Episode #021: The 15 Minute Funnel Fix Method
The 15 Minute Funnel Fix Method
Ever have a funnel that just won't convert?
This episode is about my 15-minute process for uncovering WHY a funnel isn't working and the steps to fix it.
When you tune in you'll learn...
-> My SIMPLE system for mapping out my funnel to pinpoint why it isn't converting where you want it to
-> The 4 BIGGEST FUNNEL KILLERS we see, and how to fix them
-> Why your funnel will LIKELY FAIL at first, but what you can do to fix that fast
Tune in, turn up, and get ready!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 20. And in this episode, we're talking about what should you do if your funnel's not working. So if you've got a funnel, if you want better results, or if it's just plain not working, then this episode's for you. So stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, Not So Average Marketer, welcome to another episode of the podcast, which I am really excited for. Now, I will tell you a little funny story before we dive in. My office fire alarm has started to go off on recording days so I'm out in my living room recording with my backup microphone, so if the audio's not quite as good as it usually is, I apologize, but I think good content is more important and perfect audio quality, and I don't want to keep you waiting. So let's get into the good stuff.
Now, real quick, I think that the best place to start with this episode is to just define what I mean when I say funnel. So when I'm talking about an email funnel or a sales funnel, what I'm talking about is a process through which new leads that you acquire through your opt-in or freebie become new customers. Okay. So a funnel is really this broad term that just means how do we move people from a state of aware of our business to a state of a customer in our business? And I've got a few different episodes in the show where I talk about this. We'll link up to one of them if you're like, "I don't even have a funnel yet," then I'm going to recommend that you jump back a few episodes and we'll link this up in the show notes as well. But we did an episode on how to actually write your first email sales sequence that would start turning new leads into customers.
And that's episode number 12 if you're on a podcast app and you just want to check it out. But basically what happens or when I talk to students that say, "My funnel's not working, what am I supposed to do?" A lot of times I get this question and the answer isn't always as simple as, "Oh, just go fix your funnel." There's more to it than that. There's nuances, there's subtleness. And what I want to talk about today is how I figure out how to get my funnels actually working and how I get my funnels converting where I want them to convert when things don't start out as great as I want them to. And I think this is a really good place to talk about the fact that the expectation that we have of sales funnels in the online marketing world isn't really reasonable.
Okay. We think that we're going to set up a really great sales funnel, write our emails, maybe we do an on-demand webinar or a challenge or a mini course and it's totally evergreen, but then it doesn't convert and we go, "Oh my gosh, it's not converting, what happened?" And what I want you to understand is that most funnels don't just crush it from the jump. Okay. The misconception we have is that if you do the work of setting up the automation and setting up the process and writing the emails that from jump, you're going to have really great results, but that's just not the case. A lot of times when you create an email sales funnel, there's a lot of room and time for refinement that needs to be put into it. Okay. So let me talk to you first about what I do to really get my email sales funnels rolling along. The thing that I want you to understand is that your email sales funnel is actually just a series of steps.
Okay. So for the sake of this podcast, I'm not going to talk about the intricacies of an individual funnel because the reality is everyone's funnel is different. Maybe it's all email based. Maybe you have a video in there. Maybe you have a podcast in there. Doesn't matter what the funnel looks like, because what we're talking about today is really how to diagnose and solve funnel problems. So let's start here. First things first, you want to look at where the breakdown in your funnel is if you're not getting results. And I have this little process that I teach to my students and customers all the time that has just been a game changer for us. And that is, instead of going through your funnel stats and making a big spreadsheet and trying to figure out where everything is, what I do is I draw my funnel out on a piece of paper. When I do this is I actually draw like a little flow chart of my funnel.
And I evaluate every single touch point where I'm sending a correspondence, an ad, a piece of content to my audience, and I look at where the flow is going. Okay. So for example, if I have a five email sequence, what I'm going to do is my first bubble is going to be the advertisement that they see. The second bubble is going to be the thank you page. The third bubble is going to be the emails. The fourth bubble is going to be the sales page and the fifth bubble is going to be a customer. Now, you can get even more granular than that. You could have a bubble for each and every email. You could have a bubble for multiple different pages, maybe the page they see when they first sign up versus an offer page that you put later in the funnel. But what I want you to understand is that I want you to create a visual representation of your funnel.
