7 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Sales Funnel While sales funnels can be incredibly effective, they can also be easy to mess up. Here are seven mistakes to avoid when creating your own sales funnel.
By Vlad Gozman Edited by Chelsea Brown
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
When Tinder first entered the scene, it needed to find a way to stand out in a sea of online dating options. So, it did what any good marketer would do: It created a sales funnel. A sales funnel is a process that leads potential customers through the journey from awareness to purchase. In other words, it's a way to guide people towards becoming paying customers.
In Tinder's case, they hosted Greek Life parties and recruited students to join their platform. Once these students were on Tinder, the app would then funnel them towards becoming paying customers by offering features that were only available to users who paid for the service. The rest is history. Tinder is now the most popular dating app in the world, with over 65 billion matches recorded. While sales funnels can be incredibly effective, they can also be easy to mess up. Here are seven mistakes to avoid when creating your own sales funnel:
1. Not defining your target audience
Before you can even begin to create a sales funnel, you need to know who your target audience is. This seems like a no-brainer, but so many businesses make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone. Not only is this a recipe for disaster, but it's also a huge waste of time and resources. It's far better to focus on a specific group of people and craft your funnel around their needs and wants.
Related: 3 Tweaks That Dramatically Improve Your Sales Funnel
2. Not creating compelling content
Once you've defined your target audience, it's time to start creating content that will resonate with them. This is where a lot of businesses make the mistake of thinking that any old content will do. The truth is, if your content isn't compelling, your sales funnel will come to a screeching halt. Your content needs to be interesting, informative, and most importantly, it needs to offer value.
Interactive content is a great way to add value and keep people engaged. Try incorporating quizzes, assessments, surveys, polls, calculators and other forms of interactive content into your funnel. There's a new generation of powerful no-code landing page & funnel builders that allow you to create this type of content without any coding knowledge.
These not only boost engagement, but they can also help you gather valuable "zero-party data" about your audience. Unlike third-party data, which is gleaned from sources like cookies and web beacons, zero-party data comes directly from the customer, and it's incredibly valuable for segmentation and targeted marketing.
3. Not offering incentives
If you want people to move through your sales funnel quickly, you need to offer them something they can't resist. This could be a discount, a free trial or anything else that would entice them to take action.
4. Not making it easy to convert
Once someone has reached the bottom of your sales funnel, it's critical that you make it easy for them to convert. If your checkout process is confusing or takes too long, you'll lose customers fast.
Related: The Science Behind the Sales Funnel
5. Not tracking your results
If you're not tracking your results, then you have no way of knowing whether or not your sales funnel is working. Most funnel builder tools include funnel analytics, but always make sure to set up Google Analytics or another form of tracking as well, so you can see in depth how people are interacting with your funnel.
6. Not split testing
Another mistake businesses make is failing to split test their sales funnels. Split testing allows you to try out different versions of your funnel and see which one performs better.
This is an important step, because it allows you to constantly optimize your funnel for maximum conversion rate. Without split testing, you'll never know if you could be doing better.
Related: 5 Steps to Building Your First Online Sales Funnel
7. Not following up with leads
Finally, one of the most common mistakes businesses make is not following up with their leads. Just because someone has subscribed to your email list or bought something from you, doesn't mean they're going to become a customer for life.
It's important to stay in touch with your leads and continue nurturing them even after they've converted. Send them helpful emails, give them exclusive deals, and keep them updated on new product launches.
By avoiding these seven mistakes, you'll be well on your way to creating a successful sales funnel that converts.
