5 Reasons Funnels Fail To Convert

Sales Funnel Mastery: Business Growth | Conversions | Sales | Online Marketing

In this episode, we discuss the top 5 most funnels fail to convert. If you're suffering from a low (or negative) ROI, these are the places you want to look first!

Resources Mentioned

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Transcript

Hey, what is going on everybody. Jeremy Reeves here with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today is Monday, May 2nd and I am really excited for this. We have a lot going on this week. We are launching a new funnel actually on Facebook. I think I told you about that in the last podcast. I am excited about that. I actually did not even really start nothing is even created yet. We are doing a PDF to a tripwire and then you know, to essentially testing that with an upsell and then if that particular market focus works, then we are going to build out a whole funnel for it.

We are kind of doing like a little mini test for it based on the you know, the test that I talked about in the last episode.

So that is going on live this week, we will see how that works, see how that does, see if we need to make any tweaks you know, that kind of thing and then we will kind of go from there, but I am excited about that.

It kind of goes right into what I am going to be talking about today and that is 5 Reasons That Funnels Fail To Convert you know.

So in the last episode, I kind of talked about our last funnel that we tested really, really quickly that have like no thought into it and it did not really work all that well. The concept that we are testing did work, but the actual funnel itself did not you know, did not give a positive ROI on it.

So it kind of give you like a glimpse into why that did not work. So I want to expand on that overall topic of why funnels fail to convert you know, because funnels have you know, the word sales funnel you know, the buzz word sales funnel has been around for I do not know a couple of years now.

I have been doing them since like 2009, 2010, something like that, but you know the word really did not yet big until I do not know maybe like roughly 2 years ago or so.

And there is a good reason for that you know, because they worked you know, it is just plain and simple, they worked, except sometimes they do not, you know, and that is when they are not done properly you know.

And there are a lot of reasons why they would not be done properly.

So today, I am going to cover 5 of them, okay.

The first one is and really, probably the biggest one, is -- actually not the biggest one, but it is one of the bigger ones is that your message to market match is off, right.

So if your message to market matches off so let me give you a quick definition of message to market match, right.

So when you are selling something, you have to have, there are 2 parts to the equation. Just like you know, if you are going out and you are trying to pick up a girl, you have to have chemistry or a guy if you are a girl. You have to have chemistry between both people for that relationship to work.

If a guy walks up to a girl and he thinks the girl is attractive and cute and sweet whatever characteristics he is going for, but the girl does not feel that same way back, that relationship is not going to work, okay, and vice versa you know, maybe that girl thinks the guy is attractive, but the guy does not think the girl is attractive, still not going to work.

For that to work, for that relationship to work, both people need to be kind of like in sync with each other. They need to both find each other’s physical and you know, whatever, emotional, mental characteristics and traits appealing you know. They have to like their personality. They have to like how they look. They have to like how they act, all that kind of thing.

And it is the same way. When you have -- if you think about that in terms of your product and then your market, you have to make them both be in sync with each other.

So you can have a product, for example, in coming up with this new funnel that we are going to do, you know, what I did was me in my place, I wrote down -- I went outside, I have a cigar and I went out on my whiteboard out in my patio outside my office here, and I wrote down all the different -- I have my whiteboard out and I draw a line down the middle and I put PDF on 1 side and then I put tripwire on the other side, and I wrote down -- I think it was about a dozen ideas for PDFs for this, you know, for this new funnel and then on the other side, I wrote about a dozen ideas for tripwire.

And then what I did was we kind of as a team went together and well me and main marketing guy, Sean, we kind of get together and we look at both sides and I came up with my top 3 of each of those. So I said, okay, you know, this PDF is going to be perfect with this tripwire you know, and did that 3 times. He did the same thing and then we narrowed it down to 1, right.

And the reason that we did that was because there were some and I wish I had it, actually here it is, let me pull up real quick.

So for example, one of the PDFs that I was thinking about doing was X number of ways to maximize revenue from your existing list, okay. So, you know, think about that, that probably sounds pretty good, you know. You have a list and you know, I was going to show you, you know, whatever 7 ways to maximize revenue from your existing list or whatever that was except if you did not have a list, right.

That audience if you think about that who is that attracting, that specific example is going to attract people who already have a list. If you do not have a list and you are kind of in the beginning stages that is not going to attract you, okay.

