Marketing is about taking customers on a journey. You create a set of experiences for your customers and your aim as a marketer is to convince them to stay with you for the ride and take the action you want (op-tin, share, purchase or whatever your “Call To Action” is looking for) at the “destination” or end of the journey. The technical term for this process is a sales funnel, but keeping away from technical jargon we will use the Journey analogy.
So taking account of the above, what could go wrong? During my mentoring sessions the following issues repeatedly comes to the fore, do you recognise either of the following?
- You spend ages creating a great opt-in bonus that has heaps of value for your target audience and then hardly anyone signs up to get it.
- Or you research and test a product idea, everyone says they want it and then when you finally launch it, people click on your sales page but don’t actually buy.
So in order to illustrate a typical customer journey, I embarked on a journey from a Facebook ad a couple of weeks ago to see what works and what doesn’t and why. I purposely chose an American ad as they often display the worst marketing examples – so for illustration purposes provide perfect fodder. This one is for getting potential customers to opt-in to an email list but the principles are exactly the same to move people to a purchase. We’ll look at all the different elements of a real life sales funnel and pull it apart to learn from it.
So let’s have a look at the sales funnel that confused me…
1. The Facebook ad
I was online the other day and came across this ad on Facebook. I clicked on it (a rare occurance) – because it promised to tell me how to make and extra $8,000 – $16,000 a month!
So, first things first, the advertiser did a great job with this ad. They put something I wanted in front of my face and got me to notice it and click through. It’s a great first piece to their sales funnel.
Why this worked
Bright, colourful picture to attract my visual attention
Clear and specific benefit and result to get me to take action
2. The landing page
So then I click through (which is exactly what the call to action” asked for) and I see this:
So, this is where confusion starts, thinking about the journey analogy, each step should be designed to continue the journey and move the prospect through to taking an action. However, there’s no continuation of the journey here. They actually start me on a new one.
Why? Well if my motivation for clicking the initial link was the promise of extra money, but there’s no mention of $8000 – $16,000! Instead what I’m offered is a free report: The Master Class Blueprint. I think, “Ok, not what I was expecting and I’m not sure how I’m going to make $8-16K but maybe they will tell me in the report.” So, IF I give them the benefit of the doubt, I sign up.
The problem here is that the marketer is disrupting my logical thought process and they are leaving me to make all the connections myself – this breaks my trust. It makes me wonder if they are credible. Can I really believe what they say, if they didn’t deliver on their first promise. The increased awareness of clickbait and malware containing webpages makes the probability of me making this connection and continuing here is reduced by 78% – would you bother continuing on this journey or write it off as a bad link?
What they could have done differently:
They definitely should have mentioned what was promised in the initial call to action in the ad. Keeping a consistent message to build my trust that they are credible and it is safe to give them my email address.
Using the same image and colours that were in the ad would also have helped communicate that consistency. This page looks totally unrelated and different.
A consistent message in both words and visuals, means that it is a no-brainer for me to give them my email address. After all, by clicking, I have already demonstrated that I want an extra $8000 – $16000 a month. Confirm that is what you are going to give me and I will swap my email address for that information. But Disrupt my thinking, offer me another choice, as was done here, and I could very well choose to click away to stop a journey which seems to have taken a wrong turn and exit the sales funnel.
3. The ‘Thankyou’ page
Next, just to confuse me even more, after I have hesitantly signed up, I get taken to this page:
“Wheel of Fortune???” This now screams out to me that there is something not quite right with this journey! Then in the first line of text they tell me I have signed up for their webinar. What webinar? I didn’t sign up for a webinar. I signed up for a free report, actually I didn’t want to sign up for the free report. What I really wanted to know was how to make $8-16K a month. And, surprise surprise – there is no sign of that information. So not only is this page confirming my already aroused suspicions that I am a victim of clickbait and that this brand is not one to be trusted, it also offers me prizes that I’ve never heard of before. Why? And what’s more, if I check out the sign up button at the bottom of the page, they want me to give them all my worldly details. Once we get to this stage, research suggests that just 7% of users bother to continue.
Each step of the journey or piece of the sales funnel should build trust and rapport with the potential customer. Therefore, the response I had to this page is a disastrous response from the point of view of a marketer. Not at all what you want to elicit from a potential customer. The marketer has now made my experience more like a maze than a journey and completely broken my trust. Again, this page looks completely different and the message has no connection to the ad I originally clicked on.
What they could have done differently:
At this point, the marketer should have delivered on their first promise. This builds credibility and trust in the potential customer’s eyes and allows the possibility of further interaction in the future. Instead they are wanting me to give them more and more. There is a marketing theory that suggests that once you have a customer taking an action (like opting in or purchasing), it is easier to get them to take a further action.
However, I think you should treat your audience and customers like real people – because they are!! You would never ask a friend to babysit your kids and then ask them to cook you dinner as well. Why not? Well, you are stretching the friendship and they probably won’t be around for you next time if it’s all give with no return. People have the same psychology online as they do in ‘real’ life.
If you are ever in doubt about what to do online, just think ‘Would I do this face to face?’
The most common (and courteous) response to someone opting in to your newsletter or buying your product is to give them a thank you – and deliver what you have promised.
4. The followup.
Despite failing to establish enough credibility and rapport with me for me to want to give them my details, the request to supply them is the next step of the journey- Full name, address, email address and contact number (surprisingly not my bank details!) For the sake of this exercise, I supplied some details (not my own I hasten to add!)
5. Still no mention of that $8-$16K a year. Just the report that I didn’t want anyway to download. Then when I click through to check it out, finally, there it is.
I had to go through 5 steps to get the answer that the Facebook ad promised me and nowhere along the way was it mentioned again. The marketer would have lost me out of the sales funnel after the initial click, before I’d even got going and the disconnect that each piece after that caused made it more and more likely that I would click away without taking the action they were hoping for.
None of the strategies used are bad. They could all work very well in a sales funnel in the right context. But the lack of continuity in the marketing message that made me feel like I was being sold to and made me distrust the marketer. The marketer clearly hadn’t thought through my experience as a customer. They hadn’t planned a nice smooth journey for me. Instead they led me through a maze which created a lot of confusion, uncertainty and distrust. Not emotions that are going to put me into an optimum buying frame of mind!
Takeaways:
Sales funnel mistakes that stopped me from buying or opting in
◾They didn’t deliver on the initial promise they made straight away. The effect of this was that it cut across rapport, broke my trust and made them lose credibility.
◾The visual and written messages weren’t consistent with each other and from piece to piece throughout the journey.
◾They asked for too many personal details for a first interaction before they had created trust.
Things they should have done differently in the sales funnel.
◾Created a seamless and consistent customer experience
◾Delivered on promises
◾Created trust before they asked me to do something else for them.
In Summary
You need to take customers on a journey
The journey has to be logical, create rapport and engage your prospect’s emotions in a positive way.
