Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hi friend. Welcome back to her Empire Builder show where we dive deep into the mindset, strategy and magic of building an epic online business your way. Today's episode is so good and I know you're going to love it. Especially if you've ever felt even the tiniest bit icky or confused about sales funnels. Because we are joined by the fabulous Kate McGiven who is not only a multi award winning serial entrepreneur and self proclaimed super nerd, but also the brilliant founder of hellofunnels. Co. Kate has this incredible gift for helping awesome humans, mostly women, fall in love with funnels that are simple, proven and totally sleaze free. Which is what we need.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:00:46]:
Funnels that actually feel good to build, run and sell through to make you money. In this episode, Kate and I are chatting about how to build funnels that are aligned with your values. What's working right now in the online space with evergreen funnels and step by step strategies that you as the course creator can turn leads into paying students on? Well, I would say autopilot, as autopilot as it gets. I don't think that anything is passive, but it is a very leveraged way to sell. Whether you are just getting started or if you are scaling your digital empire builder. Your digital empire builder. Can you, can you tell that I say empire builder like 50,000 times next to each other whether you are scaling your digital empire. This conversation is going to help you rethink automation, simplify your systems and I bet you will enjoy the process because for me I am very heavy on live launching.

Tina Tower [00:01:44]:
I love live launching. It's how most of our business has been built. But I love having evergreen also at the side and it is like I said, the most leveraged way that we can get build our list, get audience into our programs. What I love to do is have those evergreen programs that is fantastic for when people aren't quite ready for your signature course and then by the time they do that they're like, you know what, I love her. She's awesome. She has everything that I knew I needed. And so then when you're live launching, they're ready to go. So I bet you're gonna love this episode and make some more money without as big an effort.

Tina Tower [00:02:21]:
Enjoy. Kate, welcome to her Empire Builder.

Kate McKibbin [00:02:25]:
Thank you so much for having me. Very excited.

Tina Tower [00:02:27]:
I love it. So we have actually just finished a retreat together for four days where I to learn so much about you and your business and your funnels and I recommend you all the time because I am so big on live Launching and love everything to do with course creation. But my secondary is my Evergreen. Funnel is one of those things that always sit there that I'm like, yes, I need to give them some love. I need to do it. And you just have it absolutely nailed. So I'm very excited today to talk all about funnels.

Kate McKibbin [00:03:01]:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I feel like most people either seem to go hard on one or the other. Like, I feel like for me, launches again, they're like that. Yeah, do them if I have to.

Tina Tower [00:03:11]:
But. Yeah, well, I mean, like, I always go. I would love Evergreen if I could get it to work as well as the results of live launch, which is why I love everything that you talk about.

Kate McKibbin [00:03:21]:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'm very excited to kind of nerd out on all of this today.

Tina Tower [00:03:26]:
Nerding out is my favorite thing. So take us back. When was the moment that you realized that funnels were gonna be your jam? Was it something strategic that you decided, or did you kind of just fall into it? How did. How did funnels end up being the thing?

Kate McKibbin [00:03:42]:
Well, it was sort of as one of those moments where I had to have a coach give me permission to do the thing that I really wanted to do. So prior to this version of business. Cause I've been in a version of online business since, like 2007. So prior to this, I was doing a business called Secret Bloggers Business. So that was teaching people how to run their blogs, like a. Because prior to that, I had a vlog. So, you know, that kind of whole.

Tina Tower [00:04:07]:
Little journey, blogging, how fun that was.

Kate McKibbin [00:04:10]:
I know.

Tina Tower [00:04:11]:
Yeah. And you're just simple back then cake.

Kate McKibbin [00:04:13]:
And you just take a photo with a filter on Instagram and that was. And it was your breakfast, and that was fine. And that was all you had to do.

Tina Tower [00:04:20]:
Yeah.

Kate McKibbin [00:04:21]:
Yes. Much simpler days. But so I'd kind of gone through that blogging sort of space, and the bit that I'd always really loved was the behind the scenes part. Like, my blog wasn't just a blog where you just published posts. It was a blog that I'd had this custom app built into so people could share bookmarks, the things that they liked. And it had, like, added affiliate links to things automatically. And it was all this kind of nerdy stuff ahead of your time. It was.

Kate McKibbin [00:04:49]:
I kind of made, like, a bad version of Pinterest before there was Pinterest. But, yeah, I always like that. Like, that's kind of my happy place that, like, how can we make these machines get us this outcome? Like, I just find it like really, really fun. So it's grown up Lego or whatever. And so I was doing a lot of that. I also kind of had the same thing with a lot of people had with that blogging space that you're relying on a really unreliable and pretty unfun business model of having to sell your soul to different companies to spruce their content. And it was just giving crazy revenue dips. And I was like, no, I don't like any of this.

