Q & A Episode 48 - From Scroll to Sale: Building a Smarter Funnel
Episode #48 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | From Scroll to Sale: Building a Smarter Funnel
What’s the point of a beautiful website or an aesthetic Instagram if no one takes the next step? In this episode, Mark and Alyssa explore the full sales funnel—from awareness to action—and how blogging, Pinterest, and email marketing each play a role. Plus: the hourglass sales strategy you didn’t know you needed.
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About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. WIlliams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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Mark D. Williams 00:00
We've had the podcast now for two and a half years, coming up on three, and I get questions all the time through DMS, on Instagram, emails, as well as to our account. Maybe we've had a guest on where a question has come up that really triggers an idea for you. If you didn't know, we have a one to one consulting session through the curious builder platform on our website, curious builder.com or curious builder podcast.com you can click on the one to one and schedule one hour of my time, and we will simply just sit down, have a virtual call, and we'll talk about any business idea that you want, marketing, branding, operations, really, anything that helps you and helps your business. Maybe it's a guest that you had on that you want an introduction to. Maybe it's a guest we've had on and they brought up something about scaling or hiring and firing or anything that might resonate with you as a business owner, that you want to expand and talk on. We'd be happy to do it again. That can all be found in our consulting page. It's really been really enjoyable for me as well to work directly with people. We've had probably 10 or 15 of these over the last year. A lot of times it's contacts or people to set them up in a way that makes them successful. And so if you're interested in that, please reach out to us at the curious builder podcast.com, it's the hourglass funnel sales strategy, right? So you, you start, they all come down through, but then you really, once you have a client, you've converted them. You know, you can, you can have another client, or they can be, they can sort of be your sales funnel. We'll have to, we'll have to write a book. This is a whole other. This is a whole we just discovered a whole new line of thinking here. I love it. I mainly because I was in the sauna last night.
Mark D. Williams 01:39
Welcome to fierce builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today is Thursday Q and A, and we have a returning guest on we have Alyssa Abbott from Alvin vine socials. She was on episode 68 if you want to hear her whole business story. We also had her on a month or so ago for a Q and A, all about the power of blogging. And I wanted to bring Alyssa back on to talk about sales funnels. You know, I think it's really important as home builders across the country, or really any business, we are thinking about sales. And there's a number of different ways, a number of different kinds of sales funnels. And so we were chatting offline, and I just thought it'd be an interesting topic to kind of dive into. So I guess let's get right into it. We've got 20 minutes here to talk about digital sales funnels. I think the first thing is like, Hi, I'm over here. Like, how do you find me? Like, it seems like step one is like, find me. Do you think that's the first step, or do you think you start first with a strategy? First
Alyssa Abbott 02:29
you have your business, right? You're like, how do I think that's just it? It's, how do people find me? You can have a fantastic website, you can have Instagram, you can just be putting stuff out there. Think that's kind of the top of the funnel. And a lot of people get stuck in that point. They're just, it's maybe a broken funnel, where it's just like, I'm just, I've got everything out there for the top of the funnel, but I'm not actually like making it skinnier as they go through my process. It's just like throwing spaghetti at the wall and
Mark D. Williams 02:59
shoots. And I played Chutes and Ladders last night with my kids. It's just a shooting a ladder. You know, you spend money on the way up and you just shoot it out the ladder. So it's like, no, no concept, no plan here. Yeah,
Alyssa Abbott 03:09
yeah. I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. And even people who are like, Okay, I want to blog. Like, I want to blog and do Pinterest. And those are very much kind of top of funnel. I would say blogging could be a little bit down the ladder, but it's you do all those things. But if you don't have that strategy of going down the funnel, it's where a lot of people get stuck. Do
Mark D. Williams 03:31
you think that? I mean, let's go high level, and let's talk about each step of the way. So you have this big funnel, and we're trying to get it into a one. Is the end goal, a one on one meeting is that most people's obviously that. I guess maybe it's even easier than that. It's like you want a sale. So the goal is to get the right person through the through your funnel, so that the client has a good experience through their funnel, not a bumpy ride down the slide and they get to they get the home. I guess in my case, this sales funnel obviously is not new analogy. Lots of things use. It doesn't matter if you're a builder or not in this scenario, but if but is that typically you're trying to get that first interaction, or do you think your sales funnel even goes farther than that? Like, it's actually the signed contract. Like, where do you think the end date of a sales funnel is? Or does it never end because after you Well, I mean, I'm answering my own question. Yeah, it's like a circle funnel. It's like an hourglass. Hey, actually, it's too funny. Tasks, it goes in, and then when you're done, it flips back over, because now that is you've got, actually, that works, even that really does work. Yeah, it's the hourglass funnel sales strategy, right? So you, you start, they all come down through. But then you really, once you have a client, you've converted them. You can, you can have another client, or they can be, they can sort of be your sales funnel. We'll have to, we'll have to write a blog. This is a whole other. This is a whole we just discovered a whole new line of thinking here. I love it. I mainly because I was in the sauna last night and I kept flipping the hourglass back and forth. So that's probably why it's fresh in my mind.
