As funnel builders we are always looking for new customers and projects. In this post I want to demonstrate a massively untapped market, which is growing every day, and very few funnel builders seem to be exploiting.
Growing market
As websites become easier to build, more and more customers will have their websites built by new players entering the market. Personally I don’t see anything wrong with this, as the number of people entering the market who want and need websites, will simply be served by new businesses who can provide that service.
The problem comes however when both previous customers and businesses with websites, no longer require a new website in order to grow their business. Businesses who need brand-new websites will over time shrink as a market. Not necessarily because there are fewer people who require new websites, but the speed and ease at which people have basic websites built, combined with businesses already having sophisticated websites, means that brand-new website projects won’t necessarily be required.
So as a funnel business that focuses on increasing conversions, and growing other businesses, where can you look for new projects?
New websites
Businesses don’t need new websites, every time they want to grow. If they have a new product launch, or content marketing strategy or they want to increase revenue, there is absolutely no need for a brand-new website project.
However, this lack of requirement for a new website, is in fact growing the size of another market. The market of businesses you already have business websites.
Commodity websites
Eventually websites will become so easy to build, that fast loading and well-designed websites will be as easy to build as ordering from Uber or Amazon. Instead, funnel builders will have to look to other sides of the process, in order to provide funnel services.
For example while traffic will always be required, the sources of traffic will always change. While websites may be very easy to set up and run, the consistent content and promotion of the website is what will really matter.
New funnel builders
On top of all that, the number of funnel builders entering the market will also increase. Again, while I don’t subscribe to scarcity-based mentalities, as the number of funnel builders entering the market will also match the number of new businesses that require funnel services. It’s still worth noting that the fastest growing market on the Internet, is businesses who already have a website.
A new car every 3 years
Car dealers know that trying to sell a new car to the same customer every 3 years, is almost impossible. If you change the offer and delivery however, you can create a very profitable business model. For example providing regular servicing and maintenance on a car. Or changing the car ownership to a lease model.
The solution to finding a massive untapped market is not in trying to discover people who need a new product, but trying to discover people who already have a product and making it better.
You still need a niche
often the first thought people have when they understand this new market, is that they now have a potential of millions of websites. It still critical to have a well defined niche, and a clear idea of who you work for or serve. Going after everyone who has a website is no more defined, and going after anyone who doesn’t have a website. You can’t simply now say that you work with small businesses who already have a website.
If you’re going to go after businesses that have a website, it also doesn’t exclude you from working with customers who don’t have a website. Remember, as final builders our role is to serve and help a well-defined business avatar. To say that we build funnels for people who already have websites, doesn’t do us any favours.
But instead, if we say we work with businesses who have:
- a well-defined customer base
- at least 1000 customers
- 10,000 people in their email list
With this they can launch new products to their market for under $1000, that’s a well-defined market. It also still allows us to go after businesses who currently have a website.
One final point on the niche, you still need to focus on the toolset or technology stack that you’re comfortable with. If you want to fully transition into a consultant based role, there’s no reason for you to ever get involved with the tools. However to say that you are going to focus on WordPress, woo commerce, digital products and ActiveCampaign, Would serve you well rather than working with any CRM, CMS and autoresponder.
You could become the world’s greatest conversion optimisation specialist for businesses that use OptinMonster and who sell plugins. You can see how this allows you to work with customers who already have a website.
Focus on one conversion
Funnel builders that succeed in working with businesses who already have a website, will succeed by focusing on one conversion. Increasing the average number of subscribers per blog post for example, is a well-defined niche and opportunity.
We are beginning to stray into “what if my niche is too small?” territory, but there’s no reason you can’t work on other conversions, after you are known and hired for a very specific and particular conversion.
My advice would be to think about the types of conversions that add the most value to our current website. If you decide that you are only going to work with customers, who have a current website and have current sales and customers, attracting new sales might not be the fastest route to growth.
Generating sales from their current customer list, or increasing the amount of traffic to their website, might grow the business much faster. As opposed to trying to discover new customers or generate new sales, which is more expensive and takes longer.
This conversion that you’re going to focus on, needs to be something that you are both knowledgeable and obsessed with. Because you can be talking about it a lot, offering it to a lot of people and delivering it over and over again. So we’ve started to narrow down our niche, by going after a large and expanding market.
We work with businesses who sell trainers and shoes, to increase the average sales value per transaction.
If I was going to go after that particular niche, I would need to be obsessed with increasing the average transaction value. I need to talk about all the bumps, upsell pages, lead nurturing, the list goes on. If I’ve got any kind of experience inside the trainer and shoe market as well, that’s an even bigger bonus.
The test for knowing if you are truly obsessed and knowledgeable about the market is if you can think of 100 blog post ideas within that very specific topic. However in my experience it also helps to understand that you need to become obsessed with a topic, in order to truly commit to it and vice versa. Commitment and learning about a topic, often encourages you to become more obsessed with it. If nothing jumps out immediately, then allow yourself to commit to the topic and become obsessed over time.
Identify what businesses want
Even if you’ve identified a large market, you know the best type of conversion that you could offer AND you can talk about that topic day in day out. You still need to focus on what your target market WANTS.
Passion, experience and a defined market are the foundations for a healthy funnel business. However if your offer isn’t desired by the market, they are never going to want it. You have to know what the business wants. It’s not good enough knowing what they need, or trying to convince them that this will help them.
If I could only sell something that a business wants or that a business needs, I would always choose something a business wants. It might be that over time they understand they do need it, but they must want it.
The easiest way to understand what a business wants is to see what type of future they want. Businesses want results for themselves, they don’t want the process. A business wants new customers more sales and new subscribers. They don’t want an automation and squeeze page funnel. The funnel and processes what they need, the future benefits to their life and business is what they want. You must sell them what they want.
The good news is that you can explore the conversion that you offer, the market that you serve and the topic that you’re passionate about and offer the benefits. Working for a shoe company to increase the average transaction value, needs an order bump checkbox and an upsell page.
But what the business wants is increased return on investment, increased profits and more revenue per customer. Why do they want these benefits? That’s also a very good question.
It could be that a shoe shop who needs to live previous word wants those revenue metrics to grow, once them because they want to hire new staff. Or they want to expand into new territories. What they want to increase their market share. It might be because the business owner wants to leave and sell the business. If you can identify the true reason why someone wants to grow their business, it’s an easier sell.
Focus on one business type/market
Circling back round to our niche discussion from earlier. My advice would be to focus on one business type or market at a time. Even if you know that multiple businesses could use your conversions, and multiple businesses have a previous website.
You still want to attract one particular business type or market. This doesn’t necessarily mean an industry. As I’ve explained before, I don’t believe in industry is a niche.
However I do believe that clearly defining who you work with, is the fastest way to generate authority, and referrals.
Use this post here to identify markets and niches that you could attract.Commit to your market and create all the useful content you can. Imagine being able to run a webinar or blog post or YouTube series, on how anyone can sell their business in half the time by increasing the average transaction value per customer.
All of a sudden you’d position yourself as an extremely valuable player in their marketplace. The best part? Is that it’s an expanding market because they only have a website, you don’t have to build a brand-new website from scratch and if you play it right, it can be more profitable than building a new website project.
But what about recurring revenue?
We’ll wrap up this post by exploring recurring revenue with previous website projects. Even if you don’t have previous customers, most websites are built and then abandoned by the original creators. The good news is that maintaining a previous website and increasing conversions, leads beautifully into recurring revenue.
If you want a better look at some recurring revenue products you can use, read this post.
So are you going to go after website owners? Businesses with current websites? Let me know in the comments below who your niche is, and what conversions you can help them with.
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