“The revenue engine is a whole system. It encompasses a diverse set of integrated components, each doing its part to advance the system’s purpose. The engine is not just comprised of marketing and sales— it includes product, accounting, and the underlying technology and data infrastructure required to keep everything flowing.” — Tom Mohr

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There are 4 components in any strong revenue funnel.

If any of these are missing, you're losing money. 👇

1. Offer: the unique stack of products, services, or experience you sell

2. Conversion Experience: sales page or sales call

3. Nurture Journey: long form content that your ICP can dive into and use before they give you money –– newsletters / blogs and podcasts / videos, for example

4. Discovery: outreach, paid ads, short form content, and SEO

Many creators and entrepreneurs build out 2-3 components of the funnel, then wonder why they aren't making as much money as they'd hoped.

I'll break down two examples of this that I see on a regular basis:

• Struggling Influencer Syndrome

• Starving Artist Syndrome

Struggling Influencer Syndrome

If you have a huge audience but nothing to offer them, you're spending time and money capturing attention that you can't effectively monetize.

This creates "struggling influencer syndrome," a phenomenon where an influencer can have a massive audience and super low revenue.

This happens most often on direct-monetization platforms like YouTube, Twitch, or Medium.

These people get really good at going viral, but get pennies in return for their exposure.

Posting viral content is like wearing funky socks with a suit. The socks are a conversation starter –– an icebreaker.

Your funky socks (and your social media posts) create an opportunity for you to build relationships with an audience.

Where many artists go wrong is that they expect everyone who digs their social media content to automatically give them money.

This is like expecting someone to Venmo you $100 from across the room just because they liked your funky socks.

The core of the problem is...

Struggling Influencers don't have anything valuable to sell their audience, and because they spend all their time trying to entertain everyone, they aren't deeply connecting with anyone.

How do you fix it?

You fix this by building a valuable product, service, or experience, and using your funnel to drive an engaged audience to make a purchase.

You can use sponsors for this, but since you'll only capture a fraction of the revenue you generate, you'll need a huge audience.

It's much more efficient to sell something you own.

Starving Artist Syndrome

If you have a great product and an optimized website, but no YouTube channel, podcast, or newsletter, you're losing conversions because you aren't truly building a relationship with potential consumers.

The biggest barrier to any sale is trust:

• Is this worth the money it will cost me?

• Is this worth the time it will cost me?

• Will I get more satisfaction from buying this thing, buying a different thing, or not buying anything?

• Do I even like the business that's selling this? Do they share my values?

• Are they going to steal my credit card? How do I know this isn't a scam?

• Does this thing I'm buying actually exist, or are these product photos just Midjourney mockups with a sprinkling of copywriting generated by Chat GPT?

Long form, value-driven content allows you to build a bridge of trust with your audience that leads them from a Zone of Defense into the Zone of Desire.

Think about it: it's hard to like a person until you have a decent idea of what type of person they are.

Likewise, it's hard to trust a business until you have a decent idea of what type of business it is.

This effect is magnified in the digital space, because online sellers don't have third-party entities vouching for them at a subconcious level.

For example, products on the shelf of a grocery chain can borrow the trust that consumers place in the chain itself.

Similarly, a karate instructor in a local town can benefit from the logic of "if they can afford to rent this place, they must be legit."

If you're running an online business, you need to build your own immersive experience that can rival the magic of walking into a local brick-and-mortar business.

You do this with FREE, value-packed long form content:

• Blogs / newsletters

• Podcasts

• Videos

"But that's hard."

Yes.

It is.

But your competition is doing it anyway, even though it's hard.

And that's why they're making more money than you, even though their product is worse and their audience is smaller.

If success was easy, everyone would have it.

Recap For Memory

Every strong revenue funnel is built of the same four components:

1. A strong offer

2. A persuasive conversion experience

3. A valuable and informative nurture journey

4. A stack of eye-catching discovery assets

Your role as a business owner is to make sure that each of these components is optimized for your ICP and efficiently guides them to the next step.

If you have a strong offer with zero discoverability, you’re going to drive low revenue.

Likewise, if you have a massive audience but nothing valuable to sell them, you’re going to drive low revenue.

Your goal then, is to create something valuable, present it in a way that makes it hard for your prospects not to buy it, build out a database of educational and entertaining long form content that serves your ICP, and to capture attention with mass advertising strategies.

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Grow Your Revenue

If you're a small agency struggling to balance fulfillment with lead generation, marketing, sales, and operations, we can help you increase revenue for your small business. Oh yeah, and it costs you nothing to get started.