 My name is Brian Kragsgaard and I'm the editor of Poststatus. It's a WordPress news and information site for people that make their living with WordPress. This slide here is to show my southern flair with my WP y'all hat. That's its only point. You can be jealous of my swag. So today, we're going to talk about how to build a compelling WordPress product or service. And we're not going to talk about that from a code perspective. We're going to talk about that from an emotional perspective because that is by far the most important part of the first funnel of three funnels that we'll talk about today. First of all, I get pitched all the time. People with WordPress-based services and products that email me or contact me in some form or fashion. And I initially have no look at the code, the quality of the product, or anything else. So they have to create an emotional response for me. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about how to create something that's compelling. Because the first thing that you have to do is grab someone. So what does it mean to be compelling? Well, it's a multi-stage process. And it's by going through what I'm going to call a conversion funnel. And people label these differently. But I like these four steps. And this is the first of three funnels. And the first thing you have to do is actually raise awareness about your product or service. And the awareness phase is oftentimes where people get stuck. A lot of people have built something amazing. And then they have no clue how they're going to get it in front of anyone's eyes. So when you're raising awareness, you can do that in a variety of ways, like releasing a limited version of your product in the WordPress.org repository for free and creating an upsell to the paid version. Or you could create useful blog posts about your product that can engage someone on the blog content itself that then draws you in to figure out who is this that's writing this. And that can apply both to products and services. So once you raise awareness for someone, they now know who you are, and they know what you do a little bit. And you have to create interest in the product itself or the service itself. And this stage here is where you're going to lose a lot of people. Because how many people go to one blog post or see a result from something that you did in a campaign? Or meet you at a conference and grab your business card. And then when they visit your website, they drop off. And in each of these stages, there's a drop-off percentage. And at the end of that, what you really want people to do is desire your product or service and then act and actually convert to where they become your customer. And at the end of this four-step process where you have significantly dropped off a percentage of your potential customers, you now have a customer. And that's fantastic. But that may be 10% or 5% of the initial people that saw that awareness. So one of the things that's really important when you're trying to create a compelling product or service is actually to focus where your raw numbers are the highest so that you can retain and keep that funnel fat and not narrow it too far down so that once you actually have a customer, you have a broader base of people that you're working with. And you've now got a bigger group of people to start the real fun of creating a compelling product. And that brings us into funnel number two. And it's the actual customer experience funnel. I test and use a ton of products and services as well. If someone has drawn me in, I decide to purchase their product or test their service, they now have to convince me that this was a worthwhile choice. And any product or business, you have certain customers that they buy or they sign up and then they never use it again. And that's not what we want. We want people that are going to be engaged. So the best way to do that is to have a really solid customer initiation. And you can do this through drip campaigns. You can do this through purchase receipts, confirmation, emails, introductory, blog posts. There's all sorts of things that you can do to engage these people right away. One of the simplest ones that you can do is it's done by a lot of people, but some of the help desk services do a really great job of this, like Groove and HelpScout, where you actually get a note from the president of the company. It may be an automated note, but you don't know that right away. Delicious Brains also does this really well, where it's like, hey, Brian, I just want to check in and see how your process has gone so far. My hosting company also does this really well. And they just check in and it feels very personal. And they're creating an emotional connection between you, the customer, and them, the company. And it's harder to walk away from an emotional connection than it is like a corporate relationship. So that's just the customer initiation. We haven't gotten yet to the application itself being good. So now you're installing the product, or you're installing the plug-in or the theme, or you begin the client services process. This is where you actually have to be good at your job. So the application phase, you can of course lose people, you can have requested refunds, and we need to be good at that, but we need to consider that this application portion is part of this customer funnel, because eventually we are getting to somewhere else. Because between application and support and providing excellent support, those two companies I mentioned are also great resources for helping you improve and manage your support at scale and not get stuck in Gmail and email and phone calls and things like that, and they have a lot of tools that will help you. And the end goal is to keep a customer for longer than that first phase of the purchase side goal. So maybe the first project that you do for a client services project, or your first month, the SAS, or your first year of a commercial plug-in or theme sale. And what you really want to do is optimize as much as you can within this second funnel without forgetting that the bulk of your people were in that first funnel. But now you're trying to take these customers from being a one-time customer to a multi-tenure customer that might be around for two years or more. And these are the customers that are going to be your greatest assets. And it's oftentimes that we forget to leverage the people that do renew. And the best referral that you have is a human referral. And the fan funnel is actually what's going to allow you to go back to funnel number one. Funnel number one was awareness. And your fans are going to help you raise awareness with the broader community better than anything else will. And there are levels of that funnel. The first level is the passive recommendation. So I have this service, and meh. It's all right. I would probably use it again, or it's the only thing that really accomplishes my goal. Or the stronger recommendation, where you would recommend it. But you could often turn these strong recommendations into a testimonial. And then if you go take this testimonial and you put that back to funnel number one, that's creating interest and desire because you're publishing the testimonial back in funnel number one. So you're utilizing this third funnel to fill the first funnel and make that more of a emotionally grabbing decision for someone. And then at the end of that, you have the lifer. So every one of us probably has some service or product or thing that we have and we just would not get rid of no matter what because we love it. And that is your absolute best type of customer. And if your customer goes through all three of these funnels, then you've achieved the perfect storm. Great, maybe right. And you've created a customer that's going to be loyal and loyalty is the best customer currency that you have. And they are going to be your advocates, your drivers, and they will be more powerful than any other single piece of creating that emotional engagement that you seek in funnel number one. And that's my dog. She makes every slideshow. And that's it. Thank you.