In this episode, I’m going to break down the simple marketing funnel I’d use if I had to start my business over tomorrow. In my opinion, there is so much bad funnel advice out there, and as we approach Black Friday and the holidays, it’s only going to get noisier. So I wanted to take the opportunity this week to share what I’d do if I pared everything back.
Right now, my marketing is pretty complicated because it’s almost six years in the making and I have a team to support me. But what if I were just starting my business—or even not starting, but craving simplicity and wanting to be more intentional with my marketing? That’s what I’m going to talk about in this episode.
I’m going to cover what people typically do in their marketing funnels that I think is a mistake, what I would absolutely do instead, and I promise to keep it super simple (while keeping in mind that you probably want to see results quickly). So let’s dive in.
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Table of Contents
This isn’t going to be a mistakes-focused episode, because I want to acknowledge right out of the gate that there are so many ways to build a business, to market a business, and to create a funnel for your business.
I’d Chose To Focus on Something Mid-Ticket
But if I were going to start over tomorrow, I’d first look at what I want to offer, and I’d very likely choose something mid-ticket—probably between $500 and $1,500.
Here’s the thing: I think a lot of times when we hear “funnels,” we think low-ticket. We think, “I’ve got to get my freebie out there, then an order bump or tripwire, then send 85 emails, and then they upgrade to this course, and then to my high-ticket coaching,” and suddenly there’s this whole ascension model. And all of that is—I want to say great—but it is what it is. I think complicated business models like that either work well or they don’t, and often without an outside perspective, you’re not going to know what you actually have until you have it, and then you can decide if it was a good idea or not.
I also want to say I wouldn’t go super high-ticket, because in my experience, high-ticket really demands that rock-solid internal belief that I might not have at the beginning. If you’re doing something high-ticket—let’s say you’re in the wedding industry and you want to work with five couples a year—you have to believe, day in and day out, that those people are coming. You have to market as if they’re coming, despite having no evidence.
I think a lot of us can’t sustain that level of confidence for three months without a lead coming in, if that makes sense. So if I were starting my business or this funnel over again, that’s not where I’d focus.
I also think mid-ticket is really nice because you can often see the difference right away in your bank account. If you get $1,500, it’s like, “Damn, that feels like a nice little cash infusion.” Maybe not like the stories you see online where people make a hundred thousand dollars in three days, but it does feel good.
Most of us notice an extra $1,500. I see behind the scenes with so many business owners, and believe me when I tell you that. Whereas with low-ticket offers, you can see a lot of sales and still not feel like you’re winning. You have to sell so many $17 e-books before you’re like, “This was a good idea,” right? Let’s say you sell 20—what is that, $340? And I’m not turning down $340. I’m just saying that if I were going all-in on a simple marketing funnel, if I were going to pare back my business, that is not how I would start.
So that’s what I want to say about the offer decision. I would choose something in the $500 to $1,500 range. I also think you don’t need a ton of social proof at that price point. And hear me when I say: you do need to know what you’re doing. Please do not sell something you can’t confidently deliver on. I just feel like I have to say that—don’t sell something you’re not confident in. But if you are confident—let’s say you did it in corporate, or you’ve been selling it through word of mouth for a long time—it can be an easy offer to build momentum with, close on a sales call, and have real conversations around.
So anyway, that’s the offer decision.
Focus on One Problem + One Person
The next thing I would obviously do—which you hear in every single podcast—is focus on one problem, one person. And this is less of a brand exercise and more of a focus exercise: Who do you help? What problems do you solve? What is the specific promise if they hire you?
“I help personal brands get their first website off the ground.”
“I help small business owners build a social media presence that gets them followers.”
Whatever it is.
It feels very 2017-coded—the classic “I help X achieve Y in Z time without A, B, C.” Write that down. Figure that out for yourself.
And I also want to say: that’s advice you’ll hear anywhere. But if you want my Cara version of it, give yourself two hours to do this. So many people spend way too long on this stage. My friends hate me for this because I will not let you stay in the planning stage as long as you want to. I will 100% push you to take action.
And truly, it is really hard to find clarity in your home office. We sit around brainstorming our ideal client and trying to craft the perfect offer messaging—what we think will be the most compelling—when in reality, I’ve gotten much farther with my own messaging by (1) having actual conversations and (2) putting content out there and seeing what people respond to.
