[00:00:00] Dominique: Emma is a graphic designer, turned web designer and describes herself as a go-to WordPress educator and geeky girl next door for designers, ready to evolve into successful web developers. Through her game-changing e-courses Emma helps designers unwrap the mysteries, methods and magic of web design so that they can build beautiful and truly brilliant WordPress websites and she uses language that her students can actually understand. There's none of that techie coding, jargon, mansplaining and overwhelm. Emma is a freelancer turned entrepreneur and she's following her passion and that's exactly why I have asked her onto the creative spark podcast. Welcome Emma.
[00:00:36] Emma: Hi, thanks so much for having me.
[00:00:39] Dominique: So take us back to the beginning. I know a little bit of your story as a graduate designer. So can you tell the listeners what your kind of university journey was and then where you went to from there?
[00:00:51] Emma: I met Dominique many, many years ago when I went to do a bachelor of, I think it was called visual media or something at the time and my major was graphic design. I went there because I wanted to be a graphic designer, but part of that, degree, we learn a little bit of web design and building the HTML and CSS. I think WordPress might've just been around at the time, but it wasn't a big deal, but I really liked Dreamweaver. I was one of those really freak designers who actually enjoyed it and I, I think, I remember you saying you were one of those like freak designers that actually liked web. There's not many of us, although I'm discovering there's a lot more these days, but that's probably because the tools have got a lot better.
As my journey went on, I graduated, I started building websites just in HTML, and then discovered WordPress realized that WordPress was like a little bit too tricky for me to figure out myself, so I got a web developer to do that. I would just design the websites. He would build. them and then as the years went on, all these awesome tools came out that were made really I think, specifically for designers to be able to build websites.
It means that we can build WordPress websites without any of the coding. If you don't want to touch code, you don't have to touch code these days and that's where the page builders like Divi and Elementor, and they're the ones that I now teach in my courses, because I did discover after a while that I was building all these websites for other designers and I was like "Hey, you can totally do this, why are you getting me to do it?" and so that's where I had the idea to build an online course and that's when I sort of got into this whole world of funnels and how I can use a funnel to get people to buy my courses, essentially. I never really used it in my. Graphic design business when I was doing work for clients, although I can totally see the benefit of it these days and I definitely do recommend to my students that they have a specific sort of funnel or multiple funnels, even for their graphic design services or things they offer in their, design businesses. But me specifically, I've only really started getting into this whole funnel world when it's come to selling my e-courses and mentoring..
[00:02:55] Dominique: So, what was your first foray into the world of funnels? Did you remember if you built an opt-in funnel? Did you know you were building a funnel or did you just know that you needed a mailing list? Tell us a bit about that pivoting from servicing clients one-on-one to actually starting to build mailing lists and put things all online..
[00:03:11] Emma: I went into the intention that I need a funnel. Like I knew that was my next step. I had, most of my client work on the side and building this e-course on the side and I'm like, okay, almost finished the course now I've got to sell it and I have no idea, like, how am I going to get it out there? How am I get people to find it and actually buy it for like a relatively high price tag. Really. I reached out to another graphic designer Anna Dower. She was a graphic design mentor and she had an awesome funnel that worked on me. I had bought one of her mini courses. I had gone through her funnel and I was like, that is what I need.
She's doing exactly what I want. I need to pick her brain. So I hired her as a mentor for a couple of months and she essentially took me through the whole process of figuring out what my opt-in would be, let my little giveaway, download thing, getting set up with like active campaign and building my list and all that kind of stuff.
[00:04:07] Dominique: Do you remember what that lead magnet was? And what online course was was it the same course as the e-course that you've got now? Or was it the first evolution of that.
