrong with messy action, but if you’re not careful messy can become a disaster.)

And the only way you’re able to do that is if you recognize what is objective truth: ads aren’t THE answer, ads are just a tool—a piece of the bigger picture. 

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Once you see that, you’re able to use them more effectively, efficiently, and you put power back into your hands. 

Because when you rely solely on social media ads as your lead and revenue generator, you basically are at the mercy of Meta and how they want to run things. 

So how do you put that power back into your hands and build a business not dependent on ads? You take a step back and look at all the pieces that make a successful million-dollar funnel. 

There Are 3 Key Components To Any Successful Million-Dollar Funnel:

  1. Attention
  2. Affection
  3. Retention 

I can dig deeper into each one of these in a later post but for now let’s just focus on the general idea.  

Attention is simply getting people to notice you. You’re creating awareness of something interesting or important. 

Typically this is where ads come into play but this can also be featured content, affiliate email programs, podcasts, you get the picture. 

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Affection is what happens after you’ve grabbed their attention. The goal here is to connect with the audience and create a relationship that makes them want to buy from you.

This shows up as sales pages, email sequences, and even your everyday content on your social platforms but the bottom line is that you’re nurturing these people.

The last part is retention.

Now, whether or not this person has bought from you, they expressed interest in some form and you want to keep that person around. 

Why? 

Well, buyers will tell people how great your stuff is and anyone who didn’t buy might just need a little more time to think before they decide to buy from you. 

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And again, even if they NEVER buy, best case they refer someone to you, worst case it doesn’t hurt to have one other person that likes you.

This piece also is largely working in your email and in the content you’re pushing out through your other channels. (Facebook, Instagram, podcast, blog, etc.) 

Okay, so remember when I said that entrepreneurs are addicted to ads? What I mean is, they’re so hyper-focused on making sure that Attention works that there’s little to no thought put into Affection or Retentionwhich is a problem

Those last 2 pieces of a successful million-dollar funnel can take time to build but are what can save you SOOOOO much time and money on cold ads and retargeting. 

Plus, if you set them up and automate the processes correctly, they account for the highest ROI in any successful business. (And I mean ANY.)

What really stops entrepreneurs from focusing on these areas is pretty simple: 

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  1. It’s harder to track exactly where a sale came from
  2. It takes more time to see the results
  3. It’s really not sexy

And I sympathize with you, really, I do. 

I want my results on demand like everyone else does. 

The thing is, that’s not how you build a million-dollar funnel. 

You have to be willing to put in the time and effort to make it work. Not only that, you need a strategy that makes sense within your business that can effectively scale as you do. (Because trust me, that million-dollar funnel is NOT a one-person operation.) 

SO am I saying don’t use ads? Absolutely not. (My ad expert friends would kill me if I did.) 

Ads are an important piece of a flourishing market strategy. 

But remember, that’s exactly what they are: a piece. 

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And when you go back to edit or build your funnel, you should treat them as such—just a piece of the bigger picture.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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