And the reason that I do this is because I'll go back over the visual representation of the funnel and I'll say, "Hey, where are things not working?" Okay. And so what I do is I look at core or key stats. So what percentage of people who see my ad are clicking on it? Is my ad getting a good click-through rate? Is my landing page getting a good conversion rate? Is my sign up page, or my thank you page actually getting people to click? If I've got a trip wire, what does that offer take rate look like? So the first thing is to draw all these bubbles out, but leave space around them to actually put your metrics and your stats so that you can evaluate what is and isn't working.
Because the reality is, the way I like to think of a funnel is that it's got all these holes in it. If you think of like a traditional kitchen funnel or oil funnel, it's like with an email or a webinar or a video funnel, what you're doing is you're putting people in the top of your funnel, but you've got all these places that they kind of fall out. They stop opening emails, they stop clicking to the sales page, they stop clicking the buy button, they stop converting. And what you want to look at is where is the breakdown? And here's something really cool about this little system is that once you find one breakdown, you can redo this time and time again to continue to find where your stats are lackluster, where you're continuing to miss the mark with the metrics that you want to achieve.
So you don't just have to stop and go, "Oh, I realize that my sales page isn't getting clicks." You can then start fixing or working on your sales page and then say, "Oh wow. I noticed that now I'm getting more clicks to my sales page, but my email open rates are low. So I'm going to play with subject lines." You can also do things like say, "Oh my gosh, so many people are clicking the checkout button on my sales page, but people aren't buying, maybe there's a pricing issue. Maybe there's a checkout issue. Maybe there's an issue that people are really interested and I don't have the price on the sales page so they're clicking to learn more and they see the price and they're leaving." The point of this exercise is not for you to become overwhelmed or feel like you have to look at a million things, it's to help you visually illustrate where the breakdown is.
So what I want to do is talk about the four biggest problems that we see with sales funnels and how to fix them. So problem number one is your ads aren't converting. Okay. Here's the reality, sales funnels are volume games. Okay. Even if you convert at three or 4% in your sales funnel, you have to get a hundred people to sign up for your funnel to get three to four sales. And so that means that you have to make sure that your ads are working. Are the people who are clicking on your ads the right people? Are people clicking on your ads? What percentage of people who click on your ads are converting? So the first thing I look at is that touch point, that place where I'm bringing people in, where's the conversion happening? If the ad isn't getting clicks, I've got ad issue.
If the ad is getting clicks, but people aren't signing up, then I might have a messaging or a targeting issue. If people are signing up, but then they're not opening the first email, I might have a lead quality issue. So I'm going to just share a few examples because I want you to start thinking critically about what the story is being told or what story is being told, I should say, based on the map that you're writing out and building. Okay. So as you look at your ads, that's the first biggest mistake we see. The second biggest mistake we see is when it comes to emails, and I really shouldn't say mistake, I should say, funnel fixes. The second biggest funnel fix we see is email open rates. So a lot of times you can get people to join your email list, they might even open that first email, but it's really important to say, are people actually clicking and opening my emails?
If your open rate on your first five to seven emails isn't above 30%, something is being missed. People are not connecting with your content, they're not connecting with your subject lines. So you have to look at a few different things if you find that your email are not getting the opens and the clicks that you want. The first thing is, look at subject lines. Are you using compelling, direct, simple subject lines that tell people what to expect? I have discovered for me personally, and this is research you have to do for your audience, that direct subject lines that actually tell people what's going to be inside the email work way better then subject lines where I'm like, "You'll never believe this," or "Open up for a big surprise."
Those don't work as well for me. Those do work well once people have been nurtured into my audience and recognize my name and my email, but initially people just want things like, "Are you looking to grow your email list? This will help." They want that direct, clear subject line. So if you're using really direct subject lines and you're not getting opens, try more emotional driven subject lines. If you're using emotional or curiosity driven subject lines and you're getting no opens, try using direct and statistically driven subject lines. Lead with what people resonate with. And with softwares like Convert Kit, you can even set it up to split test different subject lines and see exactly what's going to work the best. So what I also want you to think about emails is if people are opening, are they clicking? So if you're getting that 30% plus open rate on your initial sequence, but people aren't clicking, it's the content of the emails.
