3 marketing funnel mistakes to avoid

Whether you call it a sales funnel or a marketing funnel - the purpose is to bring in new leads who have a need for whatever you are offering.

These are a few of the pitfalls that prevent your funnel from working as well as it could.

1: A lead magnet that has a wide appeal

Most people understand what a lead magnet is - but not everyone understands how highly targeted it needs to be.  A general lead magnet will attract lots of people to your list, but it won’t bring in your ideal clients or customers.

A lead magnet that is targeted to attract your ideal customer will ensure that, when you move people along to the next stage, they’re open to it - because you’ll be offering them something they actually want - which will increase your sales.

2: No nurturing of your subscribers

Giving people something free that has great value for them is only the first step.  If that’s all you do before you start sending sales messages, your list will start unsubscribing.  As the saying goes ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer’; similarly one item of value doesn’t make a customer!

Nurturing is easy - and there are various ways to do it.

My advice would be to set up a series of automated emails (autoresponders) that are triggered by the initial sign up - so once done you can leave them to work away in the background.  I often take the main points from the lead magnet and sent a series of email over a couple of months - every few days - reminding people to download it first, then highlighting the main points and encouraging them to take action.

Another way to keep delivering value is to send an email to your list linked to each new blog your write.  You can probably get away with this once a week - or put two blogs into one email every month or so.  As long as you write great value material in your blog posts, you’ll keep giving your list excellent, quality material.

3: Start without the funnel mapped out

There’s nothing wrong with launching your lead magnet without having ‘built’ the rest of your funnel - BUT that often means that the follow up is either long delayed, by which time people have forgotten the great value they started out getting OR it doesn’t happen as life/work gets in the way.

Good practice is to have a clear map of the four or five levels of your funnel mapped out, what you’ll offer at each level, how you’ll engage your subscribers, what the upsells will be and how they’ll be delivered as well as the nurturing focus for at least the top two levels.

This will ensure that the effort and time you invest in building your sales funnel will actually pay off in converted subscribers. 

Build your press list

What is a press list?  It’s a list of publications you would like to get coverage in.

Sounds pretty straightforward, but there are a number of key criteria you need to consider before you start assembling your list.

1: Are these publications read by your target audience?

The national dailies and high profile glossy magazines may be good for your ego, but if the majority of their readers are not your target audience it’s going to be an uphill struggle getting noticed.

This means you need to do some research into what your target audience actually read.  It might be their association or institute journals or a specialist publication for their industry.  Some people will read printed publications, while other prefer digital.  Be aware of which format your publications appear in, some only one or the other, some both. 

If you’re considering print advertising as part of your marketing investment a decent publication will have demographics for their regular readership.  If someone is going to spend money they want to know the details.  If you’re going to invest time and effort you need the same information.

2: How important are circulation figures?

If you’re comparing a big national daily with a circulation of millions with a niche industry journal reaching only a few thousand, it can be tempting to go for the quantity.  However, if you have a very specific audience, there’s no guarantee that many of them will read the national daily - regardless of how many pairs of eyes see it.  If they’re not the right eyes, it’s irrelevant.

Quality over quantity every time.

3: What kind of material does each of your target publications feature?

If they don’t have an ‘industry news’ section with short snippets, you’ll find getting a mainstream press release published hard work.  Especially if you’re servicing that industry, not directly part of it.  It will have to be something pretty ground-breaking to get noticed by the editor.

However, if they publish useful knowledge-based items or expert advice pieces you might have a better chance of getting into print.

4: Have you spoken to the relevant editor?

Don’t guess and submit unsolicited items. Get in touch with the editor (for bigger publications you’ll need to contact the right editor - business, finance, features, etc.)  For most industry publications the team is often fairly small and may be a commissioning editor and some freelancers. 

You’ll need to find out if they take content from external sources - or your efforts will be wasted.  You’ll also need to know their lead times - and stick to them.  With printed monthly publications the deadline may be as far back as 2 months before publication date.  Often the June issue is published at the end of May and the deadline will be mid-April - but every publication is different, make sure you know how they work.

Online publications may not have a deadline as such as they often publish articles daily.

Never phone a publication unless you’ve read two or three copies of their magazine and understand their content and style.  It’s good practice to have two or three article titles with a short description ready as they’ll want to know what kind of article you’ll submit.

5: Play by the rules

If you’re writing articles for one magazine, don’t submit the same item to another magazine or your credibility will go out of the window.

Keep your press list manageable and maintain your contacts - that means you need to keep up with what they’re publishing on a regular basis so your article suggestions are on target.

Dozens of publications are difficult to manage so cherry-pick your top 10 or so and only add another one when you’ve eliminated one of those.

You’ll need to submit reasonable well-written articles so, if writing isn’t your thing you could engage a professional copywriter to work with you.

If it all sounds like too much work, outsource the job to a professional PR agency.  They may already have relationships with your industry press and can jump-start your press coverage.

Why write newsletters?

What’s the point of writing and sending out newsletters?  They should form part of your marketing strategy - and there must be a purpose that fits into that strategy for every activity.