Kate McKibbin [00:05:27]:
So I had started to create really basic funnels for our blog. Cause it was getting like, we see a lot of traffic, like half a million visitors a month kind of thing. And so I was like, well, this is crazy. We should be able to do something more than just running banner ads. So basically I've been playing with all of this stuff and at the same time had been teaching this online course about how to do, you know, how to set up your newsletter and how to create content and all the more basic sort of parts of blogging. And I had a coach at the time and I was just like, I just don't love it. Like, I'm not actually loving the blogging in the first place. I love the course side of things, but I don't really, I'm not that excited about what I'm teaching because I don't love blogging as a business model.

Kate McKibbin [00:06:08]:
I'd done it for a long time and it was, you know, a lot of work for kind of not that much reward. And yeah, the coach was like, what do you like? I'm like, well, I like this behind the scenes stuff, you know, Like, I love setting up marketing funnels and stuff. She's like, why don't you just teach people how to do that? And I'm like, surely no one cares about, you know, surely I'm the only person who cares about this stuff this much. And she kind of just you know, planted that seed. And pretty quickly after that I was like, no, no, that's. I think that's the thing.

Tina Tower [00:06:39]:
And, and it's the thing that you find so much easier than most people find as well, which is what makes it the perfect thing.

Kate McKibbin [00:06:46]:
Yeah, like to me it's just very. Oh, I don't know, it's. I don't know if you can be born being good at funnels because babies don't tend to have that much experience in it. But I just always, My brain just works this way. Like, I like the. That kind of the other side, like, don't show me a thing. I did. And that's what we all aspire to.

Kate McKibbin [00:07:05]:
And it's so much fun. Like it's, you know, I've been talking to lots of, you know, obviously the mastermind and other, you know, other people in the space who've been in the space for a long time. And I know a lot of people are feeling like really tired and stuff right now. And I'm like, I just love it. I just want to keep going.

Tina Tower [00:07:20]:
Not me. I'm having fun with funnels. I love it. So you do talk about, I've seen you talk about sleaze free funnels. What does that mean to you personally? And is there a part of your story that kind of shaped that philosophy?

Kate McKibbin [00:07:36]:
Well, I think that was the other kind of story I had about saying I help people with funnels because funnels like historically have got a pretty bad reputation. You know the bro marketing sort of style of funnels where, you know, you land on a page and you've got a 15 minute countdown timer and then you go here and here and. And it's just I feel like yes, they, they work really well as a reason that people do them.

Tina Tower [00:08:04]:
Yeah.

Kate McKibbin [00:08:05]:
But I don't think you ever want to have your, you know, any experience that someone's having with you either as a lead or as a person experience and have them coming away going. I just didn't feel good. Yes. And I've kind of realized like over time that everyone actually sort of has a bit of a different sort of level of, well, just like how they like to be marketed to. Like some people love a discount. Other people think discounts are show something is not very valuable. Some people love to do things live. They're like, yes, give me a live event, I'm gonna buy a ticket, I'm gonna show up, I want.

Kate McKibbin [00:08:39]:
And other people, like, I don't. I want to be able to do it in my own time. So I think there's definitely. And this is my kind of. I know my motto anyway. But I feel like the kind of marketing that you probably enjoy consuming and being a part of because you generally attract people similar to you is like if therefore people coming into your world, not all of them, but I think a large portion of them normally will probably have a similar level of comfort around the different types of marketing tactics you can use. So that's why I sort of say people, if you don't like a countdown timer, don't use a countdown timer.

Tina Tower [00:09:15]:
I'm saying that though, like, I mean we just closed live launch last month and it always. Because I'm the First to buy. If I want something, I'll make the decision. And I'm like, first in on the early bird. I get all my bonuses. Like, that's what I like. I can like. It always blows my mind how many people come in in the last eight hours.

Tina Tower [00:09:34]:
Always every single launch. I'm like, what are you, what are you still thinking of? It's been a week. Like, what are we still doing? But always about 30 to 50% of our entire eight day launch comes in in the last eight hours. And this is why I think, you know, when you're doing Evergreen, those funnels, although they're, I went through a stage and going, I don't want to do countdown timers. Like they're that sleazy thing or they're scamming because especially if it's not real, you know, and people are put into the fake ones, I always took a lot of issue with that. But I also understand that people need that incentive to take the action.

Kate McKibbin [00:10:09]:
Yeah, well, I'm like, I'm pro, I'm absolutely pro giving people a deadline and it has to be a real deadline. But I think, you know, and that's one of those, like, I feel like with marketing, like you've got so many different levers you can pull that can increase conversions and. But I don't think people should ever pull a lever just for the sake of increasing conversions if it doesn't sit right with them. Because if they're ever going to be like, oh, I just hate this, then they're not going to feel good about promoting it. And so it's not like the same with, you know, creating your offers or your pricing, all that stuff. Like, I feel like it's always got to be in alignment. So, yes, I 100% love countdown timers. I've tested them.

Kate McKibbin [00:10:49]:
They definitely increase your conversions, like massively. But if you just can't make yourself feel good about them, then there's other tools in the toolbox that you can use.

Tina Tower [00:11:02]:
Yeah, I love that. I mean, we have one of our evergreen programs that I literally say, this is not going anywhere. It's here when you need it.

