Stop me if this seems familiar.
You’ve been working hard building your first funnel and launching your new product or service.
Everyone knows you’re on your way to success. After all, you’re passionate about what you do and the people you help and you’ve put so much of yourself into your business and making a difference.
But then, no one purchases.
Before you start panicking thinking you’re a failure and that entrepreneurship may not be for you, there may be an easier solution. It may be as simple as making a few adjustments to your sales funnel. Sure you followed the steps just like all the gurus promised. But take heart. . . your sales funnel-building journey has just begun and funnels can be hard! As an experienced sales funnel builder, I’m here to help! In this blog post, we’ll look at some simple reasons why your sales funnel isn’t converting as high as you’d like, and stop you from spinning down the shame spiral. You’ll be able to make some simple adjustments and boost your sales funnel conversion rates in no time!
Throughout my eight years working with digital marketing and sales funnels, I have learned a thing or two about why people aren’t getting the result they want when it comes to conversions whether it’s sign-ups for freebies, webinars, challenges, or enrollments and revenue.
Often it comes down to one of these five main reasons.
1. Lack of Targeted Traffic
I’m going to start by dispelling a myth here. Size doesn’t always matter – at least when it comes to list size. Sure, a bigger list or social media following CAN be helpful because it means you have a bigger net and a bigger chance of converting a higher number into signups or enrollments. BUT if those people are just a bunch of random names, then it doesn’t matter if you have a hundred, a thousand, or a million people on your list.
Say, for example, I have a great food truck business. We sell amazing burgers and fries throughout our area, have a great reputation, and make an effort to attend area events such as state fairs and festivals, school events, college football games, and have even started making ourselves available for private parties like bachelor and bachelorette parties, engagements, weddings, and more. So business is booming! We want to break into a new area and cater to nearby cornhole and ax throwing tournaments, so we launched this announcement to our list. Our list has been steadily growing, but the interns we hired this past summer just added a bunch of their college friends on it thinking they were helping us out. As it happens, all of the names they added were not our targeted traffic, but instead, college students who (1) didn’t have cars to attend cornhole or ax throwing tournaments off-campus (2) weren’t really in the area during the summer when these events were held, and (3) were also vegans like our interns.
Needless to say, despite having a large list and high expectations, conversions for that launch would be disappointing because we would have the wrong targeted audience.
The moral: Make sure your audience is well defined. Are you marketing your funnel to the right people? No, I don’t mean women or business owners. Define it more. Figure out their pain points. Understand who would really want your product or service?
If your funnel isn’t targeted well or if your audience isn’t defined well enough, the traffic that is going to your funnel may not be the right people. Therefore, your funnel won’t convert.
Remember if you are in business for a period of time, your audience may have become more refined over time, so you may have some targeted clients, and some who are not so much. This is natural. They may unsubscribe themselves as they find your content speaking to them less and less, or you may benefit from cleaning your list regularly and removing those subscribers who have been inactive for periods of time (say, six months or more).
This is an important factor to evaluate in your sales funnel strategy.
2. Poor Lead Capture Systems
Next, check your landing pages, your opt-in incentives, lead capture forms, and whatever else is used for lead generation.
If these are poorly made, you may look less credible making gathering leads more difficult. What does it mean to be “poorly made?”
- Is the design outdated and uninviting causing the audience to be less likely to want to engage with you?
- Is the call to action clear and easy to find?
- Is the tech set up correctly? Meaning, does the lead-capture or landing page link correctly to the thank you page and automation to send the deliverable or the next step confirming their entry into your funnel whether a webinar or welcome sequence or course?
When you are unable to capture leads effectively, you will be unable to grow your business because you won’t be adding these new potential audience members to your list. Remember your list is the place where you are able to continue to build that crucial know-like-trust factor and encourage them to work with you in time. It’s a place where you can share your content, bringing them through the customer journey, and showing them examples of social proof through others who have worked with you and have gotten results.
3. Weak Calls to Action
In order to bring your audience to a place of transformation that they desire, you have to give them clear steps of what they want. These are their calls to action, or words or phrases used to prompt action and guide your audience to their goals. Traditionally we think of buttons that direct them to “Buy Now,” “Click to Read More” or “Find Out How,” but calls to action can be written in various ways.
