Are you receiving high traffic to your business website but having issues with converting leads into customers?
This is a common issue for businesses of all sizes. If you are not successfully converting visitors into customers, you could be wasting both time and money. This means you have leaks in your marketing funnel and miss out on valuable business opportunities.
In this article, we will discuss the reasons why your marketing funnel may be leaking and how you can improve it with the help of online forms.
What Is Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel is the path customers follow from becoming aware of a product or service to becoming loyal.
This concept is a useful framework for marketers that helps simplify the various stages of the shopping process.
The main stages of the marketing funnel include:
- Top of the Funnel: Awareness
The top of the funnel (ToFu) is awareness. At this stage, your goal as a marketer is to raise awareness of your brand. Your prospects are aware of your products or services and get engaged with them for the first time. However, they might not know a lot about your brand. So, focus on providing high-quality marketing content to generate more leads. Create a brand narrative that stands out. Start by creating your website, perform search engine optimization (SEO), promote social media channels, etc.
- Middle of the Funnel: Consideration
The middle of the marketing funnel (MoFU) is the consideration. At this stage, you aim to gain the trust of the prospects. They have a problem and search for solutions. Prospects research your brand and your competitors to find the one that best matches their requirements. So, you should help them decide to purchase your product or service. Educate them about your product with articles that add value, offer them surveys, and more.
- Bottom of the Funnel: Decision
The bottom of the funnel (BoFu) is the decision. This is the final stage before the prospects convert. You have successfully caught their interest, established trust, and developed a connection with them. Take this opportunity to convert them by providing final reasons to choose your brand over others. Offer them a demo or a free trial of your product or service, share customer testimonials, and social proof, share how-to articles and guidelines, provide them with pricing and feature comparison, etc.
What Are the Common Leaks in Your Digital Marketing Funnel?
To effectively make your digital marketing funnel function effectively, you need to first detect and address its leaks.
Here are the common leaks in the digital marketing funnel:
- High Bounce Rates
A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are leaving your website after only looking at one page. A high bounce rate is considered bouncing which is above 46%.
This typically indicates that your content is not meeting the expectations of the visitors, slow-loading web pages, etc.
- Low Engagement Rates
A low engagement rate is another common digital marketing funnel leak. It suggests that the visitors are not engaging with your content. For example, they don’t click on links, don’t share content, or spend a short amount of time on your website.
- Low Conversion Rates
Low conversion rates happen when visitors fail to complete the desired action, like making an order or filling out a form, even after interacting with your content.
For example, if you add poor calls-to-action (CTAs), offer a complicated user experience, and create barriers in the conversion process.
- Poor Lead Quality
Poor lead quality means that the leads your business generates are less likely to convert into consumers. The most common reasons are targeting the wrong audience, not applying marketing personalization, wrong communication methods, etc.
What Are the Causes of Funnel Leaks?
To detect the potential funnel leaks and avoid them, you need to find out the causes for these leaks.
Here are the key causes:
- Misaligned Audience Targeting
Targeting the wrong audience is a key factor that causes leaks in your marketing funnel.
When your marketing is directed toward people who are not interested in your products or services, it can create inefficiencies throughout the entire funnel.
If your messages do not align with the needs or requirements of your audience, they may not interact with your content. This can result in high bounce rates and low conversion rates.
- Poor User Experience (UX)
Poor user experience (UX) is another common reason for leaks in a marketing funnel. When visitors experience a frustrating or confusing experience on your website, they are more likely to leave without completing desired actions, such as signing up or making a purchase.
For example, if your website takes too long to load, visitors will exit it without even reading the content. Or, if the navigation of your website is complicated, then the visitors won’t find what they search for and will leave.
- Dysfunctional and Broken Forms
Dysfunctional and broken forms can lead to serious leaks in your marketing funnel. Forms have an important role as the last step in a conversion process, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading resources, or completing a purchase.
Technical issues, complicated forms, poor mobile optimization, and unclear form instructions cause marketing funnel leaks and keep potential customers away from purchasing your products and services.
- Lack of Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with the leads at every stage of their journey of becoming a customer. If you don’t guide and nurture them, you miss out on the opportunity to convert these leads into customers.
For example, if you don’t provide proper follow-ups, the lead loses interest in your brand, forgets about it, and drops out of your marketing and sales funnel. Or, if you send out not personalized emails and other messages, the leads will not feel engaged. Not providing educational and other content that shows the value of your brand is another example of the lack of lead nurturing that causes serious leaks in the marketing funnel.
- No Connection Between the Sales and Marketing Teams
Ineffective communication or no connection between sales and marketing teams can result in the loss of valuable insights. A lack of understanding between the two departments may lead to missed opportunities. Marketing strategies may not effectively target the right leads, and sales may miss opportunities to provide crucial feedback on the success of these strategies
What Is the Role of Online Forms in Digital Marketing Funnels?
Online forms play a central role in the digital marketing funnel. They have the following key functions:
- Capture Leads
Online forms effectively capture leads by gathering contact details from potential customers, transforming website visitors into prospects.
- Collect Valuable Information
Online forms collect user information beyond just contact details, including preferences, behaviors, and specific requirements. The collected data is vital for defining your target audience and meeting their needs.
- Help Nurture Leads
As online forms establish personalized communication, they are ideal for lead nurturing. For example, you can segment the leads based on the information collected by surveys, polls, and other forms. Then you can use this information to send personalized email newsletters, follow-ups, educational content, and more.
Strategies to Optimize a Leaky Marketing Funnel Using Online Forms
Online forms can serve as a powerful tool for optimizing a leaky marketing funnel. Here are some key strategies to consider.
- Offer Improved User Experience
Online forms should be easy to use and navigate for the users. Make sure your forms are easy to complete. Keep the forms simple, with a minimum number of fields. It is optimal to add 3 to 5 fields per form. Apply clear labels and instructions to help users fill in the forms correctly.
- Use Branched Logic For Your Forms
The idea of using branched logic is to create a personalized path for the users based on their answers. Personalized questions make the process more engaging for the users enhancing the form completion rates.
- Perform A/B Testing
Regularly perform A/B testing on your forms to see which variations work the best. Experiment with different headlines, field placements, and call-to-action buttons to improve form performance and make filling them out simpler.
- Monitor and Track Your Form Performance
Constantly monitor and track online form performance. Pay attention to metrics like bounce rates, submission rates, as well as form abandonment rates. By analyzing these metrics, you can find out where potential customers fall through, improve your form submission rates, and avoid marketing funnel leaks.
- Offer Rewards For Form Completion
Encourage users to fill out forms by offering rewards such as discounts, free trials, or exclusive content. This will motivate users to complete the form and decrease the likelihood of them leaving the funnel.
Bottom Line
Leaks in your digital marketing funnel can have a serious impact on your business and the conversion rates in particular. The good news is that optimized online forms can offer a powerful solution to this problem.
By keeping your online forms simple, neat, personalized, and with enhanced user experience, you can ensure an effective digital marketing funnel that drives better business results.
