Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:
- Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.
- Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.
- Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.
- Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.
- Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%
The post 7 Secrets To Improve Your Sales Conversion Rate In 2024 appeared first on ClickFunnels.
Want to make more sales?
The best place to start is improving your sales conversion rate so that you could make the most out of the traffic that you are currently getting.
Today we are going to share seven tips that can help you do that…
- What is a Conversion Rate?
- What is a Sales Conversion Rate?
- Why is Optimizing Your Sales Conversion Rates So Important?
- Attention: Seemingly Insignificant Increases in Your Sales Conversion Rate Can Add Up to a LOT of Money Over an Extended Period of Time!
- Our 7 Best Tips for Improving Your Sales Conversion Rate
- Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels that CONVERT?
What is a Conversion Rate?
A conversion rate is a metric that shows what percentage of the people who were exposed to your call to action took the action that you wanted them to take (converted).
Here’s a simple formula that you can use to calculate any conversion rate:
The Total Number of People Who Took That Action / The Total Number of People Who Were Exposed to Your Call to Action x 100 = Your Conversion Rate
What is a Sales Conversion Rate?
A sales conversion rate is a metric that shows what percentage of the people who were exposed to your sales call to action ended up buying your product or service.
Here’s the formula that you can use to calculate your sales conversion rate:
The Total Number of People Who Bought Your Product or Service / The Total Number of People Who Were Exposed to Your Sales Call to Action for That Product or Service x 100 = Your Sales Conversion Rate
For example, if 387 people visited your sales page and 23 of them bought your product or service, the conversion rate of that sales page is 5.94%. Why?
Because:
23 / 387 x 100 = 5.94%
It’s important to understand how conversion rates are calculated but you probably won’t need to do it yourself because marketing apps will automatically calculate them for you!
Why is Optimizing Your Sales Conversion Rates So Important?
Imagine this:
You have a leaky bucket.
And you need to fill that bucket with water.
Would you just start pouring more and more water into it hoping that it will fill up eventually?
Or would you fix the leaks first and only then start pouring water into it?
It’s obvious that the latter approach makes more sense, yet entrepreneurs often engage in the business equivalent of pouring water into a leaky bucket.
They drive more and more traffic to their sales funnels that aren’t converting. Wouldn’t it make more sense to improve the conversion rates first?
You see, regardless of whether it’s “organic” or “paid”, traffic is expensive: you are always paying for it with your time, energy and money.
That’s why it’s so important to optimize your sales funnel for conversions and make sure that you are making the most of that traffic. Otherwise, you are wasting your marketing budget!
Attention: Seemingly Insignificant Increases in Your Sales Conversion Rate Can Add Up to a LOT of Money Over an Extended Period of Time!
When it comes to conversion rate optimization, the big wins tend to get the most publicity: there are always crazy stories floating around about some small tweaks that drastically increase conversions.
The most famous example of this is probably Performable’s A/B test where they tested a green call-to-action button against a red call-to-action button. They weren’t expecting much but the page with the red button converted 21% better!
However, the everyday reality of conversion rate optimization is much more mundane:
Most A/B tests lead nowhere and when they do produce a noticeable change in the conversion rate, that change is typically so small that it may seem insignificant. Big wins are extremely rare.
But it’s important to understand that those seemingly insignificant changes may not be that insignificant after all.
In fact, they can add up to a lot of money over an extended period of time!
Example: 5.94% Conversion Rate vs. 10% Conversion Rate
Let’s continue with the previous example of a 5.94% conversion rate.
If you send 10,000 visitors to your sales page every month, you’ll make 594 sales per month and a total of 7,128 sales per year.
But if you can increase your conversion rate to 10%, you’ll make 1,000 sales per month and a total of 12,000 sales per year. That’s 4,872 extra sales per year!
Now look at how this plays out over ten years:
- With a 5.94% conversion rate and 10,000 monthly visitors, you’ll make 7,128 sales per year or a total of 71,280 sales in a decade
- With a 10% conversion rate and 10,000 monthly visitors, you’ll make 1,200 sales per year and a total of 120,000 sales in a decade.
That’s an extra 48,720 sales over the course of ten years with the same traffic!
Of course, while going from a 5.94% conversion rate to 10% may not seem like a big deal at first glance, this is actually a 68.35% increase in the conversion rate.
But you can probably achieve that through continuous conversion rate optimization: a several percent increase here and a several percent increase there can add up to a substantial conversion rate increase over time.
