If you’re looking to generate targeted traffic and sales from Twitter, there may be a few simple strategies and tactics you may not have considered.

In the direct response world, we have a proven tested formula to generate profits through the use of a marketing funnel.

What is it? And more importantly, how can it help you to reap huge rewards through Twitter?

Let’s look at the marketing funnel itself first.

With the “marketing funnel” model, a person makes a small purchase (yes, supplying an email or physical mailing address is considered a payment of sorts), and over time you “funnel” your customers towards more and more high-end products and services, step by step, by selling them to the next level.

So by “funneling” your prospects into paying customers, you’re setting the stage to provide tremendous value to them. So much value, in fact, that your customers begin to look forward to receiving content from you.

And with that value comes the opportunity to take your customer to the next level, where you can sell higher-end goods to them.

And this isn’t a one-sided benefit. Both you and your customer benefit by this relationship. Your customer benefits when he gets even more value…something he really wants. You’re helping him in that regard.

And of course you benefit as well by slowly graduating your customer to your “A” list, where you can provide even more value.

Take a look at a typical online marketing funnel:

Let’s walk through each step of the funnel to gain a clearer understanding of how the funnel works.

1. Your prospect enters the funnel by responding to your incentive or “ethical bribe” to raise their hand and give you their contact information. He is now a lead on your mailing list.
2. You continue to provide value to him, but you want him to make the transition from a non-paying lead to a paying customer. As a result, you give him a front-end, or entry-level, offer on a product or service directly related to the value he received when opting to join your list. You may make the offer at a breakeven or even an initial loss, because you know you will more than make up for it on back-end sales.
3. If he doesn’t purchase your front-end product, you continue to sell him on the same offer or different front-end offers—ideally both, because he just may not be in the market for your initial offer at this time, but may be later.
4. When he purchases your front-end product, he is now a customer. You are now “warming him up” to doing further business with your company. Once he sees that you over deliver on your promise of value, he’ll feel more comfortable buying from you again.
5. You want to graduate him to the next price level, so you make him an offer on a higher-end product or service related to the entry-level one he already bought. If he doesn’t buy, you follow a similar approach as step 3 above. That is, you continue to make him offers, but this time on the mid-level product.
6. Once he purchases your mid-level product, you move onto the high-end product. He is now conditioned to buy from you with confidence and without worry, because he knows what an outstanding value you’ve been giving him. He’s seen the results of your products first hand, so his buyer’s resistance is reduced. He is now on his way to becoming one of your “A” clients, the 20 percent responsible for 80 percent of your profits.
7. You continue to sell him higher ticket items and provide even greater value to him.

The steps I have listed are a very simplified approach. You’ll soon see that there is much more to it if you truly want to be successful in the long run, but it’s not rocket science by a long shot.

For instance, each time he purchases from you, you’ll want to do up-sells and cross-sells. Up-sells are more expensive finishes, grades, styles, or a bigger version of the product (“Do you want to super-size that?”).

Cross-sells are other items that go along with the product. Something complementary. A carrying case, extra paper, ink, blank media, whatever (“Do you want fries with that?”)

After he buys, you’ll want to ask him for referrals, a testimonial, and do everything in your power to make sure he is satisfied. You want him to be satisfied so he’ll buy again of course, but you want also want to reduce your refund rate and gain his endorsement.

You want him to tell all of his friends and colleagues about his positive experience with your company.

You probably know when someone has a bad experience with a company they’re more likely to tell others about it than when they have a pleasant experience. You want to encourage them to tell all about their pleasant experience.

And then you’ll want to develop some kind of residual income, where they pay you so much a month or year forever until they cancel. Not everyone will do that, of course, but your “A” customers probably will.

And you can create different residual levels, just like you have different product levels, all at different price points.

Notice how the width of the funnel gets smaller towards the bottom? The width represents the number of customers at that height, or stage, of the funnel. However, the smaller the width, the more money they are spending with you.

In fact, the amount of money they spend with you can be thought of as being inversely proportionate to the width of the funnel (more or less). So the 20 percent responsible for 80 percent of your profits are at the bottom of the funnel.

The other 80 percent that give you 20 percent of your profits are towards the top. This distribution is a general observation and not a mathematical absolute. It might be 70/30 or 90/10 or somewhere in between.

This is no accident. Your “A” customers, your biggest advocates, are in the smallest segment of your customer base…the bottom of the funnel (but the top in terms of the value you deliver to them).

When thinking in terms of this approach, which is a proven tested model, you might begin to wonder how the same logic could apply in terms of a social media site like Twitter, where the ultimate goal is to gain targeted traffic and ultimately more sales.

Here’s a simplified view of what such a “Twitter Funnel” might look like:

So what does this all mean, and how do you use it for maximum success?

Let me show you some ways I initiate the funnel with respect to Twitter, in a short video I’ve prepared for you. the video is actually the second in a series of my Twitter Traffic Swarm system.

For more on the Twitter Traffic Swarm system, check out the other videos and resources in the series.

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