The Ultimate Strategy Guide For Marketing Online In 2021

Written By: Christopher Lengyel- SEO Marketing Expert

Hello! My name is Christopher Lengyel and in 2020, I helped over 60 businesses save advertisment money by using SEO Marketing

Today I’m going to showcase that strategy so you can use it as well. It involves direct response marketing, sales funnels, and paid facebook ads.

Now incase you’re not aware of what any of this is, I’ve written a nice primer on it.

Please read it carefully, if you skim around when you read it, you’re going to get lost. If you already know what a funnel is, skip to the section labeled “This Is How A Funnel Works So Well With Advertising.”

“So, Let’s Begin, What’s A “Funnel”?

There’s three components to digital marketing:

A traffic source is where your potential patients are in the digital world. That could be: Facebook, Google, Instagram, direct mail, email, whatever.

We’re going to use advertising to siphon people away from that source and have them come to our “landing page”.

Before, the only options we had for landing pages were websites. Now we have something called “Sales Funnels”. You can think of them as “mini-websites” which don’t have a navigation bar. (Did you notice this page doesn’t have one?)

We now have the choice between sending people to our website, or our sales funnel.

The way a funnel works is simple. Imagine you’re going down the freeway, and you see a billboard that says:

“Free Designer Clothes At Next Exit, Make Sure You Turn Left Into Mike’s Clothes Shop”

Well, people who are into designer clothes would probably get off at that exit right?

Facebook is the freeway. Your ad is the billboard. Mike’s Clothes Shop is your sales funnel. The people in cars are the “traffic”. Our ads have to say something to convince someone to get off the freeway and get off at the exit. 

Now, you can use Facebook to drive traffic to your website, or a funnel.

“Here’s Why It’s Worth Investing In

Building A Funnel In Addition To Your Website”

The problem with websites, is the sheer amount of options it has. Websites induce Indecision.

When you go to a website, there is no clear course of action. You can go to someone’s website and get lost inside the pages.

So unless a person has a clear path on what to do when they’re on your website… they won’t do anything.

A funnel is the antithesis of that. A funnel works like a bowling alley. Everyone is in their own lane, and they can either go towards the pins, or they can go in the gutter. But they can’t do anything else.

This is the second big advantage funnels have.

So, what we’re doing, is using Facebook ads to take people from Facebook, and put them exactly where they need to go into your funnel..

“This Is How A Funnel Works So Well With Advertising”

Okay, there’s probably thousands of people on Facebook who could be your potential clients right? And you want those people to come into the clinic. You don’t want them to just go to your website and get lost right?

No. Of course not. You want them to land on a specific page and do something. (Like sign up for a discount, or give you money.)

Let’s say you put up an advertisement to visit your restaurant on Facebook and 1000 people see it.

Those 1000 people were just put into the “top of our funnel”. And we know if 1000 people se our ad, only 5-10 people are actually going to be interested in who we are and what we do. (And these numbers are pretty typical by the way.)

Now, back in the old days, if you didn’t get the contact information of those 5-10 people right away, they would be lost to the abyss forever.

Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that anymore because Facebook allows us to do something other advertising platforms have NEVER been able to do. (Not even google.)

Which is something called….

“The Invisible List”

See, Facebook tracks everything that each user does on the platform. So, if 1000 people see your ad, we can tell Facebook to show those SAME 1000 people the ad again. Or we can show them a different ad altogether. But this only scratches the surface of what we can do.

Lets say 10 out of the 1000 people who saw your ad actually clicked through to your website. When someone clicks to the next page they’ve triggered something called an “event”.

An event is a fancy term for “someone did something we can track”.

So, Here’s where we’re at right now:

1000 people saw your ad.

Out of those 1000 people, 10 clicked on the ad and went to your funnel.

The other 990 people saw your ad and did nothing.

That means, you have 10 people in the MIDDLE of your funnel, and 990 at the TOP of your funnel. 

Well, now we can target the 10 people who went to your website with a different ad.

So, this is called “retargeting”. Retargeting just means we’re advertising to someone who’s already interacted with us. 

Let’s say 1 person does schedule an appointment.

So, now you have:

990 people in the top of your funnel (these are people who saw your ad and did nothing.)

9 people in the middle of your funnel (these are people who saw your ad and went to your funnel and left.)