[00:04:14] Emma: No, it's pretty much all the same, obviously it's been tweaked over the years, but it was like a roadmap, which was like a nine step roadmap breaking down the nine modules of my course, essentially. So it's just like one page of what's in each module of the course, but giving them like, this is what you do first, and this is what you do second essentially my first course and my signature courses be the boss of WordPress and that's was teaching designers how to build a WordPress website from start to finish and there's nine steps involved in that. And so it was a roadmap that had those nine steps and breaking that down and links to tools I use and things like that. That's still the most popular, opt-in that I have on my website, obviously it's tweaked and changed a bit over the years, and I think it looks a lot prettier now than it did initially, but it's essentially the same thing..
[00:04:59] Dominique: can you talk us through your tech stack? So I'm assuming that you build the landing pages in a WordPress page on your site and then as you say, active campaign, talk us through the way that you set it up and how the automations are structured and things in the email.
[00:05:12] Emma: Yeah, sure. I love talking about tech so I could go on about this for ages. firstly, yeah, I use Divi for my WordPress website, so that's the page builder and theme that I use, and so I just create my landing pages and opt-in forms and stuff using Divi, then I hook that up with active campaign and active campaign is like my email automation program once they've submitted their email, they get sent to active campaign, active campaign, sends them an email saying, "here's your freebie" and then they also go get triggered into like an automation that sends them like another email a day or so later with like a bonus freebie and then like another email, a few days later. Some other kind of value add. And then eventually after a few emails they get, "Hey, do you want to buy my mini course for like this discount, like 50 bucks" instead of a hundred and the mini course is like a little snippet of my big course. It just funnels them down into hopefully eventually buying my my big course or something down the track.
[00:06:11] Dominique: That's an interesting way to do it is actually give them a little taster of the big course, obviously once they drop into your mailing list, you'll have regular launches or you might just do a sales pitch every now and then, but the mini course, is it the first module or is it literally the bare bones version of the whole course?
[00:06:30] Emma: No, it's a specific module, So it's not the very first module I actually picked a module, which whether this is right or not, cause I might be giving away too much for free to be honest. but the thing that most people really, really struggle with is that whole tech part so it's the module where it's like, "okay, we'll buy your domain and your hosting, connect them together, install WordPress, and then install like your first plug in and that's kind of like that's one module of my course. that's what the mini course is, but that actually turns out to be, I think module three or four of my big course. It's not the very first module
[00:07:06] Dominique: Do you find that people then go on from that first mini module to then buy the rest of the course because they get the result and they're like, " that was great. I need to know more. Tell me how to do the rest".
[00:07:16] Emma: Well, this is why it's making me think. Maybe it's not the ideal module to sell. because yes, it has happened. People have moved on to the bigger course, but not as much as I would hope, definitely found they would move on to the bigger course when I was doing specific launches.
so if I only launched my course, like three or four times a year, then yes, they were more likely like get on the wait list and they want that course when it comes out. Now that I've changed them to evergreen. It kind of doesn't seem to work that way as much. So I might need to re jig that to sort of maybe use one of the other modules as the mini course instead.
[00:07:51] Dominique: And I think that's a really important thing to note about funnels is no matter how long you've had it running. People change their behavior, but also as you learn new strategies, you realize that maybe you can rearrange things. This is the thing that a lot of my students struggle with is the idea that, they spend all this time and energy building a funnel, and then they kind of think they're done.
And it's like, no people are optimizing their funnel. Even Amy Porterfield doesn't have the same funnels that she would have started with everybody optimizes and changes and rearranges and streamlines. it's never finished. It's not like a house, you can rearrange all the bits. As you like, so it's very important to just keep tweaking and tinkering with it.
[00:08:27] Emma: Yeah. And it's definitely something I have like tweaked it over the time, but I would like to sort of get in there almost with a bit more of a fine tooth comb and look at the data. That's one of the good things about active campaign and those kinds of programs is that you can sort of see, okay, what are people clicking on and what are they not clicking on?
And maybe what's working, what's not and I do really wanna go through that when I have time, that's what every entrepreneur says, right? Like when I actually have time, to go through that and see what things I can tweak to hopefully make it convert better.
