6 Best Funnel Optimization Strategies To Optimize Any Funnel
In the world of marketing, there are a multitude of strategies that can be used to get your product or service in front of potential customers. Among these top strategies is funnel optimization
There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to funnel optimization strategies, but fortunately, there are also a lot of great tips and tricks to make the process easier.
This strategy is highly effective in helping you achieve your marketing goals.
To get the most out of funnel optimization, it is important to understand this process, and how to execute it correctly.
In this guide, you’ll learn some of the best ways to optimize your funnels – so you can maximize your results.
Strap yourself in as we explain funnel optimization!
What Is Funnel Optimization?
Funnel optimization is the process of making changes to an existing funnel (Sales Process) in order to potentially have the funnel produce more results.
Yes, you can split test or just make changes to a funnel – that will increase your lead production, lead quality, customer quality, conversions, value per customer, and more.
Funnel optimization is one of the most cost effective and fastest way to increase conversions for your business and be able to produce more profit.
By producing more profit from your funnels, you’ll be able to invest more money into ads and scale your sales much faster.
How Does Funnel Optimization Work?
There are 2 ways you can start doing funnel optimization for conversion. Here are those 2 methods of optimizing your funnels, why they are important, and how to do them.
- Split test your funnel optimization strategies – It is suggested that you only split test a single element of any page in your funnel or sales process at a time. Why? Because often it can be difficult to run a split test to see if a change or optimization to your funnel worked, especially if you changed multiple things at once. You should only make one change to your funnel at a time, such as a adding an upsell, and then run website traffic to identify if the changes increased or decreased the desired result you are testing.
- Make all of the funnel conversion optimization changes at once – If you feel confident in making a variety of proven changes to your funnel at once, this is another strategy you can take. I recommend this option for funnel optimization, only if you are absolutely certain that the changes you are making to your funnel will have a high probability of increasing results generated. If you go this route, and get a poor result, you may not know what the culprit was, and be left changing everything back, so you can do one split test at a time anyway. So we highly recommend testing only one change at a time.
Regardless of the method of funnel optimization you decide on, with each change you make, you need to run an ample amount of website traffic, that is equal for every change, to know how it truly impacted your sales process.
We recommend at least 2000 visitors per change you make to truly know how the change impacted your sales process and conversions.
As an example: if you changed the main heading on a lead capture page, you need to run at least 2000 visitors to that page before making another change. This will give you a true test.
The more visitors you run per change, the more accurate your split testing will be. So decide on a number of at least 2000 or more visitors, and stick to it then for each change.
Why Optimize Your Funnels?
Optimizing your funnels gives you an advantage to increase your profits through small changes that in most cases do not cost anything, except a bit of time.
For example: Let’s imagine you optimized your opt-in page, and increased your opt-in conversion rate because of the changes you made.
If you at first were getting a 20% opt-in rate, and a change you made increased this to a 40% opt-in rate, that is a 2X increase in lead production!
This then, should also double the number of customers you are generating. Do you see how optimizing your funnels can create such optimal conversion results and increases in ROI?
You may like your results now, but small changes can sometimes mean BIG differences in the pocket book, where it counts the most!
What Is A Funnel In Marketing Terms?
A funnel, also called a sales process, a step by step series of pages that walks your audience through a process to convert them from a lead into a paying customer.
Funnels were popularized by ClickFunnels especially in the digital marketing space. However, funnels and sales processes have existed already for decades before this.
If an online sales funnel is optimized right, it can convert higher and generate more revenue for you than just having a single lead capture to sales page.
Having a well designed funnel, can give you the ability to down sell, upsell or sell add on products to a prospect depending on the action they take.
In the offline business world they do it all the time, the upsells and add on products are just done in person..
Remember McDonald’s Super Size me?
That was to get you to spend more money..
How about, when you bought a vehicle, have you ever been lead from a car sales person to the finance manager and then asked “Would you like an extended warranty? Do you want a maintenance plan?