So hear me when I say: pick something mid-ticket, choose one problem and one person to sell it to, and give yourself two hours to do this.
Build a Website As a Minimal Infrastructure For Your Business
The next thing I would do is build what I consider a minimal infrastructure. This isn’t going to be perfect, but it will give you a foundation. I would put up a simple website with five pages: a homepage, an about page, a services or product page for the one thing you’re selling, a contact page, and a blog page—depending on how much time you have to set this up.
Now, if you’re hoping to make money by Christmas, I would skip this next step. But if you’re building this simple marketing funnel as a brand-new business owner and you want to build it sustainably, I would also set up an email list with some kind of lead magnet. Use ChatGPT to help you. Don’t make it garbage—it’s someone’s first impression—but put something together quickly so you can start collecting emails. And then maybe write a five-email welcome series.
Again, hear me when I say: I want to keep this focused on a simple marketing funnel, and this step is extra. If I needed cash fast, I would skip it.
So, I’d try to get that five-page website up. I know one-page websites can do well, so if that feels more aligned, you can absolutely do a one-page site—as long as it includes some kind of blog functionality. I’m obviously making blogging part of my simple marketing funnel because I always have. Not only do I do it as a service, but it was always part of my marketing when I built my wedding business. It’s been part of my content marketing agency from the start. It’s literally what I tell every single person: I think they need a blog for their business. Not even just if they’re going to hire me—if they’re a friend with no budget, I’m still telling them they need a blog.
We’re not there yet in the funnel, but it’s worth mentioning as you set up this minimal infrastructure: your website will need a blog. It will come up.
My Favorite Showit Website Templates
If you don’t have a website yet, I recommend Showit. I find it incredibly user-friendly, with great support and really strong templates. Some of my favorite Showit website templates (in no particular order!):
The quality of a Showit template really does make a difference, especially as someone who specializes in SEO. I see so many SEO issues in some of the templates my clients use, and I’m pretty picky about what I recommend. So you can go to that blog post to see which ones I trust—and I can keep that updated, which is better than listing them off here.
Anyway, I got off on a tangent there, but the point is: with a solid Showit template, plus ChatGPT helping you write, you can get your site up quickly. And again, when I say “use AI to write,” I do not mean copy and paste. I don’t mean dumping in buzzwords or slop. You put into ChatGPT what you actually want to say, and then it helps you write it.
Literally—I was just talking to a friend about this. I might not be quite this blunt with a client, but with my friend I said, “Listen, I just reviewed three of your pages and they all say the same eight buzzwords. You have to change it, because I don’t even understand what you do.” I told her, “It sounds beautiful, but you have to kill some of your darlings because you’re saying a whole lot of nothing.”
Even with that, I still think using ChatGPT is helpful. There’s editing involved, of course—swapping images, tweaking the copy, cleaning things up—but it still speeds up the process a ton.
Batch 10 Blog Posts
The next step is to build a bank of content, and I would do this right away. And yes, I would still do this even if you needed cash sooner rather than later. Even though blogging takes time, I would batch-write 10 blog posts.
I want to address something here: so often we’re like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t have time to write 10 blog posts.” If you don’t have clients right now, or you’re looking to expand your reach, you do have time to write 10 blog posts. You will never have more time than you have right now.
Obviously there’s nuance to that, but in general we convince ourselves we don’t have time to do X, Y, Z because we’re “doing all the things.” Don’t do all the things, okay? That’s why we’re paring down. We’re building a simple marketing strategy—and that strategy includes having a bank of blog posts.
These blog posts will eventually rank on Google. They’ll support you in creating more content. They’ll also function as social proof or authority-building for people who land on your website. There are so many reasons to do this. Maybe 10 isn’t your number, but I would say a minimum of five. Minimum five. But really, I like 10—because if I land on your website and see a blog with 10 posts, I’m like, “Okay, she’s been doing this for a bit.” And that matters.
That’s number two of my marketing funnel.
Use Social Media To Get More Eyes On Your Content
Number three is getting eyes on your content. You need more visibility now, so I would choose a faster-moving platform—not necessarily forever, but definitely for getting attention quickly. I would choose either Instagram or TikTok.
As a millennial, I’m more comfortable with Instagram, but TikTok can be a very solid option. It just depends on your preference.
