How to build a high-converting funnel [Use these 3 pillars]
By the end of this blog, you’ll know the three most important areas that, in my experience, make or break a successful marketing funnel. If you’ve ever seen poor results from a campaign, improving even one of these areas can completely change your results.
Let's get into it.
Pillar 1: The Offer
Every marketing funnel starts with a specific offer. Your aim should be to make it feel like a clear & obvious win to your ICP.
The strongest offers combine three ingredients: a specific outcome, high perceived value, and reduced risk.
In other words...
Tell your ICP how their life will be improved by working with you
Make them feel like your solution is custom made to their challenges and blockers
Offer a risk reversal, like a free trial or a money-back guarantee
The offer is the most important part of any marketing campaign. If you don't get it right, nothing else I mention in this blog will be able to help.
It can be tricky to perfect your offer, but if you ever need some extra guidance, book a strategy call with me and we'll go through it together.
Top tip: Double check that your messaging is on point. You could have the best offer in the world, but if you can't effectively communicate that to your audience, no one will know about it.
Pillar 2: The Traffic Sources
Once your offer is locked in, it’s time to focus on the channels that drive attention and move people through your funnel. This is the "fuel" that attracts attention and brings leads into the business.
Think:
Paid ads (Meta, Google)
Organic (SEO, social media, content, video)
Partnerships and referrals
Cold outreach
Each of these traffic sources can be extremely effective at attracting qualified leads, and each has their own benefits and drawbacks, it just depends on what best suits your business.
Paid ads
Paid ads require regular investment (I typically recommend a minimum $20/day budget), but can easily be scaled up and allow you to pinpoint and target warm, high-intent leads, bringing them straight onto a call without a long nurture process.
Organic
Organic is a long-term play best paired with another traffic source. It's low cost, but slower burn and can take months to produce results. But, once you've got some momentum (like a social media following or multiple high-ranking blog posts on Google), it becomes easier and easier to get results. In addition to this, organic allows you to build authority, and position yourself as an expert in your industry.
Partnerships and referrals
Partnerships and referrals bring in the warmest leads, but they’re not consistent enough to depend on, and they can’t be scaled predictably. If you’re delivering a 5-star experience, referrals will come naturally, but I prefer not to count on them since they’re never guaranteed.
Cold outreach
Cold outreach can be massively scaled (think 10,000+ emails a day to different inboxes 😮), but requires a high investment and a fair bit of technical set up. A general rule of thumb is you can expect to spend around $0.10 for every email you send. But, naturally, it has a low conversion rate and can negatively impact brand reputation — you are essentially shouting into the void asking strangers to pay for your services, so tread carefully.
Summary
Overall, if you're new to developing traffic sources, my advice is this: pick one to start with, invest as much time and money as you can into it, and once it's matured and is consistently bringing in leads, you can look to expand into other channels.
Pillar 3: The Conversion System
Finally, the conversion system is the final key pillar of any high performing funnel. It's the processes and actions in place that turn qualified leads into paying customers.
It's the "engine" that generates your business revenue.
It includes things like:
Landing pages, lead magnets, and VSLs
Email nurtures and retargeting
Sales calls, proposals, onboarding
Proof assets (testimonials, case studies, reviews)
The best conversion systems feel extremely natural. Each step should feel like a logical continuation from the last, and leads should actively want to move onto the next stage.
Conversion systems can also get pretty complex, and it's probably the most time-consuming part of any funnel build I do for my clients.
Closing thoughts
Having a successful marketing funnel can be the difference between life and death for businesses.
If you now feel motivated to build one (which you should!), but lack the time or expertise to get started, I've been building these systems for the past 4 years, and would love to hear from you if you're serious about scaling your marketing efforts with a one-on-one growth partner.
You can book a call here to learn more.