[00:08:56] Dominique: I don't know if you know Kate McKibbin from hello funnels, she's just launched an accreditation program and I was one of the first people to go through that and she is all about the data. I mean, I thought I was nerdy about this stuff. She literally has all these incredible spreadsheets where you can plug numbers in and she has all the sort industry standard conversion rates and all of a sudden it just makes sense.
I just went back and looked through all of my landing pages and I'm like, well, you are in the bin because you're not converting anywhere near enough and just literally knowing what number you're looking for and then you can go through and go. This is converting at 50% and the industry rate is 35% that's an absolute winner. This one's converting at 7% I mean, I never even had clicked those buttons in my landing page software until I went through. so its just Absolutely blown my mind. you can never get too nerdy with this stuff just go in and drill down to every single step of the funnel and see what the conversion rate is and then you can make new decisions based on that information.
[00:09:52] Emma: Absolutely I've binged or podcast recently, there was one thing that you said on one of them, which was like we are really equipped to be building funnels because we can design all the steps and we can get our head around all these tech.
We probably know half the tech already I think that's one of the good things is when you go to tweak funnels, you can do it all yourself, most of the time, you're not going to necessarily certainly outsource this to like a real expert that's going to charge you a lot of money.
[00:10:17] Dominique: Yeah. And I think that's exactly right. What you're doing is empowering designers to build their own websites. And what I'm doing is empowering designers to build their own funnels, which is literally should be one in the same thing these days. For that exact reason people get so frustrated when their web developer just sort of goes missing and they can't access anything. It's literally like getting someone to build your house and then you don't have the keys to it. It's really frustrating that all you can do is look at it and then if you want to make changes and things, you're not empowered to do that. I think that both you and I are very much about empowering creatives to do the tech themselves, because as a designer, we are in a great position to just literally build websites and funnels. as the tools evolve to be easy enough that, we're not so freaked out by the tech, then I think that's a great way forward for just about every creative freelancer for sure.
[00:11:04] Emma: Yeah absolutely..
[00:11:06] Dominique: So in terms of the designer, boss, So you mentioned Ana before, tell us a bit more about how that relationship has evolved, because that's how I came back into your world. I certainly don't need help building a WordPress website, but I love all the stuff that you're doing with designer boss and I, I signed up for the previous summit that just happened and I binge watched all the videos when I was sick over Christmas, which was fantastic, so I was glad I was up-sold in your funnel and bought the extra package. yeah. Awesome. Well, so like I said, I hired Anna as a mentor a few years ago. And then our relationship sort of went from there from being mentored and more being peers and we were sort of talking often about like, how I was going with how she was going. I was helping her out with her website because she had a Divi website and she was helping me out with some stuff and it turned into sort of this peer relationship to eventually realizing, okay, we have like the same target market, essentially. Anna more focuses on she's just a graphic designer, not a web designer, or like she can design websites, not build them and, her courses are focused on designers and design business and stuff like that. When you want to go from like a day job to having a freelance business. And then mine is more teaching people how to build websites. Like I said, so we had this similar target market, but different offerings and we're like, okay, why don't we just team up? And I think the first thing we went to team up for was the summit because Anna had been invited to speak at a summit when, how good were our idea is this, let's do this together. And then COVID hit, which obviously sucked in a lot of ways, but it was amazing for people who wanted to host online summits because we couldn't travel all that kind of stuff and we could then get speakers, awesome speakers from all around the world to join this online summit.