Kate McKibbin [00:11:10]:
Yes. How's that?

Tina Tower [00:11:12]:
Leave it all up to you.

Kate McKibbin [00:11:14]:
Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Tina Tower [00:11:16]:
So when you were building hello Funnels, what are some of the biggest mindset hurdles that you've had to overcome from a business point of view and how did you move through those?

Kate McKibbin [00:11:26]:
I think the first one I had to come up with was it's okay to do the things that you're seeing other people Doing like. I definitely had a bit of a, like, oh well, if everyone's doing a webinar, I've got to do something else.

Tina Tower [00:11:39]:
Ah, so you're always trying to like create something completely different.

Kate McKibbin [00:11:42]:
Yes. Which is just hard. I feel like there's a time and place for that. But usually if you look around your market and everybody's doing a certain thing, it's because it works. And why make life harder for yourself? Just because you kind of have this thing that is bad to be.

Tina Tower [00:11:57]:
Yeah.

Kate McKibbin [00:11:57]:
Copying when really. So that was a shift. It's like not obviously copying is copying and you don't ever copy. But if you can see strategies and tactics that are working for people. Yeah, you can model them and you can make them your own and you can, you know, I love to now let the market do the research for me. Like whether it's pricing or particular different, like tactics or strategies. Like when anytime I see someone going on about like some shiny new thing, I'm like, no, I want to see a long lasting trend because I also want to make sure that whatever it is we're putting time into is something that's going to last and it's not something that's maybe just working this week because there's been a tweak in the algorithm.

Tina Tower [00:12:36]:
Yeah, that's it. And have you found that that's changing rapidly because of AI coming in so heavily?

Kate McKibbin [00:12:42]:
I think the stuff that's changing for now because I think, I know we talked about this at the retreat as well. Like had a bit of an AI existential crisis about midway through last year where I was like, oh my gosh, we're not going to have jobs in like six months time. Like there's is, you know, it's just, it's too good. Like why would anyone ever need humans?

Tina Tower [00:13:04]:
And then tried the image generation though, for graphic design. I mean, it's just terrible.

Kate McKibbin [00:13:09]:
No one needs seven fingers and we're.

Tina Tower [00:13:12]:
A long way off. Yeah. We still have jobs, I reckon for at least a few more years.

Kate McKibbin [00:13:17]:
Yes. And then, you know, and it's just gonna change. It's just gonna like whatever it is, it looks like. So I think the biggest sort of change we've seen is it's not actually the like what we call like the conversion events. Like, you know, whether it's a webinar or it's a live launch or whatever it is, the fundamentals aren't changing that much. But I think there are nuances. I think there's like the actual offers adding in and leaning into like all the benefits that you can potentially have with something with AI. Obviously different markets have different needs, but you know, you could potentially help your client to get an outcome twice as fast if you can give them the right AI tools or, you know, and I think that kind of thing can just kind of help to give you a bit of a competitive edge.

Kate McKibbin [00:13:58]:
Yeah, I totally.

Tina Tower [00:13:59]:
I do think the like the strategies and the fundamentals are the same, but the way we actually do them is so much easier and more leveraged now.

Kate McKibbin [00:14:08]:
Yeah. Like I created a program the other day that was what I promoted all last month and based like I was out on a walk with chat. G man, chatgpt. Go for walks and we just have a chat. While I'm going.

Tina Tower [00:14:20]:
You nickname yours. Does it have a name or you just.

Kate McKibbin [00:14:23]:
No, I just got my chat. I know that people have got like chatter.

Tina Tower [00:14:26]:
It's chord depending on how far down the AI is, my friend. Rabbit hole.

Kate McKibbin [00:14:31]:
Right, right.

Tina Tower [00:14:31]:
And you've made it like your companion.

Kate McKibbin [00:14:34]:
Well, I do get to do the voice to voice and I've chosen the voice that I prefer. So it has a like a human sound. Yes.

Tina Tower [00:14:41]:
I love that. Yeah, me too.

Kate McKibbin [00:14:43]:
But it was crazy. It was like I had an idea, flesh it out, you know, mapped out all the modules, wrote the sales page, wrote the email sequences and I did this on a walk. Like Beautiful. Yeah. That would take weeks.

Tina Tower [00:14:57]:
Yeah.

Kate McKibbin [00:14:58]:
So yeah, you just get to be faster, which I really like.

Tina Tower [00:15:01]:
Yeah. So a lot of women course creators that I work with feel can feel, especially at the beginning, a lot of resistance around tech and automations.

Kate McKibbin [00:15:11]:
Yeah.

Tina Tower [00:15:11]:
Did you ever feel that way yourself? Or you were like, it was your jam right from the beginning. And when you come up against women that have that and are like, oh, hang on, it's too much tech, I don't know if I can do it. How do you soften that for people? Because I mean now like it's so. Oh, it's just so much more user friendly than it was back in the blogging days, you know.

