Plug the Leaks in your Online Sales Funnel! Paid Agency Secrets to Help You Fix Customer Leakage for Good

Ever experienced the sinking feeling of your marketing budget going down the drain? If you haven't, trust us, it's not a wonderful experience. It's extremely frustrating when all your hard-earned money leads to disappointing marketing results. The secret ingredient for any effective online marketing strategy is a clearly defined sales funnel.

Many brands make the error of neglecting a well-mapped customer journey to navigate the client from awareness to action. This leads to precious customers seeping out through various unseen leaks. It’s like trying to fill a bucket with holes in it.

But fear not! We've got the perfect guide to seal these leaks and prevent your hard-earned cash from flushing away!

We've listed down some common errors companies make to help you learn from other's mistakes! We have divided them according to the stages of the funnel in which they occur. Our journey through the funnel begins with social media and our website marks the end point.

Social Media

Picture social media as the grand stage in which the curtain rises on your product. It's the first impression your customers get of your brand, and you've got to make it count. Some mistakes most brands make that cost them millions in lost revenues are:

Ineffective Content Marketing Strategies:

Creating content for social media is both an art and a science. It must entertain and engage the audience, as well as incentivise them into acting in the way we want them to.

Social media is like a party, where you don't have to wear a suit and follow a bunch of rules. The perfect place to casually connect with your audience and offer them insights and humour to entertain and educate.

There is, however, a game plan involved, although it may not be obvious at first. Social media content follows a clear format to ensure we guide our audiences along our mapped-out engagement ladder and beckon them towards conversion, with the help of CTAs (Call-To-Action).

An effective content marketing strategy ensures that all content on social media effortlessly guides customers down our sales funnel. Coupled with a well-defined destination of conversion through clear CTAs (Call-To-Action) that lead them to your website, you can streamline their path towards becoming paying customers.

Irregular Posting:

We've all got that one friend who always promises to show up to the gym, yet they always seem to disappear into thin air right before they enter. Does this sound like the ideal partner to achieve your fitness goals with? I would say no.

It’s the same with social media. You have to make that effort of showing up for your audience to convey to them you have their back. Inconsistency is your worst enemy, both in a personal relationship and in business. Especially if you want to gain trust and build a strong community.

Regularly posting engaging content on your social media channels communicates to your audience that you genuinely care, and it keeps you firmly rooted in their minds. Through regular subliminal triggers reminding them of your presence, you can associate your brand with trustworthiness and reliability.

Like that friend who never fails to call you up every day at 8 AM and says, "It's time to hit the gym!". Now the question to ask yourself as a brand would be, which friend would you rather be?

Inability to Build Lasting Relationships:

Social media is a casual platform, where you meet new people to connect with and find new beneficial relationships. If you met a new person, and all they did was talk about themselves, I’m pretty sure you would grow tired of them in no time!

This is the mistake most brands make on social media. Rambling on about how great you are being an effective way to drive people away and make them think your brand is compensating for something. (A weak product or service)

Like a masterful conversationalist builds relationships by showing interest, empathy and solving his audience's problems, your brand can also do the same. By shifting the focus from themselves to the customers, brands can build genuine relationships.

Focusing on customer pain points, solving their problems and providing them with valuable information ensures that we can develop a mutually beneficial relationship.

Lack of Re-targeting Strategies

The digital world is a vast expanse of short attention spans and distractions. Trying to make them remember your brand in the abyss of noise and distractions is like trying to make a goldfish remember your name.

Re-targeting acts as a virtual tap on the shoulder to your potential customers reminding them of your presence. It helps leads remember that you exist and that your products or services can solve their problems and are worth their time.

These strategies turn window shoppers into actual customers. It's an essential ingredient in preparing an effective online presence. They also ensure that the meal you worked so hard to cook (your product) is actually served to the intended audience.

Retargeting strategies act as digital breadcrumbs for your audience that lead them to the full-course meal. Re-targeting strategies significantly increase conversions and prevent customers from slipping through the cracks in your online sales funnel.

Website

If your social media is the stage where your product makes its debut, your website is your online storefront to display to the world. A virtual showcase of the value you provide and the problems you solve. Many businesses fail to realise the importance of a well-planned journey that guides visitors from awareness to action.

Inconsistency in Branding and Messaging:

Inconsistency in branding and messaging on a brand's website can devastate its sales funnel. It's like going to a restaurant that serves Italian food one day, sushi the next, and then switching to Indian curry after that!

When your branding and communication are inconsistent, visitors get confused. They could wonder if they are in the right place to solve their issues or whether they can trust your brand.

Consistency is key when it comes to websites and the psychological impacts they have on potential customers. A uniform brand theme, tone and style in the websites subconsciously gain trust from browsing leads.

A resounding message of credibility, authenticity and trustworthiness is conveyed through consistent branding and messaging, providing customers with a clear roadmap ahead and a seasoned guide to help them achieve their aspirations.

Slow Loading Times

Slow loading times devastate sales funnels. Imagine you invite customers to your store, promising to solve their problems. You give them a resounding image of who you are and how you can guide them to success.

They arrive excited and determined only to have to wait forever at the door. They would leave feeling disappointed and betrayed, wouldn't they? In this face-paced digital world, people don’t like to wait, and there's a world of distractions waiting to seize their attention the moment we lose it.

If your website takes forever to load, even if they’re eager, excited and want to learn more about what you have to offer, they won’t think twice before investing their precious attention somewhere else and will abandon the ship you have worked so hard to build.

It also harms your search engine rankings, making it significantly harder for people to find you in the first place. So, to steer the sails (or sales) steadily towards conversion, brands would benefit from fixing their website’s slow loading times.

A Shortage of Success Stories

Imagine you’re on a plane and the pilot with his trusty microphone welcomes you on board and wishes you a comfortable trip ahead. As you sit back and relax, he follows up by saying that this is his first time flying a plane and he “hopes” everything goes well.

Not so relaxed anymore, are you? You feel uncertainty, doubt and wonder if you should ever have even gotten on this flight in the first place. In the worst-case scenario, you might decide to leave the aeroplane only to realise the flight has already taken off!

Success stories act like a certification of expertise to help potential customers trust you and make them feel that they are in good hands. They visualise you solving their problems in a similar way to the people featured in your stories. They experience the story first-hand and put themselves in the shoes of success.

Without such stories, you're essentially asking people to take a leap of faith, and let's be honest: when it comes to their money, people aren't very willing to take such chances. So, sprinkle some success stories on your website and watch how they boost your conversions by depicting authority and reliability.

Absence of a Powerful CTA

A wonderfully conceptualised social media presence leading to a website without clear CTAs (Call-To-Action) is like a joke with no punchline. It leaves audiences confused and leaves them wondering "What's the point?"

Your sales funnel may be perfectly crafted, and your offerings may be exceptional but if you fail to guide your site's visitors on what to do next, they will keep wandering aimlessly until they get distracted and leave.

Without it, potential customers end up disoriented and confused about what to do next, which can lead to missed opportunities and lost sales. It's like writing an exceptional story but failing to give it a proper ending; you leave your audience hungry, but not in a good way.

As a result, a great CTA acts as the cherry on top (or bottom) of your sales funnel, assuring that visitors can easily comprehend exactly how they can get involved and convert into devoted customers.

And there you have it! These are some effective tips and tricks to help you fix the various leaks in your online sales funnel. Your sales funnel is your greatest weapon to conquer the digital landscape. As you embark on this adventure, we hope you can avoid these common pitfalls, tell a compelling story, and take your customers on a journey they won't soon forget!