You need to account for the construct of your marketing funnel if you want to do it right. The good news is, it’s easier than you think.

Properly executed, nothing can be more useful to your lead generation and sales more than the marketing funnel. For the online world, in particular, the funnel is one of the most effective tools that you can use to grow your business.

However, not all funnels will turn out great. It often happens that people fail to complete or optimise their funnels.

In Part One of this series of articles, we highlighted the first five key components of a successful funnel. Now let’s discuss the remaining five so that you can build your best marketing funnel yet.

What Every Funnel Needs (Part Two)

Building on Part One, these are the other five qualities that define a successful high-conversion funnel.

Scarcity

People get the concept of scarcity wrong in their marketing funnels in one of two ways: they either don’t use it or they abuse it.

A marketing funnel, or even your ad copy, should have a legitimate air of scarcity.

For example, if you’re in a service business, maybe you can only take on five or ten clients per month. Or perhaps you’re running an e-commerce store and you have a limited supply of products.

Those who have followed you for a while may already know that. And as such, they have an extra impulse to buy or opt in.

But beware not to abuse scarcity or be disingenuous. You may not notice it but most people can spot it from miles away.

Urgency

Urgency and scarcity go hand in hand, but the former is a different tool that helps you convert your traffic.

You can even create a sense of urgency in many ways.

A good example is by offering a one-time discount on one of your hottest products or services.

One of our clients does this. He runs a $5,000 coaching program with a tiny inner circle. And everyone knows that he only accepts new enrolments every quarter. The urgency to buy is quite clear to anyone who wants to join that program.

Another great example is offering an extra incentive to buy now, rather than later when you’re trying to upsell.

Exclusive promotions usually work great to instil a sense of urgency. They can work even better if you also use scarcity as a core component of your marketing funnel.

One-Dimensional Landing Pages

Here’s one more marketing funnel component that you have to get right: the one-dimensional landing page.

The goal is to make your offer clear and avoid anything that may distract visitors.

Let’s assume your audience arrives on a landing page that you use to promote a free video training course.

What’s the prospect’s journey?

They click on the ad, arrive on the landing page, go to the video, right?

But if you want your landing page to do its job, you don’t want to advertise or talk about anything else on the landing page. Don’t go off course with your messaging – you risk splitting your traffic in multiple directions if you do so.

A one-dimensional landing page gives you a higher chance to convert. It makes people more inclined to take the action that you want them to take.

Why?

When they don’t have to consider alternatives or read about unrelated topics, they can go straight to doing what they’re supposed to do on your landing page.

The Decoy Effect

Proven effective since the early 2000s, the idea of the decoy effect is to use decoy offers to get people to buy what you really want them to buy.

Those additional offers can increase the perceived value of that offer you really want to sell.

This concept is best explained with a study that showed the decoy effect in action.

The economist who ran this test in the early 2000s with 100 MIT students offered them two options: a one-year web subscription for US$59 or a print and web subscription for US$125 per year. Only 32% went for the print and web as the other 68% chose the cheaper option.

However, something else happened when a third variable entered the mix.

When the economist added a third subscription for $125 for both print and access to the online library, the percentages changed dramatically. Only 16% of students opted for the cheaper option and 84% chose the combined package.

You can also look at it as having an entry-level, a mid-range, and a premium offer. Most people will pick the middle or the premium option if it offers enough incentive in comparison.

It’s a useful psychological tool that you can use to further optimise your funnel, convert traffic, and get people to buy your ideal offer.

Optimised ‘Thank You’ Pages

Now we’re at the final element that your marketing funnel must-haves – the Thank You page.

It’s an underutilised slice of online real estate that can provide you with many new opportunities. Unfortunately, people often skip this entirely or fail to optimise it.

Your thank-you page should confirm the prospect’s action after going through your funnel. In addition to that, you can also use it as a medium to share more content with your audience.

You can use this final piece of the puzzle to let people know more about you. For example, you can direct them to a blog where they can consume more content about you.

The idea is that you shouldn’t stop continuing to build trust even with the thank-you page.

If someone already books a call with you, you can tell them about your Facebook group, LinkedIn profile, or YouTube channel.

This can make them more likely to show up for the call, besides generating more traffic and interest in your brand.

Optimise Every Step of Your Prospect’s Journey

A marketing funnel should accomplish four things: boost traffic, generate leads, help conversion, and secure sales.

It’s a complex marketing tool tailor-made for growing a business and increasing revenue. But that’s not all.

Marketing funnels are also sophisticated tools with a host of things that you can tweak. And the better you optimise your funnel, such as by testing different combinations, adding the right content, and taking advantage of opportunities, the better the results.

If you haven’t perfected yours, it’s never too late to make adjustments.

Feel free to reach out to us for more online marketing strategies and advice. Click here to book a free consultation with one of our resident experts.