1 person in the bottom of your funnel (these are the people who saw your ad, went to your funnel, and got the discount offer)

You have officially built out 3 layers of your funnel.

Now, guess what? When that 1 person shows up with their voucher, he/she would have “converted”. Or, you have one “conversion”.

A conversion just means you took someone from being a prospect, to being a customer. AKA…….

“A Complete Stranger Gave You Money After You Advertised To Them! Congrats!”

If this doesn’t quite make sense now, don’t worry it will.

What we’ve done is found the 1 person out of 1000 who matters. This 1 person is the patron who is going to keep your business going.

Now let’s do some really fun math.

If one customer is worth 1000 dollars (I’m going to use 1000 dollars because it keep the math simple your customers may be worth more or less.

All you have to do to make 1,000,000 dollars is get 1000 patients.

All that means is, you have to get 1,000,000 into the “top of your funnel”.

So, Here’s The Job For Each Step Of The Funnel:

So, there’s people on facebook who are completely unaware you exist. You create your first ad to build awareness. Once someone sees your first ad, they are in the top of the funnel.

Then you retarget the people in the top of your funnel with another ad. This ad is going to give them an offer to receive a discount or schedule an appointment with you. If someone from the top of your funnel clicked on that ad and went to the scheduler page, they are now in the middle of the funnel. 

If the person who clicked on the other offer actually schedules an appointment with you, they are now moved from the middle of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. 

But, to make sure we maximize our marketing abilities, we’re going to retarget the people in the middle of your funnel with another ad. This will push them to complete the appointment.

Now. Once someone reaches the bottom of the funnel, we’re going to retarget them again with emails to make sure they show up to the place of business.

When they show up, they are OUT of your funnel, and they have converted into a customer.

Now, Let’s Start Creating This Funnel.

So, before I write any ads or SEO into anything, I plot out the customer journey on the Facebook side of things. What that means is simple. I try to craft the road the prospect is going to go down before I do any writing. 

That usually looks like this:

Now, you’re probably confused looking at that picture. What that picture is, is my initial campaign planning sheet. I like using a campaign planner so I can have a big overview of what the funnel will look like.

Knowing what my objectives are, what platforms the ads are going to be shown at, and the objectives and audiences for each ad is super helpful.

But honestly, you can do this on a blank sheet of paper if you’d like. Just draw out the steps someone has to take to become a customer.

So let’s dive into step 1…

“Top Of Funnel”

Okay, so in the top of the funnel, you have to get someone’s attention and then build their awareness of you and your business.

So, you have two choices:

Focus on you, or focus on the prospect.

By the way, there isn’t a “wrong” approach.

If your ideal prospect already knows:

1. What your restaurant serves
2. What your restaurant can do for them
3. Believe your restaurant is the right choice 
4. Believe you are the right Chef for the job…

By all means, focus the ad on you. That’s where their interest is.

But 99 times out of 100, they don’t care who you are, what you do, or what deal you have going on. They only care about solving the problem they have.

And so, I like to focus on a problem the prospect has.

For instance:

Needs new dinner recipes

Indecisive on where to eat

Needs fast service

Catering needs for groups

You know, things the customer thinks about everyday.

Remember, the top of the funnel is just designed to get people who are interested to identify themselves, NOT schedule an appointment.

Now, you’re a chef, it’s your job to market your services. And so I’m going to hold you to that standard. So I have my clients either:

Make a video which is helpful to people from suffering from (X problem.)

Or do what I’m doing and write an article which will help them with (x Problem.)

Now, there’s two reasons for this.

One. If the prospect feel is like you’re helping them, their respect for you goes up, but they also want to work with you more.

No one wants to work with an amateur. People that eat good food want to be served by experts. People want to work with people they like. People like giving money to people they respect.

“Doing This Is Called “Pre-Selling” And Restaurant Owners Do A Really Bad Job Of It.”

But the real advantage comes with reason number two.

Imagine you want dinner, and you have to pick between two restaurants.

Restaurant A has written articles and made videos which helped you understand YOUR problem. They’ve also given you tools, tips, and recipies to try and help you (and others like you), make a decision. Oh, and they haven’t even asked you for money.

Restaurant B just ran an ad on facebook, and is offering you double money gift cards you pay $10 but get $20. You know nothing about the chef. They have not ever prepared food for you before. And it’s kind of off-putting that he’s asking you for money upfront.

