Justin Phillips

Alex Garcia
November 23, 2023

It’s the holidays. You’re not supposed to be in your email. Enjoy yourself. But if you need a break from the Turkey or crazy in-laws then here’s a quick playbook for you.

But first a quick thanks to our sponsors minisocial and Neurons, who make this newsletter possible.

How Magic Spoon Scaled to 9-Figs with Micro-Influencers

Magic Spoon is Instagram’s favorite high-protein, low-carb cereal.

And that’s because they felt like they were everywhere.

Here’s how:

They booked 100 micro-influencers
Those influencers were told to create testimonial-like videos
Those videos were then run as paid ads

This created the perception that Magic Spoon was everywhere. And everyone’s favorite cereal.

And they worked with minisocial to implement this influencer flywheel.

Want to run the same campaign?

I got you hooked up with 15% off your first project, so just tell em’ AG sent you.

The 8-Figure Instagram Funnel

Instagram isn’t your typical channel for lead gen.

But Justin Phillips flipped that on its head.

JP is the founder of Support Black Colleges, an apparel brand that he’s scaled to $10 million in annual revenue in just 3-4 years.

Using killer content on IG and an automated funnel, Justin:

Grew from 10k followers to 870k followers
Added 10k+ to his email list per month
Grew to 8-figures in revenue.

This is how he built his funnel:

1. TOFU: Find your winning content and give it away for free

When you look at Justin’s content, they follow the same template: a screen share explainer video of “a free supplier” to xxx or “a secret supplier of xxx”.

This stems from testing at scale. To then 10x what works.

So he started testing different content types like podcast clips, infographics, and pointer videos.

And found his explainer videos to perform 10x better than other formats.

And leverages it to drive top-of-funnel awareness for his account.

2. MOFU: Reward content engagement and build a flywheel lead funnel

Justin’s ethos for content creation is: make it so good that people want to save it.

This is why his IG funnel works…

A flywheel lead funnel:

A CTA at the end of the video and description asking the user to comment with a keyword like “brand” to get more free content.
Using manychat, he set up automation so that users who reply with “brand” would get the link to the free content in their DM.
Users are routed to a landing page where they need to submit contact details to get the free content.
The flywheel happens when a post gets hundreds of comments within the first 10 minutes. Users commenting the keyword tell the IG algorithm that his content is worth going viral.
As a result, more new users get to see the content to fuel the top-of-funnel demand!

3. BOFU: The best time to sell again is right after they purchased

And the funnel continues.

On the page where users are watching the free video. There’s a CTA right below to upsell users on the paid program.

The best time to sell again is right after people have purchased. Especially in this case, users are more likely to reciprocate, having just experienced the value of the free content.

The best part is that the upsell is seamlessly integrated into the user experience as Step 2 of the free video instead of being a separate offering. This intentional framing encourages users to transition from the free content to the premium offering seamlessly.

And that’s how you master a content flywheel.

TLDR;

Top of Funnel: Experiment, experiment, experiment until you find your winning content format and give it away for free.
Middle of Funnel: Reward content engagement to initiate the flywheel. Comment a ‘keyword’ and send a free resource as a reward.
Bottom of Funnel: Unlock the free resource in exchange for contact details. Once the visitor engages with the content, upsell them immediately.