Kate McKibbin [00:15:32]:
Oh, absolutely. Like we were having to like hard code things. If you wanted to change the color of a button, you had to know css. Like now it's so the tools are amazing. So no, I've always loved all the tech and you know, I basically. I sort of sound like I grew up bilingual, but my second language was technology because my family is all like, my brother does computer game design. My dad was an Internet service provider. Like we were a very techie.

Kate McKibbin [00:16:00]:
We were like one of the first People have Internet in like 100 kilometer races. So it's kind of in my blood. So I do have a bit of a unfair advantage to that. But I think with anything it's just, it's a skill. And I think as a, as adults there's not often we kind of come into a space where we feel really uncomfortable and it's sort of, that's like, oh, this hurts my brain. I don't quite understand it. And it's only because it's new. And I think when you get out of practice of that learning, then then it can feel really confronting.

Kate McKibbin [00:16:32]:
But I don't think that anyone is born bad at tech. I think it's just you haven't been experienced to it and then because you've maybe created a story around that, you've then avoided it. So it's now, you know, it now becomes anything that you're sort of avoiding or you know, might be same as someone who's got a fear of heights. You know, it's not that you're more likely to fall off a building because you have a fear of heights, it's just you're now going to, you know, avoid that situation. Anytime you're in it, you're going to feel 10 times worse. So I think it can be. The tech is super friendly now. They all have little AI bots in them now as well to help you if you ever get stuck or kind of create them for you.

Kate McKibbin [00:17:09]:
Or there's so many templates like start simple, do it piece by piece. And then also again, we're all grownups and if you do get to a point where you're like, I just hate this and you can afford to, then there are people out there who can, like, there's tech bas who, they love this stuff and they happily be able to do it like 10 times faster than you might be able to do it. So I think there's options and I think if we have online businesses, we have to be able to embrace technology because that is the essence of an online business.

Tina Tower [00:17:39]:
So what has been the most surprising emotional win for you as a funnel nerd? So something that wasn't necessarily about money and metrics, but was there a moment that you were like, like, I've got.

Kate McKibbin [00:17:53]:
It, I've made it. Oh, I feel like. Well, the examples come to mind is a recent one where we sort of turned our front end funnels upside down and it actually made them work better. And I was like, so previously when we were doing. Because we've done low ticket offers for Years on and off. And generally as ads start to get too expensive, we'll turn them off for a while and then I sort of have another run. Because then ourselves like our, there's definitely a tandem for myself and my business when we are or aren't offering them. But, but we found it really frustrating that we were kind of whenever we had them running, even though running well, there would always be this limit.

Kate McKibbin [00:18:37]:
Like we'd maybe be able to get to like 15 a day, 20 a day would be the top. And I'm like, I want to get to like 50 a day or you know, like I want to be able to really blow this up because of how well it works. But yeah, there was always this kind of like dance around as you scaled up ads, costs got more expensive, et cetera. So one thing that we, I started to play with was what if instead of driving traffic straight to the offer, which is kind of traditionally what most people do, because you think of it like a paid lead magnet, we went back to the old, old way of doing things, which was having like a tripwire and then a follow up email sequence to that low ticket offer. So it's kind of like because people are taking a little bit longer to make decisions now and like I think there is that bit less trust. Lead magnets are actually less expensive than they used to be. So it sort of ticked all the boxes. I was like, oh sure, this is kind of feels a little bit, you know, 2015, surely it's not going to work.

Kate McKibbin [00:19:40]:
And we tested it and it worked so well. And so that was kind of, that felt really fun because it was, I don't know, anytime, anytime I get to solve a problem and it's not just like, oh, it works okay. It's like, no, that works really, really well. That makes me happy. Did you get to the fifth of your day? Sorry?

Tina Tower [00:19:56]:
Did you get to the 50 a day?

Kate McKibbin [00:19:57]:
Oh, no, not, not yet. We've only decided running. We've started scaling the ads. But it's all, we've already gone past what we were at before.

Tina Tower [00:20:04]:
So I mean that's a lot of like, that's a lot of cha ching, cha ching, cha ching. Do you know that's something that I miss in. I bet you you even know a tech way around this. Have you ever had a Shopify site?

Kate McKibbin [00:20:14]:
Oh, I played with it, but I've.

Tina Tower [00:20:16]:
Never Shopify, when you make a sale, gives you the notification and if you've got the sound on goes cha ching, which is a very happy sound. We don't have that in any of our, like, stripe checkouts, thrive cart checkouts, kajabi checkouts. It's not a thing.

Kate McKibbin [00:20:30]:
I can tell you how to do it.

Tina Tower [00:20:32]:
We're going to talk about this later.

Kate McKibbin [00:20:34]:
I'm like, I want that.

Tina Tower [00:20:35]:
I want that so bad. We've got to find that out later. That's going to be fun. What is your definition of a simple funnel and how do you resist the temptation to overcomplicate it when we have so many different things that we can incorporate in?