Alyssa Abbott 04:56
No, that's fantastic. Well, I think of like a design. Minor where you know, okay, I they do. You hope that person, they'll go through your funnel. I would say it depends. There's a lot of variables, but the end of the funnel is that sale. They got the job, they complete the job, and then flips it over, and it's like, okay, well, luckily for a repeat client, you don't have to go through all the cold phases, they're warm. They already know you. They already love you, trust you, and so that's an easier route. But yeah, I think for most people, it would be getting that sale and kind of finishing that funnel. For me, it's getting people to my client into that maybe discovery call, letting them then do the closing of it all. But yeah, essentially getting that sale.
Mark D. Williams 05:41
Let's go back to the top of the funnel of the sand analogy here. So you got your sales funnel. So you know, awareness, you've got. What are some things that we have for awareness, you have your website, social media. What are some of the things that are sort of like, Hey, I'm over here. I'm open for business.
Alyssa Abbott 05:55
One that I think that I love is Pinterest. So certainly, your website, social media is a great tool, but Pinterest is another search search engine that's certainly very different than your regular Instagram or Tiktok, and what I love is that 98% of searches are unbranded, so I'm not going on to Pinterest to search for a Nike shoe. I'll go on Amazon, or I'll go to Nike or whatever. But for Pinterest, you go in and you start searching ideas, and you start searching inspiration, and I find this beautiful home that Mark D Williams wrote or wrote built, and I'm obsessed, and so I just go down the wormhole, or I start pinning to my board, because I know I'm going to be building a home in the future. And I love these kitchens, and I love this butler pantry or this laundry room or whatever. And so then when it comes time for me to go and actually, like, start doing more research or start putting things together, I could take all of a sudden here, I've got all of these from this builder that I love, and then I'm gonna go into the next phase of the nurturing sequence, and look at their blogs and look at, like, the actual content that is attached to Pinterest. And so I love how Pinterest is very much top of funnel. It's just bringing people to your website, and that next part of that nurture sequence, and it does a fantastic job at bringing you up and then sending you out.
Mark D. Williams 07:19
Yeah. I mean, yeah, like a lot about that. So then, because you've got, we mentioned in the previous Q and A about blogging, people can reflect back on that episode specifically, we spent 22 minutes talking about just blogging, so we won't go there. But I mean, as you're warming people up in your content, and they get more used to I think it's a little bit like social media. You know, video content, for sure, your stories tend to gravitate towards people who are already following you from for those that are into kind of their Instagram analytics and video content, and then you have the people that content. They're your super fans. And of course, you're always trying to get new people and new contents and get into their networks. But a lot of it is, I was talking to Katie Cath from J Cath here locally. She's got a great blog here locally in Minnesota, and she told me that she actually gets, like, 90 some percent of all of her clients through Instagram, which is shockingly high. And I asked her about that. Why does she think it's so high? And she's, I think, you know, the reason that they a convert at a really high rate is because their followers have been warmed up and trained to devour their content, and they're following them. And by the time they reach out, they've already pre qualified themselves, so every lead she's getting is so qualified and so ready to go. Because, excuse me, they know what to expect. They know Katie and Jesse, they know the shop, they know the design, and so they're kind of on board for all of it. And I just think that's interesting, that by having a really effective warming up strategy, when they come in the door, your clients actually know a lot about you, and so your conversion rate is much higher than if it was just, quote, a cold meeting. That's kind of the whole point of it, right?
