5 Top Sales Funnel Blunders Made By Internet Marketers

So business owners, it’s time we had a little chat, one on one.

Yes, you knew it was coming sooner or later didn’t you.

It’s time for “the talk”.

I’m going to have a chat to you about some of the biggest blunders us marketers and business owners make when it comes to building and using our sales funnel.

Yep, the tips you’ll need to know so you don’t get your leads in a knot and slip over your conversions.

Blunder #1 – What Sales Funnel?

The first sign of blunder amongst internet marketers is the assumption that the sales will happen as soon as you finish your landing page, when in real life that assumption couldn’t be further away from the truth.

I mean we all start somewhere as marketers, right?

I get that not everyone was born into a funnel, it takes time to learn how they work, what they do and so on.

BUT.

Once you know what to do, it’s time to get implementing and stop the learning.

By not having a proper and optimized sales funnel in place to convert those visitors into customers and subscribers, you’re wasting all the effort you poured into the website and product in addition to letting go of all the potential revenue that you could have gained by implementing a sales funnel.

What’s worse, if that’s your website…stop thinking to yourself why people aren’t hitting your thank you pages.

Remember that a sales funnel, no matter how basic and poorly optimized, is always better than not having one at all.

Consumers have such a wide selection of products and experts available out there thanks to the internet, that they won’t spend their valuable time looking for that purchase button hidden in your website.

So my advice to you to overcome the very first blunder is to infact spend the time to look at your own sales funnel.

Map it out.

Plan it.

No, really. Get a whiteboard and plan it all out so you can see it in front of you and then put it to work.

You’ve got all the tools here at your disposal (er…ClickFunnels is a good start).

Then don’t be afraid to ask marketers and other business owners for feedback on what you need fixed and what should be tweaked.

Creating funnels with ClickFunnels is very simple! To show you just how simple set-up is, here’s a walkthrough as an example:

How to Create a New Funnel

Step 1: Log in to your ClickFunnels account.

Step 2: Click Add New Funnel on your dashboard

Step 3: Create your new funnel accordingly

1. Choose Collect Emails if you want to create an opt-in funnel

2. Choose Sell Your Product if you want to create a sales funnel

3. Choose Host Webinar if you want to create a webinar registration funnel

4. Choose Create a Custom Funnel if you want to create a funnel with a custom layout

Step 4: Choose among the pre-made templates or create your own layout.

Step 5: Add elements to your funnel

Blunder #2 – Don’t Become The Sales Pitch

Assuming you’re not a famous internet marketer or don’t have the instant branding of Apple, people who visit your website have no idea who you are the first time around, so you’ll have to introduce yourself to them.

However, if you start selling yourself to your visitors like the internet was your personal red light district, they won’t come back.

(Creepy visualisation right?)

Make sure you understand your audience, and more importantly, that you understand how to make a good impression on them.

Remember, first impressions last.

People do judge books by their covers, especially on the internet.

By making an excellent first time impression to your visitors you can have them return to your website again and again, finally turning them into loyal customers and readers.

Whether you do that through methods of retargeting or a great email sequence, that’s up to you.

But that’s what it’s all about.

Many internet marketers forget that there is life and purpose after the initial purchase or subscription, when it’s always easier and cheaper to advertise and sell to an existing return customer.

So don’t pitch yourself as “the perfect clown to perform at your daughter’s sweet sixteen, now only $99.99 per hour”, but instead welcome the visitor to your site and tell them a little bit about yourself and your merits in the niche you’re selling in.

If you’re not the best of writers, you can easily outsource this job to a great copywriter (remember, if you are cheap with the selection of the copywriter, you probably won’t get good copy…you get what you pay for), so there’s really no excuses for not doing this part right.

Retargeting and creating emails for sequences is also possible with ClickFunnels. Not only that, but set-up is really is easy.

How to Add Retargeting Pixels to Pages

Step 1: Prepare your retargeting pixel

Step 2: Log in to your ClickFunnels account

Step 3: Head on over to your funnel

Step 4: Click “Edit Page” on your page. This example shows how you can add retargeting to your Sales Page.

Step 5: Click Settings > Tracking Codes

Step 6: Enter your Retargeting pixels and click Save.

How to Create Emails In Actionetics

Step1: Log in to your ClickFunnels account

Step 2: Click Actionetics.

Step 3: Go to Email Broadcasts and click on the “+ New Email Broadcast” button.

Step 4: Design your email! You can choose from several templates.