Kate McKibbin [00:20:51]:
Yeah, sure. So first of all, need to decide what the objective of the funnel is. So is it a. Because most. Unless you're a total unicorn, we're kind of. Gone are the days where, like, one funnel can solve all of your business's problems. So I've normally like to try and go, all right, is this a funnel? Is it trying to solve the problem of I need more leads and I need that, you know, without paying lots of money for them, or is this funnel solving a problem of I need to be making more consistent sales? And there's always a little bit of overlap between the two. But I think it's important to decide, like, what's the actual most important thing, and then from that you choose what's then therefore going to be the easiest to sell offer.

Kate McKibbin [00:21:36]:
Some offers work better on Evergreen than others, and it's usually those ones that are a bit easier to understand that haven't typically needed phone calls to convert. Like something that someone can. They can see it, they can get a bit of information about it and, you know, be able to make that decision and then you match whatever that is you've chosen to, okay, well, what's the best type of, like, what's the best sort of conversion mechanism for that type of offer? And then you just do that to start with. So if, for example, you had a DIY sell program and it was like $300 to $2,000, then a webinar is usually the best. So you. Rather than going, okay, well, I'm going to have this opt in which is going to come into this, and then I'm going to have this low ticket. And then I'm going to have this webinar and then I'm going to have this upsell and this whatever, I would just do the webinar. Like, if that is the simplest and fastest way to get the outcome you want want start there, get that bit working, get that as your baseline.

Kate McKibbin [00:22:38]:
And then it's almost like Lego blocks. Then you can look at that and go, okay, well, this bit's working, but we need to get more people into it. Okay, well then we add this Lego block or if this was working but it's not really profitable, then we can add a different Lego block. But we just sort of. You start with the simplest way first.

Tina Tower [00:22:56]:
And what tech stack do you like to use for that? I think I know your answer to run the webinars, but what's your favorite to use there?

Kate McKibbin [00:23:05]:
I haven't had much luck doing all in ones because I like to be able to do more complicated things than most people need to be able to do. But I think like for a webinar funnel you could easily do that in an all in one. Like I know you're a Kajabi person, like, I think you could definitely do it there. I think when it comes to funnels, you just want to be able to see your stats really easily. That's. And that includes for, you know, for any landing pages, for any sales pages, and also for your, your actual email sequences. And you want to be able to have goals in your email sequences or a bit of logic so that you know, if someone purchases, you can easily pull them out of the sequence or if you need to, you know, if someone registers and they, someone attends but they don't, you can send a different person to email to this, to that. So that's where I know some of them are kind of come a bit unstuck.

Kate McKibbin [00:24:01]:
So my personal favorite tech stack is active campaign for emails, although I'm mad at them about putting their prices up. So I actually recommend ConvertKit to everybody because it's close enough and it's 10 times. 10, like less than 10 times the price. Yes. Then I have just said actually using click funnels for the landing pages. And check out the new version of ClickFunnels which, you know, hell must have frozen over because I used to hate clickfunnels. But I like the new version. It's quite, it's quite nice, quite clever.

Kate McKibbin [00:24:32]:
And that's pretty much all you wouldn't need to do.

Tina Tower [00:24:36]:
I thought you were gonna say deadline funnels.

Kate McKibbin [00:24:37]:
Oh, and deadline funnel. Oh, sorry. Yes. No, you need to have a timer. You need to have a real proper timer. Yes. I always forget about. They're just a given.

Kate McKibbin [00:24:45]:
They're just like always there all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tina Tower [00:24:49]:
That is the thing that I am like, I have never used deadline funnels until yesterday.

Kate McKibbin [00:24:55]:
Oh, okay.

Tina Tower [00:24:55]:
How did you sign up yesterday? I'm like, okay, we're going it, we're gonna, we're gonna Optimize these evergreen funnels. Let's go.

Kate McKibbin [00:25:02]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's. It's once you sort of realize how, like, once you've gone through one piece of software and you figure out how to do it, once you go, oh, this is actually quite easy. And now it's just a matter of, like, doing that with the next piece of software and the next. And then you. Then you're good.

Tina Tower [00:25:20]:
Then you're there. What are the most common mistakes that you see people make when they're like, you know, my funnels aren't converting and you get a little look in behind the hood? Is there consistent themes or errors that you see people make?

Kate McKibbin [00:25:33]:
Number one is I just haven't put enough traffic through it. So, like, 20 people have gone through and I haven't made a sale yet. It's like, well, if you don't know the actual benchmarks you're kind of looking for, it can be hard to know, therefore, what success is or isn't. But, yeah, definitely know what success looks like and making sure enough people have gone through that any numbers are statistically significant as well. Because I think, again, nothing happens when you launch a finalist. Quite often someone will get a sale on, like, the first day. It's almost like a little bit of, like, you know, good juju. And then they're like, oh, yes.

Kate McKibbin [00:26:08]:
And then they don't get one the next day or the next day or the next day because they've only had a trickle of people going through, and then they think it's broken. The other thing would be if they've used, like, untested things in their funnel. So that's why I recommend people start with, like, one sort of, like, Lego block at a time. And usually you want to either, preferably test it live first, because it just gives you, like, an influx of traffic all at once. So you can look at the numbers and go, yes, this offer actually sells at this price point with these bonuses. Or, yes, this webinar actually converts and people watch it to a certain point and there's people buying. So, like, you just want to know when you're building out your funnel that you're actually putting in stuff that works. So if you've set up something and it's all untested and it's really complicated and you don't have enough people going through it, it's gonna be really hard to figure out what is broken.