Alyssa Abbott 08:53
100% my I think kind of everything that we do is to bring you warm leads, instead of just these random people or cold lead. I want them to have gone through that funnel and to have found you and fall in love with your brand and really be interested and in that same way. So it's another opportunity, another funnel, if you will, to have those warm leads just come right up to your doorstep. The next
Mark D. Williams 09:15
step would probably be, what capturing email marketing. I mean, I think we, I was, I've been very late to the game in 21 years to a lot of these things. So it's only been the last several years, and really, with you. I mean, really, I think that's the benefit of having partners that are experts. If you're a builder, you're good at building, maybe you're good at marketing, maybe you're not, or maybe you don't devote the time to it, but I think having this team approach where people sort of say, you know, like, why would I need a email campaign? It's something that you and I have talked a lot about, and I think as you capture people, it's very common you go to people's websites and that pop up, bubble shows up, and you can enter to follow along. Most people don't, but those that do are very interested. And let's talk a little bit about the email marketing how as a sales funnel, how does that work? How do we use that as a tool?
Alyssa Abbott 09:58
Email Marketing? Is a converter to me, what I see. I started off years ago just doing blogging and Pinterest, and actually with you, we saw the need for we need to do email marketing. I know this is a huge thing, and it's something that now I do offer to my clients, because it really closes my part of the cycle. I'm bringing all this traffic to your website, and then what, like, what do we do next? They can read your blogs, they can follow along on Instagram. But what is that call to action, or that that top of mind? And whether it's we have a really fun freebie we haven't we still need to do that, probably at some point for you, but for now, we have a pop up just saying, join our email list, and then it just keeps you in there regularly. And so these are people who are already interested in you. They're already following along with you. They want to see your email pop up, and it moves them from just browsing your blog casually to ready to actually talk to you and book a call, or ultimately, enjoy.
Mark D. Williams 11:07
This episode of The Curious builder is brought to you by Olive and Vine socials. If you're a builder, a designer or an architect looking to grow your brand without dancing on Tiktok or spending your whole life on social media, listen up. Olive and Vine social specializes in Pinterest marketing, blogging and email strategy for luxury home brands. They help you turn your beautiful work into a strategic SEO driven content that drives real traffic and connects you with your ideal clients without burning you out ready to grow smarter and not harder. Visit olivenvine socials.com and tell them the curious builder set to you. Just so you know, I've been working with Alyssa over at Olive and Vine for three years. She helped us launch the podcast. She's helped us grow our brand at Mark Williams custom homes. I could not do what I've done without her help, and I'm more than happy to announce that she's our latest sponsor for the curious builder podcast. I think hearing you talk about I think there's a temptation, and we're in a very intimate space, building people's homes. But I think it's also, I build maybe three to five homes a year. So it's not like I need a lot. You just need the ones to convert. And we're always obviously want to fill your funnel, or you fill your hourglass with sand, with prospects. Of course, my question is, you could go I assume you can do this. I know for big companies, you hear about it, I don't hear so much about small companies. But like, you could go buy an email list, I assume, like, if you're Verizon Wireless, you could probably just, can you buy? I mean, are there email lists to buy? I mean, are there brokers that sell email lists? Yeah, so you do this, but the problem is now you have a bunch of unqualified, unwarned up people that didn't ask to be there, and one of the reasons we all sort of dislike signing up for these is we hate getting pummeled. I have like, three spam filters set up on my and it's like every morning I delete them all, and 90% of them I didn't sign up for, or I don't feel like I did. And so it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, because people don't really like things filling up their inbox if they don't want it. And I remember, you know, early on in this discussion, I was the one that kind of brought up to you, and Leah, one of our other marketing team superstars, and said, Hey, let's just add these people. And her comment was, no, don't do whatever. You don't do that because a you can get flagged. You can get blocked if people are getting emails that didn't sign up for it. And B, like, that's not really what the point of that is. Like you want, like, if you have what doesn't matter, 200 emails or 500 emails, 1000 emails, 5000 10,000 like, you want the people signed up because they want to hear what you're saying. And like this podcast, like, if you're looking for gardening tips. You're probably not listening to the curious builder podcast, because I don't know anything about gardening. I kill everything. It's just being relevant, being you know what you want. And I think there's a temptation for us to like, how can we accelerate the curve? How can we get ahead faster? Can we just import a 10th? I know I'm tempted to be like, oh, let's just get 10,000 people on this list. But guess what? There are 9375 of them don't want to hear from you, and now you've just sort of ticked them all off. And what's your comment or thoughts on that? No,
Alyssa Abbott 14:11
I mean, I remember, I remember those conversations. I mean, like, I don't think we're supposed to do that as much as, like,
Mark D. Williams 14:18
a moral dilemma. Yeah. I
Alyssa Abbott 14:21
mean, you know, you can buy lists. I think a lot of that really messes up even whatever email provider you're using that there's a lot like if you're getting tons of unsubscribes or people can even report the email and that can really affect your reach to other people that actually want to hear you. And so I think it all comes down to this long game. Everyone wants that shortcut, but honestly, it's what is that slow and steady wins the race. It's that that is it a turtle?