[00:12:43] Emma: So we're coming up to the fourth summit that's happening in April. And essentially the whole goal of this summit, even though it is obviously deliver awesome value, to build mine and Anna's authority, that was one goal and then also to build our lists. So the lists that people can then go into our funnels on hopefully buy our courses at the end of the day. That was sort of like our two main goals, but then a part of that we're like, well, why don't we create this. Bonus bundle that all the speakers contribute something. That's like, max a hundred bucks each, maybe it's just like a $20 thing or a $40 mini course And we create this bundle, we've got 25 speakers and then we'll sell it for like a bargain price. Let's just do that. See how that goes. And then we just sold a bucket load and we're like, "wow, this is awesome, obviously we had an amazing funnel cause Dominique bought it". then we like, "well, let's do this again". now we're coming up to our fourth summit in two years and it's great for building our lists that, my list has doubled like the first time, cause I didn't have that many people on it and I probably get another 1500 every summit added to my list.
So it's a big list building exercise there obviously builds authority, gets me talking to people like you and like other authorities in the industry, people even like overseas that I never would have dreamed that I'd be able to like call them a peer, which has been like sort of have to pinch myself when I talk to some of them. then also it's great cash injection for our business too. yeah, summits, there are a lot of work initially, but totally recommend them if, they're sort of goals that you have on your list.
[00:14:12] Dominique: And I can imagine once you go through the bumpy ride of ironing out all the kinks for the first couple, it does just then become a systemized, rinse and repeat workflow and I love, as a person who's about to speak at the next summit, I loved the way that you went about your content collection. Because to me that was also a funnel, so a lot of freelancers don't necessarily realize is that funnels aren't just for selling online courses. I mean, that's how we would probably encounter most of them and also get on people's email lists, but you're using a product called content snare to actually collect all of the information from the summit speakers and I presume that within your own business, you've automated a lot of the, steps and processes. that's something that any freelancer can start to use things to generate briefs and anything that's a repeating activity.
If you do something more than once, you should set up a system for it. was that something that you or Anna or the pair of you just said, this is too hard chasing everyone emails. There's gotta be a better way.
[00:15:11] Emma: Yeah, so, the first summit, we just did it by email because like anything we grossly underestimated, how much was involved, how much chasing, how much speakers just don't get back to you by the deadlines, all this kind of stuff. actually during that summit, we'd asked Jimmy rose, who's the founder of content snare to be be in the summit, he was one of the speakers in the summit, he's like "by the way, contents snare would be perfect for this" and I'd actually use contents snare years ago in my design business for briefs and things like that from clients, since canceled it because I wasn't doing much client work anymore, but I was like, "oh yeah, it would work quite well", so when summit number two came around, I'm like, yeah, a hundred percent using contents snare and it was a bit to set up to begin with, but for the last two summits, sending the brief to you this time took me like two minutes, it's so easy it's just like " bang" it's all there, You've got examples I've recorded videos to like help people, like all this kind of stuff. So It was a lot to set up to begin with, but now. Everyone gets me their stuff on time, everyone gets email reminders to say, "Hey, this is due soon. You know, make sure you get onto it". I'm not having to spend hours chasing speakers for content and it'd be the same with clients. you just don't have to waste your time doing that because no one likes to do that.
[00:16:25] Dominique: And the fact that there's two of you I think that forces you to actually systemize things a bit more because when it's just you, you just do it. You don't worry about making a system, but when there's two of you, you don't want to be doing the same thing. Obviously there must've been a moment where you both sat down and said," let's write a full list of tasks. Let's work out. Who does what, when" and then that all of a sudden makes it easier to do that system. Is that what you found with this process?
[00:16:49] Emma: yeah, mostly, definitely not as formal as that Anna and I very kind of wing it type people. But the good thing is we kind of fall into the two categories of like, Anna really doesn't like tech, just not her zone of genius, and I love all that stuff. I'm quite happy to set up content snare or active campaign automations and things like that.
It's not really her jam, her jams more designing their social media graphics and writing the emails and the marketing campaigns and stuff like that. So we kind of just fell into those roles a little bit more than actually splitting it down the middle and going you do this I do this..