See, that is the job of the finance manager, to get you to buy something else, and if you do not he may even offer it to youat a discount(down sell you).
I know when I bought my new truck last year, that is exactly what happened, and because of our experience with sales funnels in our online marketing, I knew to hold out, and got my extended warranty for an even longer period of time, and for almost nothing.. 🙂
This is why you need to use a funnel, and also optimize any funnel you put in place for your marketing online.
What Are Sales Funnel Strategies?
Funnel strategies are various ways you can increase the effectiveness of your funnels through optimization and fine tuning of…
- How your funnel looks
- How fast your funnel loads
- How your funnel is structured
- How your funnel functions
- How to use your funnel to increase sales
Put simply, this is your UX – user experience.
The better user experience is for potential prospects, the more effective your funnel will perform.
Sales Funnel Stages
There are 3 stages to a sales funnel. By having each of these sales funnel stages in place, you’ll be using the right tactics to improve sales funnel conversion. Each stage should be in proper order…
- Opt – In stage: This stage is the most important for your conversion funnel optimization rates to be high. The class (quality) and quantity of leads generated is important.
- Bridge Stage / Sales Stage: This stage is responsible for customers generated, a small conversion rate boost can increase sales drastically.
- Checkout Cart Stage: This stage is where your customer decides to put in their credit cards and spend money with you. Optimize it carefully!
Each of these stages should go through full conversion rate optimization in order to turn your potential customer into a lifetime buyer!
Best Funnel Optimization Strategies
We’ve gone through a lot, but I’m sure you’re curious about what the real best funnel optimization strategies are.
The rest of this guide will go through each of the best funnel conversion optimization strategies, and why they are excellent for increasing your profits and so much more.
1. Decrease Funnel Marketing Friction
Marketing friction, is a concept in business that very few talk about and even fewer people truly understand. And it is one of the biggest killers of conversions.
What Is Marketing Friction?
Marketing friction is the term used to describe any obstacle that stands in the way of a visitor becoming a lead and making a purchase.
One example of this in a funnel, is having an opt-in page that off the bat is requesting way to much information from the first time visitor.
You are able to “reduce funnel marketing friction” and increase opt-in rates, by simply reducing the number of required fields to be filled out. Keep it to the bare minimums to fit your sales process.
Name and email should suffice for the first time visitor, unless your sales process involves calling your prospect as an immediate first point of follow up. Only then, maybe you add a field for phone number as well.
Personally I would still only keep it to name and email, and later on after your prospect has been exposed to more of your marketing pages in your funnel, would I ask them for a phone number.
This will work better and eliminate friction, because as potential customers are exposed more to your offer and process, they will become more confident in giving you their actual phone number or other additional information.
You also want to make sure your not wasting your time calling people who are really not interested in what you are offering.
So collect the other details you may want later on in the funnel, or through follow up emails, and have people set up appointments with you.
The goal of your opt-in page is to get you leads, not scare them away. Sometimes asking for two much information from the get go, will cause people to do the opposite of what you want.
These small changes that can simplify a sales process, are capable of optimizing conversion rates and profits quite drastically.
To make sure you reduce friction across your funnels, you will want to go through and do split tests of minimization, to identify what will boost conversions and results for your particular business model.
Steps To Reduce Marketing Friction
- Reduce form fields to the minimum needed to proceed to the next step
- How fast does your funnel pages load – research by Google has found that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds.
- Keep your messaging clear and concise on your funnel pages
- Use text that is easily read on any device – Seriously, we come across websites and sales funnel pages everyday, where you can not even barely read the text. When we come upon one of these pages we need a magnify glass to read, we just close them out.
- Give a clear and easy path to follow – do not make buttons and links hard to find, or have so many your visitors have no idea what to do next.
This is a real screenshot of a very bad marketing funnel online, can you see what is wrong with this picture? And that’s only a small snapshot of one of the pages of this marketing funnel.
