The third stage of the sales funnel involves creating a free offering that will entice potential customers to join your mailing list. Actively using a mailing list allows you to nurture the relationship until a potential customer is ready to purchase your product or service. We will go into more detail on the benefits of having a mailing list in the next lesson.

Now that you have established your personas you have a good idea of what challenges your potential customers are facing, as well as their goals & aspirations. So how can you help them overcome their challenges or achieve their goals? What could you offer that would be of value to them?

For example, Pablo has established that his personas are looking to a paleo diet to improve their health. They enjoy cooking but are short on time. He might decide to offer them a free paleo recipe e-book titled "20 Paleo Recipes That Can Be Cooked In Under 20 Minutes", in exchange for their email address. Pablo can confidently conclude that the consumer who provides his or her email address is interested in a paleo diet and will find the e-book useful and interesting. In return for the e-book, Pablo receives a direct line of contact with a consumer who he already knows is interested in a paleo diet and is therefore an ideal audience for his products. Pablo can then nurture this relationship to help turn an interested individual into a loyal customer. We will explore how to nurture this relationship in more detail in coming lessons.

The important thing to note is that both parties have exchanged something of value but no money has changed hands.

Now let's look at creating a unique offering for your business.

* Task One: Decide on your offering.

What do you have of value that a potential customer will find useful or interesting? Refer back to the personas you have created. What challenges are they facing? Your offering should help solve a problem faced by one or more of your personas.

Note: You may have different personas, all facing different challenges. If this is the case it may be best to create a different offering and sales funnel for each persona. For example, a real estate agency may have one offering for home buyers and another offering for sellers. For now, choose one persona and proceed through the rest of this course focusing on this one persona. Once you have set up your sales funnel for this persona, you can always come back and set up another one for each of your other personas (if necessary).

Examples of offers could be:

• Free information
  • E-books
  • Recipe Books
  • Cheat Sheets
  • Templates
  • Videos
  • Audio Downloads/Podcasts
  • Case Studies
  • Email course
  • Webinars
• Free consultations/trials
• Discounts (be careful of using discounts as this may devalue your brand in the eyes of your target audience)

As you can see, your offering can be anything of value. It should solve a problem faced by your personas and relate directly to your industry. It does not have to cost you anything. Don't forget, YOU are the industry expert. YOU know more about the industry than the consumer so there is always helpful or interesting knowledge you can pass on for free in exchange for their time and attention.

** Task Two: Create your offering.

We understand that creating the free offering may take longer than 30 minutes. In fact, it almost certainly will. We urge you to take your time and think about what your customers will really value and create an offering they will appreciate. The better your offer, the more trust you will build with your potential customers and trust is essential for turning potential customers into loyal customers!

To save you some time, below you can find PowerPoint templates (must be viewed using Microsoft Office PowerPoint) we've provided to assist you in creating your offering. If you need some design help or don't have the time to do this yourself, you can use freelance services from platforms such as Fiverr or Freelancer to hire a designer within your budget.

The next step in the process is to set up your online presence.

Note: If you have not yet created your free offering you can still move onto the next section however your free offering will be required when it comes time to set up your automated email sequence.