Shocking Truth: There’s No Such Thing as a Set-and-Forget Marketing Funnel
You might want to believe the hype of some sleazy sales letter that promises that you will just have to “plug into” a funnel and you will make money immediately. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. In fact, if there is a market and people are making money, the competition is fierce, and you will not be simply handed a blueprint so you can take a share of the lifetime profits.
Another reason why you can’t just replicate an existing funnel (no matter how much you paid for the template pack on Clickfunnels) is that you need a personal brand that drives your campaign. And whatever is working for one person might not work for someone else. Indeed, I have been asked before by a sales coach (not going to mention names, but quite well known on LinkedIn) to clone another person’s funnel. In fact, she had it all saved on the computer; landing pages, emails, the lot.
So if you want to set up and manage a sales funnel, you have to think about the long game, instead of the quick wins. That’s why you might need sales funnel management packages.
When to Update a Marketing Funnel
Another reason why you want professionals to manage your sales funnel is because it doesn’t exist in an empty space. In fact, it is based on interaction with your market and in correlation with what customers demand and what your competition is doing. So if you just set up a “set and forget” funnel, you will soon be left behind and start losing your competitive advantage you gained through the marketing automation. Here are some scenarios when you absolutely must update your marketing funnel.
When You Launch a New Product
We usually start with a simple funnel for lead generation, and build on it later. Maybe we add the upsells in the beginning. Once the front end is optimised, we will have to think about improving the conversion rates, so you can get more return on your marketing investment. This means that you might want to focus on a different area of business, launch a group training course, or sell a new service. If you don’t have sales funnel management packages, you will have no idea where to start adding the new offers. And might never do.
When You Evaluate Your Conversions
It is also recommended that – once your funnel is set up – you check your conversion rates. Of course, you will have an AB test running in the first month, but a simple tweak of a headline can easily double your conversion rates. So it’s important that you get a professional to evaluate your results and look for areas of improvement. After all, double the conversions means double the revenue and income.
When You Change Your Prices
A lower or higher price tag will mean a different audience and tone for your sales letters and email messages. Of course, you will have to put a lot of effort into building trust if you are selling a £5000+ course, but if you are offering a free trial, the risk is lower, and you will be able to close the sale faster. So your funnel and strategy will need to be adjusted for maximum conversions. If you go on and on about a low ticket item without asking for the sale at the right time, you will miss out on potential sales.
When You Face New Competitors
The markets are constantly changing, and the more competitive your industry is the more you will need to reinvent yourself like a mimic octopus. Keeping an eye on your competition is just as important as knowing your ideal clients. If you let them take the lead, you can only be a follower. The lower the barrier to enter is in your industry the more often you need to evaluate your competition. At the same time, if you are relying on social media, you have to monitor what other people are offering, as it is easy for your prospects to get distracted by the next “shiny object”.
When You Receive Feedback from Clients
Running customer surveys is important if you want to make sure that you are serving your market to the best of your ability. It is not hard to pick up the phone and have an honest conversation about what your customers liked about their journey and where you can improve. Alternatively, you can use advanced surveying methods, such as Typeform. However, if you want to keep it simple, you can simply send out a Google form or a SurveyMonkey link.
When You Want to Improve the Customer Journey
Evaluating the performance of your strategy is the first step of improving your conversions, and it is included in our sales funnel packages. You can look at the conversions at every stage of the funnel and focus on the areas that are underperforming. Instead of starting from scratch, you only improve the part of the marketing funnel that is not delivering the expected results.
More often than not, there will be one stage where you will see a huge number of prospects drop out. Once you have identified the stage, you can optimise it until it offers a better return on investment.
What Is Sales Funnel Management
Essentially, managing a sales funnel is important for every business. You have to track prospects and see how they progress down the funnel. A marketing strategy is never complete, so you have to always strive for better conversions and higher return on investment. Only a fool would set up a lead generation campaign and leave it running without adjustments for a year. We are living in the fast-paced world of social media and instant gratification. If you want better results, you have to constantly improve.
The Sales Funnel Management Process
Our process of sales funnel management is pretty simple. We do the research and marketing plan, then we come up with a funnel map. Once it is done, we build the infrastructure and the automations. Next comes the testing period and the optimisation. After a couple of months, you will have a well performing sales funnel that will generate leads and prospects on autopilot.
“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.” – David Ogilvy
However, the job isn’t finished at that point. We also manage your sales funnel based on the changing needs and objectives of the business and its customers. Once you have a working funnel, we will work on further optimising it.
Here are some of the examples of the changes that might occur we can address with effective sales funnel management:
- Increased capacity and the need for more quality leads
- The shift of objectives
- Price increase
- Brand and mission change
- The release of a new service
- The need to raise fast cash for investment
- The change of advertising channels
- Focusing on a new type of customer
- Running out of capacity for one service
- Accidentally discovering a new market
Of course, every business is different, and that’s why we tailor our service to the end goal of the organisation, instead of applying cookie-cutter options or one-size-fits-all funnel designs.
Sales Funnel Management Best Practices
It is crucial that you know and acknowledge the competition. The good news is that if there are people in your sector offering something similar, chances are that there’s a demand and you can make money, too.
“Never be afraid of the competition; embrace it, learn from it, and strive to be better.”
We aim to get all jigsaw pieces fit perfectly together. We test, test, and test, and improve in between. Timing is essential when closing deals. When you know that your prospect is ready, you can achieve a near-perfect conversion rate with much less effort than trying to hard sell in the beginning.
We measure everything that can be measured.
We measure everything we can, using advanced marketing software and tools, so we can report on the performance of the funnel. We conduct a funnel analysis regularly, so we can eliminate unnecessary steps and further optimise the ones that bring in the money. We might have a lot of inbound leads, but low conversion rates. In that case, we test a new version of the bottom of the funnel and see if we can close more deals for our clients.
Why Every Business Needs a Full Funnel Marketing Strategy
- Scalable growth
- Higher return on investment
- Advanced technology
- Industry knowledge
- Lower opportunity cost
- Flexibility
If you want to grow your business faster and in a more cost effective way, you might want to consider getting on board for one of our sales funnel management packages.
Try Our Marketing Funnel Calculator to Get a Idea of the Management Cost and Setup Fees
Do you have any questions about our marketing funnel management packages? Get in touch.
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