Fix Your Broken Funnel

This is going to be a bit of a lengthy blog post but if you have a sales funnel online, it’s going to be well worth the read.

I frequently get emails from people asking me why their funnel isn’t working.

I always ask the same question back – WHICH part of your funnel isn’t working?

It seems that the general conception is that if you aren’t making money or hitting your sales goals, it’s because your entire funnel isn’t working.

This is not the case.

Sure, you need to look at the big picture of your funnel… but then break it down in to it’s building blocks.

What do I mean by that?

My funnels often look like this:

Ad –> Lead Capture page –> Presell Page –> Sales Page –> Email Marketing Sequence

There are many many places in this funnel that influence the success or failure of this campaign.

Here are just a few:

Ad (CPC/CTR) –> Lead Capture Page (Conversion Rate) –> Presell Page (CTR) –> Sales Page (Conversion Rate) –> Email Marketing Sequence (Open Rate/CTR)

In this email I want to focus on the first half of the funnel.

Lets start with Traffic

I’m going to be using Facebook newsfeed ads in this example but really the concepts can be applied to any paid traffic.

The first thing I look at when someone tells me that their funnel isn’t working is their Ads click through rate.

CTR influences cost per click.

The higher the click through rate, the lower the cost per click. Plus to me, a high CTR signalizes that you have the right message for the right audience which will impact the success of the rest of your funnel.

My main goal when I launch a new ad is to get a CTR of 8%+ or higher. Above 10%+ and you’ll start to see clicks to your website for just pennies.

In order to get a CTR this high I start by asking myself what is that this audience wants more than anything else? And I find a way to give that to them.

In my beauty niche I found this out by going to forums and Facebook groups and asking one simple question “What is the one tool/ingredient you can not live without?”. This exercise is very revealing and I highly suggest you try it.

The answer to that question in my niche was predominantly Essential Oils so I set up an ad campaign and squeeze page for a free giveaway around winning a set of essential oils and on my presell page had them click through to an ebook on an essential oils guide.

My CTR averaged about 12%. My CPC about $.03.

If your FB newsfeed ad CTR is below 5% I pause my campaign. I stop and I look at two things:

1) Message – Is you call to action compelling enough? Are you sure your audience wants what you’re using as a lead gen bait? Why are you so sure? Is it just because you think so or you’ve actually asked your audience? Try asking the question above in groups and forums and modify your message based on the answer.

Spend time getting to know your audience, even if you’re already passionate or knowledgable on this niche.

Join FB groups, and forums. Ask questions, answer questions. Even just 15 minutes a day. I guarantee you will make more money next year by doing this.

2) Targeting – Are you targeting too broadly? For example are you targeting “essential oils” or have you niched your targeting down to just websites, and pages that ONLY people in your audience would be familiar with? Don’t be afraid to spend an hour researching your target interests. It will pay off.

Optin Page

I won’t go into a ton of detail here about split testing. On a very basic level you need three things:

1) Congruency with your ad copy. The call to action on your ad copy should be near identical to your call to action on your landing page.

2) Keep it simple and clear. Don’t have more than one call to action.

3) Tracking – Make sure you’re tracking how many people are actually opting in. Don’t ball parking anything in your funnel. This is a surefire way to lose money.

Presell Page

A presell page is designed to build interest and desire for your product and to get them to click through to your sales page.

This is just the way I run my funnels (after extensive testing) but after someone opts in to my mailing list I have the “thank you page” thanking them for entering their email and then pre-selling them on a product that I believe would interest and help them.

The main goal of my thank you page is to convince them to click on the “Learn more” link which takes them to my sales page.

Again tracking is key here. On a very very basic level at least use a program like Bitly so you can track how many people are clicking through to your sales page.

Too often I hear people tell me “I’ve had 200 optins so 200 people have seen my offer but only made 4 sales, it’s not working!”. This isn’t the case. My guess is less than 50 people have seen your offer and that’s if you’re doing a ‘decent job’.

On the other hand though – 4 sales out of 50 is pretty good!

You may have thought you had a conversion problem on your sales page when in actuality that’s working just fine, you have a pre-sell problem.

See how important breaking apart your sales funnel and analyzing what’s really working is?
If less than 50% of the people seeing your thank you page are clicking your sales page link then you know you should be spending some more time pre-selling your product and building interest to get them to click on this link.

I could talk on this topic for days but the most helpful thing when it comes to increasing the performance of your pre-sell copy is having a topic that interest your audience. I.e have a product that your audience actually wants.

Upsell Sales Page

Carrying on from what I said above most people come up with an idea for a product not based on market research but based on what THEY think is a good idea.

Unfortunately that usually doesn’t cut it.

9 times out of 10 I pre-sell my products which basically means that I sell my product before I create it.

Not only is this better for the customer (takes pressure off of me worrying about if it will sell and allows me to focus 100% on creating a great product) I also find this process INCREDIBLY informative.

I’m able to learn if people are willing to spend money on my product before investing any time creating it.

I’m able to learn reasons people buy, potential objections they have to this product, hesitations and so much more.

When it comes to creating a product that sells you need to go direct to your audience and ask them what are the problems they are having.

Find the problem, pre-sell the solution. You can get to market faster, with a better product.
Again I could talk about this for days but for now I just want to make you aware of the different areas in your funnel that you could be spending time improving.

It’s not just your ad..it’s the entire sales funnel so spend some time breaking down your sales funnel and looking at the different metrics and really figuring out what’s working and what’s not.

This a pretty long post at this point so I’m going to leave it at that.

If you found this post helpful, comment below and let me know. If I get enough interest I’ll continue to write more on this topic plus topics like understanding your numbers, pre selling your product and increasing conversions.

To your success and happiness,

Brittany