The plan after the funnel review. Two tracks, sequenced. Yours and mine.
A plain-English summary of what we now know, what the right next move is, and what each of us owns.
The funnel and offer combo we ran stopped working. Before another play, we need alignment on the actual diagnosis and the actual fix.
Top: what changed. Middle: the two-track plan. Bottom: deliverables and what happens next. Skim the bold first.
We swung. We connected. We didn't drive it out.
February did about $20K on warm-adjacent algorithmic support. The campaign itself has actually been fine on cost. About $77 per application through GHL over the last 30 days.
The issue was downstream of acquisition. Of the last 7 applications, all 7 got disqualified. Lifetime DQ rate is now 90.5% (38 of 42 since January). The campaign isn't broken. The qualification engine is.
And when I pulled the full subscription data on top of that, a second layer surfaced.
Even when humans qualify, pay, and start the program, most leave within the first months. Community-only is canceling at over 80% lifetime. The 12-pay LMA plans are functionally not collecting. Across all offers, you currently have a single-digit number of actively paying customers.
So we have two layers of the same problem. The acquisition stream is generating wrong-fit leads (90% DQ rate). The people who do fit and buy aren't staying (80%+ cancellation). Both point to the same root cause. This isn't a paid-traffic problem. It's an offer-and-audience-fit problem with retention compounding it.
We could double or triple your lead flow tomorrow, and the same DQ rate plus the same cancellation pattern would just convert more spend into churn. Not more revenue. Fixing the back end (the offer, the audience fit, the retention math) is the unlock. Marketing follows.
Track 1 is your work. Track 2 is mine. The sequencing between them is where the math lives.
The unlock. Work only you can do because it's your IP, your customers, and your community. I bring the marketing and methodology lens; the product side belongs to you.
A different funnel shape that fits cold local-business-owner traffic. Short tangible deliverable up front, email nurture for everyone, only sell to hand-raisers.
Lead magnet funnels aren't new. You've probably seen them, maybe built one. What I want to walk through is what's different about the version I'll run for you. Five tactics do most of the work.
Before I build any landing page, I run three $50 ad tests in sequence. The first tests the problem statement. Does the audience respond when we name the pain in their words? The second tests the lead magnet title. Would they actually opt in for this specific thing? The third tests the headline. If any of the three doesn't produce clicks at $50, we adjust before we build, not after.
The point is to catch a message-fit problem for $150 instead of finding out four weeks later when nothing's converting. Most agencies skip this step because it slows down the build. I do it because it saves the $5K of build labor that would otherwise go on a funnel built around a message that doesn't land.
Most targeting is "any local business owner with $10K+/mo." That's not specific enough. We name the exact owner profile we're aiming at (industry, revenue band, lifecycle stage, type of pain) and we name two groups we explicitly won't market to. The ones too early in their business to use what you sell. The ones too far ahead to need it. Three named tiers, only one we sell to.
Counter-intuitive part: when you sharpen the bullseye, the people just below and just above also self-select in. Aspiring owners stretch to qualify because they want to grow into your level. More mature owners join because they recognize they can still learn from someone serious. Going wide actually loses both. The "any local business owner" framing puts you at the kids' table for the more advanced operators, and they bounce.
Your last 30 days illustrate this. About $77 per application, which is fine on cost. But 7 of 7 applications got disqualified, and the lifetime DQ rate is 90.5%. The bait is pulling the wrong audience. Sharpening the bullseye is the fix.
The lead magnet should be a piece of Markademy that can stand alone. A checklist, template, scorecard, or audit you've already taught inside the course, packaged so a cold prospect can use it without buying anything. The reason this matters: when the lead magnet is connected to the sale, the people who opt in are pre-warmed for the offer. When the lead magnet is something random, the people who opt in are random.
Candidates I'll look at first: a GBP audit checklist, a Google Maps diagnostic ("why isn't my listing showing"), the "fully booked Tuesday" template, a lead source diversification scorecard. All exist already in some form inside Markademy. If we work through your course and don't find the right piece for what we need, then I'll create one. The first move is to look at what you've already built.
The opt-in form on the landing page asks for one thing. Email. Lowest possible friction, highest conversion. Once they've opted in, they land on a thank-you page with 2 to 3 qualifying questions: revenue, business type, biggest current pain. About 30 to 40% answer. The other 60 to 70% skip and just get the lead magnet.
That's by design. The 30 to 40% who answer become a high-intent list with profile data attached. These are the people we know are qualified and engaged. The 60 to 70% who skip still got onto the email list and keep nurturing. We don't lose either group. And the front-end conversion rate stays high because the qualifying questions never gated the opt-in itself.
At any moment, only 3 to 6% of any email list is actually ready to buy. The other 94 to 97% will buy eventually, but on their own timeline, not ours. Most coaches burn through their list by selling hard to everyone immediately, which works for the 3 to 6% but costs you the rest. We do the opposite. The whole list gets value emails, indefinitely. Only the people who actively signal "I'm ready to talk" get pitched.
The signaling mechanism is a single-line email that just asks "want some help?" No link, no form, no program details. They reply yes or no. Replies become warm conversations. The rest of the list keeps nurturing.
Once we've generated the first 100 leads through the funnel, I'll send this email as a validation check. If 3 or more reply with a yes, we know the funnel is producing real leads and we scale spend. If fewer than 3, we adjust the bait or the audience before pouring more money in. It's a built-in stop-loss.
Cold prospects don't know you. They have no trust banked. Asking them for big commitments up front (watch a 10-minute video, commit $3,500) only works in markets where the prospect already trusts the seller. For most cold paid traffic, it doesn't.
A lead magnet funnel asks for something small first. An email in exchange for a checklist or template. Trust gets built through actual delivery (the checklist solves a piece of their problem), nurture (the welcome emails teach something useful), and time (people warm up at their own pace). By the time they raise their hand, they've consumed real value from you. That's what shifts them from cold to ready.
The build runs in three phases, each gated by a check before we move forward.
What I need from you on Track 2: About 30 minutes to look at the lead magnet candidates I shortlist. You confirm which 2 or 3 of your course pieces feel strongest as a standalone deliverable. That's the only Track 2 input from you for now.
Track 2 prep runs in parallel for free, starting now. Track 2 paid spend does not deploy until Track 1 shows measurable retention progress. Otherwise we're filling a leaky bucket.
Two ways we can run this from here.
Track 1 first, Track 2 staggered. You spend the next week or two heads-down on the product work: cancel-reason audit, onboarding walkthrough, trial decision. I don't kick off Track 2 prep until you've made enough Track 1 progress for us to know we're moving forward together. The May retainer pauses during that window and picks back up when we kick off Track 2.
Both tracks in parallel. You handle Track 1, I handle Track 2 prep at the same time: message tests, audience definition, lead magnet candidates, buyer language extraction. The May retainer applies as scheduled and covers my Track 2 work for the month.
Either is a fine answer. Pick the one that fits where your head is this month.