Are You Making the Most of Your Marketing Funnel?

By now, you’ve heard that you should have a sophisticated marketing funnel firmly in place. But for many business owners, that advice is like hearing you should floss twice daily. It sounds good in theory, but it’s not quite there in practice.

There’s a good reason for that. Developing a marketing funnel can be complicated and time consuming, and it’s easy to push to the back burner.

However, a good, reliable funnel will lead to more customers, more sales, and more revenue. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you probably have a funnel in place, even if you don’t realize it. So here are the questions to ask yourself about your funnel to make sure it’s set up for success.

Do you have quality leads?

* Are the right people becoming aware of your brand? If so, how?
* Are your leads coming in at the top of your funnel similar to your paying customers at the bottom?
* Are your leads actually interested in buying something?

If you answered no to any of those questions, concentrate on the top of the funnel, or in other words, lead acquisition. Test alte
atives for how potential clients and customers find you, whether that’s social media, interviews and guest posting, your blog posts, or any other source.

Does the funnel have a block keeping leads from turning into customers?

* Are your leads becoming more familiar and comfortable with you over time? If so, how?
* Is your conversion rate for leads to customers at or above the average of 2-5%?
* Is your average cost per acquisition (aka. sale to a new customer) lower than the cost of the sale (and more importantly, the lifetime value of the customer)?

If you answered no to any of those questions, concentrate on the middle of the funnel, where leads are gathering information about you, shopping your options (and your competition), and going through the buying process. Consider sending a survey to leads who clicked through to landing pages but didn’t buy, asking them what you could do to improve their experience.

Do you have repeat customers?

* Do you get positive feedback about the customer experience?
* Do you have something for everyone (at all levels of your target audience)?
* Do you offer an incentive for loyalty?

If you answered no to any of those questions, concentrate on the bottom of the funnel, ensuring that you’re making it easy for customers to turn into repeat business. Ask past customers how you could do better and offer them an incentive to give you another try.