On whichever platform you choose, I would post at least once a day. And I would do at least two to three stories per day. Sometimes that could simply be resharing something funny or on brand, or a selfie with your coffee. Randomly, that has been performing really well for me. I’ve noticed—and I don’t do this every day, though I should—that when I start my stories with a selfie and some text over it, my stories for the entire day tend to perform better.
Anyway, that’s what you probably think I’m going to tell you to do on Instagram—but what I’m actually going to say is this: with the rest of your time, I would actively be engaging and having as many conversations as possible.
This is not cold pitching or sliding into people’s DMs. I would be responding to stories, leaving comments that don’t feel salesy, and focusing on growth content—not sales content, not nurture content as much. You can do some selling in stories, but I would mostly try to get in front of as many people as possible.
Add in Threads For More Awareness
And I’d get myself on Threads, too. So I’m saying Instagram or TikTok, and then I’d add Threads. The reason is that it’s such a low-lift platform. Put those 10 blog posts you wrote into ChatGPT and ask it to pull the best takeaways, then think of one random, relatable thing a day—about you as a business owner, a mom, a millennial, an Enneagram Three, whatever—and that becomes your awareness content.
Okay, so let me back up and say all this in reverse.
The Top of Your Simple Marketing Funnel
When we think of a funnel, we think of the top as an awareness tool. That is your Instagram/TikTok/Threads strategy—your engagement strategy. Get out and be social. If you’re building a simple marketing funnel from scratch, you are not going to sit and wait for people to come to you.
You’re going to get out there and have as many conversations as you possibly can. And again, not pitching—just responding to stories, leaving comments, being a real human. Genuine networking. Get people to pay attention to you.
From there, you already have your bank of blog posts. Hopefully that will start doing some SEO work for you, but it can take time, especially on a brand-new domain. I know some of you listening already have solid businesses and are just looking for nuggets to apply to what’s already working. And I know some of you are thinking, “I really need to get off Instagram. I need to stop relying on referrals.” So I’m telling you exactly what I would do if I had to start my business over.
If you don’t have as many clients or sales as you want, visibility is your full-time job. Get out there and bring people to you.
The Middle and Bottom of Your Simple Marketing Funnel
Then think of the middle of your funnel. That’s your blog content and your website content. Someone lands on your site, they’re curious about working with you, you have your mid-ticket offer right there, and you have blog content for them to learn more about you. You also have a contact form, probably linked to your CRM.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t even know what I would share—I’m just trying to get clients right now,” show what you’re doing that day. Remind people what you’re selling. Talk about how many spots you have. One thing people miss in their marketing—and I include myself in this—is urgency. Why is now the right time to take action on this, beyond fake scarcity or countdown timers? I don’t mean that. But genuinely: why is right now the right time?
And make sure you share that as many times as you can. Look at what’s working and keep creating more of the content that works. And that is literally my funnel—not my current funnel, but the funnel I would build if I were starting over from scratch.
If I needed a simple marketing funnel, this is exactly what I would do: I’d create a website that gives me a solid foundation, I’d have blog posts ready for people to binge, and then I’d get on Instagram and go find my frigging clients. One hundred percent.
You Don’t Need a Complicated Funnel
A lot of times we hear “marketing funnel” and instantly think automation, 17-email sequences, fancy (and expensive) software. We think, “Do I need ThriveCart?” And I really don’t think it needs to be that way. Those tools can make things easier—especially once you’re dealing with higher volume. For example, if you’re selling a $17 ebook with a $34 add-on and a $297 upsell and then a high-ticket offer… yes, automation, tech, and email sequences can be incredibly helpful when you have that kind of volume.
But if you’re just setting up a simple marketing funnel that helps you bring in some cash on the lower end, here’s something I should have said earlier: when I say $500 to $1,500, I’m thinking monthly services. I did not mean that if you’re a website designer you need an offer priced there. Instead, think about the payment plan price. If you charge $5,000 for a website—don’t use that as the benchmark, I’m just giving an example—and you offer a six-month payment plan at $750 a month, that would be considered mid-ticket in this context.
I’m talking about cash flow—money coming through your door—not the total package price. Because selling $500 packages over and over and over again? That can get exhausting.
Okay, I’m going to finish up this episode with a few frequently asked questions. So I’ve walked you through my simple marketing funnel—I think I’ve said that exact phrase 85 times in this 20-minute episode—but now I want to get into the FAQs. And this is the question I got four times this week:
Should I be adding frequently asked questions to blogs for AI?