It's the messaging of the emails. It's the call to actions of the emails. So take a look at your emails and say, "Are people even clicking?" All right? Now the third big funnel fix that we see is that people make it all the way, they make it all the way through. They opt into the Facebook ads, the ads are working. They're clicking on the emails over to the sales page, but the sales page is getting lots of clicks and you're not getting signups. That my friends is an offer or messaging problem. Now we'll do an episode on this down the road where we talk about getting your messaging and your offer right through the lens of a failed launch. I'm actually really excited for that episode. But for right now, what I want you to understand is that you have to make sure you have a good sales page for a funnel.
All right. Now, when you do say like a live launch or a five day challenge, you can get away with a weaker sales page. You can because you built trust and authority. With a sales funnel, especially an email based sales funnel, people don't know you, and they're making a lot of judgements based off first impressions. So your sales page needs to look good, it needs to read well, and it has to convert on cold traffic. So if you feel like you're getting lots of people clicking over to your sales page, but they're not buying, there's three things that I look at. Number one is the offer. Is the offer in alignment with the freebie that they signed up for? Is the offer in alignment with the emails I'm sending? And is the offer something that people actually desire? And this is a big one because it can be hard to take a critical look at our offer and say, "There's a chance people don't want this."
But what I want you to be thinking about is what does this sales page or offer need to do to serve a desire that my audience has? All right. Now, obviously this isn't a sales page episode, maybe we'll do one of those too, but I just want you to take a moment to ask yourself critical questions about your sales page. If I was someone who didn't know me, would I buy? If I was someone who didn't know me, would I have gotten enough information leading up to this to buy? If I was someone who didn't know me, would this page immediately strike me as high quality, worth the price and valuable? So be critical. Okay. Now the last funnel fix that we see is you get lots of people clicking on your sales page, people even go to your checkout page, but then your conversion rate on checkout is low.
If you use something like SamCart or ThriveCart, you can track your checkout percentage. We like it to be over 20%. Okay. So we want to make sure that at least 20% of the people who click yes, I want to buy on my sales page, go on to complete their purchase. And what I also recommend is that if you're getting to this step and you have a low take rate, make sure you've got key information on your sales page so people aren't clicking to learn more and not actually reading the sales page. A sales page's job is to persuade people to believe in and trust you. And so you've got to make sure that you have that persuasiveness happening before people click. So this could be changing your button configurations, this could be changing the information on the sales page, but most importantly, or what you're probably going to find is that people are interested in the product and they're looking for that next step, but something is stopping them.
So look at your checkout page with a critical eye. Do you have the guarantee listed? Do you have a recap of what's inside? Do you have student testimonials? Have you set this page up to convert? All right. So here's the thing, I want to just run through everything that we covered real, real quick, because I really want to keep this episode around 15 minutes because I want to call it The 15 Minute Funnel Fix. But what I want you to understand is this, first things first draw your funnel out on a piece of paper, as a flow chart. Pull all the keys stats and then identify the breakdown. The four biggest breakdowns we see are ads not converting, emails not being opened or clicked, sales pages not being read and converting, and checkout pages losing the sale. So once you identify where one of your core breakdowns is, you can work on that, put another couple hundred people through the funnel and test it again.
But I want to leave you with this closing thought. Even if your funnel's not working, even if your funnel's not perfect, if you're growing your list and you're combining your evergreen promotion with live launches, you're still doing your business a service. Don't be so concerned that, "Oh my gosh, I set up my ads and I'm not getting sales right on the front end." Y'all, business is a long game. Okay. Don't think that you have to crush it right out of the gate. You don't. You don't have to crush it right out of the gate and you probably won't crush it right out of the gate. But as long as you're growing your list, nurturing new leads and continuing to promote yourself and your offers, then you're setting yourself up for a good opportunity to grow. Okay. So there you have it, a quick little 15 minute episode on how to fix your funnel.
If your funnel's not converting, listen to this again one more time. Give it a read through or listen through I should say. Also know that over at heartsoulhustle.com/nyap021, again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap021 for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 21 and we'll have a full transcript of this show along with some show notes, links to any resources that I mentioned, including those other podcast episodes. So check it out. We have the full transcript for you. We always have the full show transcribed so you can go back through, listen to these key stats that we talked about, skim back through. And I just hope you get lots of value from this because I'm really enjoying these punchy episodes with high value content. We're right around 17 minutes, but 15 minutes of content so I'm going to call it The 15 Minute Funnel Fix. I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, week, month, and year staying on so average and I'll see you next time on the pod.