If your calls to action are weak, and not enticing, potential customers won’t want to buy from you. A weak call to action won’t engage your audience and encourage your readers to click, meaning they won’t see your offer, no matter what it is.
It is worse if your calls to action confuse the audience. Then they won’t know what to do and a confused person ends up doing nothing at all. This will lead to them leaving the page.
So be sure those calls to action are clear, concise, defined, and enticing so your funnel will encourage them to buy. This is super important as the call to action tells the viewer what to do.
4. Not Fully Demonstrating the Value
To charge premium pricing, you have to get clear on the value behind why you have come to that price and be sure you can demonstrate it to your audience as well.
This isn’t meant to price shame or say you should undercharge for your work. We all know how much we put into what we do with education, certifications, time, energy, and results. However, if your product or service is in a higher price range than your clients may be used to and you don’t explain to the audience why this price is right for what you are selling them, they may not understand the value of what you are selling.
There are a couple of ways you can do this:
- The first place is in the offer stack or value stack. This is the part of the sales page funnel where you see exactly what’s included in the offer or digital course and what the perceived value is. So any modules, workbooks, supplemental learning, coaching time, the Q&A calls, the community, and your included bonuses, can all be added together for the total value of the program which is usually much more than the actual selling price.
- The second place is through social proof, testimonials, and reviews. This is where you can rely on user-generated content to explain the transformation others have gotten as a result of working with you. After all, that is what your potential customers and clients want: the same results for themselves. How much would they pay for their dream solution to their pain point?
Explaining why your product or service is so great and why the price is perfect, considering what you are giving them, will make the potential customers interested in buying from you and start considering the purchase themselves.
5. Competitor Influence
I try to have a pretty strict rule of just focusing on my own work and not comparing myself to other entrepreneurs. My philosophy is there is enough for us to all win.
However, if competitors’ offers, marketing, and user experience is way more compelling than yours, you may be losing customers to competitors. This could be one reason your sales funnel may not be converting.
I try to stress to my clients (as well as my biz besties!), you are unique in who you are as well as the work you do and for that reason, you will attract your own set of customers and clients who want to work with you and not your competitors. That said, it’s up to you to explain your value point and why you’re the best at what you do for serving your audience (this is called your unique value proposition).
Spend some time working to close every point of argument so that choosing you is the logical choice. Be sure your messaging is effective and professional, your funnel is easy to use, and make sure you craft a compelling offer.
All of these factors go into the look and feel of your funnel (and entire business for that matter!) and it needs to give off good energy for your audience.
6. No Sense of Urgency
Do you insist on leaving things open with the idea that your potential clients and customers will decide when it’s right for them?
You might be getting caught in a lack of urgency.
Creating a sense of urgency or scarcity is super important for making potential customers take action so that your sales funnel converts. If there is no sense of urgency, they may delay purchasing or not purchase at all thinking, “I’ll do it later” repeatedly.
Leave your audience with the feeling that they don’t want to miss out on this opportunity to work with you. Elements you can include in your sales page funnel might be timers or deadlines letting them know this is the last time you are running the offer this year or at this price or with these bonuses can encourage them to click, “YES!” to your offer.
Remember, it doesn’t have to be sleazy marketing; it can still be ethical if it’s true that you are running the offer differently in the future.
Key Takeaways
You may have noticed that all of these reasons your sales funnel isn’t converting come back to being unsure or unclear around your message and your marketing. Not being clear on your audience messaging, not being firm in your lead capture set up, not being direct with your calls to action, not fully demonstrating your value, not being sure of your unique value proposition, and not being sure of your sense of urgency can all be fixed pretty easily and shored up in your funnel to increase your conversions.
For additional help with your sales funnel, check out my other post on sales funnel mistakes you might be making to learn other ways you can improve your sales funnel success. And, if you’d rather hand off all things copy, design, and tech to a professional, book a call with me here and we can solve your sales funnel woes, together!
Measure and track your traffic so you can measure your progress! If you’re not sure how to do that, grab Funnel Numbers Demystified to learn how to track your numbers, what they mean, and what to do next.