[00:17:22] Dominique: that's the perfect team actually is when quality street and you like the strawberry creams and I like the crunchy things. it's a much more compatible relationship than fighting over the same stuff so I love that you've naturally found your path, that actually brings me on to the next question that I wanted to ask, which was about filling your funnel. So we've talked a lot about the tech and the structure and the building of the funnel. How do you actually go about the content strategy and actually kind of attracting people into the funnel. I mean, I guess social media is the obvious one, but do you have a strategy around, Posting regularly and whether you've got, opt-ins on circulation or, how do you actually get people to interact with your landing pages?
[00:18:00] Emma: I wish I had a real like, this is my clear strategy. it's not super clear, but there's sort of like a whole bunch of things that I do. the biggest Way I get people in there is through Facebook, mostly my Facebook group. I have a big Facebook group, that people will sort of come to and then I'll, share one of my freebies or something and then they'll sort of get on the list there also, when they would go to join the Facebook group, that one of my entry questions " would you like to sign up to my newsletter, essentially pop your email address here" so that sort of adds them to my weekly newsletter then really it's being helpful in Facebook groups is something that really helps me, so other similar Facebook groups talking in those, I do post on Instagram, but I'm not good at Instagram. It's not my jam really, I'm just on there cause designers are on there, but I'm not very good at it. my whole feed is mostly just sausaged dogs because that's what I have and well, I don't have a full strategy that I did was running Facebook ads for awhile at the moment I've paused them, Cause I realized they weren't really converting, like I wanted and I've got to sort of go reevaluate that and make sure that that's all working fine, but they were working really good for a while and then it's just like, I feel like. They just get old, you know, and you've just got to sort of tweak them and make them better sometimes and maybe that was just me. so
there's kind of that, I just make sure that I really feed everything in select the next thing. So if they. join my Facebook group, then they'll hopefully join my newsletter. Or eventually they'll download a freebie from something I've posted in the Facebook group, or I've done a Facebook live and I'll say there's a free deal or answer a question and say, "Hey, here's a freebie I have for that, that answers that question for you" and then at the end of the freebie, it'll be like, " Hey about my course" or join the Facebook group, like everything sort of leads on to another thing. I don't leave it hanging where they don't know what to do next. And I think that really helps. Cause then I get people that are on the Facebook group, on my mailing list, get my newsletter every week, like they listened to my podcasts, like everything, it sort of just all goes around.
[00:19:58] Dominique: I think that's what a lot of people who are new to funnels, they get a bit overwhelmed by is that when they're in something like that, if they encounter you and they realize that you've got all of these things going on and they're all pointing in one direction, people think they actually have to build that at the same time, and so I love the idea called funnel stacking, where you'll have a little mini funnel and then another mini funnel on another one, but then they all can be linked together once you've built those. And as you say, if you've got another freebie in another freebie, bringing you into the same place where you're still going to talk about the same things. So it's not like you're building lots of funnels to go in different places. They all bring people different ways into basically buy the course and then when it's time to do the summit, jump on the summit. So there's not many things that you're promoting, but your attracting them in lots of different ways.
[00:20:44] Emma: And that's pretty much how I see it. So it it feels a bit messy, it doesn't feel like one sort of clear path, but it makes sense because everyone comes in different places, some people love consuming podcasts and other people don't, some people love Facebook groups. Some people aren't even on Facebook. Like having all those different things that sort of weave into each other, I feel like it's help.
[00:21:04] Dominique: I think you've got to keep trying different things as an entrepreneur because as you said, Facebook ads used to work and now they definitely don't and if they do work, you're paying much more for a lead and so this is why people are quite active now to have the low cost product rather than a freebie, so that they're just using that money to pay, to get people on their list, to then sell them the high ticket item, and if you're trying to sell something straight away from a Facebook ad, it's just really not that profitable anymore.
