Building an effective sales funnel is crucial for guiding potential customers through their buying process and turning them into loyal, paying customers who shout about your brand.
But it’s not as easy as ‘pour blog readers/followers/webinar watchers in the top and customers come out the bottom.’ If only!
The sales process is not a simple, linear pathway, so it’s easy for businesses to make mistakes during the construction of sales funnels – ultimately restricting their own lead generation and conversion rates.
Learn from others’ mistakes by using this collection of the 10 most common sales funnel errors as a ‘things to avoid’ checklist.
What makes an effective sales funnel?
In its simplest form, a sales funnel filters through prospects until they’re ready to buy – and keep buying. But the term ‘Funnel’ is a very practical, simplistic image to capture the complex customer relationships that underpin your business success.
Your prospects are faced with the whole landscape of your industry, an internet’s worth of information and multiple avenues to explore ways to fix their problems. Convincing them that your product or service is the right answer involves becoming the guide that helps them navigate each obstacle.
This all starts with getting their attention. Not just waving and smiling from the sidelines – but being exactly where your potential customers are, at just the right time, with whatever they need at that moment.
A powerful sales funnel takes them by the hand and leads them from that first handshake, through the checkout, and onto becoming an enthusiastic fan of your brand. This needs thoughtful crafting to make sure you don’t lose a single prospect along the way.
Each organisation’s sales funnels will be slightly different, but need to include these key elements to maximise effectiveness:
Knowing me, knowing you
A-ha-ah… you need to know exactly how your brand and product or service offering solves your target audience’s problem. Basing your sales funnel on deep customer research insights means you can precisely target each customer journey.
What are you offering?
Be very specific about your value proposition. Stay focused on the ‘one thing’ of this campaign. Don’t make it harder to say ‘yes’ by giving too many options and overwhelming your buyer.
Multi-staged content strategy
This shows your expertise, shares useful knowledge, or entertains your travelling prospects where, when and how they prefer.
Built-in lead qualification
Building lead qualification into your sales funnel strategy means that you only spend time on pre-qualified leads that are ready to buy.
Gentle nudging in the right direction
Look after those leads with email streams and other nurturing tactics to keep them cosy on their path to purchase.
Data-based insights
Continuous testing to see what does and doesn’t work for your audiences. Make optimising tweaks as you go, so you don’t lose any precious prospects along the way.
Make it mobile-friendly
Can’t believe we’re still saying this one…! Mobile optimisation should really be a given these days, given that 60.28% of all website traffic is done on mobile devices. But it’s such an obvious thing that it’s worth checking that mobile optimisation hasn’t been overlooked.
Use the right tools for the job
Streamline your structure by using a sales funnel builder that automates several elements, speeds up the design process with simple templates, and integrates with the rest of your tech stack.
Always listen and tweak your sales funnel
Feedback from your audiences should be built in to your sales funnels, with opportunities to incorporate how they feel at every key moment. That includes after they’ve completed a purchase – make sure your sales funnel supports every relationship into the future.
Applying the best practices for building effective sales funnels is challenging, but the right combination creates irresistible customer journeys.
10 mistakes people often make with sales funnels (and how to avoid them)
Here’s what not to do: The top most 10 common mistakes organisations make that scupper the success of their sales funnels even before they launch.
1. Not understanding the target audience
If you don’t know exactly who you’re talking to, how can you talk to them in their language? Otherwise, not only will your vocabulary miss the mark, but your entire messaging campaign will be disconnected. Failing to fully understand the needs, problems and ambitions of your audience segments means your sales funnel won’t make it off the starting blocks.
You won’t generate the leads you want because you haven’t created a lead magnet that your audience values. Conversion rates will stay low because your content doesn’t speak to your audience. This is a totally avoidable mistake. You need to research the information for your sales funnel as rigorously as you do for product development decisions.
ScoreApp has a great, simple way for you to ask your audiences the right questions – build a waitlist. It’s an intuitive way to get granular details from your prospects without the time investment of traditional surveys, or the large price tag of a market research company.