The answer is probably yes. Not every single time, because it can feel really monotonous, and I don’t think it’s worth adding FAQs that are so basic they’ll never make it into an AI summary. But overall, I do think it can be a good idea. So I thought I would practice what I preach in this episode—which is funny because it’s a podcast—but since I turn podcast episodes into blogs, bear with me.
What if you don’t know your niche, or you’re in the middle of a pivot?
I addressed this at the beginning, but I really want to hammer it home:
You do not get clarity sitting in your office, deciding on messaging angles, and talking to your best friend ChatGPT. You just don’t.
I’ve mentioned this before, but when I started my business, my wedding business shut down because of COVID—temporarily—and I was like, “What am I going to do for money?” I sat down and wrote out everything I knew how to do. Then from that list, I asked myself what I wanted to do. And I started my business offering everything under the marketing umbrella.
Pretty quickly, I realized there were parts of marketing I didn’t enjoy. That’s why I went all-in on Pinterest and blogging. Not only are they the most effective use of small business owners’ dollars and the easiest things to outsource—they’re genuinely what I like doing most.
I never would have figured that out sitting alone in a room. You get clarity by working with people and doing things. That is my number one advice.
What if I don’t have testimonials?
I hinted at this earlier. Blog posts can help establish your authority. If you write on topics you truly understand, you’re showcasing your expertise. That alone can be really effective.
And this is going to sound unpopular, but depending on the service, sometimes offering it for free in exchange for testimonials can also be incredibly effective.
You know what? Your girl’s not afraid to work for free. I’m just going to say that. I am not afraid to work for free if I’m trying something new or if I’m going to benefit in other ways. I know that’s not super popular, but that’s my honest opinion.
I also think a great way to support whatever you’re selling is with statistics or some kind of additional proof. For example, in my own business with AI: there are some AI trackers popping up that claim to tell you how you’re ranking in AI. I haven’t found anything particularly good yet. As soon as I do, I’ll tell my clients, and eventually it will find its way onto the podcast. But I do know that blogging helps you get found in AI. I have qualitative data—clients telling me they got their first lead on ChatGPT, my wedding business gets regular leads from ChatGPT. So I know it’s happening, but I don’t have something like “X% of my clients have 12 articles ranking on ChatGPT.”
What I can do is reference broader data. For example, on Backlinko, which is run by SEMrush, they said that most ChatGPT results are coming from position 21 and up—page three onward of Google. That means the playing field has been leveled and it’s a great time to invest in blogging. Or I could pull general content marketing stats—like “people who invest in content marketing are X times more likely to see ROI”—and borrow those to enhance authority if I didn’t have testimonials. (And to be clear, I’m making up those numbers here just to keep talking without stopping to research.)
That said, getting testimonials should be a priority, especially now. We’re dealing with a very sophisticated market—people know what to look for, and unfortunately there are so many people who are… well, lying. Testimonials help cut through that.
What if I don’t want to market my business on Instagram and TikTok?
Raise my hand—I totally get that. And you’ll notice in the Instagram/TikTok strategy I shared, I’m not telling you to just post and pray. It is way too late to start passively. You have to show up intentionally, day in and day out. But that is temporary. This simple marketing funnel is a really effective and fast way to build momentum, not necessarily the forever plan.
Long-term, I would continue investing in search-driven marketing platforms because I believe they’re the most sustainable ways to grow. Obviously, you could hire me for blogging or Pinterest, but there’s also podcasting, YouTube, and other ways to be found online. One thing I’m super interested in—but haven’t tried myself yet—is getting found via LinkedIn SEO. That’s a story for another day, but the point is: there’s more than one way to market your business.
How long should this take to work?
I really think two hours a day. I know that’s unpopular. I’m not the “15-minute posting routine” person. I’ve been more active on Instagram lately, and my screen time is around 42 minutes a day—which I think is outrageous. Too much time. And honestly, I’m trying things for my own reasons that aren’t strictly ROI-related, so I don’t want to explain them because they’ll sound dumb.
And part of that screen time is me not engaging as much as I should. But if I were trying to build a simple marketing funnel, this is exactly what I’d do, and it’s exactly what I’d recommend to someone who wants more clients and more cash right now. It takes two hours a day. That’s just the truth.
Anyway, that’s it for me this week. I’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to the end.
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