Also, if you haven’t done any conversion rate optimization before then it’s probably safe to say that you could realistically boost your conversion rate even more than that!
(Note that this was just a theoretical example meant to illustrate the point so we intentionally made it simplistic!)
Our 7 Best Tips for Improving Your Sales Conversion Rate
#1: Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel for Your Business
Human relationships tend to revolve around trust, which is built gradually over an extended period of time.
For example:
- You wouldn’t expect to immediately become best friends with someone you just met
- You wouldn’t propose to a love interest on the first date
- You wouldn’t demand to be given a senior role at work when you don’t have any relevant experience.
Most people who are capable of functioning in social situations understand this intuitively.
And yet it’s easy to forget this once you start a business: it’s so common for entrepreneurs to drive cold traffic to their sales pages and hope for the best.
If that’s what you are currently doing then you can almost certainly increase your sales conversion rates by simply building a Value Ladder sales funnel for your business and driving traffic to it instead.
This approach to selling is based on one simple idea:
The more expensive your offer, the more trust you will need to close the sale.
So it makes sense to start by offering the potential customer a freebie and then gradually build trust by asking for increasingly more investment and providing increasingly more value at each stage of your sales funnel.
If the customer feels that they got a good deal, they will be open to checking out your next offer, so it’s important to exceed their expectations at every stage of the funnel if you want them to reach the top of your Value Ladder.
For example, our co-founder Russell Brunson charges between $50,000/year and $250,000 per year for his Inner Circle mastermind.
Despite the high price, this mastermind is so popular that it’s application-only and has strict revenue requirements. So how does Russell persuade people to pay him that much money not just once but every year?
He uses Value Ladder sales funnels.
For example:
If you are patient, start by providing free value and then gradually build trust over time, the sky’s the limit when it comes to how much money you can make!
#2: Make Sure that Your Value Ladder Follows a Logical Progression
Generally speaking, it’s probably safe to say that even the most basic Value Ladder sales funnel will convert better than driving cold traffic directly to your sales pages.
That being said, if you want to get the most out of your Value Ladder, you need to make sure that it follows a logical progression. What do we mean by that?
At every stage of your sales funnel, you want to help your dream customers solve a problem that they are struggling with, which should then unlock a new problem that they need to deal with, which you can then help solve at the next stage.
In other words: there needs to be a logical progression from one offer to the next all the way to the top of your Value Ladder!
Example: Weight Loss Niche Value Ladder
Say, if you are in the weight loss niche, you could structure your sales funnel like this:
- A lead magnet with a 30-day weight loss plan that the potential customer can adjust based on their gender, age, and measurements. This is the Bait stage.
- An ebook that provides a comprehensive weight loss plan for an entire year that they can adjust based on their gender, age, and measurements. This is the Frontend stage.
- A personal one-on-one consultation where you give them advice on how to implement what they learned in the ebook. This is the Middle stage.
- A year-long one-on-one personal training program where you help them set a realistic weight loss goal, keep them accountable, and troubleshoot problems as they arise. This is the Backend stage.
You can also create a membership website so that your customers would have a community where they can hang out with other people on the same weight loss journey. This is the continuity program.
So you start by helping them create a weight loss plan for just one month, then help them create a weight loss plan for the entire year, then help them tailor that plan to their particular situation and then help them stay on track by keeping them accountable throughout that year.
See how there’s a logical progression?
#3: Have a Lead Magnet that Exceeds all Expectations
Your lead magnet is your one opportunity to prove your expertise to your dream customers.
If they are blown away by the quality of your lead magnet, it will be much easier for you to persuade them to buy your Frontend offer.
Meanwhile, if they find your lead magnet disappointing, they will assume that your paid offers are going to be disappointing as well.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure that your lead magnet exceeds all expectations.
Something that we see way too often is entrepreneurs using low-quality lead magnets because they can’t be bothered to invest in a product or service that they are going to give away for free.
But this low-effort approach to lead magnets is penny-wise and pound-foolish because it creates problems in the Frontend stage of the Value Ladder sales funnel.
So what’s the point of spending all that money to acquire leads if you can’t convert them into paying customers?
Here’s a helpful way to think about free offers: ask yourself how difficult it would be for you to sell your lead magnet.
If your dream customers would happily pay should you ever choose to charge for it then it’s probably safe to say that you have a solid lead magnet.