If your funnel looks like this, you are in real trouble…
Marketing friction is huge, get rid of it.
Being affiliate marketers, we join affiliate programs all of the time, and sometimes we will even back away from joining an affiliate program, because they will ask for way too much information just to get access to the members area.
Let people join your site if its part of your marketing funnel, by providing some minimum basics, and later when they feel comfortable, they can put in the rest of their details in their profile area.
Friction is a killer, and you need to look at every aspect of your funnel to make sure you have provided your visitors with the path of least resistance.
Make it easy for your potential customers and they will buy from you.
2. Add Upsells To Your Funnel
An upsell is an additional offer that a business makes to a customer after the customer has already agreed to purchase a product or service.
Upselling usually involves offering a more expensive product or service than the one that was initially agreed upon.
Sometimes, businesses or marketers will offer add-ons or upgrades to the original product or service in order to increase the value of the sale.
Example Of How An Upsell Works
There are many ways you can add upsells to your funnels, this is just one example.
Your visitor lands on your sales page and purchases your marketing course for $200.00, now after they have finished paying, you bring them to another sales page that tries to upsell them on personal one on one coaching via Zoom or Skype calls for an additional $500.00.
Now, a really highly optimized funnel, might even have a down sell on the upsell if the customer clicks off without buying the one on one coaching, as an example.
A single upsell in a funnel or sales process can increase ROI by 20-75%. Imagine what having 2 upsells would do?
It is extremely simple, but the process of adding upsells to your sales process or funnel in some way or another, is the fastest way to literally multiply your profit margins without having to add a single penny in marketing costs.
Add upsells to your sales process, follow up emails, and funnels – you will thank us later!
3. Add Down Sells To Your Funnel
Down sells are a technique used in sales to increase the chances of making a sale by offering a customer a product or service for a lower price than the one originally proposed.
Down sells are typically used when the original offer is turned down, but can also be used as a way to increase the average sale price by offering a customer multiple options at different price points.
Down sells can also be used to increase the average purchase value by offering add-ons or upgrades at a reduced price. In some cases, down sells can be used to increase customer loyalty by offering discounts on future purchases.
Example Of How A Down sell Works
A visitor goes through your sales funnel process, and ends up clicking on a link to purchase your product or service for $187.00, but they click off of your sales page without buying.
In a highly optimized funnel, when someone goes to click off of your sales page, it would trigger another reduced offer (pop up), could be the same product or service and for a limited time you offer the visitor a discount to try your product or service for a reduced price off $135.00, saving the customer $52.00.
This down sell process can again, also drastically increase conversion rates, profits, and the lifetime value of customers.
You might even find if your conversions were really low to begin with, that you had your initial product offering priced to high.
4. Add Order Bumps To Your Funnels
An order bump? What is an order bump? How do order bumps work?
An order bump in a funnel is a small and extra optional charge for an additional product, service, or addition – to the main product or service being sold.
Example Of How An Order Bump Works
I self published my 2nd book, Finally Wealthy, and sold digital copies. I had at the bottom of my checkout cart page, a small checkbox that asked if customers wanted me to include some marketing and sales templates along with the book.
Do you know what happened? My average customer value went from $9, to $24. That is an almost 3X increase in profit, from a SINGLE order bump, on the first sales page in my funnel.
It is kind of like asking, would you like to Super Size that?
How much would a 3X profit increase in your business mean to you? Use order bumps, they work!
5. Split Test Your Funnels
You should be split testing your sales funnel with every change you make, in order to optimize them for conversions efficiently and easily.
By split testing, you can accurately identify which changes made to a sales page, opt-in page, checkout cart page, or bridge page, are responsible for an increase in sales and profit.
Split testing is your friend! And, it can be done with emails, advertising, and your sales funnels!
Everything is in the testing – friction, upsells, down sells, order bumps, you just keep tweaking and testing until you have a well oiled finally tuned money producing machine, that offers great value to your customers.