And in the funnel that we are doing, we are attracting people that are in the beginning stages okay. So that one may not be relevant, right.

And you know, and then some you know, tripwires, let us see, like email segmentation templates I was going to do because the one upsell that we have is templates you know, copy templates and a big part of that is email templates you know, prospect templates and segmentation templates and buyers templates and you know, promotion templates, webinar templates, all kind of stuff like that in there.

So, again, you know, email segmentation template is going to be a great tripwire for a segment of the audience, but not for a very you know, not for a beginning part of the audience and this funnel that we are going after the end game is not to get them into coaching or you know done for you which is normally what we are doing. The end game is to sell them our products, right, $500 or less.

So there, in the beginning part of the market, they are not you know, I am not going after 7-figure business owners. They do not want that kind of stuff typically. You know, they want -- you know, the 7 you know, $500,000 plus are more looking for coaching done for you, that kind of stuff, whereas, $500 or less again, typically, looking for more information because they cannot afford the other stuff because you know, the business is not big enough, alright.

So the message to market match is making sure that what you are selling matches what the market wants, okay, and you have to look at your market and understand exactly who you are selling to and then of course you know, with the whole message, that is the copywriting. That is all you know, I would not go into that. That is all obviously going to be relevant in our Facebook ads, in the landing page, in the you know, in the tripwire page, all that kind of stuff.

Second one is adding too much complexity too early. So you know, if you have not heard this before I have basically 3 stages of a sales funnel and that is the foundational stage where you are getting the foundation setup. You have your unique selling preposition, your lead magnet, your core offer, and 1 upsell and like a buyer’s sequence to keep in touch with your buyers to kind of prime them for when you get more offers later on and keep them happy, get them good result, that kind of thing.

Then you have your maximization stage, okay, and that is when you are getting in the things like segmentation and going offline and you know, testing and things like that, right.

Understanding your matrix is a huge part of the maximization stage. Basically, what you are doing is you are taking your funnel and this is where you get more complex. You are really looking at your funnel and saying where are the leaks and you plug those leaks, okay and then in the perfection stage that is when you are getting up to 7 figures plus.

That is more split testing. You already have all of the components of a sales funnel. You already have you know, it is all segmented the right way. You have all the emails in place. You have all your various pages in place. You have things like retargeting. You have things like behavioral triggers. All that stuff and then you are looking you know, you are going after perfection. So you are going after this is like the last couple(inaudible 8:56.4) where you are testing different positioning, you are testing different offers, different prizes, all that kind of stuff and this is what I do for a lot of my clients that are 7 figures plus on retainer.

You know, is doing this kind of perfection stage, alright, but the point of this is know where you are in you know, in you know what stage, you should be in you know. If you are in a general sense, I like to say up to 500,00 or so you know, again, this is all you know, it is not like -- this is not black and white nothing in the life is black and white.

So take this you know, with a little bit(inaudible )this is just like a general rule of thumb, but up to about 500,000 in sales, gross revenue, you are going to be your foundational stage.

So you are going to be one to nail your USP. What is unique about you, you know, what is different, what is valuable about your business. You want to nail that. Nail your market, your message, all that kind of stuff.

Five hundred to a million or so, you know, maybe a million and a half, you are going to really be focusing on your maximization stage okay and then after that, after a million and a half then you are going to go really focus on your profession stage because then you can you know, you can afford to hire somebody to do stuff like that you know.

So the point here is do not try to make it too complex too early. Really nail your foundation. This is something I have been learning a lot lately with a lot of my clients is we really have to focus, take a step back and really just absolutely crush the foundation you know.

I always like to say that you know, the wider the foundation as you scale your business you know, if you are looking to scale foundation is before scaling. Maximization is when you are starting to scale, so think it that way.

If you are trying to scale your business, you have to have your foundation in place because number 1, you know, the wider your foundation, the more sturdier foundation, the faster you can go upwards before it starts to get shifty you know.

If you only have a tiny little narrow foundation and you start to scale, you are only going to be able to go up you know. Think of this in terms of a house. You have a tiny little you know, a couple of feet foundation, you are not going to be able to go up very high before the house starts you know, getting all shaky and wobbly, right and falling over.

