In inbound marketing, generating leads is only the first part of the job. You need to accompany users throughout the entire conversion funnel so that they become loyal customers.
If there are gaps in any step of your sales funnel, you'll continuously lose customers: it's like trying to water a garden with a hose that has holes. Therefore, it’s essential to detect and solve any sales funnel challenges in time to optimize the process and convert as many leads as possible. Let's see how to do it in 3 steps.
In order to identify where the leakage points are in your sales funnel, you first need to identify which steps a user goes through to become a customer, including the different acquisition channels, landing pages, email marketing, thank you pages, etc.
The particular steps in each sales process are unique, but to begin identifying them, it may be useful to refer to three broad general stages: acquisition, consideration, and decision.
In the acquisition phase, the potential customer becomes aware of the problem or solution he or she needs and begins to search for information about it. To identify the key moments of this phase, try to solve these questions:
In the consideration phase, the prospective buyer is more clear about what he or she needs and is starting to investigate concrete solutions. Here are the most important points to consider in this phase:
Finally, in the decision phase, the user is ready to buy and gives a clear idea of his or her interest, such as requesting a quote. These are the key questions to resolve at this point:
In order to do a complete analysis of what's going on, you must conduct both quantitative and qualitative research into the brand's sales funnel.
If your site doesn't work well, visitors will leave frustrated and it will become a leakage point before you even capture leads. Here are the three main aspects of technical analysis:
Tools such as Google Analytics provide us with a great amount of information about the traffic to our website, which can be very useful in identifying possible leakage points. Keep these recommendations in mind when analyzing the data.
If you have forms on your site, whether they are lead generation, purchase, or something else, you should consider them as one of the most important conversion points. If there are any flaws in their concept or design, they can quickly become leakage points for potential customers.
With the help of a specialized form analysis tool, identify which form fields generate the most error messages and which users are reluctant to fill out.
Heat maps are visual representations of data, where a specific color is associated with a value. Usually, warm colors are used for high values and cool colors for low values.
When it comes to identifying potential leakage points in the sales funnel, there are two types of heat maps you should use: click maps and scroll maps.
On-site surveys are displayed as the user navigates through a page of the site, inviting the user to answer a question about their experience.
To obtain qualitative information with this type of survey, open-ended questions should be asked, or the user should be asked for an explanation for the default answer they have selected.
Some questions that can help you identify leakage points are:
Normally on-site surveys are limited to one or two short questions, as the goal is not to hinder navigation. Another option is to do an in-depth customer survey in exchange for an incentive, for example, participation in sweepstakes.
Your own customers are a gold mine of information about your sales funnel. To make the most of this technique, take note of these recommendations:
User testing is the process of watching real users perform different actions on your site, such as finding a product or making a purchase, usually while commenting about what they are doing. This way, you can get an "outside" view and identify potential weaknesses on your site.
After all this analysis and research, you have probably identified if there are any leaks within your sales funnel. The recommended actions to fix these depend on whether it’s towards the beginning or end of the conversion funnel.
For leakage points in the early stages of the funnel, try these ideas:
On the other hand, if there are leakage points in the later stages of the funnel, consider these measures:
Finally, whatever the concrete actions are, remember that inbound marketing is a process of constant optimization. Try different approaches, measure the results, and use what you have learned to make your sales funnel more and more efficient.