Tina Tower [00:26:58]:
Is there, like, a rule of thumb for when you say, like, know your numbers and your stats? If you were running a Cold audience lead magnet funnel. Is there a percentage that you would expect that page to be working at before you were like, the page is broken?

Kate McKibbin [00:27:13]:
Yeah. So for a lead magnet page, it's usually 35% would be the. The goal or more for the actual. So that's whether it's a webinar registration or, you know, freebie, like, always look for that 35% percent. Then for the overall funnel, like, regardless of what type of funnel, there's two numbers that we normally look at. Obviously, most important is roas. So if you're running traffic to it, you want, and if the point of it is profit, then you want to make sure it is profitable.

Tina Tower [00:27:44]:
But roas being return on ad spend.

Kate McKibbin [00:27:48]:
Yeah. Yes. And then the next number you would look at is.

Tina Tower [00:27:55]:
And it's.

Kate McKibbin [00:27:55]:
I don't know why it's this, but basically a 2% is kind of like your minimum conversion rate. So if you get 100 people, opt in, you want to get two sales as a minimum. So for people to go all the way sort of through your sequence. So if you're not getting that, then you definitely need to do some. Do some work. But I think, you know, with. If it's a low ticket offer, you would expect a lot higher than that. If it's a more premium offer, it may be that or slightly lower.

Kate McKibbin [00:28:26]:
So it kind of always. Yeah, there's different numbers for different. Different offers and different funnels. And it's a bit.

Tina Tower [00:28:32]:
Yeah, those benchmarks, 2% for sales, 35% for lead magnets.

Kate McKibbin [00:28:37]:
Yeah, that gives us in front at the other end.

Tina Tower [00:28:39]:
Yeah, yeah. Where does email automation play its strongest role inside your funnels? And where do people often misuse it? Like, I know when I got my start it was building kajabi sites and one of the. I mean, in probably my first 10 builds, there was a guy who was Californian, and that's what made me realize Americans can do things very differently to Australians. He had 72 emails in his, like, new friend nurture sequence. I was like, yeah, this, this is a lot. That's a lot. We have six in there. Where, where does email automation play its strongest role for you?

Kate McKibbin [00:29:18]:
Well, I'm probably closer to your Californian friend with.

Tina Tower [00:29:23]:
All the emails.

Kate McKibbin [00:29:25]:
All the emails. And I know some people have like a year's worth of emails they put people through and then they just start again. So. And they send it, they update it with a different newsletter each week. So they're getting fresh content.

Tina Tower [00:29:39]:
Yeah.

Kate McKibbin [00:29:40]:
But they basically have their journey mapped out and it has different offers throughout the year and they just, it's just on a loop. So I think it can be as much or as little as you like. Because my business is mostly like, I'd say it's like 80% automated. As far as the sales and marketing. I've got a lot of email marketing going on. So we have like, we have layers of funnels. We have our initial funnels and then depending what people do in those funnels, they'll then get moved through to next funnel animals and et cetera, you know. So there's a couple of mine is that kind of big spider webby kind of thing that I advise people not to do, but at least not start doing because it all started with one 72 hour sequence and then got that that was working and then like stacked it from there.

Tina Tower [00:30:27]:
So 2025 is where we are right now. What is one funnel strategy that's working right now that wasn't really on the radar a couple years ago?

Kate McKibbin [00:30:37]:
I would say it's. Yeah, the, the. That sort of like going back to the good old days of the tripwire. Like I'm loving the tripwire right now just because of the ad spend and the ad costs. And I know you flesh out explain.

Tina Tower [00:30:50]:
The tripwire for us.

Kate McKibbin [00:30:51]:
Yes. So tripwire is like OG marketing. Like I had a tripwire on my, you know, in like 2014 kind of thing and I kind of never loved them that much because they only converted a couple of percent. I'm like what's the point of, you know, what's the point of this? But we sort of now have the chance to be a bit smarter with them and there's a tools allow us to do that. But basically the tripwire is the point that serves. Is that when someone comes in to our world they get made a just unbelievably amazing offer that is going to both when they purchase. Obviously it helps to cover your marketing costs. And I'm so big believer of front end funnels like fund your marketing.

Kate McKibbin [00:31:38]:
So any sales that come from this get reinvested back so that you can kind of keep this like little machine going. But also they help to add trust. And I think that's the layer that wasn't so important before because I know a lot of people are having much longer sort of times to purchase from people who are coming into their world. Like ours have like more than tripled what they used to be. Because I think it's just, you know, again people, there's so many different reasons and so I think anything we can do to actually show that, you know, we are, we are worth trusting, we have something to say. We are not scammers, we are any of that stuff. I think that's really important. So if people can get like a little taste test and that's just gonna be something that's kind of happening all the time.

