How to Fix Your Leaky Lead Magnet or Sales Funnel
Your online funnel has one job: To generate leads, contacts, and sales.
But what happens when your funnel isn’t… funneling? What should you do?
This ultimate guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to fix a leaky lead magnet or sales funnel that just isn’t giving you the results that you intended.
What Causes a Leaky Funnel?
Before you can fix a leaky funnel, you need to understand how a funnel actually works. A funnel is made up of several parts, and some parts of your funnel may be working beautifully - while others are not.
Top-of-Funnel - Awareness: How you’re getting people’s attention and drawing them in (organic content, podcast, PR, paid ads, etc.)
Top-of-Funnel - Interest: Usually some kind of content or offer that piques someone’s interest and makes them want to learn more about your and / or your business.
Mid-Funnel - Engagement: The point where someone decides to engage with you (example: follow you on social media, visit your website, explore your shop or links).
Bottom-of-Funnel - Trust/Commitment: The point when someone has learned enough about your / your business that they decide to engage further to either book a consultation, sign up for a free trial, download a lead magnet, join an email list, etc.
Bottom-of-Funnel - Paying Customer: The point when someone makes a paid purchase. This may be a one-time purchase, or they may become a long-term paying customer.
Which Part is Leaking?
As a business owner, this is the number one question you need to be asking yourself before you take ANY action to fix your funnel. Think about these scenarios:
Your Top-of-Funnel may be overflowing (you have lots of followers, users, people aware of your business) but your Bottom-of-Funnel needs work (you aren’t building trust and converting users to paid customers).
Alternatively, you might have a Top-of-Funnel problem if no one knows about you (in which case, you need to focus on awareness building activities.)
This is exactly why you need to understand what is and isn’t working in your funnel before you take any actions.
Identifying Your Funnel Leaks
To identify the leaks in your current funnel, ask yourself the following questions:
Top-of-Funnel - Awareness: Do people know that my business exists? Am I growing in visibility (website traffic, social media engagement/followers, PR or other marketing efforts are working)?
Top-of-Funnel - Interest: Once people find out about the business, do they stick around? Are people saying things like ‘This resonates with me’ or ‘I’ve been looking for a solution like this’?
Mid-Funnel - Engagement: Do people engage with your content, blog, newsletters, videos, shop items, lead magnets? Are you seeing growth in engagements over time?
Bottom-of-Funnel - Trust/Commitment: Do you have strong trust-builders in place to show people that you are credible (media features, testimonials, reviews, free trials, etc.)?
Bottom-of-Funnel - Paying Customer: Are the products / services you sell resonating with users enough for them to pay for them? Is there market demand for your product? Is it competitively priced? Do your free trials or consultations tend to convert to paying clients?
Fixing Your Leaky Funnel
Once you know which part(s) are broken, you can start fixing your funnel with confidence. In this phase, you’ll want to not only identify the leaky area, but also use customer data to inform the funnel fix.
Here’s an example of what this might look like:
LEAKY AREA: Bottom-of-Funnel - Paying Customer: Let’s say you have a massive following on social media + a large number of newsletter subscribers, but not many people funnel down to become paying customers. CUSTOMER DATA: You survey your newsletter subscribers to see which potential products they would be most interesting in purchasing. To your surprise, 80% want to pay for 1:1 coaching, not something passive like your book (which you’ve been pushing as your primary product). LEAKY FUNNEL FIX: Based on the survey data, you develop a new 1:1 coaching offering and start promoting it on your channels. You see sales increase as a result of making this informed shift.
Here’s another example:
LEAKY AREA: Top-of-Funnel - Interest: You’re a newer business in the health & wellness with low visibility. You know that people will absolutely LOVE your products - once they find out that you exist. CUSTOMER DATA: You conduct mini user-interviews with 10 people in exchange for a $10 gift card (or free giveaway item). During the interview, you ask them how they get their information each week about new health & wellness trends. You learn that 9/10 people read The Healthy Human newsletter every single Sunday. LEAKY FUNNEL FIX: Armed with this information, you reach out to The Healthy Human team and ask if you can share your information in an upcoming newsletter; you end up negotiating a paid advertisement that lands you tons of warm leads that you can start nurturing.
The Leaky Funnel Solution: It’s All About Your Customers
If there’s one thing you take away from this article, I hope it’s this: A strong funnel of any kind is built on an even stronger understanding of your target customers. They should inform everything you do - from top of funnel attraction to bottom of funnel product offerings.
The key to fixing a leaky funnel usually comes down to a better understanding of what your customers want and need.
Here at Praxia Insights, that’s exactly what we help businesses like yours achieve - A deeper understand of what their customers truly think, feel, and want.
Let’s Fix Your Leaky Funnel
If you’re feeling frustrated with your funnel results (or lack thereof), you’re not alone. We work with businesses every single week who are struggling to understand why their funnels aren’t working - and what to do next.
Here’s how we can help you fix your leaky funnel:
Funnel Audit: Our trained experts can review your current funnel and highlight areas that might be causing bottlenecks.
Market Research: We’ll scope out your competition and show you what’s working well in their funnels - as well as show you how to make yourself stand out in a sea of competition.
User Research: We can conduct surveys, 1:1 user interviews, and focus groups with your target audience to get you first-hand feedback on what people really think about your funnel, content, and products.
UX and Usability Studies: We can conduct UX studies with your audience and watch them interact real-time with your website, funnel, content, or products through observations, screen recordings, website/product testing studies, diary studies, and more.
We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and small businesses conduct research to improve their lead generation and sales processes.
Interested in learning more? Set up a complementary consultation to see how we can help you fix your leaky funnel today.
Get a Free Funnel Audit
Share your funnel with us and we’ll review your funnel for free, offering specific recommendations on how you can fix the parts that aren’t working.