6. Strategy For Maximum Funnel Conversions: Copywriting
The oldest trick in the sales book, improving your copywriting is one of the top strategies to increase conversions. Across funnels and any other part of your marketing, the copywriting used across all communication – is a huge dictator and large part of conversions and sales generated.
If you get the copywriting right – you can sell ice to Eskimos.. 🙂
If you are not a good copywriter, we highly recommend looking into hiring a professional copywriter or learning the skill yourself in order to increase your conversions and profits. (Across marketing, advertising, funnels, emails, messaging, and more)
**Special Bonus: If you want to optimize your business further, then you should consider learning how to increase email conversion rates. This will allow you to increase your back end conversions as well, and further scale your profit and growth consistently.
What Are The Funnel Optimization Best Practices?
While you optimize your funnels, there are a few funnel optimization best practices or guidelines to follow. Here are the general guidelines you should remember as you go through optimization your funnel or optimizing your sales process…
- Make a simple funnel. Most of the time we over complicate our marketing and businesses – with funnels you need to make sure you have a simple streamlined process for a customer to go through.
- Use good copywriting practices in your funnel. Your headlines, videos, descriptions, and all text, should be copywritten with your audience in mind.
- Always upsell, down sell, and resell customers in your funnel. This practice ensures you are maximizing your lifetime value of your customers. (And serving them other products and services they want and need)
- Design with clean, crisp, and good feeling aesthetics. People often judge on how something appears and feels to them. The way you design your funnel will generate the feeling and can either be bad or great for your funnel conversions.
- Learn more about UX – user experience.
- Test and track all changes
Cartflows & What They Mean
The flow of what a customer does during and after the checkout cart process – is what defines a cartflow.
How you design your cart flow, can impact your sales funnel optimization.
What Is A Good Funnel Conversion Rate?
If you’re designing a funnel or remodeling one you’ve already created, you may ask yourself, what is a good funnel conversion rate to expect on average?
A funnel conversion rate between 3-5% is great. 2.35% is average. And anything beyond 5% means you’ve hit the jackpot and have amazing funnel conversion rate.
Nobody wants to be average, so shoot for a 10% or higher conversion rate from visitor to sale. As the top highly optimized funnels do over 10%.
One reason the average is so low, is most marketers and businesses fail to optimize their marketing funnels or sales processes.
Yep 90% just don’t do it..Don’t be the 90%…Be a 10% percenter!
Funnel Optimization Marketers Who Know How To Prospect For Customers
If you want to learn more in depth online conversion funnel strategies and learn from the best sales funnel optimization marketers, here is a list of them you should consider learning about.
- Russel Brunson – The ClickFunnels founder is among, if not the best funnel optimization and builder in the world. (He charges $1,000,000 to build a funnel for a company) You may not be able to afford him building you a funnels, but you can use the same funnel builder software as he uses. Click here to learn more.
- Jon Weberg – Jon has written an entire book on how to optimize and scale businesses, funnels, sales processes, and more. He is a top 1% digital marketing and business consultant.
- Daniel Doan – Daniel Doan is a master copywriter and great genuine person to work with for fine tuning anything digital marketing. Optimizing through copywriting is a great way to go. And he uses good tracking page optimization.
Final Thoughts On Strategy For Sales Funnels
Optimizing your funnels is the fastest method to increase the metrics in your business, that generate the positive results you’re looking for. If you actively optimize your funnels, optimize your sales processes, and optimize your business – it can only increase the results that come out the back end.
Funnel optimization strategies are incredible profit injections that should be used by all businesses and marketers.
Use this funnel optimization strategy guide to your own discretion, we’re sure it will improve your results you see.
If you want to learn more about how to increase your businesses profits, you can go here to learn how to become a Marketing Mastery Elite customer. At MME they will show you how to master, optimize, and scale – every aspect of your business effortlessly. Every sales funnel is a key to scale!
As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to post them in the comments section below or just say hello ????
Sincerely,
Your Friends And Partners
Richard And John Weberg