You can easily inform your sales funnel strategy by adding a few simple questions in the form of a short quiz to your waitlist landing page. You’ll discover:
- Exactly who they are
- What problem are they looking to fix with, potentially, your product or service
- What other solutions they’ve tried, or competitors they’re considering
- How they really feel about your offering
Try creating a free landing page and market research waitlist quiz with ScoreApp.
2. Lack of a clear value proposition
You need to get straight in there with the benefits to your audience – not the features you’re all excited about sharing. But how your product or service is the answer to your prospects’ real problem. That means focusing on one thing at a time for each sales funnel.
The click that brings them to your landing page signals their interest. It’s now up to you to show them the value and benefits of the product or service they expect to find. And only that product or service. No menus, or pop-ups, or links to other pages of your website – not here. This part of the funnel has one job: to connect with visitors enough to convince them to continue to the next part of the funnel.
All the usual good stuff applies: clear and relevant messaging, emotion-triggering words, complete focus on the one value proposition, and making the next step in the process completely obvious.
3. Ignoring different buyer stages
While focusing on one offering is key to the success of any sales funnel, only concentrating on one stage of that funnel spells disaster. A sales funnel strategy must consider how their customers are feeling at every stage:
- Awareness: When they first encounter your brand and product or service
- Interest: As they start to see you as an industry expert, learn about your offering, and explore the different solutions available to them – including your competitors.
- Desire: They want you! They’ve decided you’re the best option.
- Action: Off to the checkout they go!
- Customer relationship: Upselling, cross-selling, thank-you, offers…however you look after this new customer is up to you. Just don’t let it end with the receipt.
You need to look at each of your brand personas in turn and see how they navigate every stage. What do they need? Is it…
- A handy guide to answer their questions about how something works?
- Reassurance that the free trial doesn’t need a credit card, to get them over the edge at final decision time?
- A nice discount email arriving just as their initial purchase runs out?
Your sales funnels will only be successful if you invest in assets to support your audiences at every stage.
4. Overcomplicating the funnel
No one wants to feel like they’re being made to jump through hoops – especially if you intend to hand over some of your hard-earned cash. Simplicity underpins successful funnel design because it eliminates the risk of prospects being confused or overwhelmed by a cumbersome process.
To avoid losing leads, your sales funnel micro-steps should be almost instinctive.
Imaginary doughnut company example: 5 steps to deliciousness
1. You see an advert for fresh doughnut delivery on social media.
2. Clicking on it takes you to a landing page for the current offer of a discounted rate on their ‘British flavours’ boxes. You also find out they’re all made fresh in the UK, are 10cm in diameter (mahoosive!) and can be gluten-free.
3. You decide that’s exactly what you want to send your doughnut-obsessed friend for her birthday, microcopy saying they’re all delivered within 24 hours of baking gets rid of your worry about freshness – and you hit ‘buy now’.
4. The checkout makes it really easy to enter both payment details and separate delivery details, along with adding a note on a cute card (up-sell alert!).
5. The thank-you email contains a 50% discount for their 2 doughnut box, with a suggestion that ‘you deserve a little treat, too’. And that’s the second purchase made. Doughnut deliciousness for everyone!
At no point did this sales funnel let the prospect get confused by taking them to a menu of their full flavour range, have annoying discount pop-ups in their face, show a video of the production process, or tell the company’s origin story. All perfectly appropriate parts of their website, but only serve as distractions on this sales journey.
This sales funnel focuses on one specific offer, gets rid of any misgivings, makes the checkout process straightforward and follows up with an excellent thank-you discount and suggestion that’s easy to agree with. (Apologies if you’re now craving doughnuts.)
5. Neglecting mobile users
Not optimising your sales funnel for mobile users is like turning your back on half the people coming into a physical shop. 80% of Gen Z and 62% of millennials primarily use mobile search – that’s a big proportion of potential customers you’re ignoring there.
It’s such an obvious point but it’s actually very easy to overlook. This doesn’t just mean your landing page looks good on your phone. You need to ensure every component of your funnel, like forms and quizzes, all work as well on mobile devices. ScoreApp features are designed to be completely mobile-friendly, removing this potential spanner in the works altogether.