Mark D. Williams 14:48
Yep, turtle in the hair. Okay,
Alyssa Abbott 14:52
when you're doing it the right way and you're reaching the people, honestly, the growth that you've had over the last two years. Is crazy, and you've done things the right way, and you've just built and you've tried new things, and we've blogged, and we've done all this SEO work, and it's a long game, and it's you built that awareness, you built that trust, that connection over months, and you didn't just buy an email list to try to, like, blast everybody and get a quick sale. And I think that speaks to some integrity too. And just like who you are and what you're going to do for a client, you're not taking shortcuts. You're doing it the right way, and I think that's the best way to do it. Just in general, do you
Mark D. Williams 15:33
think you're in a unique position, and maybe don't have these off the top of your head, and but you essentially run two of our companies right Mark Williams custom homes, and then the curious builder podcast. How would you compare the two in terms of our sales funnels, in terms of what we've talked like, what works and what doesn't work from what you've seen, in terms of our growth pattern between the two? Or is it hard to compare them?
Alyssa Abbott 15:56
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, when I came on. I mean, curious builder was like, I think you had just like, I don't even know if the day one the ground zero. And so we've seen a lot of growth. There's been so many ideas, and it's gone in it maybe a different direction than even you expected when you first started. And so with the collectives and all of that, and so that has seen really crazy growth. But MDW, Mark D Williams custom homes was had a great foundation, and so it was, I mean, it's hard to compare, because one had crazy growth, and then one just like, I mean, it still grew. Even just your Instagram, if you look at like, how many people are following you, yeah, it's been cool though to take I remember at one point we had them together, and I remember saying, like, we've we're talking to different people, like we've got to separate these two brands, because they are different. I don't know it's
Mark D. Williams 16:52
funny. I don't even remember that. Actually, we know where we're at right now, but we have two completely separate brands. I don't was that the newsletter that was combo, or
Alyssa Abbott 17:01
was there was the newsletter. I mean, Instagram, I think you split it pretty early on, but even Pinterest, and then the blogging we were doing, blogging all on MDW, and then finally, we split that up to do two blogs a month here and two over there. So I probably like six months in, maybe even it might not have been exactly, but we split it all because obviously it didn't really make sense, the talking of who we were talking to, it was just, it just was not being as strategic as we think. We wanted it to be so
Mark D. Williams 17:34
unique position for you to be, yeah, just because it was fantastic different companies, and it's got, like, you've got, like, the new kid on the block being the curious builder, and then the mature company that's been there for a long time. So different strategies, obviously, yeah, no.
Alyssa Abbott 17:47
And it was really a cool learning experience for me as I was growing my business and kind of figuring out what I wanted to be able to do it alongside that and get all kinds of different experience and try things out. I think,
Mark D. Williams 17:58
think that's been one of the another rewarding parts of the curious builder brand is it's obviously evolved a lot, and you've been a big part of that, right? Not only, obviously it started with the podcast, but now we have like, six, I think, six platforms, and it's just a lot to write about for you. Number one, but yeah, and it's like, who knows which one we'll come up with next year. I have some news actually to share with you that is not even public yet, so we'll have to do it on another podcast. So it's like, you keep generating and I think that's what keeps it fresh. I think that's why probably the growth rate has been because the growth rate on the curious builder through the sales funnel, if you would call sales funnel just essentially ship or downloads on the podcast, or subscribers for the emails, or whatever, is just, we're trying to create a community where people, because we all have the same things, and I find it helpful to listen to other people chat about not only the people we interview, but you get people that are at different parts of the career, that are all part of your career as you grow. I think of like Molly windmiller from lab has helped us a lot with branding. And before that, it was Kim Sen from Sen and sons. And so it's like, you have these different people that's come into your business, help grow it, and then, like, release it back into the while it grows. And then someone helps you, and then you do it again. And so it's like this. It's like this process that keeps on being renewed, which is really fun from, I think that's why, from a sales cycle, like, how do you or a sales funnel, like, how do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it new? Because if you just said the same thing all the time, it obviously just gets a little
Alyssa Abbott 19:23
stale. Yeah, with what I do, it's so fun because I get to test things out all the time. We can test blogs, we can test pin design and all that kind of stuff. And even emails I will test like, what time of day we're gonna send it out and what is the look of it tweaked that so many times, and it definitely keeps it fresh. And there's no shortage of fun things going on over with both of your brands. And love to kind of find new ways to say the same information. If we're talking about one of the collective groups, I don't love just saying that the same exact thing every time. And so it's like, okay, what different angle? Can we take with we know there's an event coming up, let's talk about this part of it. Let's talk about that part of it, and just trying things out. And I think that's what's so cool about marketing in general. The same thing isn't going to work year after year after year, because everything is evolving so much. Do you think
Mark D. Williams 20:15
is it kind of like all or nothing? I guess they're just thinking of colors right now. You've got your primary colors. You've got four. With those four, you can do any sort of combination thereof. You can't do just blogging, or you can't do just email marketing. You can't just pick one. You need a little bit of the combination, because it's kind of a force multiplier. It is.