Who would you go see? Because I’m going to Restaurant A.

It pays to play the long game, and do what’s best for the customer.

Not to mention, it takes almost no effort to record you helping a customer, (you can even use your staff and have them be the customer) and use it to get people interested in you.

So here’s the step’s

1. Know your prospect
2. Know your prospect’s problem
3. Create content to help them with their problem
4. Put that content on your website
5. Use facebook ads to drive traffic to that content.

So, what should your headline be?

Something like…

Chef (Your name) shares the top 5 dishes that make choosing a restaurant for dinner an easy decision.

What should the text in your ad say?

Well, I like to stick to the old Problem, Agitate, Solve formula.

In case you’ve never written ads before (or held a sales job) this is what most people use in “short sales.”

So, you can what you do is get someone to admit they have a problem, then you turn up the pain, and then hand them a solution.

You can say something like this:

I’m Chef (Your name here) and having cold food at a catered event is the most aggravating experience you can have at a party. Clients that I work with have experienced this and it ruined their party. And so I’ve (created this video / written this article) to help you keep the food hot).

This is BASIC. This is not extremely compelling, but I’m going to use it to illustrate the Problem, Agitate, Solve formula.

Line 1 (Problem): I’m Chef (Your name here) and having cold food at a catered event is the most aggravating experience you can have at a party. 

Line 2 (Agitate): Clients that I work with have experienced this and it ruined their party.

Line 3 (Solve): And so I’ve (created this video / written this article) to help you keep your food hot).

You don’t need to get crazy with it. This should be sufficient to help you get those brain juices flowing. (But try and add some extra “umph” to this formula.)

Okay, That should be enough to make anyone wanting hot catered food click on the article.

If you’ve gotten this far congratulations! You’ve just created your first “Top Of Funnel” Ad!

So, lets move onto the….

“Middle Of The Funnel”

This is where things get really fun.

So, 1000 people have seen your first ad. 10 clicked on it. What should you say to those 10 people in this ad? Well now we’re going to up the anti a little bit.

Now, we know they want hot catered food, and they’ve read your article (in theory). What you can do now, is make them a “soft offer”. A soft offer is just something to make them give you their contact information. 

There are two different categories of “Soft Offers”….

“Lead Magnets & Quizzes”

A Lead Magnet is something you give away for free to get someone’s contact information

A Quiz is… a quiz! What you do is ask the prospect if they want to take a quiz, and then ask them for their contact information to get the results.

Depending on Who you want to attract, you can use either.

Here’s some ideas you can use for both categories:

Quiz Types

√ Challengye Quiz

√ Discovery Quiz

Lead Magnets:

Free Report: Imean, this is “The Classic” lead magnet. People sign up for a free report about whatever type of pain they’re having.

You can’t go wrong here, however, they are getting a little tired. So, if it’s not converting well, you can use my favorite solution…

Free Online Class: A free online class is an interesting take because most restaurant customers haven’t experienced a “cooking” class. (This lets you show off how good your food is!)

If you want to be on the cutting edge of marketing, these work great as lead magnets because you’re going to hop on a zoom with potential customers, and you’re going to build a real connection.

Once again, you need to have a purpose for this class. You can’t just say “Free online cooking class.” You have to have a goal for this to be valuable. 

Quizzes:

Quizzes work REALLY well because it provides a more personalized experience for the customer than just a free give-away. So think about this. What if you released an ad that said: Free Quiz For Restaurant Customers: How To Decide What To Have For Dinner.

Anyone who takes that quiz… is trying to decide what to have for dinner and wondering if they should go to a restaurant.

That shows intent from the prospect and it’s a higher level of personalization.

So, they take a 10 question test, and before they can get their results, they get a popup that says,

“Where Can We Send You The Results?”

So they type in their contact information and check their email.

You’ve just collected their email address, AND you’ve increased your chances of seeing that customer because you’ve started building a stack of proof that they need to see you.

So I’m a huge fan of quizzes. I could write ARTICLES on quizzes. But I’m going to keep it short.

Challenge Quiz: A challenge quiz is where you ask someone “Can you (do x)? Take this quiz to find out.” To be honest, I’ve never used this in a professional sense. But I’ve seen other people do it.

Discovery Quiz: This is the quiz I use most. It goes something like this….. “Should you go to (Insert Restaurant Name)? Take This Quiz To Find Out.”

