The traditional marketing funnel has you start with a low cost item (generally under $50), then follow a sequence of events to upsell you and increase the value of your purchase. This approach works, and can be wildly successful…
However, today I’d like to share a strategy we deployed that is rather counterintuitive – it’s called The Reverse Marketing Funnel.
What Is a Reverse Marketing Funnel?
A reverse marketing funnel starts prospects at the top, with your most expensive offering, and moves those who don’t convert down the ascension ladder to progressively lower-priced offers. Rather than starting from the least expensive item and ascending a prospect up the value ladder, you lead with the premium offer and down-sell from there.
This is a strategy that works great for coming down off of a product launch, or following up a high-converting premium offer promotion.
You see, any time you run a marketing campaign – whether you’re doing a product launch, sending out a free whitepaper, or doing a free audit/assessment – you’re getting people to raise their hands and identify themselves as potential customers for your business.
If you’re giving away a free report for back pain (for example), you’re getting a list of people who are either experiencing back pain themselves, or seeking to assist someone they know who has back pain.
Novice marketers will take these names and try to sell them only one particular product or service. They’ll attempt many times, and convert 2% or 3% of those prospects into actual buyers.
But what about the 97%-98% of people that didn’t buy?
Many will be ignored… Others will be given another opportunity to buy a short time down the road, after they’ve cooled off, but many of the potential sales will have been lost.
However, these are people that said they have a problem… And they’re still looking for a solution.
If they didn’t buy what you offered them, perhaps it’s because they were hoping you would offer them something different.
Case Study: How the Reverse Funnel Added $86,679 to One Campaign
That’s exactly what we discovered during a strategy I designed for a client of mine.
To give you a little background, we were selling an information product for $2,495 (of course, we’re talking about information products here, but often the best ideas come from outside of your industry, so… If you sell a widget or a service, I encourage you to see how you can apply a similar strategy to your business).
First, we created a squeeze page, where we drove traffic with a series of 4 free videos (this can also be done with offline mailing for people asking for a free report).
The first 3 videos set the stage for the final free video, which was a sales video.
Of the 15,000+ people who requested the free report, we generated a total of $516,330 in 10 days…
This is where most marketers stop…
However, 97% of the people didn’t buy because they wanted something else… So, a few days later, we offered them a down-sell that solved a similar problem to the one they were having, but without many of the same benefits.
The next offering was priced at $997. It’s similar to the initial offering, but didn’t have many of the bells and whistles that were offered at the $2,495 price point.
The result?
An extra $46,679 in 5 days, instantly adding an extra 9.04% profit to the campaign.
…And now we’re in the middle of offering another down-sell. This time, it’s priced at $197 – and if history repeats itself, this will produce another $40,000 in 5 days, adding another instant 8% (+/-) to the campaign for a total of $86,679 in additional profits.
We’ll continue to run these down-sells to the same list… Then we’ll offer cross-sells.
For example, if someone was interested in guitars, and we made them an offer for every guitar product offering we had – we might cross-sell them by offering them music lessons or software for recording/editing their own music.
All in all, we predict that before we’re finished, we’ll likely have increased the value of the initial campaign by as much as 50% or more.
Why the Reverse Funnel Works
Now here’s the secret…
It comes down to one word, and you’re going to want to write this down.
You ready?
The word is: Timing.
You see, when your prospects identified themselves as looking for a solution to their problem, they’re considered a “hot lead.”
They’re hungry. They’re interested. They want to buy the right product for them. Now it’s your turn to figure out how to best serve these clients…
As my dad used to tell me, “You’ve got to strike while it’s hot.”
FAQs
What is a reverse marketing funnel?
A reverse marketing funnel (also called a reverse or inverted sales funnel) starts prospects at your most expensive offer first, then moves the people who don’t buy down the ladder to progressively lower-priced offers. It is the opposite of the traditional funnel, which starts with a low-cost item and upsells from there.
How is a reverse funnel different from a traditional sales funnel?
A traditional funnel ascends: a sub-$50 entry offer, then upsells to increase order value. A reverse funnel descends: the premium offer leads, and non-buyers receive a down-sell that solves a similar problem with fewer bells and whistles, then further down-sells and cross-sells. Both work; the reverse funnel monetizes the 97-98% of hand-raisers a traditional campaign leaves behind.
When should you use a reverse marketing funnel?
It works best coming off a product launch or a high-converting premium promotion, when you hold a list of prospects who raised their hands but didn’t buy. Those people already identified themselves as having the problem; timing is the asset, so the down-sell sequence should run while the interest is still hot.
Does the reverse funnel work outside of info products?
Yes. The mechanism is offer-sequencing to hand-raisers, not the product type. A service business can lead with its flagship engagement, then down-sell a scaled-back version, an assessment, or a productized starter offer to prospects who weren’t ready for the full commitment.
The reverse funnel is one play inside a bigger question: does your business have a demand engine that runs on systems instead of luck? If revenue still swings with your bandwidth, start with the feast-or-famine cycle, then look at how the full Predictable Profits Operating System sequences demand, sales, and scale. And if your growth depends on landing bigger accounts, pair this strategy with the Dream 100.
