Sean Garner Consulting | Marketing Agency & Certified StoryBrand Guide

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E14: How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel To Get More Customers

Sean Garner
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You've built your sales funnel, filled it with potential customers, now it’s time to optimize it! 

In this episode, I dive into the essential, often overlooked strategies that transform mediocre funnels into high-converting machines. 

Discover how to leverage data and smart automation to make sure your funnel's fulfilling its full potential—whether you're a startup or scaling up.

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P.S.  When you are ready, here are a few ways I can help…

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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.

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Website: https://www.seangarner.co/ 

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EPISODE 14 TRANSCRIPTION

Introduction to Sales Funnel Optimization

[00:00:00] Sean Garner: So you've created a sales funnel and done all the work necessary to fill it with your dream customers, but isn't it actually working like it should? Well, in this episode of the Marketing Domination podcast, we're going to talk all about step three of marketing domination, which is all about how to optimize your sales funnel on the Marketing Domination show.

[00:00:21] Sean Garner: So we've been going through our series on these first few episodes about what marketing domination is. We talked about the first section and. So we've talked all about these first series of episodes about the marketing domination framework, phase one was all about building your sales funnel. Then we went on to phase two, which was about different ways and techniques to fill your sales funnel. Well now, our third and final phase of marketing domination is all about optimizing your sales funnel. How do you know if what you actually have is working well or working properly? And so with this optimization phase, I will tell you, for me, it comes down to two different parts.

[00:01:05] Sean Garner: It comes down to your data. And so your optimizations, man, comes down to bargaining. So with optimizing your sales funnel, it comes down to these two parts. The first one is it comes down to your data. And the second one is the automations that you use to optimize your sales funnel. So this section of episodes, honestly, is just going to be two episodes today.

Key Aspects of Funnel Optimization: Data and Automation

[00:01:29] Sean Garner: We're going to talk all about data and data points that you need to use to optimize your sales funnel, to see how it's working. And then our next episode, we're going to be talking all about automation. Some of the automations I like to use, but this section for optimizing, this is honestly the, the art behind building a sales funnel, because, you know, there's certain things with building and filling that are, that are pretty set in stone.

[00:01:51] Sean Garner: As far as foundational things that we need to do with optimizing it. This is where we really get to tweak things based upon your business, how things are performing for you. So I'm gonna give you some ranges and best practices over these next few episodes. But this is honestly the, uh, the art of funnel building and for digital marketing is this optimization phase and testing things.

[00:02:11] Sean Garner: And so I just want to give you guys a high level overview over the next two episodes of how I like to optimize and kind of start that process. But for the rest of these episodes that we do in the podcast, honestly, it's going to be a lot of optimization techniques, um, automation techniques, and things like that, that you can use to make your sales funnel work well.

[00:02:29] Sean Garner: So the very first thing that I like to think of and do whenever optimizing one of my sales funnels is I want to look at the data. We've said this multiple times on this podcast already. I say it to clients all the time. We do not make decisions based upon personal preference or emotion when it comes to marketing our business.

[00:02:47] Sean Garner: Probably shouldn't do that. Things in life, but we don't want to do that. We want to make these marketing and business decisions based upon data. And in the digital marketing world we live in now, there are tons of tools and resources that we have in order to get these data points for us. So we know what's working, what we should optimize and what we should double down on a work.

[00:03:10] Sean Garner: So high level overview, because on future episodes, I actually want to pull up analytics report from a client. So you guys can see some specific data points. But today there's going to be some high level numbers of things that I like to look at when just looking at overall performance. I typically even just do this as website audits for people whenever they reach out to us for maybe possibly becoming a client.

[00:03:32] Sean Garner: These are some of the things that I look at to see how what somebody's doing is currently performing. So first thing I want to look at is traffic, how many people are coming to your website? The second thing that I want to look at is where are those people coming from? So something that's called traffic source.

Analyzing Traffic Sources and User Behavior

[00:03:48] Sean Garner: And so with that, I want to look at, you know, are they coming from social? Is it paid? Is it organic? Is it search? Is it direct? Like, where are these people coming from and how does that traffic break down? If it's coming from social, well, what platforms are they coming from? Because again, I'm trying to paint a big picture.

[00:04:06] Sean Garner: Over how, what I'm doing is actually working. There, I was in the fitness industry for a long time. There's a strength coach. I really liked his name was coach Mike Boyle. And he always taught him like heart rate monitors and things like that. In the fitness world, there's no point in measuring all of that stuff in fitness.

[00:04:21] Sean Garner: If you're not going to use it to change your training protocols. And I would say the exact same thing whenever it comes to the marketing data with your business, just. Because there are so many data tools available for you, don't measure things just to measure things, measure things that you're going to take action on.

[00:04:35] Sean Garner: So we don't want to just look at these reports and like, that's really good information that we want to use that so we can tweak our strategy, cut things that maybe is a waste of time. Or double down on the things that are working. So whenever I'm looking at the social platforms, again, I want to look at what platforms people are coming from, because then I can get more granular with that.