Anyway, That’s the middle of the funnel ad.

After  you’ve gotten their contact information, it’s time for the big ask. Are you ready for the….

“Bottom Of The Funnel”

So now you have a choice, do you want a very small amount of people who are willing to pay now, or do you want a large amount of people who can pay later?

Because you’re going to have to choose between giving something out for free or for a discount.

Strategy 1: Get ten people in the door for free, and sell 2-5.

Strategy 2: Sell 2 people and get them in the door.

When you’re growing your business, Strategy 1 will always yield you more money over time. Here’s why. Every customer you bring in, is going to recommend 1-3 more people at some point.

So 2-5 patients turns into 6-15 more patients over a large period of time.

I’d also rather have 2-5 people leave reviews on google and Facebook. This will allow you to strengthen your SEO & Google My Business Reviews. Thus, bringing you more money.

Now with that said. When you’re a huge business with bills to pay, you might have the marketing budget to make strategy 2 work.

But, your cost of acquiring a customer is going to go up because you’re going to have to do a lot more selling on the front end.

You’re also going to have to be a lot more aggressive in your follow-up. Which means putting more money into Facebook, google and staff to make outbound calls.

Hard Offers

√ State-Your-Price

√20% Off Your First Visit

√ Catering for 10 people  Voucher

√Buy Something Get Something Free

Free Offers:

Free Kids Meal: This offer grabs the attention of parents, grandparents and the occasional aunt and uncle trying to spil their favorite sibling. Once they come in it is your job to up-sell.

Free Dessert: This offer can catch the average sweet tooth consumer with instant cupon downloads. They might be on the way.

Free Side: There are always the ones who want the “extra” with their meal.

Hard Offers:

State-Your-Price:  If your normal price is $15.99 for a dinner plate, you simply say: “Come see us for dinner! Grab the daily special for $15.99.” If you’ve done a good enough job building rapport with your customers, it works. But if you haven’t, this won’t work and they’ll look for deals elsewhere.

20% off your first visit: This is good for prospects who want to come and try your food but the price is too high. If you have a lot of people on the fence, you can send this out as a promo and get some customers.

Catering for 10 people Voucher:  This can be used to get pre-scheduled events lined up in advanced.

Buy Something Get Something For Free: This is probably the best offer you can present and still get money in the door.

I highly recommend: Free Dessert or Side Dish on first visit.

This allows you to use the word free in your advertising and still get some cash in the door. 

So, once you have,

Your audience, your advertising, and your offers in line. I’m going to show you something most marketers won’t show you.

“The Secret To Making This All Work.”

I build funnels in “streams”.

That means I build individual funnels for different prospects.

That means I build individual funnels for different prospects.

Here’s what I mean. I have a different funnel for:

1. Birthday Catering
2. Wedding Events
3. Dine In
4. Take-Out
5. Delivery
6. Private Chef Experiences
7. Pop-Up Events
8. Corporate Events
9. Meal Prep

You read that right. At any given time, I will be running ads for 10 different prospects.

You want to know why? The more you seem like a specialist in an area of pain, the easier it is to sell to people. 

If you wrote an entire article based on having great dining experiences, it positions you as a specialist. That’s why this strategy works so well.

I am an expert at Web Development & SEO Marketing because that’s all I do. I use google and know a lot about email, but I really do spend 95% of my time helping people with SEO Marketing on media platforms.

Digital Advertisement and SEO Marketing are the #1 things restaurant owners have the worst time executing well, and so I’m considered a “specialist” in SEO marketing. If you wanted help with SEO Marketing & Digital Advertisement, where would you go? To some guy who does “a little of everything?” probably not.

You’d go to someone who specializes in solving your problem. Well, when someone is in pain, and they’re thinking about spending money to fix it, they want to go to a specialist. YOU need to be that specialist.

So it’s not enough to set-up one funnel and call it a “one and done”. You need to setup 10 funnels and have those systems operating smoothly.

If you want help with that, I highly suggest picking up The Campaign Planning Sheet & SEO Guide

It’s going to teach you how to plan these campaigns from a high level, so you won’t feel so overwhelmed doing it.

So, I hope you enjoyed this article! And as always…

It’s A Great Day For SEO Marketing

Chris Lengyel

P.S. if you find any typos, can you send me an email at

Chris@BusinessYoutubeVideo.com it would be greatly appreciated!