Sales Funnel Not Working? Here's Why & how to increase conversion
You’ve built your sales funnel and… tumble weed. The sales are barely trickling in - here’s why and how to fix your funnel
The idea of a magical sales funnel that drives sales in your sleep tends to be the the dream scenario we all fall for when we first learn about sales funnels and ‘passive income’.
We imagine that setting up this clever sequence of emails is going to be the answer to working from a hammock for the rest of our days.
And while sales funnels can be a game changer when it comes to scaling your business and increasing your income - I think the phrase ‘Passive income’ has a lot to answer for.
It has tricked many into thinking it’s all about setting up some savvy automated emails, having an online course…aaaand you’re done. BAM - 6-figures.
Bad news I’m afraid. Passive income ain’t passive!
I love passive income and evergreen marketing because it’s so much better suited to my introverted ways than the alternatives. I’d much rather be curled up in a blanket with a cup of tea writing blog posts, designing pins for Pinterest and getting geeky with my metrics, over doing a high-energy launch any day.
But by my no means is passive income passive - it’s still work, but the work is different (and more fun, sustainable and rewarding in my book).
So, that’s perhaps the first reason why your sales funnel might not be working - because you thought it was a ‘set it and forget it’ situation.
And I don’t blame you - there’s a lot of bogus information online leading us to believe that’s the case (because they want to sell us something - in a really gross and icky way - no thanks).
But I want to dig a bit deeper into why your sales funnel isn’t driving sales, because there are some common mistakes I see over and over again that are simple to fix, that will improve the conversion of your sales funnel.
You’re not feeding your sales funnel
This ties into what I was saying above. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking ‘build it and they will come’ with funnels. But it’s not the case. Instead it’s ‘market it and they will come’.
So when I say you’re not feeding your funnel - I mean you haven’t got enough traffic coming to your website. AKA You’re not doing enough marketing that’s going to drive traffic to your website and into your sales funnel.
Real talk - I spent ages writing a long piece in here about conversion raters, how to figure out your website to sales funnel, to sale conversion rates and how to calculate therefore how many visits you needed to drive to your website to deliver the number of sales you need to reach your income goals. But honestly it was so boring I sent myself to sleep.
Suffice to say, no matter where your website traffic is right now - you probably want MORE of it. Because more traffic = more mailing list subscribers (who go through your sales funnel) = more sales.
So the short story is… it’s a numbers game (and, a building a funnel without icky strategies that turn people off game). But what I’m saying here is that you need lots of traffic coming into your website, that drives lots of subscribers to your funnel and mailing list, which equals sales.
I’m guessing you’ve established that you need more traffic coming into your website - AKA you need to be feeding your sales funnel more. Right?
Cool! That’s great that you’ve identified that because now you can put all of those mind boggling numbers out of your head and take ACTION!
3 ways to feed your sales funnel:
Blog more - challenge yourself to write a blog post a day. It doesn’t need to be war and peace, right now, you just need to get into the routine of blogging more, because the more you blog, the more opportunity you have to show up in search engine results - whether that’s on Google or Pinterest.
Pinterest - which leads me on to Pinterest, which is essentially a search engine for images. And it’s SO much more powerful than you think! For each of your blog posts create a few pins that can direct traffic from Pinterest to your website.
Outreach - this is another great way of getting in front of new people and it involves writing guest posts for other blogs, appearing on other people’s podcasts and writing for magazines.
You’re making it difficult for people to sign up to your mailing list
This is such a classic one, I see it all-the-time. Someone has put their blood sweat and tears into making a value-packed, generous lead magnet, but when you go to their website, for the life of you you can’t find where to sign up for it. You go to their instagram in the hope of finding the link in their bio - nope, not there either. So you give up.
Getting more people on your mailing list isn’t rocket science. When you’ve got a created a lead magnet that’s value packed and converts, and you’ve got a mailing list proposition that people can’t wait to sign up for - it all comes down to user experience.
This is why I say you’re making it difficult for people to sign up to your mailing list.
You’re literally making it hard work for them to figure out where they need to go to sign up. So getting more people on your mailing list is as simple as making it easy for them to join.
There’s loads more in this post on getting more sign ups to your mailing list: 3 mistakes you’re making with your mailing list that’s stopping people from signing up.
Make it EASY for people to sign up to your mailing list by:
Inviting people to sign up to your mailing list in the footer of your website, so it shows up on every single page
Including a sign-up form on your about page (often one of the most visited pages on your website)
Featuring a sign up form in the main content of your homepageIncluding a sign up form in your blog posts
Creating a pillar page for the topic/ or audience struggle that your lead magnet addresses - and of course include the sign up form on that page to sing up for your lead magnet
Creating a dedicated subscribe page, accessible from your main navigation, that ‘sells’ your emails and your lead magnet
You went straight in for the sell
They’ve signed up for your mailing list and BAM you’ve got them. Time to hit them with the sales messaging - right?
No, no, NO!
All this does is turns them off and makes them want to head for the unsubscribe button. And if they don’t unsubscribe, this is the quickest way to train your subscribers to leave your emails unopened or worse send them to junk.
I thought this was meant to be a sales funnel!?
In your other marketing you have a process right? When someone just discovers you, you lean into serving them. You do the whole educate, inspire, entertain thing. You’re generous with helping them find solutions to their problems - whether that’s educating them around how to make changes that will alleviate their pain points, making them laugh for a bit of light relief in their day, or inspire them that their dreams really are possible, or inspire them to try something they haven’t before.
Then perhaps they want to get to know YOU better. After all, until they know they know, like and trust you, they aren’t going to go any further towards working with you or buying your course. So you share your story, you share your personality, you share a funny experience that happened to you last week, and they start to think ‘you know, I really like this gal - she’s straight talking/ honest/ real/ down to earth/ funny/ flawed like me.
And perhaps after some time hanging out in your world they’re curious about how they can get more from you or work with you, which is when you talk to them about your offers, and finally - ask for the sale.
It’s no different with your sales funnel. Sure they’ve signed up to receive your freebee, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready and primed to buy your stuff.
Take a look at your email sequence and do some tweaking. Here are some ideas:
Email 1 - where you deliver your free lead magnet: Share their freebee with them, remind them of the value they’re going to get out of it and why they should make the time to read/ listen to/ do it
Email 2: Ask them how they got on with your freebee, share a story or some pointers that will help them get even more value from it
Email 3: Share your story (in a way that inspires them, in a way that puts them at the centre of the story)
Email 4: Share a blog-post type email with a take-away that will give them value in some way, and segue into talking about your offer and how it fits their needs
Email 5+: Continue to share value AND sell
Continue to serve before you sell in your emails throughout the funnel. And when you are selling, remember to lean into the problem that your offer solves and help them identify if it is the right fit for them.
Yes it will take a bit longer to get to the sales messaging, but as we’ve covered up top, you don’t want to jump straight in with the sell.
Wanna tuck this in your pocket for when you’re optimising your funnel? Pin it for later.