[00:04:53] Sean Garner: Well, is the type of content that I'm posting on the platform is different. How is the, the engagement on those pieces that are leading to the traffic source? The next thing that I would want to look at is Google and SEO. So as far as like a traffic source. We're a big SEO agency for our local service businesses.

Leveraging SEO and Keywords

[00:05:10] Sean Garner: So I want to look at, you know, what keywords are people searching? What keywords are we ranking for? What content is driving those keywords? So somebody is looking for a keyword. What pillar or piece of content is it taking to them on our website? How are we ranking with those keywords? How many impressions are we getting?

[00:05:25] Sean Garner: Which is just like how many times you're showing up in the search results. How many clicks am I getting? So that's awesome if we're ranking for certain keywords, but if they're not driving clicks to our website. It doesn't really matter what we're ranking for. It's what customers actually clicking on and going to.

[00:05:39] Sean Garner: So I want to look at all that stuff. So big picture is I want to look at top of funnel. How many people are coming to the top of my funnel with traffic? And where are those traffic sources? The next thing that I want to look at is once they're on the website. What are they doing? So there's things that are called heat map tools, where you can look and you can actually see where people are scrolling, where they're hovering clicks and everything on the website and seeing how they're interacting with your content.

Evaluating On-Site User Engagement

[00:06:01] Sean Garner: I want to look at things like my bounce rate. So bounce rate just has to do with when somebody comes to the website, do they take any actions or are they just literally. Bouncing off and exiting off or going back. And they're not really doing anything on the website. I want to look at things like my time on page.

[00:06:16] Sean Garner: And so that means how, what's the average length of time somebody's spending on your website. Typically, if they're not spending much time on it and it's got a high bounce rate, it means that, uh, the, the people are finding valuable information. So we want to keep people on our website as long as possible, we do that with things like adding videos embedded into our website, lots of information with the internal link.

[00:06:37] Sean Garner: So after they read one blog article or they're on one page, that makes them want to click onto another page on our website. It just keeps, keeps them on our website longer. Typically, the more time somebody spends on your website, the better the information, the content is on your website, which will definitely just help increase, increase traffic and, and SEO rankings.

[00:06:55] Sean Garner: And hopefully your business people aren't just hanging out on your website. I guess they would maybe if it's a blog, but. Nobody here is doing that. You guys all business. Um, so the next thing I want to look at is once people are coming, what they're doing and interacting with the site, what are conversion metrics.

Measuring Conversion Metrics and Calls to Action

[07:07] Sean Garner: So remember, we talked about different calls to action that we have. We have a direct call to action, which is the main thing we want them to do. Book your appointment, schedule your service, start your free trial, that main thing we want them to do. And then our transitional call to action. Based on all the people that I have coming to my website, which is that top of funnel traffic number, we're looking at what percent are taking action, whether it be on my direct call to action or my transitional call to action, because that's going to give me some ideas of maybe changing or testing my call to action, changing button colors and split testing, that kind of stuff and seeing what performs better.

[07:37] Sean Garner: Whenever it comes to that direct call to action booking, I want to look at booking numbers. So whenever we're looking at optimizing our sales funnel, it's not just the digital side. I like to look at this for my overall process. Okay, maybe we're getting calls booked. What's the show up rate for those calls when people are showing up to the calls?

[07:56] Sean Garner: How prepared are they for the calls to where we can give them more information to make them in a more ready-to-buy state and equip them with more information. So whenever they get on a sales call, they're ready to buy whenever they show up to an appointment or a service, they're ready to take action and do the things that they need to do. Whatever your business is, do they have like if they're a medical clinic, have their forms filled out. All of that stuff is part of our marketing funnel process because it's part of our business. So we want to make sure that it's all optimized and set up. And I'm always just looking for missed opportunities with that. And a lot of that is less on hard data numbers and more speaking with staff members that's actually running it, stalking the sales team, talking to the front desk person, and kind of finding out as people are coming through your marketing funnel.

[08:38] Sean Garner: How, what is their state of mind whenever they actually show up for the product or service? Do they understand what they're purchasing? All of those good things. I want to know that the next thing that I want to look at is my transitional call to action. So the lead generators that we have on our website, can we try different lead generators, try different cover images for different titles for it and split testing that.

Refining Lead Generation and Email Sequences

[08:59] Sean Garner: Once we've captured that information, some other data points that we want to look through and optimize are different conversion numbers. So I want to look at email sequence numbers. So I want to look at, you know, things like open rates, clicks, and then what does that ultimately do to new business? So big picture numbers that I'll typically tell you to shoot for with emails.

[09:17] Sean Garner: These are always changing and there are different things that have come out where, you know, Google or Apple will automatically open emails. So it kind of skews rates. I always tell people, whenever you're looking at data sets like this, it might not be 100 percent accurate, but the main thing is make sure that you know that it's consistent.

[09:33] Sean Garner: So your open rates might not actually be 50%, but if you're using the same measuring tool to measure it every single time, you can see if things are going up or down based upon that. So we want to look at trends with our marketing, not necessarily just one-off glitches that could have occurred. So with open rates, typically we tell clients we want to shoot for at least 20 percent or higher for open rates.