Kate McKibbin [00:32:26]:
And so you're kind of building this almost like second email list. Like you'll have your email list of subscribers and you also have an email list of customers and that those, you know, you can then kind of get clever with different things that you market throughout the year or just I think it's good to even just watch how they behave when you make offers to them because generally someone who's bought from you before, you know, it's sort of like that Marketing 101 that as long as they had a good experience, they're far more likely to buy again. So yeah, I find that this is just like, like it's not something that's going to solve all the problems tomorrow, but it just helps to build and sort of bring that positive momentum. And also like I said, getting those notifications on your phone is fun. Even if it's $7, you go yay. Like yes.

Tina Tower [00:33:13]:
So that brings me beautifully into the next question on pricing. So are you seeing patterns that are working really well right now? Like I know, I know we've tested so many times because the seven to me drives me crazy and going really does it. But it works all the time. Is the 274797 like works. I even tried like our 997 program for a while. I just did a thousand dollars, didn't.

Kate McKibbin [00:33:37]:
Sell that $3 makes a difference. So interesting.

Tina Tower [00:33:42]:
But are you seeing going through funnel, is there certain price points that are working at the moment straight off ad spend? Is there something that people should be aware of with that?

Kate McKibbin [00:33:53]:
I think again if the goal is that sort of customer acquisition or sort of lead acquisition, front end piece. I know there was a bit of a trend about a year ago going like the really, really cheap and that was like the $7 memberships or the $7, you know, programs and things like that.

Tina Tower [00:34:09]:
My nightmare.

Kate McKibbin [00:34:10]:
Well it, you know like the point of what they're trying to do was again make it so unbelievably good that you know, the ads cost would be lower because if you're getting a lot more people who convert from that click through then it's going to cost you less. I think the problem with that was that your, your average cart value from that then becomes Very hard to make it. Much like if someone's only spent $7 and then you want to upsell them to something, the most you can probably upsell them to is something maybe that's $30. Like it's. And then again, like it just kind of.

Tina Tower [00:34:43]:
It's a lot of that you need.

Kate McKibbin [00:34:46]:
So we, like, at the Moment we're running two front end funnels and one is a $27 offer and one is a $97 offer. And the $27 offer it has, the $97 offer is one of the upsells and then a couple of others. And then same like with the 97. The $27 is the order bump. So it's like it's the same offers, but they're just in a different order. The lead costs are pretty much the same. The $27 offer program is converting at nearly 5% and. But the average cart value is 50.

Kate McKibbin [00:35:18]:
I only know this because I literally was looking at this before I jumped on. I don't normally remember numbers as well.

Tina Tower [00:35:22]:
I love this. I love the numbers.

Kate McKibbin [00:35:24]:
But like, the average cart value is about $55 from that, whereas the $97 offer is converting about 2%, but the average cart value is $160. So it's actually, even though you're getting half the number of sales, it's. You're getting still way more revenue. Yeah. So my sort of. I think it's good to test these things, but I think if you are running that strategy, if it's possible, particularly if you are doing it as a triple wire kind of funnel versus running direct traffic to it. Like if I was running direct traffic to a $97 offer, it would cost me like, like 500 bucks to make that sale. It'd be stupid, but because you can do the lead magnet first, it just brings it right down.

Kate McKibbin [00:36:09]:
But I think if. Yeah, if you're kind of tossing it up, going to like, whichever the more expensive offer is, if you have a couple. I would probably start with that. Particularly if you have a really strong sequence because it's just going to give you more, like, gives you more place to space to play. Like, if you're making $150 a sale, then you can spend, you know, a lot more to make that sale than if you're making $55 a sale. So.

Tina Tower [00:36:34]:
Yeah.

Kate McKibbin [00:36:34]:
Nice. Yeah.

Tina Tower [00:36:36]:
So once someone you mentioned a little bit before at the beginning, and you were saying, you know, once something's working, if you dial it up, it can lose its effectiveness a little bit or it can get more expensive. Expensive. If someone has a funnel that is converting well, what's the best steps to take to scale it without kind of burning it out?

Kate McKibbin [00:36:54]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean scaling is never a straight line. It tends to go in steps and sort of, most people are able to sort of hit a point, particularly if like we're not talking like the low ticket. Like low ticket I think is a whole other beast. If you're trying to. Because you do the revenue you're getting back, like you just need to keep your ads costs so, so low. And that just kind of in itself puts a bit of cap on things. But maybe if you were doing a webinar funnel to like a 500 offer, for example, and I'm thinking about a particular client of mine, so she's had a funnel for nearly this webinar funnel, nearly six years and it's doing about 2 million now.

Kate McKibbin [00:37:35]:
And it's the same, same thing. Yeah, but it took six years to get to that.

Tina Tower [00:37:40]:
Yeah.

Kate McKibbin [00:37:40]:
And it's very much been like kind of go up, get one level and then you kind of go in and you refine. Like what? Okay, how can you make sure that all of the. Look at the open rates of your emails. Can we get them all to be 10% higher? Look at the, you know, it's that kind of obsessiveness that really takes it. Like I think it started about 20k a month and now it's. I don't know what's the maths on a like 200. Yeah, yeah. So it's like it's 10x.

