A coaching student recently emailed with a problem you may have encountered yourself – your sales funnel just isn’t working nearly as well as you’d like it to. Fortunately, there are proven techniques you can use to increase any sales funnel’s pulling power, from the ads you place, to your squeeze page, your blog, your sales letters and on your backend.
Here’s 17 simple ways to increase the effectiveness of your online sales funnel…
1. Ask for action. Whether it’s a Facebook ad, solo ad or a banner, a squeeze page, a sales page, even a blog post – ask your reader to take the next steps and do what you want them to do. Keep it simple and make it easy to take that action, too.
2. Always offer free information, such as blog posts, articles, reports, podcasts, videos etc. to establish yourself as an authority who can be trusted, as well as someone they just plain like.
3. Describe your lead generating free report in a way that makes it every bit as enticing as a $100 paid product.
4. Show a picture of your report or product, and don’t skimp on this. Get a good graphics designer to create a cover that looks like it belongs on the best seller list.
5. Spend a lot of time choosing just the right title. Whether it’s a blog post, a free report or a product, give it a name or title that creates curiosity or implies a big benefit. If you can do both, you get major bonus points.
6. Include your address on your squeeze page and your sales page. Make it super easy to find on your blog. A real address (preferably with a real phone number) tells people they can trust you.
7. Use your head shot photo everywhere you can. Unless you look like an ogre (and trust me, you don’t) it’s better to have your face seen throughout your sales funnel. This makes you a real person to the prospect, not just some faceless person trying to take their money. Spend time choosing just the right photo, and even use social media to help you pick the one that makes you look like the likeable, trustworthy person you are.
8. When offering discounts, use a dollar amount, not a percentage. For example, $10 off converts better than 10% off.
9. You know those dashed lines they put around coupons? Thanks to conditioning, those lines also work online for getting attention and making sales. Try using them on your order page.
10. Give the order page “coupon” a headline that affirms positive action – ”Yes, I want to lose 30 pounds in the next 60 days.”
11. Give the customer 2 or 3 choices – perhaps a starter option, a full option and a deluxe option. Price the deluxe at slightly more than the full and you will very likely increase sales dramatically.
12. Try placing a less-heavy dashed line around your banner ads as well to stimulate response.
13. Use a direct headline – one that promises a benefit or stresses the offer of free information while invoking curiosity. Test your headlines. Test test test. Then test some more. If this seems tedious, get your VA to do it.
14. If you don’t have a VA, consider getting one. S/he can be doing the little stuff while you focus on improving your funnel.
15. Giving away a free book or consultation? Or is your price crazy low? Put it in the headline.
16. Offer a bonus unlike any other. For example, everyone offers a free ebook, recording, video, etc. Instead, offer something tangible like a real book. Have it shipped via Amazon. Obviously this bonus will only be offered on higher priced products.
17. Offer a free sample. Yes, this is old school, but it works. Offer a free 30 minute consultation, or a free chapter, or the first 3 videos of your 15 video series. If you deliver what you promise and make them want more, you’ll get sales.
One last thing: If you’re already doing all of the above and your sales are still lower than you like, you’ll want to take a look at the big picture. Is your offer a good one? Is the product something people are willing and even eager to pay for?
All the marketing in the world won’t do much to help a lousy offer. If the problem turns out to be the offer, the question to ask is whether you’re charging too much or is it simply something people don’t want? And then take the appropriate action.
Above all else, don’t give up, because the only people who truly fail are the ones who throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble.
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