How to make sense of the so called ‘Conversion Funnel’

I guess funnel would be best described as like a highway tunnel – it’s a means to drive large amount of people to a certain goal or a target. Get people directed from A to B.

Similarly – a conversion funnel’s main purpose would be to drive consumers from A to B in a controlled environment, for example getting people to search on your core PPC keywords, get them to click on your text ad – and get them to buy or enquire about your products and services that you offer as a business. Simple really isn’t it?

As simple as it might sound, you should be thinking about your Conversion Funnel strategy already before you launch your marketing campaigns online – who are your target audience, who will you be looking to drive to your site and by what means.

Should you use PPC, SEO, Display media or Affiliates? Perhaps it should be a balanced mix of all?

When the potential customers are finally on your site, via whatever channel you decided to use – how will you get them to purchase your products or sign up for your services – and complete the Conversion Funnel journey that you have achieved to direct them on?

In two short and simple words: Action Plan.

Have one in place – and stick to it.

Make sure you are consistent with the message that you are pushing through to your potential customers.

Ensure your ad texts / banners are highly relevant and compelling against the keywords that you have selected, ensure you direct users to the most relevant landing page possible and that it’s easy and clear for them to buy your products or sign up to your services.

Don’t confuse the users with them having to navigate their way through the site, or don’t give them too many choices.

We are humans after all and easily distracted. A crossroad with no signs, no-one telling us what to do or where to go – we are just going to turn back and go back to where we came from.

Best strategy is to have as few clicks on your Conversion Funnel path as possible and get the user to complete the funnel journey as painlessly as possible.

So what next? You’ve planned your strategy – you have your Conversion Funnel in place and it’s all ready to go.

In order to measure the effectiveness of your strategy – you should always be able to measure and analyse the performance of your funnels.

Set up tracking on the Conversion Funnel path – and improve it where applicable. Identify the strong as well as the weak areas of the path. Are there any parts in the journey that makes the user to drop off? What can you do to fix it?

It’s all about testing, refining and fine-tuning.

The behaviour of our target audience changes and we should always be a step ahead – ready to adapt and adjust.