4 Tips to Help You Fix Your Funnel

Help, my sales funnel isn’t working! Even though I’m funneling people into it, it seems that there are holes in the side and my potential audience members are falling right back out. What am I doing wrong? 

In today’s post, we’ll look at a few different reasons why your sales funnel may not be working effectively – and how you can evade them! 

Note: If you haven’t yet begun building your sales funnel, I highly advise that when you are first getting started, simply focus on building your funnel. Don’t try to fix potential problems while building; you may find that you spend so much time attempting to build the perfect sales funnel that you fail to actually use your funnel – and figure out what works and what doesn’t. 

What is a sales funnel? In summary, a sales funnel is a journey that you take your potential audience through. First, you provide awareness to someone – then convert them into a lead – then convert them to a sales prospect – then finally convert them to a customer. This is a “funnel” because you each level “deeper” that you go, the fewer people you’ll have; e.g., there are usually far more leads than customers. But the deeper into your funnel someone goes, the more dedicated they typically are to you and your business. 

So why isn’t your funnel working effectively?

First, you may not have enough traffic.

While you may have a wonderful product to offer or great content to deliver, you may not be getting the clicks you want. And as you probably know – marketing can be a numbers game. So if you only have one hundred people who know about you, odds are that you won’t be making many sales. 

This comes back to the “funnel” concept. The greater the number of people you have coming in the top of your funnel, the greater the number of people who will make it to the bottom. If you’re not reaching very many people with your content or product, your numbers will naturally be lower. 

To combat this, you may need to change your posting schedule or consider where your audience might otherwise be “hanging out” – and put yourself there. Do you need to post more frequently on your blog, website, email list, or social media account? Are you sure you’re in the right places to get the traffic you need?

Second, follow up effectively with your leads.

Perhaps you’re getting great leads through a lead magnet, but you’re not following up with an effective email sequence. It does take time to create a great welcome sequence, but it is absolutely worth it. If someone has signed up for your content, they’re expecting it from you – and if you aren’t actively building a relationship with your audience, you’re wasting an incredible resource. 

Make sure you’re following up with your audience after they enter your email list – show them that you appreciate them. This can also help ensure that this person understands who you are and how you are related to the thing they just signed up for. 

A few final notes: make sure you are sending valuable non-salesy content as well as your sales emails. Toward that end, in addition to your welcome sequence automation, you can create your upcoming emails in batches and pre-schedule them – saving yourself both time and energy. 

Third, create a call to action (CTA).

Even if you’re not selling anything to your audience, you want to include a call to action – something that gives your audience the chance to respond. For example, you can ask a podcast listener or YouTube watcher to subscribe, or you might ask a blog post reader to leave a comment. This provides a method of engagement for your audience and gives them the opportunity to participate. 

You can also share links to other articles or videos to read, or provide a survey – there are many different methods to engage your audience. What will work best for your business? Test out a variety of CTAs. If you’re not maximizing your calls to action, this can be a place for your funnel to lose audience members.

Fourth, last but not least, offer a product.

This may seem counterintuitive, especially if you don’t have a specific product you are selling in your business. But sometimes we get so caught up in offering great free content that we forget that we also have things to sell. Even if you don’t currently have a product of your own, or if you are in the process of developing one, you can still leverage options such as affiliate marketing. Free content can be a great place to offer affiliate links, and you don’t need to worry about managing your own product.

This is also very important if you are planning to offer products in the future. If you have built a reputation entirely from free content, your audience may get offended if you suddenly begin trying to sell things to them. Hold a balance here – don’t sell-sell-sell and push people away, but make sure you don’t undersell yourself, either. Your time is valuable, and if you’re not offering a product of your own, you can be paid for your time through affiliate links.

Personally, I like to go with the 80-20 rule; 80% of the time I seek to build a relationship with my audience with entirely free content, and 20% of the time I send out referrals for different products and different memberships. 

In conclusion, there are many different methods you can use to jumpstart your sales funnel and make sure that you’re not losing too many leads out the sides. By building traffic, following up, establishing CTAs, and offering a product, you can increase and engage your audience – and your business by extension. 

You’ve got this! 

What challenges are you facing in your business? Leave a comment below and let me know!