Essentially, all a business is doing on a day-to-day basis is trying to find out how to get more people to buy their stuff. 

And the main challenge is, that there is a fall-off rate.

Now, we need to get into some sales terminology before moving on.

“Top, middle, and bottom of funnel”

The top of the funnel would be everyone entering your store. 

Middle of funnel represents those people who showed interest in what you have to offer and the bottom consists of all prospects who have converted to paying customers. 

Each of the steps has a separate fall-off rate. 

And this is extremely important to understand. You don’t understand how many people don’t know or think about this. 

Knowing the fall-off rate of each of the steps can give us extremely valuable insights into how we can improve our SALES FUNNEL. 

Because this is essentially what it is. It’s a funnel. 

With each centimeter we go down the funnel it gets tighter because fewer people make it through. 

To benefit from the things that I am explaining, you have to know how your funnel works. 

What steps do your prospects go through from start to finish? Do they…

1. See the ad?

2. Click on the ad?

3. Look at the content on your website?

4. Put something into the cart?

5. Proceed to checkout?

6. Pay?

This is what a basic e-commerce funnel looks like. For service-based businesses, it looks a little different, as it also does if you're a retailer.

Write each step down as you are reading this. As soon as you got that, I have the next question ready:

"How many enter the funnel and how many make it to the bottom? "

Then you will go pro-level and find out at which exact point of the journey they leave the funnel. 

Just figuring out these two things will give you more todos than you can handle. 

It is simple, but a lot of businesses struggle to find out the exact metrics for their specific business. There is, as I've announced, an entire industry of agencies and experts that does nothing else but this.

I want to go through an example with you, assuming you got your numbers straight and ready:

If 100% of the people entering your store talk to a salesman, and 100% of those people buy something over $100…

…BUT…

…BUUUUUUT…

Only 20 people a year enter your store because it’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s obvious you have a traffic issue. You probably also sell for too cheap. How can it be that 100% of the people buy and no one complains about pricing?

Recognising The Problem Is The First Step To Fixing It

Maybe not the best situation to start with, but it gives us control over the situation by allowing us to act on actionable steps. 

Now you can brainstorm and try to find ways to increase traffic and start testing with your pricing.

As soon as you start this, you'll start to realise that each step of the funnel also has a… let's call it "sub-funnel".

As for getting traffic in, the sub-funnel is long and complex. In it's most basic form, most people look at the headline first. Then at the subhead. Then in your ad script. Some click on your ad. Some don’t. 

Go through each step and figure it out again. 

This process is called conversion rate optimization. 

Only the things that are measured are improved. 

By understanding each step of your sales funnel and fixing drop-off points and bottlenecks, you can significantly increase your conversion rate as well as your revenue.

Makes sense?

No matter if it does or doesn’t: If you want us to help you with this process feel free to contact us so my team can get back to you to organise a free marketing strategy consultation.

Talk soon,

Can