[09:55] Sean Garner: For click rates, we're typically looking at 0. percent click rates. And then again, this is based upon industry, what you're selling, what the call to action is and everything, but we're always looking at it as kind of like a benchmark starter and then we're optimizing based upon that. So part of this whole optimizing process and why we put it on step three is typically how this works in the process of working with a client.

Timeline for Funnel Optimization

[10:18] Sean Garner: Is there about six months in, whenever we really start looking at it, because what that's done is that's given us plenty of time to build out the full funnel, all the social assets, the complete digital storefront, it's given us a good three months or so of filling it with organic traffic, starting to get things indexed and everything on Google.

[10:35] Sean Garner: And so now we've got some data points to actually look at. Cause we want to look at trends as we're doing this, just to make sure things are working. So we have a baseline to then go back through this whole process of building and filling the funnel. So then we can re-optimize and see what's actually working then.

[10:52] Sean Garner: So the other stats that I'm gonna look at, so that's the main like funnel stats. And processes. The other things that I'm going to look at are different filling stats. So I'm going to look at more specific social stats. So I'm going to see, you know, based upon the content goals, how are things performing as far as, you know, shares, impressions, comments, likes, what topics of content are working best.

Social Media Content Performance Metrics

[11:12] Sean Garner: What styles of content are working best? What platforms seem to be driving the most conversions for, for the website and everything. And again, I want to look for patterns and trends. So if something's definitely not working, we can cut it or tweak it. Or if something's working really well, we can double down on that to make sure that we're optimizing always what we're doing.

Assessing the Sales Process

[11:32] Sean Garner: The other, and the last thing that we would look at when it comes time to optimizing the sales funnel is the actual sales funnel process, what happens whenever you actually show up to a customer's home or a customer or a client shows up to a sales call or a patient shows up to your med spa, what, what does that process look like for them? We want to look at that as far as what is your sales scripting look like, what are the conversations your staff is happening at doing? 

[12:00] Sean Garner: How are they answering the phone whenever somebody is calling in? We want to know all of this information, how they're recording information, how they're keeping notes on prospects and leads, what your sales team follow up process is like, how many reach outs, you know, cold outreachers are they doing?

[12:15] Sean Garner: How many calls are you getting booked? What's the show up rate for those calls? How many calls are they closing? These are all things that we want to track and make sure that we are Looking at so we can know how we can optimize it. Because one of the things that I will say as a personal training manager, I had a really high end gym in Miami, Florida, and my trainers that work for me would oftentimes come to me and they're like, I need more leads.

[12:40] Sean Garner: I got to grow my business. I'm like, well, do you really need more leads or is it a conversion issue? And. 90 percent of the time they had plenty of leads, but there was no follow up and their conversions were bad. So it didn't matter how many leads that I gave them, they needed to optimize their process in order to convert those leads and have a greater chance of success.

[13:03] Sean Garner: So oftentimes I've seen the exact same thing with my. Clients that whenever they first come to us, it's not always a lead issue. Oftentimes it's an optimization issue. Typically what I'll say is they, they do have a lead issue because people are coming to the website and they don't have a funnel to capture them.

[13:20] Sean Garner: They've got holes in their bucket. They don't have a lead generator. Their website's very, very unclear on what they do or what the customer needs to do to get started. And there's no followup process. And then they're not actually looking at their numbers and data and making tweaks based upon what they're doing.

[13:34] Sean Garner: The feedback that they're getting and the numbers that they're tracking. So they, yeah, of course they want more leads, but sometimes just giving somebody more leads, if you've got holes in your bucket and you're not always looking about how you can increase and optimize things, you're just going to end up getting continually frustrated because you're putting more.

[13:52] Sean Garner: Water in a bucket with holes. So I know that was rapid fire with me going really, really quickly through a lot of these things. We're [14:00] going to talk a lot more specific about them in future episodes, but I wanted to let you guys know and understand. There are some things that you should be looking at when it comes to your marketing funnel and your whole marketing system strategy that you have.

[14:12] Sean Garner: Just don't do things because you saw somebody else online tell you it was a great idea, or, "Hey, this helped them get, you know, millions of dollars of revenue in their business." Test things, always use data to make these marketing decisions for your business and optimize your sales funnel. Always. This is not a done process where you built your sales funnel, you got a really good content strategy and paid ad strategy to fill it.

[14:35] Sean Garner: And then we've optimized it and we're done. No, it's a continual cycle. After we've optimized it, we're done. Well, guess what? We're going to build more funnels into there, and then we're going to create new content strategies. And we're going to always be reoptimizing those. And that to me is the exciting, beautiful thing about marketing and marketing domination.

Connect with Sean Garner Consulting

[14:53] Sean Garner: So hopefully this episode added value to you guys. And again, if it was super overwhelming, I don't mean for it to be trying to add value to the local service-based business owners that we love to work with. And if you're like, "Man. I want an optimized sales funnel." Love the opportunity to connect with you and see how we could serve you.

[15:07] Sean Garner: Just click the link in the description below. It's https://www.seangarner.co/ and see how our agency can help your local business dominate the competition and stand out online. Have an awesome day guys. We'll talk to you on the next episode where it's going to be all about my favorite automations that local business owners can do to optimize their sales funnel.