6. Failing to test and optimise
You need to test and track each element of your sales funnel regularly. 70% of marketers are convinced that A/B testing is essential to boost conversion rates after seeing up to a 300% improvement.
Without A/B testing, you’re missing out on those extra tweaks that fully optimise performance. You need to track key analytics so that you can make data-based decisions to improve lead generation and conversion rates.
You get all the data and statistics you need built into your ScoreApp dashboard – a deep analysis of every element, presented simply. Try it for free and see if it’s a good fit for you.
7. Inadequate follow-up
No one likes being ghosted – including your prospective clients. Don’t treat ‘follow-up’ as a whole separate job… that’s how things get forgotten and leads disappear into the ether.
Design your sales funnel with automated, personalised email follow-ups as part of the entire sales process.
- If they make a purchase, what email sequence does that trigger beyond the obligatory ‘thank-you, here’s your invoice’?
- If they complete your quiz but don’t make a purchase, how are you going to entice them towards the checkout? Maybe a discount voucher, an exclusive webinar, or access to an ‘early bird’ offer.
It’s crucial that you think through all the possible follow-ups as you create your sales funnel. Continuing contact keeps you top of mind so when it’s time to buy, they choose you.
Marketers report that emails segmented by audience drive 30% more opens and 50% more clickthroughs than more generic, unsegmented ones. So it’s unsurprising that 78% of marketers consider segmented email campaigns to be the most effective.
Be certain that you won’t lose any leads by accidentally ignoring their initial contact. Treating this as part of the process also means you can immediately start monitoring tracking data on their success and continuously improve their effectiveness.
Because of amazing email marketing software, you can think this through once and set it up to work automatically, well, forever! The best funnel builders, like ScoreApp, integrate beautifully with your existing software. Let your time-saving marketing automation begin!
8. Poor lead qualification
Do you want 3,000 leads that result in 3 new customers? Or 30 leads that turn into 25 new customers?
A sales funnel that attracts a high number of leads that don’t actually convert can waste your time and resources. Your sales funnel needs proper lead qualification mechanisms so that you can focus your attention on the right leads.
Pre-qualifying leads as they come in means you don’t sit on calls with potential clients who don’t have the budget or aren’t the right fit overall. It also means you can avoid spending hours putting together a client proposal that gets shelved. ScoreApp contact forms and quizzes pre-qualify leads for you.
Quizzes are perfect because you can ask useful pre-qualifying questions that tackle the most common objections, queries and problems your sales team usually handle. Example questions you can ask include:
- Have you hired this type of company before?
- What other solutions have you tried to fix X problem?
- What’s your budget?
- Do you already have [key readiness step]’ in place?
- What’s your biggest issue with X?
- Do you agree that [common objection]? Yes/No
Your follow-up emails can be super-personalised to their answers and help get you nicely warmed leads that are ready to move to the next stage of your sales funnel.
9. Lack of integration
To make the most of your data collection and give the best customer experience, all your tech needs to work together. When combining different tools with your CRM to create and manage your marketing funnels, they need to integrate smoothly. Otherwise, what should be a streamlined process ends up completely disjointed, with uncomfortable customers and wasted data silos.
ScoreApp works brilliantly with stacks of different CRM systems and platforms, we’ll be surprised if your favourites aren’t on our integrations list!
10. Ignoring customer feedback
Of course it’s a great idea to include customer feedback opportunities in your follow-up emails. But there’s little point if you don’t listen to their opinions.
Ignoring customer feedback deprives you of the opportunity to plug any holes in your sales funnels, deepen your understanding of your audience segments, and glean new ideas for improvement.
Customers who have experienced your customer journeys are in the best position to tell you what’s working and – even more importantly – what isn’t. All you need is a listening ear and the capacity to curate all your feedback touchpoints.
Avoid these common sales funnel mistakes with ScoreApp
Well, that’s 10 mistakes you won’t be making in the future! ScoreApp makes it easy to create and manage effective sales funnels that deepen your customer understanding, send you pre-qualified leads, and give you the analytics you need to embed continuous improvement.
See how it all works together by trying a ScoreApp Quiz funnel, for free!