However, if you can’t imagine your dream customers actually paying for it, then your lead magnet probably isn’t good enough yet!
#4: Create an Irresistible Frontend Offer that Only Costs $7
It’s relatively easy to persuade people to give you their email addresses if you have an appealing lead magnet.
But persuading them to give you their hard-earned money is much more challenging. So what’s the best way to convert leads into paying customers?
We recommend creating a digital product designed specifically for that purpose and pricing it at $7. Ebooks, video classes, and webinars are all great Frontend offer formats!
You also want to provide an unconditional 30-day money-back guarantee and display it prominently next to the “Buy” button.
All this should help you increase your sales conversion rate because the price point is low to begin with and the money-back guarantee eliminates the financial risk entirely.
Worst case scenario, if the customer doesn’t like your Frontend product, they can simply ask for a refund!
(They probably won’t, though. People typically can’t be bothered to refund $7 purchases.)
Of course, you can use a more expensive product or service as your Frontend offer, but it will probably have a lower conversion rate than a $7 ebook with a money-back guarantee.
#5: Add Downsells to Your Middle and Backend Offers
A downsell is an offer that you pitch to the potential customer if they reject your initial offer. You can think of it as a downgrade from it.
We recommend creating digital downsells that cost $7 for your Middle and Backend offers.
These should be new products that are specifically designed for that purpose and make sense as downgrades!
Example: Middle Offer + Downsell in the Dating and Relationships Niche
Let’s say that your niche is dating and relationships.
Your Middle offer is an online course about online dating that costs $257.
If someone checks out its sales page but decides that they aren’t ready to buy yet, that tells you that they are probably interested in learning more about online dating but may be hesitant to spend that much money on an online course.
So why not downsell a $7 ebook that explains how to optimize one’s online dating profiles on all of the major dating apps?
If they are about to leave your sales page anyway, you don’t have anything to lose by pitching this downsell.
Some people will probably take you up on this offer and buy the ebook. That’s the extra revenue that you would have left on the table had you not pitched them your downsell.
Moreover, if they like your $7 ebook about optimizing dating profiles, they will probably be more open to purchasing your $257 course about online dating in the future.
Consequently, this downsell should help you not only make some extra money from the ebook sales but also to eventually increase your online course sales!
#6: Improve Your Copy
It’s not enough to have great products and services, you also need to know how to sell them.
That’s why another great way to increase your sales conversion rates is to improve your copy across your entire sales funnel.
Make Your Headlines More Compelling
The headline is the most important element of any copy so we recommend starting there. But how can you make your headlines more compelling?
That will depend on the offer in question but in general, you want to make sure that your headline clearly conveys the key benefit of it. How will your product or service make the potential customer’s life better?
Also, if your offer is an info product, you want to add curiosity to your headline: convey the key benefit but don’t reveal the exact method.
That way, people who want that key benefit will feel compelled to get your info product just so that they can learn your method!
Use the “Hook, Story, Offer” Copywriting Framework
We recommend structuring your copy like this:
- Start by hooking your dream customers with a compelling headline
- Then tell them a captivating story that resonates with them on an emotional level
- Finally, transition from your story to your sales pitch and then to the call to action.
We use this simple framework in most of our copy and it has worked really well for us. It might work well for you, too!
Provide as Much Social Proof as You Can!
Social proof is indications that other people trust you: reviews, testimonials, customer case studies, endorsements from well-known people, relevant credentials, industry awards, media coverage, etc.
It’s important to understand that what other people say about you, your company and your products is much more persuasive than what you say. Why?
Because potential customers know that you are biased when it comes to all of that so they understandably take what you have to say about it with a grain of salt.
That’s why you should provide as much social proof as you can at every stage of your sales funnel. It can help you drastically increase your conversion rates!
#7: Optimize Your Sales Funnel With A/B Testing
Everything that we discussed in this article is just guidelines.
You shouldn’t take any of our advice as gospel because we can’t possibly know what’s going to work for your business.
In fact, you can’t possibly know what’s going to work for your business either until you A/B test it. Until then, you are just guessing what might work!
That’s why our final recommendation is to spend less time thinking about your ideas and more time testing them.
That’s the fastest way to increase your sales conversion rates!
Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels that CONVERT?
Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.
He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?
His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.
This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.
But you can also get it directly from us for free…
All we ask is that you pay for shipping!
So what are you waiting for? 🧐
Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!
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Credit: Original article published here.