Diagnosing and Optimizing Your Sales Funnel: A Step-by-Step Guide
Hey there! Are you struggling to get the desired results from your sales funnel? If yes, then it's time for the optimize funnel checklist! In this blog post, you'll learn 30 ways to optimize your funnel, focusing on the three different parts of the sales funnel: traffic, leads, and conversions.
Before diving into the checklist, let's talk about expectations.
One of the most common mistakes people make is setting unrealistic goals for their funnel. Make sure you're setting realistic goals for your funnel that you can grow and increase over time. Once you have realistic goals, you can start diagnosing and optimizing your funnel.
When people come to me and say their sales funnel is not working, the number one reason I often find is that they've set unrealistic goals for their funnel. A common example is a student who wanted to sell ten of her courses per month.
To figure out how many funnel freebie sign-ups she needed to achieve that goal, we assumed an average conversion rate of 1-3% and went with the worst-case scenario of 1%, which meant she needed 1000 new sign-ups every month. Next, we calculated the number of unique leads to the opt-in page she needed to make that happen, assuming an average sign-up page conversion rate of 20-30% and taking the safer option of 20%. This gave us a target of 5000 unique visitors to the page each month.
We then compared this target to her current website traffic, which was only 5x lower than the number of visitors she needed. This comparison was a wake-up call for her about the expectations she had set.
Setting realistic expectations is crucial when creating a sales funnel, ensuring that your goals can be achieved and improved over time. The first couple of months with your funnel should be used to establish benchmarks and to ensure that you're setting achievable goals.
Once you have realistic goals for your funnel, the next step is to use the Traffic-Leads-Conversions process to diagnose and optimize your funnel. This process involves looking at traffic, leads, and conversions in a strategic, step-by-step way to identify areas for improvement and make the necessary changes to achieve better results.
Traffic Booster Checklist to Optimize Your Sales Funnel:
The first thing to look at is traffic. Are you driving enough traffic to your landing page to reach your goals? If not, here are ten things you can do to increase the amount of traffic to your opt-in page:
The initial factor to assess is the volume of traffic. It is essential to ensure that adequate traffic is being directed towards your landing page to achieve your desired outcomes.
To evaluate whether this is the issue, compare the number of unique visitors accessing your opt-in page with the figure required to meet your objectives. For instance, in the scenario mentioned above, this would be 5000 unique visitors.
If you're not reaching the target, here are ten ways to enhance traffic to your opt-in page:
Use Facebook ads to focus on new audiences or similar audiences.
Try Pinterest ads to attract fresh audiences to your page.
Compose a new blog post as an additional entry point into your funnel. Every blog post related to the freebie should feature forms within the post and an exit-intent pop-up. Every time you create a new blog post designed to capture leads for your funnel freebie, you're essentially developing another doorway into your funnel. If you believe you're always promoting the funnel freebie directly, you can mix it up and promote these blog posts instead.
Create a social media campaign around it. Schedule a round of tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram posts around it. Additionally, ensure that a link to the sign-up page is in your bio, your pinned post, and your cover photo.
Conduct a live video (Facebook Live, Instagram Live) with a call-to-action to download your freebie.
Send a brief email sequence to your list regarding your freebie - you can send it to anyone on your list who hasn't downloaded the freebie yet. Additionally, if you have other welcome sequences, consider including an invitation to the funnel freebie in that sequence.
Request your business friends to share.
Include an organic share incentive on the thank you page. This is one of my favorite things to do for launches: allowing people to unlock rewards for sharing it with their friends. So for any friend that signs up, it counts as a point towards unlocking that special reward.
Create new pins and schedule them daily. There's no rule saying you can only have one pin per content. You can have a hundred pins for the same content. So create several pins leading to your sign-up page.
Provide solutions. Look for individuals seeking assistance with a problem that your freebie resolves on Facebook groups, Twitter, or forums and offer up a solution (your sign-up page).
Lead Checklist to Optimize Your Sales Funnel:
Once you have confirmed that your traffic is satisfactory, the next step is to examine your leads. What is the proportion of visitors to your sign-up page who actually register?
Typical sign-up page conversion rates fall between 20% and 30%. Even if your conversion rate falls within this range, there is always room for improvement by implementing minor enhancements.
If improving your sign-up conversion rate is your priority, then consider the following ten suggestions to increase the number of people signing up for your freebie:
You can increase your lead generation by offering another freebie or content upgrade that caters to a slightly different audience or niche. This strategy can create additional entry points into your funnel, similar to the extra blog posts.
Examine the market fit. If visitors are arriving at your sign-up page but not converting, ask yourself why. Is your freebie something they truly desire? Are you targeting the right audience?
Adjust the copy on your sign-up page. Test each section individually using split-testing if your opt-in page tool supports it. By making incremental changes, you can pinpoint what is causing changes in your opt-in rates.
Use retargeting Facebook ads to reach visitors who have landed on your sign-up page but haven't signed up yet.
Alter the design of your opt-in page, experimenting with different colors, images, and mock-ups of your free offer. Like with copy tweaks, use split-testing if possible to identify the cause of changes in your opt-in rates.
Use retargeting Google ads to target visitors who have landed on your sign-up page but haven't signed up yet.
Install an exit-intent pop-up on your website and sign-up page to retain visitors who are about to leave.
Place more forms in optimal locations on your website, such as the homepage, contact page, sidebar, and about page. Ensure that your freebie is prominently featured in all crucial areas to attract visitors who are already browsing your website.
Utilize retargeting Pinterest ads to target visitors who have landed on your sign-up page but haven't signed up yet.
Provide social proof on the sign-up page, such as testimonials, media icons, and notifications that indicate which of their friends have signed up.
Conversion Checklist to Optimize Your Sales Funnel:
Assuming that your leads and traffic are satisfactory, the bottleneck could be your conversion rate. The percentage of people who become customers or clients after entering your funnel is an essential metric to analyze.
On average, the conversion rate ranges from 1-3%. If your conversion rate is lower than the average, then implementing some tactics can help to improve it. Here are ten suggestions to increase your conversion rate:
Experiment with different subject lines to increase your email open rates, which can lead to more clicks and sign-ups.
Test different call-to-actions in your emails to increase click-through rates.
Improve the copy on your sales page by making tweaks section by section and doing split-testing to pinpoint which changes led to increased conversion rates.
Retarget potential customers who have visited your sales page but haven't yet made a purchase with Facebook ads.
Use retargeting Pinterest ads to target potential customers who have visited your sales page but haven't yet made a purchase.
Employ retargeting Google ads to target potential customers who have visited your sales page but haven't yet made a purchase.
Boost your social proof by adding testimonials, media icons where you’ve been featured, and notifications that show potential customers which of their friends have signed up.
Start an affiliate program and incentivize past customers to sell your product for you.
Add chat support to your sales page to make it easy for potential customers to get their questions answered.
Offer more payment options and accessible payment plans to make it easier for potential customers to pay. For example, consider adding PayPal and credit card payment options.
____________________________________________________________If your sales funnels are not performing well, don't give up on them just yet. Instead of starting from scratch, take a step-by-step approach to examine, diagnose, and fix your funnel strategically, allowing room for improvement.
Begin by assessing your traffic, analyzing your leads, and then checking if your conversion rate meets your expectations. Once you identify the problem, focus on fixing it to achieve better sales funnel results.
Ready to optimize your funnel and improve your conversion rates? Book a free strategy call with us today to learn how we can help you.
