When I launch any new marketing machine, I want that bad boy to be lubed up to the nines, and as slippery as a new born seal.

Completely frictionless with an easy flow. So prospects can begin the slippery slide to the sale.

And what that means, is removing as many touch points, user actions, and anything else that makes a prospect stop engaging with the machine.

We do this to get as much data as possible, so we know what's working, and most importantly, what isn't.

Because after all - marketing is the love child of math and behavioural psychology.

But a lack of friction in your marketing has a clear downside.

When you don't have friction in your marketing systems, you will have to deal with unqualified prospects.

And those people are far harder to sell to, and suck in general.

So as soon as we possibly can, we begin to degrease our marketing machines, and introduce friction.

This removes the majority of the tyre-kickers, and means the people who do book calls are far easier to sell to.

But you can push the envelope too far and end up with no prospects, and no clients.

Which means this is a game of see-saw. Trying to find the point where we maximise ROI, without getting a bunch of tyre-kickers.

Balancing flow with friction.

And when it comes to managing friction vs flow in a marketing funnel, there are three main levers to play with.

• Time
• Money
• Effort

Introducing friction means ramping up one or more of the three above.

But get the balance wrong, you will fuck things up.

Let me give you two hypothetical extremes to make the point.

A completely frictionless marketing machine essentially says "We'll work for free, for anybody, no questions asked. Just tell us where to be, and we'll turn up, do the job and leave without a word."

It involves no commitment, or action from the prospect beyond picking a date and time.

It'd be a simple landing page with a promise, and a calendar. Nothing else.

And we've asked for zero time, effort, or money.

On the other end of the spectrum would be...

"You have to give me your name, email address, mailing address, and your company financials just to see my offer. The video of my offer is 4 hours long, and you must watch it all. And if you want to buy my offer, you need to print out this 50 page application form, fill it out, and mail it to me with a $1000 application fee. If we like the look of you, we'll invite you to come in for an interview - which costs an additional $1000. And we only hold these interviews on one day per year. The next available day isn't until next year."

This is a complex multi-step funnel, requiring the prospect to dedicate a considerable amount of time, money, and effort.

It's asking for time, money, and effort.

YadaYadaYada.

You get the point.

Frictionless essentially asks nothing of the prospect.

Max friction asks for time, money, and effort.

If there's too much friction, it feels like an uphill battle for your prospects, and they won't bother. You've interrupted their day with advertising, and they don't have the time or energy to give you.

But if there's too much flow (too little friction), it's too easy. And anyone and everyone will take you up on it, and you don't want to work with anyone. Let alone talk to them.

If you don't have enough leads right now, you have too much friction.

If you are a busy fool, working hard, but making no money, you have too much flow.

Let me tell you about a new client we signed to give you a real world example.

We set up his new video sales letter funnel, and got it live with meta ads.

And within 27 days, we generated ~70 total applicants, of which 26 where qualified, and good matches for his services.

Each qualified application cost $215.30 on average. Well within KPI, and given his market size - and deal value - a good bloody job.

But we had a whale sized problemo.

Of those 26, only 4 of them actually scheduled a time to speak.

That's a ~15% application to booking rate.

And across our clients, 75%~ is the target.

Which means he was essentially missing out on 16 calls we forecasted for him.

Asshole puckering, stomach churning, oh-my-god sort of stuff.

At this point I'm relieved our client had closed one deal, and had another at the finish line from those four calls (which means his ad spend, and our fee is more than taken care of).

But also curious as to what on earth is happening.

So I put on my best Columbo hat, and went looking for the point of friction causing this god-awful call-booking rate.

And praise the lord. I'm 99% certain I found the bastard red handed.

His sales motion is super simple.

We have 30 ads all pointing towards a webpage with a sales video on it, and an application form. If they fill out the form correctly, they then get shown the calendar to pick a time to speak.

At least that is what was meant to happen.

In reality, there was an additional form unbeknown to me on the clients scheduler.

Meaning we was asking them to fill out an additional form to confirm their time to speak.

So it was going form -> calendar -> form.

And this additional form tipped the effort lever over the edge.

We're in the process of getting rid of the second form. And I fully suspect the booking rate to quadruple.

Anyway.

If you want to work with us to build out your sales & marketing mechanisms, and run your Meta ads, email me at connor@15words.co, and put 'FRICTION' in the subject line.

We'll set up a time to speak, and figure out if it makes sense.

Stay frictionless,

Connor Benham

—CWB

P.S. I'm not pointing fingers. But I'll echo shaggys sentiments on this one.