So make sure you absolutely nail your foundation first before you start worrying about crazy stuff and getting in the multiple segmentation and behavioral sequences and like all that kind of crazy stuff that you read about. In most cases, that is not necessary. You really just have to -- just nail your foundation.

The third one is failing to understand your prospects buying cycle, alright. So it is really, really, really important to have congruency and relevancy throughout your sales funnel, alright and this goes back to the message market match, right. These are fairly similar. You know, going back to my example, with my lead magnet, you know, I am picking people in a different part of the buying cycle. If I were going after 7 figure business owners, I would be talking about segmentation. I would be talking about behavioral triggers and sequences. I would be talking about you know advance copywriting, things like that because that is what is going to attract the 7 figure plus bigger business owners to get them into my you know, done for you services, alright. Our done for you is typically like roughly 500,000 plus, again, generally.

So as you can see like I am attracting different types of people, alright. You know, lead magnets for beginners you know, resources, that is a good thing for beginner because you are not trying to attract somebody 7 figure plus they already have all the resources and tools. They are not worried about that, right.

So understand where your prospects are in your buying cycle and then kind of have triggers throughout your sales funnel that take them through and get them to the next stage in the buying cycle, alright.

In the buying cycle, I will do a separate podcast on that, because that is a whole other topic, but you know, for now, just think about where, what different stages you have of prospects that are in different stages to the buying cycle and then if you are doing you know, have different -- you can have different funnels for each one or if you only have one, focus on one of them, right.

So the client that I talked about, I do not know last time or the time before, that she is a coaching client, and she basically went from doing launches like 2 to 3 times a year you know, she is getting worn out of it that kind of thing and I helped her build the funnel. I mapped it out for her. We walk through it you know, coaching, she built it, but I kind of built it with her essentially because you know, (inaudible 13:49.4) coaching and she is now making about $1300 a day right, which is whatever that is like $500k a year or whatever from this funnel and what is funny is that, that funnel is only half done because what we did was we brought people in through different lead magnets, again, attracting different people in different stages of buying cycle and then they go into a funnel.

In her case, there is basically the super beginners and then there is people slightly more advance. She is not going after about anybody really advance so it is like kind of the beginner and intermediate areas.

And we only did the beginner part of it, right. So the only part that we even did was the very beginning course that she has and so she is right now working on doing you know, the second half of it. So that is going to probably double what she is doing now and she essentially started from 0 you know and within I think it took her about 6 weeks maybe because she had some other stuff going on and she went from essentially 0 $1300 a day just putting that funnel in place because it is a bad ass funnel.

That is failing to understand your buying cycle.

The number is 4 not understanding lifetime customer value, alright.

Too many people trying to profit as much as possible on new customer acquisition, alright. It does not allow you to profit very much you know. Think about how much money it cause. Think about getting let us just say 5 times ROI on frontend acquisition or let us just say 3 times because that is probably more realistic if you are doing like a course you know, versus like coaching or something like that, right.

So you are spending $1, you are getting $3 back, alright, good you know, but what people do not understand is that is all they focus on is, oh, I am spending $1 and getting $3 back, right. Well that might happen in the first 30 days, but what would happen if your funnel was based around getting that $3 but then turning that $3 into $10 or into $20 and that is very realistic when you are talking about you know, your backend.

There are so many things that people can do to turn their buyers into repeat super fans, you know, and nobody does it. I cannot even begin to describe how many people I talked to that do not focus on their buyers and I am talking about 95% plus of people that I talked to.

Most of the people that I talked to are at least $500 or more and a lot of them are million dollars or more and they are still not focusing on the backend and they are not focusing, they do not understand what lifetime customer value is, right.

If you really get a solid backend in place, that $3 could very well be worth $20. So let me put it this way, would you be willing to spend, get to 1 to 1 ROIs, spend $3, if it is going to turn into $20 over the next you know, 3, 6, 12 months, hopefully, the answer is yes, you know.

And so I want you to think about that you know, look at track people over, I like to track one short term lifetime customer value and one long term. So short term might be okay, you get people in your funnel. What are they worth over the first 30 days, alright. And all of you have to do with this is you know, tag them whatever like, just for example if you are doing Facebook ads, you tag them as Facebook ads and then you run a report. So, it is you know, it is May 2nd now let us just pretend it is May 1st, at the end of May so you get all your people in through Facebook right and you look at those people and you say, okay, you know, you track -- let us just pretend that we track all of the April, so we track all of April, so you look and you say, okay, these people came in you know, in the month of April and then at the end of May you would look back, what are they worth throughout the month of May, right.

