First, let’s talk about what we mean by conversion problems. Basically, you’re putting your marketing materials out there—whether that’s ads, emails, social media posts, or any combination—but you’re not getting enough people to take action.

There are many different ways to convert a lead, and it can happen at any stage of your sales funnel. You can ask them to do all kinds of things: enter their email address to gain access to something, purchase your product, download a free guide, and much more. Ultimately, though, if you’re not getting enough conversions, you’re not getting people to do what you’re asking them to do.

So, how do you fix your conversion problem? You focus on conversion marketing—meaning you make changes to every stage of your sales funnel to optimize them for leads and sales.

Conversions can happen at any stage of the sales funnel.

The first stage of your sales funnel is your target audience. In this stage, you know you’ve found someone interested in your product because they’ve completed the first step you’re calling them to make. This step is generally something simple like clicking on an ad.

The next stage is your leads. These are the people who saw your ad and clicked on it, which brought them to your funnel landing page. Then, they completed the next step of entering their email address. Now, you can market directly to them instead of just targeting them with your ads. They haven’t made a purchase yet, but they’re getting closer.

The third step is your customers. These people have clicked on your ad, subscribed to your email list, and made a purchase from an email you sent. Success! Your funnel worked.

But what if it’s not working?

If you’ve built a funnel but are not seeing the desired results, it’s time to analyze it to discover where you’re going wrong. You might need some funnel conversion optimization to prime every stage, bringing you more leads and conversions.

Your Hook

The first step in conversion marketing is to look at your ads. The way to get customers into the first stage of your funnel is by getting their attention. You lead traffic from some sort of hook in your ad that makes them stop scrolling.

You can identify whether you have a good hook by looking at your click rate. A click-through rate (“CTR”) is the rate of people who see your ad compared to the number of people who click on it. CTR varies by industry, so you should determine a reasonable rate for your particular industry.

To do this, you have to do two things: solve their problem and create curiosity.

First, solve their problem. You need a headline that will pop and make people take a second look at your ad, and you’re going to do this by introducing a problem. Sometimes, it might even be a problem they didn’t know they had. But this problem will be one of the reasons why you created your product.

Let’s say you’ve created a company that sells handmade organic soap bars and other skincare products. You did this because you want people to have a clean, healthy alternative to harsh chemicals. You also want to reduce waste from plastic soap bottles. So, how do you create your hook?

You want to combine their problem with your solution. Additionally, you want to create curiosity about your product. Here’s an example: “Learn how to heal your skin and the planet in one simple step.”

Suddenly, your viewers see that they have a problem—their skincare routine is all wrong, and they’ve been negatively impacting the planet on top of that. “This is a problem,” they think. “How can I fix it?” They’re curious about what they can do and how you can help.

You should also focus on leading your audience away from a problem instead of leading them toward pleasure. Website traffic is more likely to purchase if you can show them you’re solving a problem instead of just introducing convenience to their life.

Ultimately, you want to avoid revealing too much about your product in the headline. When your audience is curious about how you can solve their problem, they’ll be more likely to take the next step in the conversion marketing process.

Your Story

Now comes your story. This part is essential for building a connection with your audience and increasing both the value of the offer and your chances of getting sales.

Your story should:

• Be historical or metaphorical.
• Help your ideal customer or client relate to you and feel like they know you, like you, and trust you/your company.
• Help your audience make a decision to change their life for the better.

Let’s tell the story of why and how you started your organic skincare business. Tell your audience how you were sick of rashes like hives and eczema that came from using products with harsh chemicals. You hated throwing away all the bottles of half-used products, and you really hated knowing how much you were contributing to landfills.

How did you solve this problem? You came up with products made from all-natural ingredients for all skin types. You use eco-friendly packaging and have a special shipping policy to reduce your carbon footprint.

Your description of the problem helps your audience relate to you, and your story of how you solved it encourages them to take the next step. For this step in your funnel conversion optimization, your story needs to keep the reader’s attention and build a connection.

Your Offer

The next step of your sales funnel is your offer. This is where you offer something for free, at a discounted cost, BOGO, etc. You want to make this exciting and really emphasize your offer’s value.

You should view and present your offer as an opportunity to provide others with it. So, your skincare company might offer a free soap bar or a complimentary bottle of lotion with the purchase of a discounted soap bar.

You’re going to do this in a way that aligns with your story and strengthens the connection you built with the customer. Essentially, you’ll present your offer to your audience because you want them to experience the benefits of organic skincare and because you want to help eliminate plastic waste.

Bonus Step: Offer a Valuable Lead Magnet

If you find that you’re getting a good click-through rate in your hook and story stages, but your conversion rate is still low, that typically means your offer isn’t valuable enough.

If your skincare company just isn’t getting enough conversions at this stage, you should ramp everything up. You can offer one of your most valuable products for completely free, or you can offer it at a significantly discounted price for a limited time. You can also offer something like a free skincare guide available for immediate download.

Whatever you offer, you should view your offer as an exchange of goods and services rather than just giving and giving. You’d like to provide your customer with a discounted product or access to a service in exchange for their email address—and then comes the next stage of your conversion rate optimization (“CRO”).

