The Design Business Show 195: Creating Funnels + Showing Up Effectively with Renée Nichole

Director : Melissa Burkheimer | August 29, 2022
Check out episode 195 of The Design Business Show with Renée Nichole to learn all about funnel strategy and showing up effectively in your business!

Meet Renée Serrant-Layne, an online marketing and launch strategist, marketing systems expert, and avid track and field fan. Armed with her FCE Framework, Renée works with online entrepreneurs to design and build their custom marketing ecosystems that take care of their audience on their entire journey to a purchase. And to do so in a way that feels fun, fulfilling, and aligned with the way they want to show up, serve and sell to their audience. Renée is able to break down the marketing process into easy-to-follow steps, through her signature foundation, communication, and expansion process. Renée has proven through her work with clients that having a profitable business doesn’t mean that you have to lose that personal touch or spend hours of your life doing activities that frustrate you and steal your joy.

With 10 years of business development and online marketing experience, Renée brings a wealth of knowledge to the table for her clients, spanning social media strategy, funnel design, and marketing tech, as well as development of multiple income streams.

Renée has been part of numerous marketing tech and business development panels, including the RAW Summit, the Innovate Barbados International conference, and many others. Renée’s signature direct yet approachable style always makes clients feel understood and appreciated. Clients love Renée because of her thoroughness, responsiveness, sincere desire to see their businesses succeed, and unshakeable commitment to helping experts show up, market, and sell their products and services through genuine connections with their audience

Here’s what we covered on the episode:

How Renée Got Started With Funnels + Showing Up Best

  • How Renée and I met through Sage Polaris, who recommended Renée to be on the podcast
  • Renée shares that she was working as a hairdresser in Barbados when she had her son but wanted a better way to leverage her skills and create a more flexible lifestyle, which is how she stumbled into consulting and the online space
  • When Renée first started, she had a mentor who was from Barbados that had created a virtual agency, which showed Renée what could be possible for her
  • To start, Renée was a general administration virtual assistant but quickly realized that wasn’t what she wanted to do
  • A client asked Renée about using the Katra platform to build funnels and systems – after tinkering around with it, Renée found it very fun, which is how she got started with funnels and became familiar with automation
  • Because Renée is a strategic thinker, she wasn’t just happy setting up automation and doing design, so strategy became a big part of what she did and still does
  • Renée believes being able to see the bigger picture and piecing smaller things together is an important skill to have when it comes to funnels because it takes a lot of little things to create your outcome
  • The first project Renée worked on was one where she had to design and set up a lead magnet – it was a downloadable PDF where she designed the page, set up the automation, and created a nurture sequence
  • In Renée’s business, they focus on offering design, tech set-up, and copywriting for funnels
  • Renée says it’s important to know yourself and your brand so you can weave it into everything you do – it’s not just about your brand colors; it’s about the entire look and feel of a page, the language you use inside email sequences and the type of lead magnets you use to get people to join your email list or buy from you
  • For example, If you are more of a writer and are good at using language to get people in your funnels, you’re probably not going to use a lot of videos or a podcast; you might use blog posts instead because writing is the best medium for you to communicate your value to your audience
  • When it comes to funnels, Renée says it’s not about what the latest tools are or what’s trending; it’s about thinking about who you are, what your brand stands for, how you feel most comfortable, and what the most effective way is for you to show up and communicate with your audience

Client Success Story + Funnel Strategy

  • Renée shares the story of a client who wanted a funnel built and explains that the best way this client shows up is through speaking engagements, so at the end of the client’s speaking sessions, she had a specific call to action which resulted in the client having an 80% email open rate, a 45% – 60% open rate for her nurture sequence and making over $100,000 on this one offer
  • Renée’s bread crumb sequence that they integrate into pretty much all nurture sequences is a way to drop information in bits to keep people engaged and wanting more until they get to the main offer
  • How mapping out the funnels is one of Renée’s favorite parts of the process because people don’t understand how strategic you have to be when creating a funnel – it’s the whole process of someone learning about you to guiding them to buy your product or service
  • Renée finds that most people take the standard blueprint when it comes to funnels and apply it to their business without thinking about if it’s in alignment with how they want to run their business or how they want to show up to communicate and sell
  • We are too ridged in the way we think about getting someone into our space and onto our email list – we need to realize there are so many different ways to get someone into your funnel
  • Some things that are trending and working well, Renée says, are audio summits and podcasts
  • Webinars are not dead, but Renée says they are very dependent on the type of business you have, your business model, and who your audience is – the content of your webinar is very important and needs to be strategic
  • Renée uses her Facebook group and her personal Facebook page to market for her business but says referral partnerships have been the biggest driver for her business
  • In the last few years, Renée has learned that being able to pivot is essential to businesses because the market is everchanging, so you have to pivot to best serve or communicate with your audience
  • Another thing Renée has learned about herself is that she prefers relationships – she thinks it’s very important to focus on developing relationships because not everyone will become a client, but they could become a referral partner or ambassador for your brand
  • Focus on connecting with people, being genuine, and authentic with people instead of just selling, selling, selling
  • Also, know that it’s okay to do things differently than other people – you can take their advice and decide not to use it or adjust it and do it your own way – Renée shares that her approach to funnels has changed significantly over the last four years
  • Renée thinks we need to be way more strategic when it comes to funnels because we have approached funnels in an incorrect way for so long
  • The intensive Renée did that changed her approach – she says you need to be more focused on the quality of clients you attract at the top of your funnel and then filter people out based on whether they are ready to work with you or not ready to work with you right now
  • What we tend to do is market to everybody and get anyone we can in our funnel, but what that does is dilutes the quality of clients because it’s not speaking to a specific person who needs your information
  • How you should focus on attracting a very specific person that you know has been thinking about that problem at that particular point in time and then filter (instead of funneling) them into two segments – those who are ready to pay and looking for a solution and those who still need more information
  • When you address your funnels with Renée’s mindset, you will see that your buy-in time is shorter and your sales sequence is shorter because you’ve filtered people at the beginning vs. the end
  • If you’re funneling, it can feel forced or pressure-focused, but filtering will help you have a much easier time developing and mapping out your funnels and presenting information in alignment with where the person is at in terms of the buyer’s journey
  • Connect with Renée on Facebook, join her Simple, Sustainable Marketing Facebook Group or visit her website to learn more

 

Links mentioned:

Connect with Renée on Facebook

Simple, Sustainable Marketing Facebook Group

Renée-Nichole Website

 

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