So they came in all throughout April you know, up until the end of May because that would be about 30 days isn’t that sound perfect, but you need (inaudible 18:05.7) how much money did those specific people, so let us just say you brought a thousand leads in throughout the month of April. How much money were those thousands leads worth in the month of May or since you know, since they came in the first 30 days, right.

You can even tag them for the first 30 days you know, and then you look, hey, you know, where is my list of first 30 days. How much are they worth for the first 30 days, you know. How much money do they generate. And that is it, that is your value per lead in the first 30 days and then you can do the same thing for a year, right.

So you tag them, you know, first year and then you look back after a year and then you say, okay, how much were they worth over a year. I mean it is very, very easy to (inaudible 18:47.2) stuff out. It is really not complicated.

And then you look, and you say, Wow, you know, that is amazing. I thought you know, I was only getting 3 to 1 times ROI, but after a year, I am getting 20 to 1 times ROI.

So what you do with that is you know, the big secret here is you can scale so much more when you are willing to spend more money to acquire a new customer.

So you might have your “budget” $3 per lead, that is your allowable cost per lead is $3 because you know they worth $3 right or whatever your numbers are.

So if you look and you say, holy God, you know, they worth $20 over the first year, right. Wouldn’t you be willing to spend you know, more than $3 to acquire something that is worth $20 you know, hopefully, the answer is yes and that is what you do, then you go out to people and you say, hey, look, you know, I am willing to give you 100% of the upfront fee, you know, say your product is $100 or whatever and now your -- you are willing to spend $50 whatever, well don’t you think that your affiliates that your joint venture partners would be much, much, much more willing to spend more or you know, to put more effort into promoting your product to service if you are willing to give them double your ROI now. Don’t you think that you can reach a broader audience base if you know, you are willing to spend $1 or whatever it was back then and now you can spend $3, or $5, or %10 you know, whatever your number is.

I mean, you know, you can -- if you think about it, you know, typically, the more specific you are with your targeting when you are doing paid ads the higher ROI you get. So imagine like a little tiny little circle that is your circle of influence or whatever you want to call it, right. Well, if you can spend more money that circle gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, right. And your competitors they do not know this. They are only willing to spend $3 as well. Well now, if you know the people are worth $20, maybe you are willing to spend $10.

So if you are willing to spend 3 times as much as your competitors, who do you think is going to win, right. Think about that. I want that to be -- that is a huge, huge lesson for most people and they do not know it. They do not know the numbers. They do not know you know, how powerful that can be. That is how Jay Abraham took Icy Hot from whatever they were like $50,000 company to like it was like a $25,000,000 company in 18 months. That is the exact principle he used because he knew that -- I think his numbers are just less than (inaudible 21:40.5) the other day.

His numbers were let us see, they found out that the Ice Hot, you know, the bomb you put it is like you know, it is kind of like (inaudible 21:50.2) right now because it is sore, but they were willing to give people $3. The product sold for $3, they were giving people $3 to sell it, okay, so they were giving 100% of the profits and they went out to a whole bunch of retailers and did that but the reason that they did that was they knew that over the first year their average customers worth $25 in that first year. So they were not losing money, alright.

And they also knew that people would -- they would spend $3 on day 1 but day 15, they would buy another model, right, and they set their terms for net 30. So they, you know, they were essentially giving people 100$ upfront but they knew that their average person was going to order within that first month.

So they were actually making $6 the first month giving out $3. So they were still getting off 50% really in the first 30 days, but then they knew that over the first year, they were worth $25. So they were getting whatever that is again 8 times you know, they were giving away $1 to make $8, right.

And that is how they went from whatever it was, it was like 50 or you know, a couple of $100,000 or something like that just -- it was like barely, just a (inaudible 23:08.5) little business and he is (inaudible 23:10.2) like 25 million and again, do not quote me on the numbers there, to within like 18 months you know. That is the power of this, alright. So think about that.

The last one is, thinking that the money is in the list, right. Everybody says the money is in the list, the money is in the list, the money is in the list, no it is not, not at all. The money is in the relationship with the list, alright.

