If you’ve got a sales funnel and your numbers aren’t looking great, chances are you have a leak (or three). I refer to this as having a sieve instead of a funnel. Make these 4 easy fixes to see more conversions.

For an entrepreneur with a solid, established funnel in place, it’s easy to see the number of subscribers at each level of the funnel and predict what sales will be from day to day or week to week.

However, if your numbers aren’t looking great, chances are you have a leak (or two or three) where subscribers are falling out. I refer to this as having a sieve instead of a funnel.

It’s not uncommon when I do Email Marketing Clean Up or Autoresponder Setup for me to see significant leaks there alone! There are plenty of other places your audience is falling through the cracks, though. Here are the top 4, in my experience.

Not enough traffic.

It’s always best to drive traffic to your site (what will you do if Facebook shuts down groups tomorrow?), more so when you’re trying to establish your funnel. So, how can you get more eyes on your content and more subscribers into your funnel?

How to fix it: Traffic generation is an extensive topic, but here are some tips to get you started:

  • Use good SEO to encourage search engines to rank your content well.
  • Be present and active in the places where your ideal reader hangs out, whether that’s on social media, in niche forums, or at live events.
  • Use paid ads to drive targeted traffic to highly relevant pages.
  • Recruit JV partners and affiliates to promote your offers.
  • Buy solo ads in related email newsletters.

No follow-up.

Follow-up failure is a leaky funnel mistake too many entrepreneurs make. They spend a lot of time and energy setting up a great lead page and driving traffic to it, then deliver the goods to their subscribers, and then…nothing. No follow-up emails. No offers to buy more. No related services or products. Nothing. Heck, I know many that don’t even bother emailing their list!

How to fix it: Before you spend time building that opt-in page or offer, be sure you have a back-end to promote, or those subscribers you so carefully collected will end up costing money instead of earning it back.

Bonus Tip: Make sure you have a system in place to maintain your list health. Just like you need to follow up, you need to remove subscribers who don’t engage with your brand. Doing so will reduce your costs, create a more engaged following, and reduce inaccurate spam reporting from followers who forgot you.

No call-to-action.

This happens most often at the top of the funnel. Your blog posts, social media content, podcasts, YouTube videos — everything you offer for free — must have a call-to-action, or it’s just wasted energy. Your call-to-action can be as simple as “Subscribe to my YouTube channel” or “Follow me on Facebook for more tips,” but it must be there.

How to fix it: Every time you write a blog post or an email, as yourself, “What do I want my readers to do when they’re done reading/listening/watching this?” That becomes your call to action. My favorite version of this is the content upgrade.

No product offers.

When you’re just starting out, this can be a problem. You know you need to be building a mailing list, but with nothing to offer, what’s the point? Plus, you want to establish the precedent and expectation of being sold to, or they’ll turn tail when you finally get around to it. The truth is, there are lots of ways to make money in your funnel even if you don’t have a product to sell yet.

How to fix it: Promote affiliate offers. No matter what industry you’re in, there are a variety of tools and services your readers need. Find those tools, sign up for the affiliate programs, and recommend them to your readers. Not only will your readers thank you for pointing them in the right direction, but you’ll earn a little cash, too.

Got a leaky funnel? With a few tweaks and some attention paid to your follow-up sequences, chances are you can fix those holes and increase your profits in no time.

Want help setting your sales funnel up?

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