Case study · Paul McFadden Wealth · GoHighLevel funnel
£3,000 of Meta ads. £13,365 in course sales.
Paul McFadden sells a paid Property Sourcing & Deal Trading programme. Nobody buys a course like that from a stranger on the first click. So I built the road in between: a free ebook to start the conversation, a free membership to earn trust, and a video course that ends at the £495 offer. Email and phone follow-up caught everyone who didn’t buy the first time.
Client
Paul McFadden Wealth
My role
Funnel build, split testing, email copy
Channels
Meta Ads, GoHighLevel
Ad spend
£3,000 on Meta
Event
3 months, 2024
The numbers
What went in. What came back.
£3,000
Ad spend across Meta
£13,365
Course sales: 27 buyers at £495
4.5×
Return on ad spend, from the course alone
£111
To acquire a £495 customer
-
555 got the free ebook£5.41 each
-
318 joined the free course57% of downloads
-
27 bought the £495 course8.5% of members
Source: Meta Ads Manager and GoHighLevel. Revenue counts the £495 course only; sales of the in-person class and the £49 Jumpstart course from phone follow-up are not included.
01 · THE FUNNEL
Four steps. Each one asks for a little more.
Every page has one job: get the next yes. Something free earns an email. The email earns a trial. The trial earns the right to pitch the paid programme.
STEP 1 · ASK: AN EMAIL
Free ebook
“From Sourcing to Selling”, on a split-tested opt-in page.
STEP 2 · ASK: A SIGN-UP
2-day free membership
Offered on the thank-you page, while intent is highest.
STEP 3 · ASK: ATTENTION
Four-part video course
Auto-login, a welcome video, then the teaching.
STEP 4 · ASK: THE SALE
Paid programme
The last video ends with Access Now, straight to the programme.
02 · STEP 1, SPLIT-TESTED
Two opt-in pages. A coin toss decides which you see.
The main address loads one of two versions at random, 50/50, so every visitor is part of the test. Version A leads with the payoff: £5,000–£10,000 a deal. Version B adds a timeframe, “every month, within the next 3–6 months”, and makes the read feel quick: “20 years of expertise in just 15 minutes.”
Version A won, bringing in most of the sign-ups. The plain payoff beat the payoff with a deadline, so A became the page.
Version A · the payoff. (✓ Won the test)
“Make serious income through property deal trading.”
Version B · the payoff with a deadline
“Every month, within the next 3–6 months.”
03 · STEP 2
The thank-you page does the selling.
Most funnels waste the moment after a sign-up on “Check your inbox.” This one uses it. While the reader is still warm, it offers the next step: a free programme with a stated value of £495, two days of membership at no cost.
One click signs them up, logs them in automatically and asks them to set a password. No extra forms between interest and the course.
04 · STEPS 3 AND 4
Teach first. Pitch last.
Inside the membership: a welcome video and four lessons, from getting started to making offers. The course gives real value before it asks for anything, so by the final video the paid programme is the obvious next step.
That last lesson carries one button, Access Now, linking straight to the Property Sourcing & Deal Trading programme.
05 · THE FOLLOW-UP
Nobody falls out of the funnel quietly.
Most people don’t buy on the first pass. So every exit had something waiting for it: an email flow in GoHighLevel, which I wrote and a teammate built, or a call from the sales team with an offer that fit.
GOT THE EBOOK, DIDN’T JOIN
Email flow back to the free course
237 downloaders who skipped the membership got a sequence pointing them back to it.
JOINED, DIDN’T BUY
Email flow to the £495 course
Members who hadn’t bought got a second sequence making the case for the paid programme.
FINISHED THE COURSE, DIDN’T BUY
A sales call, with three ways in
The sales team called with three options. Up: the live, in-person deal trading class. Across: the £495 course. Down: the £49 Property Jumpstart in Glasgow. Every “not yet” got an offer that fit.
06 · WHY IT WORKED
Four decisions behind a 4.5× return..
Sell the next step, not the course
A free ebook is an easy yes for a cold audience. At £5.41 a lead, the back end only had to turn five in a hundred into buyers to pay four times over.
Test from day one
Splitting traffic 50/50 between two headlines meant every visitor taught us something. Version A won on sign-ups and became the page.
Ship, then keep shipping
The client kept refining the membership portal as it went live. I built it to change: test placeholders in place, new lessons dropped in as they were filmed.
Follow up until they decide
I wrote the emails for the people who drifted; the sales team called the people who finished. One offer up, one across, one down, so a “no” to £495 didn’t have to mean goodbye.
The takeaway
Don’t sell the course. Sell the next yes.
Cheap leads are only worth something if there’s a road to revenue behind them. Build the road first, and a £5.41 lead becomes a £495 customer: 27 times over, from £3,000 of ads.
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