When your leads have gotten their free product or service from you, they should now trust your brand. Here’s where that exchange of goods comes back into play: your lead gave you their email address, and you gave them their free product. Now, you’d like to offer a product you think they would like.

This offer will come through your email marketing as a kind of upsell. Say to your leads, “Since you loved your free sample, check out this product!” Whatever you’re offering, they’ll see a call to action (“CTA”) button, which will take them to a landing page.

Without a business coach, here’s where things can get tricky for a lot of entrepreneurs. They get so excited about their product or service that they take some of that excitement out on their landing page, which actually ends up being pretty ineffective.

Compare your offer to a lake in a forest and your audience to a deer in the forest. The deer sees the lake and thinks, “Oh, I’m thirsty. I could use a drink.” So it takes action and heads over to the lake (or takes that CTA and heads to your landing page).

When the deer gets there, it sees a whole lot of excitement around the lake. A guy is juggling in one spot, a dancer in another, and fireworks–distractions everywhere. Suddenly, the deer no longer cares about the lake. It just wants out of all that noise! So it runs away, probably to find a quieter lake.

You're unintentionally scaring away your leads when you put distractions and unnecessary decorations all over your landing page. They’re interested in your offer, but all the distractions and unnecessary buttons leading to other pages on your landing page will ultimately do the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.

How to Change Your Page

What should you consider including on your landing page?

To make your landing page effective through funnel conversion optimization, you need to do two things:

1. Make it simple
2. Add curiosity

Let’s apply these two principles of CRO to your skincare company.

Simplify

Do you have buttons leading to your homepage? An encouragement to check out your blog? Social media links?

It sounds counterintuitive, but take those all off your landing page! You want your leads to focus only on your offer. Once they’re subscribed or have made a purchase, it’s time to start sharing other things about your company. Right now, you shouldn’t give them a drink through a firehose. Keep your landing page simple—focus on your offer.

Add Curiosity

Now for the second part: add curiosity. This is sometimes easier said than done, especially if you have a product instead of a course. The key is to tell your audience less about what your offer is and more about what your offer is not.

Your offer is not made from harsh chemicals. It’s not packaged in plastic. It will not cause skin conditions. It will not add to the earth’s carbon footprint. Focus on those things. You can add a headline to your landing page that says something like, “Discover the secret to leaving harsh chemicals, skin rashes, and plastic packaging behind with [your brand name or product].”

Another way to add curiosity is to include a free gift in your offer. When you describe your line of products by saying things like “comes in five enticing scents” or “different products to cleanse and moisturize all parts of your body.” Then, you include a free mystery gift. Your audience will be curious about what they could get when they take advantage of your offer.

Bonus Tips

• Make sure you have the correct number of CTAs. If your page fills the whole screen, but you don’t have to scroll up or down, you can just have one CTA. If visitors have to scroll down, you should have at least three of them. Make sure that each CTA button is impossible to miss.
• Don’t spend valuable webpage space talking about how excellent or innovative your product is. Leads don’t care about that. Go back to the idea of solving their problem—talk about how your product will help them.
• Include social proof on your page to add credibility. This can include “as seen on” media badges, customer testimonials, relevant credentials and accomplishments, etc.
• Above all else, Remember that if what you’re including is distracting your lead from making a purchase, take it off your page!

Now you know what to put on your landing page—but where should you put everything?

In conversion optimization, you want to appeal to all types of potential customers. You should structure your page in a way that coordinates with them. There are three categories: emotion-based, logic-based, and urgency-based.

Emotional Section

The first and most significant portion of customers is in the emotion-based category. This is where you have a hook and story that appeals to the emotions. Make it personal and build that sense of connection.

This will be at the top of your landing and sales pages, as well as the top of your emails and the beginning of your video ads.

Logical Section

The following section should appeal to your logical customers. These are the ones who were drawn in by emotion but need logic to justify the purchase. This is where you’ll include ingredients, statistics, samples of what they’ll learn or experience—anything that will logically convince them to jump in.

This should be the middle section of your sales and landing pages, the content of your successive emails, and the next section of your video ads.

Urgency Section

This is where you ramp up the scarcity of your product and create a sense of urgency. This is the last section of your landing and sales pages, the end of your video ads, and the last of your email campaigns.

Some people just need that last little push to get them to make a purchase. This section is where you explain you only have X amount of product or X amount of time before the sale ends—as long as the urgency is genuine.

Optimizing your sales funnels and landing pages for conversions can be daunting. There’s a lot of information to absorb, and any number of tweaks can make or break your conversion rates.

There are amazing digital marketing software, and important things to focus on:

• Ensuring your hook and story are emotional, relatable, and problem-solving
• Creating leads by giving them a valuable offer in exchange for their email address
• Simplifying your landing and sales pages
• Adding curiosity to your pages and headlines
• Structuring your pages and ads according to the three categories of customers

Now that you know how to optimize your sales funnels and landing pages, you can get to work making those changes. Pay attention to your click-through and conversion rates at every stage to ensure you’ve optimized everything.