Alyssa Abbott 20:33
And I mean, you could just blog, I just, I feel like, if you're gonna invest in something like that, like it's so worth it to do the whole thing, because then you're missing little bits, and your ROI could be so much better in in a year after you look back at all the work that you've done. Yeah, I'm a believer in all of it. Obviously, that's what I do, and I see it work, but I Yeah, if I truly believe all of them are going to give me the most bang for your buck.
Mark D. Williams 21:03
I agree. I think anyone listening, who's considering it, I mean, all I can say is do it and do it with all of the vine. I mean, that's what I've been doing for two and a half years. And it's interesting because, and you recall, I don't remember how long ago was so from a financial standpoint, like anything, if there's only so much money to go around, and I think I started for about six months, and we saw great growth in Pinterest in particular. And I think I was just trying. I really wanted to prioritize at that time the podcast and some of the things we were doing. So I said, let's dial back some of our I think it was our Pinterest strategy was our main one that we dialed back, and we saw a dramatic decrease in website traffic, like dramatic and I don't remember the numbers off the top. I had to call it 5060, 70% like, that's a lot. Now you could argue, like, which ones were qualified or not, but volume does matter. I mean, you know, if the awareness thing is like, Hey, I'm over here, and you've got a 60% drop, like that matters. But then I said, I think it was in the fall. Let's say that was the spring, and then the fall that year, I said, Hey, you know what? Let's reallocate some of our investment back into that. And you gave me good advice. You said, just so you know, you turned off, that it's like the bathtub. You drain the bathtub, it's gonna take a while to fill it back up again. You didn't use this analogy. This is my and, yeah, but it's gonna take a while. And sure, shooting, it took about three months, four months, to get it back up to where it was going. And so I would just tell people out there that once you've sort of built the engine, I think consistency is probably more infest and important on the beginning than depth. Like, I don't think you need to spend a crazy amount of money, but I do think you need to be consistent. And then I think it's, it's not a it's not a good friend of mine, it's not levers, it's dials. So no, it's not on and off. I think it's like less or more. And play with that dial financially, just like marketing. I think every year, as you allocate like, Hey, am I doing print media? Am I doing video media? Am I doing a sales home? I'm hiring a salesperson. Am I hiring a company? Am I blogging? I think all of this kind of comes together, but I found it very successful. And I think it's just for me, it's part of doing business, and we've had great success with it. Yeah,
Alyssa Abbott 22:59
no. I mean, it's definitely, I would say, with all of it together, the blogging and Pinterest specifically, those are things that, while the consistency is incredibly important, as we saw it, also is something that's going to continue to generate you traffic, because there we call it evergreen, there's stuff that's not time sensitive. And so while that investment, I see people where maybe we've paused, or we've ended my time with the company, they're still generating traffic, and still generating, well, traffic, yeah, through their blogging and through their Pinterest and so that's my goal. I want to create stuff that's going to last forever, that's going to generate but that consistency. If we do, if we turn it off, or we dial it back a little bit. There. There is. You'll see it. And so,
Mark D. Williams 23:44
yeah, that's That's great. That's great advice. Well, we're past the 20 minute mark, so we'll respect the audience and your time. Thanks again for coming on the curious builder podcast. And if anyone is interested to reach out to Olive and Vine, I give them two thumbs up, and she'll spur your company's sales cycle in no time. Thanks again for coming on, Alyssa. Thanks Mark. All right, every Monday, we have our episodes with builders, designers and architects across the country. Thursdays are our 20 minute Q and A. If you have any questions, please write in. We also have a one for one consulting platform. So if you're interested in just sitting down virtually for one hour and talking about your business, be happy to do that. You can find everything at the curious builder podcast.com or curious builder.com thank you. Thanks for tuning in to curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in you.
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