Kate McKibbin [00:38:08]:
So you know, that's very much the, it's not just about spending more on ads. Like the other thing I think is really important, which a lot of people don't know is when you are running a funnel is, I think like just say if you had a 72 hour sequence in your funnel you'd be like, okay, well I assume everyone buys in 72 hours. That actually don't necessarily. And so it's really important to know actually what is the average amount of time it takes from a new lead to someone purchasing in a funnel. Like is it five days, is it seven days? Because they might not be. Again, depends on how your times and things are set up. But they might not even open up the webinar email till four days later. So they're not actually activating it for a little bit longer.

Kate McKibbin [00:38:52]:
So it's not always exactly how we intend it to be. And that was one of the things that she said like they were sort of the test ads and they test them for like three or four days and they weren't seeing a good roas, so they turn them off. But it actually takes seven to 10 days on average for their customers to buy. And so they had to actually just be more patient and wait for that full cycle to complete to actually see, you know, see that it was working. So you do. Yeah, you have to kind of, if your plan is like, I want a.

Tina Tower [00:39:25]:
Million dollar funnel thing, I'm hearing from you with that is how important, important knowing your numbers is.

Kate McKibbin [00:39:30]:
Yes, it is. And you know, that's why I think it's good to sort of invest in the tools that will allow you to see that, you know, like, it's. I'm all for like stuff, you know, just getting started with whatever you've got and whatever you can afford. But there's definitely points where you need better kind of going, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Tina Tower [00:39:49]:
Have you ever had a funnel flop and what did it teach you about humility, resilience or just plain strategy?

Kate McKibbin [00:39:57]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because I'm testing them all the time.

Tina Tower [00:40:02]:
It surprises me what works and what doesn't. Like I am constantly when I test things, when I a B split test and I will pick the wrong one often.

Kate McKibbin [00:40:13]:
Well, so one thing that I tested recently was having people, you know, they come into lead magnet, usually through like Instagram and then I had some people going directly to a 72 hour offer and then I had the second set of people, they had about five days of like really great value and stuff first and then they saw the 72 hour offer and I was like, well, surely people, like, they need a bit more warming up.

Tina Tower [00:40:39]:
Yeah, no, see, I would pick the value one.

Kate McKibbin [00:40:42]:
Yeah, the direct 1. Converted 3 times better.

Tina Tower [00:40:45]:
3 times?

Kate McKibbin [00:40:46]:
3 times. Like not even a small amount. It just so much better.

Tina Tower [00:40:51]:
See, I would have picked the wrong one. I'm like, yeah, warm them up with the value, show people what you got.

Kate McKibbin [00:40:56]:
Yep, yeah, yeah. Sometimes people are just ready to go. So.

Tina Tower [00:40:59]:
Yeah, and this is why I think like testing and measuring everything is so worth it because you just don't. And things change all the time. Buyer behavior changes all the time. Even I was talking about this the other day with social media with our recent launch and going, what worked in previous launches is different now and will probably be different in future launches as well. So you've got to always have this mix and this beautiful constant experiment going on.

Kate McKibbin [00:41:24]:
Yeah, yeah. Like no fundamentals. And then you play with the, you know, you have your sort of margin to play on top.

Tina Tower [00:41:31]:
Yeah. Okay, so my last question for you is a question that I ask everyone at the end. What does success look like for you? What are you building in your business?

Kate McKibbin [00:41:41]:
Success for me is just being able to basically do the work that I love. When, where and how often I want. Like that's sort of, that's sort of it. I just like that autonomy of being able to.

Tina Tower [00:41:54]:
Aren't we so lucky? I always think I don't know how people are not self employed. I just don't know. I'm like, I'm glad we have people that work for us and work for other people. We need, need that. But I'm like, I don't know how you could ever choose it, you know? After this, when we finish this episode, it's going to be about 2:30 in the afternoon. I'll take myself for a little walk, I'll play with the dogs for a bit. Then I might come back to my desk again. Like we just have so much beautiful freedom.

Kate McKibbin [00:42:21]:
Yeah, it's the, it's the best. But I don't know, there's still, I think you definitely have to have the right sort of. You have to be a bit crazy as well to do this, I think.

Tina Tower [00:42:32]:
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. So I shouldn't say like it's not all walks and playing with the dog. You know, you have to be able to risk and you have to be able to grit in and when times are good, enjoy the good times but know that the bad times will come as well and, and ride that roller coaster as we go.

Kate McKibbin [00:42:49]:
Yeah, yeah. So if you're not an adrenaline junkie, it's probably not for you.

Tina Tower [00:42:54]:
Yeah. Awesome. Kate, thank you so much for sharing us all the good stuff. We'll link to all of Kate's beautiful resources in the show notes below. You're an absolute champion. Thanks, Kate.

Kate McKibbin [00:43:04]:
Ah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.