Andy Wibbels over at Global Impact has written a brilliant post called, Scientology’s Marketing Lessons. Andy first explains the well known funnel technique of marketing, and he does a great job I might add.
In a nutshell, the funnel technique of marketing refers to the process whereby you begin by getting your clients to enter your sales system (the funnel) by giving them something of value –ideally for free or at least at low cost. This is where trust begins to develop. You then have a number of other services or products that your clients can purchase that increase in price as clients move down the funnel.
Andy’s uses the funnel analogy to compare the Church of Scientology and The Catholic Church pointing out that the former has a very effective funnel system and the latter does not.
Marketing can be applied to many aspects of life once you understand the fundamental concepts. Andy’s analogy is just one great example.
You can read Andy’s post here and I highly recommend that you do.
Update: After reading this post, a subscriber to my newsletter wrote to ask me if I was a member of Scientology. I am not involved in Scientology in any way. I made referrence to Andy Wibbels’ post simply because I thought it was a fascinating example of how marketing works.
There is a lot to this funneling idea that can be used for any product or service. It builds customer trust eventually allowing the customer to go for the higher ticket items without feeling buyer remorse.