You can have a list and I know people with list of a hundred thousand, a million people, and I also know people that have a list of ten thousand and are crushing the people with a hundred thousand or a million. The reason for that is the relationship with the list, alright.

It does not matter the size of your list does not matter, alright. You can show this by if you look at your list right now, let us just say it is, I do not know, 50,000, you think you have a big list, right. You think that is impressive. Go through it and see how many inactive people you have in there, because I guarantee you it is probably around 50%. I guarantee you because I actually just did this for both of my list.

I guarantee you that roughly 50% of the people in your list have not opened a single email in the last 3 months or more.

Go back and look at that and that is just an easy way to show you that you know, you can lop off 50% and you are still getting the same amount of opens, right, but you know, in a bigger contacts, the relationship is in -- the money is the relationship. The money is within the trust that you build with your list and that is through things like you know, telling stories, you know, being personal, being transparent, being trustworthy you know, building that trust with your audience, resonating with them and the emotional triggers that are going to help them resonate with you and that is different with every audience, you know, showing them that you are the person that is going to help them solve their problem, adding value to their lives.

You know, things like that are going to help you in the relationship with your list, you know. I always tell people that people that are little bit newer to this that if your -- I just lost my train of thought. If you are going out to your list and you are sending them emails and they are not responding and you know, things like that, it is not doing what you thought it should do for the amount of people you have in your list, it is because your sending them again it comes back to message to market match, right.

You have to -- they are signing up for specific reason and you have to give them reasons to trust you because their attention is on a hundred different things. So why are they paying attention to you, alright.

You have to show them, that is actually partly what our new funnel that we are doing. That is actually what is about essentially. I forgot what the title is going to be. Essentially about you know, I actually I called the (inaudible 26:18.2) email, which, maybe I will tell you guys about that once it is done, but essentially, it is a simulate, resonate, and shocky email, right.

It is a 60% open rate email, I might as well talk about it now, 60% open rate email that is essentially what we are going to be talk about, it is a quick little report, it is only like 6 to 8 pages. I am actually going to start finishing it today, but I called it the (inaudible 26:44.3) right.

So the simulate, resonate, and shock email. So I will talk about that more you know, once it is done. Maybe I will even do a podcast on it, but yeah, you know, there is a lot of things -- if you go in my list you get basically like an (inaudible 26:59.8) email that is essentially what this you know, what this does is I bring you into my world and you instantly know who I am, what I am about, who I can help, who you know, why you should resonate with me that kind of thing and if you don’t then I will tell you to unsubscribe you know, and that is what this whole thing is about. So I will go into -- maybe I will do a separate podcast on that, but you know, the point here is that the money is not in the list. The money is in the relationship with your list.

So do not sit there and think that it is okay to email your list once a month or once every 2 weeks even, you know, once a week should be the minimum, you know, and I sometimes I am guilty to this myself, but you know, there are so many auto responders in my list that most people are getting messages more than once a week.

So even the final broadcast once a week you know, most people are getting messages at least you know, at least once a week and plus, most of my list is on my you know, listening to this podcast anyway so it is a little bit different.

But anyway, that is it, I hope you enjoy this. If you know, if any of them really resonate with you, go back and re-listen to them, all of them are extremely, extremely important. If you want your funnel to convert, they all have to really you know, if you want to take your business to the next level, that is what you have to do you know, so if you want to get a little bit more in depth with all this, the 2 kind of main ways to work with us is either through coaching or having us just build your funnel for you. Everybody kind of want things for different reasons, so if you are interested in either of those, shoot me an email or just go to jeremyreeves.com and you know contact me. You could shoot me an email at [e-mail] otherwise, if you enjoy this episode, if you think you know, your friends will benefit from it then you know, make sure you are telling people about it. Make sure you leave reviews so that our itunes rankings can go up and you know, give more people value you know. I put a lot of time into this.

So I would appreciate that and also if you leave a review, I will send you the 101 Conversion Tips PDF where you know, I list out 101 different ways to increase your conversions, start your sales funnel, and that is free. I used to sell it for $77.

So any of those would be very, very appreciated.

So that is it. I hope you get a good start to your May and again, if you are interested in working with us, then just shoot us an email or go to jeremyreeves.com and fill out the form on there, alright.

I have a team meeting in about a minute, so I will talk to you soon.