Step 5: Add the information needed

1. The subject of your email
2. Add the email lists. In this case, those who signed up for your webinar
3. Your SMTP Configuration which will be used to send emails.

Step 6: Open Email Editor

Step 7: Add and remove elements to your email according to your preference

Step 8: Click Save

Blunder #3 – Not Understanding Cross-Selling/Up-Selling

A $497 product of yours might have a really small conversion rate, something along the lines of 0.5% to maybe 2% if you’re lucky.

However, if you look at this from a cross-selling point of view, you should see the potential here when told that you have another product in your product line which overlaps with the same buyers as your core product.

Just by offering your buyers a cross-sell of a supplementary product after a transaction is made (whether it be via email or directly after the first purchase is made) could net you thousands of extra dollars.

I mean look at a company like Vistaprint and GoDaddy.

Think they have upsells and cross-sells in their sales funnels?

Absolutely!

They value the ability to sell more to their existing customers vs. capturing new customers.

That’s the dream, and it’s completely doable.

The best part about all this is that you don’t need to be a developer or designer to do any of this anymore.

See where I’m going with this?

Setting up upsells and cross-sells with ClickFunnels is possible and really very easy to do.

Step 1: Log in to your ClickFunnels account

Step 2: Go to your sales funnel

Step 3: Click Add New Step to add a new page to your funnel

Step 4: Name your page and enter domain and path information if available.

Step 5: Under the Sales dropdown, choose One Click Upsell.

Step 6: Add the page to your funnel

Step 7: Reorder your funnel in the funnel steps and add it after the order form.

Step 8: Add a product to your Upsale page.

Step 9: Edit your Upsale page by adding elements and content.

Blunder #4 – Test, Test, Test…

For those of you out there who don’t know what split testing is, also called A/B testing, I suggest you go read about it as soon as possible.

For those of you out there who know what it is, but are not capitalizing on it for whatever the reason may be, all I have to say is you’re leaving money on the table.

There are absolutely no valid reasons for not optimizing your sales funnel with A/B testing, whether it’s for the email sign up form or the checkout process on your site.

Different designs are not identical in conversion, so it is very important to collect statistics and test results from different email campaigns and website designs.

But the second biggest problem with people after they realize they should be split testing, is split testing the smallest most insignificant things ever.

Actually, let’s make a list of things you should almost never split test (unless you do ridiculous volume in traffic through your funnel):

• Button Color

Really long list that one hey?

Please. Do Not. Split Test. Button Color. With. 8 Visitors. Worth. Of. Traffic.

Smart areas of your funnel to test include:

• You’re entire funnel (yes, split testing your entire funnel is a thing)
• Headlines and copy
• Calls to action and lead magnets (E.g. eBook vs. a Worksheet)
• Mobile site design
• Forms and the questions you ask
• Ad creative & copy
• Email sequences
• Your offer and targeting

The list goes on and on….

Create variations to your pages and test which one works best!

How to Create Variations

Step 1: Log in to your ClickFunnels account.

Step 2: Go to your funnel

Step 3: Click Create Variation on the page you want to test

Step 4: Choose whether to duplicate your control page or create another page from the existing templates.

Step 5: Add/remove elements and content as you see fit

Blunder #5 – Mobile Is Sticking Around

Remember that mobile users are becoming an increasingly larger proportion of the visitors to your site that convert, so never forget about their existence and user experience.

Optimize everything on your site to go well with mobile devices, from emails and blog posts to the shop and checkout experience.

Easy and efficient are the key terms here.

You and I both know how much of a pain it is to go through and try see what’s happening on a non-mobile ready to go page right?

The squinty eyes.

The massive zoom into the page.

With ClickFunnels, you literally have no excuses not to be able to build a stunning looking mobile responsive page.

You can also make sure your pages are optimised for multiple devices.

Last, but not least…

Don’t forget that your customers are human beings.

Treat them well and with respect, and they’ll be purchasing from you in no time.

Don’t exaggerate results or features, because that will only leave you in a hole after your customers realize you’ve been tricking them into buying, and those negative reviews will hurt your future conversions.

It’s not rocket science and there’s no magic bullet to a profitable sales funnel.

Hopefully you can come away from this post with clarity and see the areas you need to improve on and the areas where you’re crushing it.

So now over to you, what’s the biggest sales funnel blunder you’ve made so far? Share it with our readers in the comments below and we’ll work together to make sure we’re all moving onwards and upwards!