Whereas Facebook groups do seem to be the strategy that people are starting to turn to because you can help and help and help and it doesn't feel like you're banging on about the same funnel all the time. You're just in there being their mentor and helping them out. But then you can just seed multiple freebies as they come up and become relevant. The other thing, I mean, I agree with you about Instagram. It's kind of you're on there because everybody's on there but it's really I mentioned it's like a drop in the water the other day to somebody, and then it disappears where something like a Facebook group or Pinterest or a podcast, they hang around for ages. I haven't put out a podcast. I'm in between season two and season three. So I haven't put out a podcast for a couple of months and yet, every day people are on my website downloading things. And that's purely because they've listened to podcasts that are still there. Whereas Instagram just, It's a puff and it's gone. So don't feel bad about the sausage dogs. I think that's all good. I think that's all anybody's going to be putting on Instagram pretty soon.
[00:22:22] Emma: Yeah. Well, that's what it feels like. I just, struggle as a user if I don't think I'm a very good user of Instagram then adding stuff there. I can't really get a strategy. I'm not good at trying to make my grid look nice, lack and figuring out a caption, whereas posting something in a Facebook group, I just find so much more natural because it's like I feel like Facebook groups are about teaching and it's kind of, it feels harder on Instagram. Everyone has to be dancing while they teach or something. I don't know.
[00:22:50] Dominique: I said to my friends, if you see me dancing and pointing just, it's not me, I've been kidnapped. All right. So it's literally, " am I here to be entertained or am I trying to teach people something?" So if you want to be an entertainer. That's great. Tick-tock and Instagram are perfect for that. I think you're right. If you want to teach people things, then maybe places where you can actually have genuine conversations with people, like podcasts and Facebook groups suits what you and I are probably doing a little bit better.
So what's the future plan? So obviously another summit. Do you think that those they'll all have a point where you might get bored of them and pivot, or have you got any big plans for the future or are you happy with The work rhythm that you've got going on with Anna and your own stuff at the moment.
[00:23:28] Emma: we're working together quite well and we're enjoying doing the summit and, right now people were still really loving summits. I feel like it's going to get to a point. Maybe give it another year or two and people will be like, "oh, that's so like 2020, like we don't do it online summits anymore". I don't know. But so we'll just keep doing it as long as we want to, as long as people are enjoying it and liking it, but every summits bigger and you know, more attendees and everything than the last time. So it's only getting better, which is great. so yeah, we'll just keep doing that Anna and I have. course we're working on together that will be launched later this year and they might be more of those and more templates and stuff we might do together. But yeah. its just all about Really focusing on out our own businesses and our own eCourses and, potentially want to stop like a membership or something, that's on my to-do list a mile long, so we'll see when that happens. But right now it's still focusing on our courses and big focus on the summit. That's coming up and recording more podcasts too. That's like our next thing.
[00:24:26] Dominique: All right. Well, I'm looking forward to the summit and the great thing about summits is, obviously with an online course, once you've sold it to a person, once you can't sell it to them again, because it's a course, whereas a summit, you might have an audience member who buys all four summits because it's a whole new group of people with new presentations.
So I can see how a summit would be a much more rinse and repeat offering than just an online course, so I'm looking forward to the next batch of speakers that you've got, because the last one was fantastic.
[00:24:54] Emma: I'm really looking forward to it too. We've got a great bunch. I think we've got 24 or 25 this time, and just so everyone knows it's that Summit's completely free. you will notice though, once you've signed up for your ticket, like Dominique said, you're going to get sent to a landing page, and then you just feel like you have to buy this irresistible boss bundle, but you don't have to buy it. The summit is completely free and you can attend without paying a cent and get to listen to all these awesome speakers.
[00:25:19] Dominique: Where can people go if they want to get in your funnel and get upsold?
[00:25:24] Emma: Yeah. well for the summit and my podcast is on a boss podcast. You can go to designer, boss.co, or you can head to my website for my e-courses Emma, kate.co.
[00:25:35] Dominique: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Emma, and it was lovely to catch up with you.
[00:25:40] Emma: Lovely to chat. Thank you.
