How To Take Your Sales Funnel To The Next Level

Optimizing a sales funnel is never a completed task. If you truly want to take your sales funnel to the next level, you need to constantly work on it. Sure, you won’t be making structural changes every day. But with every incremental improvement, you’re acquiring new customers. 

So constantly working on your sales funnel is important.

But how do you go about it?

How do you know you have the right conversion rate?

Where do you even get started?

Let’s find out.

The Numbers Behind Sales Funnels

Working on your sales funnel is not only beneficial for your business, it also gives you a competitive edge. According to Salesforce, as much as 68% of companies don’t have a clear sales funnel. Simply setting one puts you ahead of your competition. 

But just how ahead?

What are the benefits of sales funnels?

The numbers might surprise you. Over 90% of buyers choose a product when the vendor has provided them with enough information and content to understand the purchase. So with a well-optimized sales funnel, you know exactly what content you should be delivering, and when. 

That’s why companies that have a clear buying process are 62% more likely to sell a big-value product.

At Authority Hacker, we’ve seen these numbers make a huge impact in our business. A well-optimized sales funnel has helped all of our launches be successful, and it has ensured continuous growth.

So let’s dive into what you need to do if you want to take your sales funnel to the next level.

Default To Data For Every Decision

In sales, you’re always making decisions. You’re constantly choosing:

• Whether or not to send a follow-up email.

• What to write in a follow-up email.

• What benefits to list on a landing page, and in what order.

• Where to add your CTAs.

And a ton of other things. The first step in improving your sales funnel is understanding that you’re making decisions every step of the way. 

The next step is making these decisions based on data. We rely heavily on Google Analytics, the Search Console, and other data processing tools to understand where our potential customers are coming from, as well as why they’re dropping from a funnel.

With Google Analytics, you can even set-up conversion goals, with intermediary steps, and notice where your audience leaves your site. This will help you identify what parts of your funnel need some extra work.

For example, if a lot of potential customers are dropping off on the checkout page, you’ll want to improve it. This can be accomplished with more social proof, a simpler checkout process, better UX or anything else you think will solve the problem.

Besides data from marketing tools, you also want to have some insights into your audience. This will help you choose the right messaging, design, or products to convert more. While web analytics can help you make some educated guesses about this, a survey can help even more.

Make It Easy For People To Buy From You

User experience is a big part of why people choose to buy from you or not. When we create our sales funnels, we make sure to simplify the process as much as possible. 

To do that, walk a mile in your customer’s shoes. Go through your own sales funnel, and look for steps that you can remove. If a click or a page is not mandatory, you should cut it.

But this principle goes beyond user experience. The content you’re providing for people at any stage in your buyer’s journey can make a huge difference in whether or not they buy. If you understand your product’s pros and cons, as well as your positioning in the market, highlight your advantages at every step.

You don’t want your potential buyer to wonder things like…

“What if I can find the same thing, but cheaper?”

“Will this really help me?”

“Can I trust this company?”

Instead, your copy should highlight why your product is the best option for your target audience. And this doesn’t mean changing your mix. You just have to double down on what your product is good at, and mitigate the objections people might have when purchasing from you. The key to better sales funnels is to do it preemptively, not after an objection comes up.

Work On Your On-Page Elements

Taking your sales funnel to the next level also means refining the on-page conversion elements. This includes things like:

• The offer box

• The calls to action

• Benefits list

• Testimonials and other social proof

If your on-page elements are qualitative, you have a higher chance of converting more potential buyers. While every single element might not be crucial in a vacuum, they’re what your page is built from. If you can optimize all of them, you’ll see results. 

So go through your landing page elements and see if you can reorganize an offer box, add more benefits to a list, or increase your social proof. While you’re at it, analyze the structure of your page as well. Maybe you can find more room for conversion-focused elements.

Send More Traffic To The Funnel

If you’ve already done everything we outlined above, but still want better results, maybe it’s not really about the sales funnel itself. Maybe what you actually need is simply to send more traffic through it.

For example, if you’ve only been getting a few hundred visits on your landing page each month, that might not be enough to draw the right conclusions. 

For example, whenever we’re launching a new product or giveaway, we’re using all possible channels to garner traffic. Besides the traditional SEO, SMM, paid ads, and email marketing, we also run affiliate marketing campaigns to capitalize on other people's audiences.

This way, we’re able to kickstart our analytics and optimization processes.

Personalize Your User’s Experience

All aspects of online commerce are being revolutionized, as you’re reading this, by personalization. As much as 80% of users tend to buy from companies that personalize their experience, rather than companies that have a generic approach to sales and marketing. 

So at every step of your buyer’s journey, look for ways to make your customers' interactions more personalized. This can be as little as addressing them by their name in follow-up emails, and as complex as segmenting your offers based on interests and entry points in a funnel.

Personalization is a good thing to have even beyond sales funnels. If you can personalize all of your marketing and sales efforts, you’ll be improving your conversion rate across the board.

To Wrap It Up

If you want to learn how to take your sales funnel to the next level, you need to start with the data. Collect it, analyze it, and make decisions based on it. Once you do that, everything else you need to focus on, like UX improvements or CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), will be easier to deal with.

If you want to grow your online business, even more, don’t forget to also check the top 10 tips on Content Marketing.