Ask most businesses that send out a newsletter ‘What do you want it to achieve for your business?’ and the answers are often:

“To keep people informed about what we’re doing.”

“To promote our latest offers/products/;services.”

“Because we’ve always done it.”

Let’s ignore that last one - it’s not a good reason!  Reminding people you’re around contributes to your marketing strategy and if you don’t tell people about new products etc. then how are they to know.  But are these really the focus of your newsletter?

Make your newsletter work harder

Improve your focus.  

• Who is on your list?  
• Are they actually potential customers or clients?  
• What do they want?  
• How can you solve their problems?
• What would be of value to then?

And, ideally, how can you grow your list so more people who fit your potential customer profile join it?  However, that’s more about your sales funnel than simply the newsletter.

Deliver value

More people read a newsletter if it has something of value for them.  That means that you need to lead with something of value to them in order to engage their interest.

This might be a ‘how to’ article, a useful tip or an idea they can use.  Anything that will give them something useful that they can use.  This will encourage them to read your next newsletter, because they are expecting more great value (which, of course, you will continue to deliver).

TOP TIP: If you write a blog that shares your knowledge and expertise (like this one) use that as your lead article.  I only use the first 2-3 paragraphs and then link it to the actual blog on my website.

Unsubscribes v. opens

It may come as a surprise, but people are lazy and often simply delete unwanted emails rather than hit the delete button.  The real success of your newsletter is in the number/percentage of people who actually open the email PLUS the number of clicks on any links.  Any good email marketing platform will give you this information - in fact, most of them will email you an overview of your campaign shortly after it goes out.

IF not many people open your email and fewer still click the links - your newsletter isn’t working.

TOP TIP: Improve the subject line to improve the open rate.  ‘Newsletter September 2021’ is not interesting!  I use the title of the lead article as it’s already been written to get attention and engage.  Controversial statements, scarcity, time running out, existing news - anything that will intrigue the recipient and make them want to know more - can all work. 

Remember, when you’re writing your newsletter - it’s not about you - it’s about the reader.  Give them great value, something to get them interested, thinking, engaged, impressed with your expertise - and you can also add your offers, promotions, etc - and they’ll be willing to open other emails from you as their perception is that you deliver great value.

 

Posting for business

Social media seems to get more complex every day - especially if you’re using it to raise your business profile.  Walking the line between promotion and engagement is always difficult - and every social platform is different.

There was a time when it was OK to put the same post on Twitter, your LinkedIn profile, and your Facebook page - but the algorithms seem to change weekly and what works on one platform doesn’t necessarily work on another.

The content of your posts depends on: 

• What kind of business you are
• What kind of customers you want to reach or influence
• Where your ideal customers are most active
• What they want to consume

An endless stream of promotional posts featuring your company’s products or services won’t engage people.  They’ll just tune you out.

LinkedIn

There are two strings to LinkedIn - your personal account and your company page.  Most people engage with you through your personal account.  That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t post on your company page, an empty company page doesn’t look good (and is just an opportunity for LinkedIn to put their ads in place).  

The company page should feature good quality information about your products and services, testimonials, tips and advice.  In contrast your personal posts can be more conversational and on a wider range of subjects including opinions on news items and comments on other people’s posts.

Facebook

Your Facebook page can be a great place to engage - or it can be a dead place where the tumbleweed blows through!  The challenge for most page owners is that even if you have 500 likes or followers, Facebook algorithms don’t show your posts to these people - unless you boost a post or advertise.

That means that people only visit your page if you pay or if they like your content so much that they come back to your page deliberately.  That means you need to build a community that keeps coming back - so your content needs to offer them something they want.  Your challenge is to work out what that is - and then deliver it. 

Instagram

This platform is image-driven - and links don’t work, so you need to be really creative about how you present your message.  You can put narrative into the text area, but people will only see that if they’re interested enough to click and open it up.  That means your images need to be interesting and generate enough curiosity for people to want to find out more.

Twitter

Although Twitter doubled the maximum number of characters from 140 to 280 tweets still need to be short, snappy and have energy.  As you can’t put long copy on Twitter you need to make your point succinctly.

Ideally, your tweets will link the reader to more information by adding a link to a blog or a place where the reader can get more information.

YouTube

You can’t ignore the fact that YouTube has a massive audience.  Many people use it as a search engine to find ‘how to’ videos or get visual information on a subject.  If you don’t have a presence you could be missing many opportunities.

There are all kinds of advice on the ‘right’ kind of videos to upload.  And lots of successful YouTubers that break all the ‘rules’ or make new ones.

You don’t need to upload 30 minute epics, but that doesn’t mean you can’t if you have something that needs that kind of time frame.  However, it’s good to have some shorter videos too - something around the length of the average song - so anything from 3-6 minutes works well.

This is where you need to do some planning and consider what people might be searching for - then ensure your video title, tags and description all mention this key phrase.

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OF course, there are many more platforms, Pinterest, TikTok, SnapChat - and every week another one surfaces.  Some sink quickly into oblivion and some become the next new thing.  The secret is to know what your audience is looking at and then meeting them on their ‘home’ ground.