A conversion funnel or sales funnel is a route that a potential customer/buyer takes from being aware of your products and services to finally making a purchase online.

As discussed in the previous article, a sales funnel consists of the following stages:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Consideration
• Intent
• Evaluation
• Purchase
  
  

Of these, marketers and sales analysts consider the three main stages: Top most phase or awareness, middle phase or consideration and the bottom phase or purchase. A poorly built sales funnel can often lead to leaks which can be difficult to mend if not taken care of at the initial stages.

Also read: Complex revenue growth deciphered in one simple quadrant

But how do you know if your online sales funnel is leaking? As a small business owner, you can easily rely on Google Analytics, which is a free tool, to get a step-by-step report of your sales funnel. Google Analytics has three funnel related reports that you can utilise:

• Funnel visualisation report- A basic report that gives you the overview of your funnel.
• Goal flow report- A bit sophisticated than the basic report, goal flow allows you to use date comparison and other advanced options.
• Reverse goal path report: You can see the pages customers visited prior to conversion through the funnel.
  
  

Now that you know how to analyse your sales funnel for leakage, here are three simple ways to fix them:

1. Fixing the leak in the top most section

The top most phase is the awareness phase where you get your customers to know about your products and services. A leak in this phase means you haven’t been able to attract the right customers yet. And to be able to attract the right customers, you need to work out a proper marketing/advertising strategy.

It is also imperative to understand if you are dedicating all your energy and money towards the right customers. Marketing to the wrong population will only be a waste of your time, energy and money. Invest in your website, landing page, social media advertising and other methods of customer awareness to plug the leaking pipeline. Remember to have a clear call-to-action (CTA) because this is where all your efforts, that have gone into marketing, determines if customers will be lured to checkout your website or walk away.

Also read: Top 5 digital demand generation channels – Are you online yet?

2. Fixing the leak in the middle section

The middle section or the consideration stage is where your prospects are pulled into deciding whether they want to purchase your products or not. Once you have circled in your potential customers, the next step is moving those customers through the funnel in order to ensure that they convert properly.  It is at this stage that you need to make sure that only the right leads are crossing your funnel.

In order to keep those right leads interested and hooked on to your products, you need to:

• Divide customers as per their buying persona
• Curate specific content for each persona
• Channelise the content via various medium
  
  

You can invest in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This was you can keep a track of all the leads collected from email listings, your website or other sources and stay in touch with them. This creates a greater brand recall and when they are ready to make a purchase, they will choose you.

A conversion funnel or sales funnel is a route that a potential customer/buyer takes from being aware of your products and services to finally making a purchase online.

3. Fixing the leak in the bottom most section

The bottom of the funnel or the conversion stage is the most crucial stage. Your prospect finally makes up h/er mind to purchase a product from you! At this stage, you need to do a proper onboarding of your customers. Some onboarding issues maybe your customer having a difficulty creating their account or completing the payment process. This might create the leak in the pipeline and your customers, who have almost converted, fall out. Fix this by staying in touch and guiding your customers towards making a purchase.

The process doesn’t end here. For each stage of the funnel, in order to ensure that there are no leaks, there are several tests you can run. For example, testing your website before launch, testing the CTAs, advertising channels and so on. In order to ensure that your business is successful at every stage, focus on keeping the funnel in a good condition and nurture it from time to time.

Also read: Do you have what it takes to be a sales shark?

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