Why More Traffic Won’t Fix Your Funnel and What Will

If you’re building an online business and trying to grow your email list, then you’re probably familiar with the term sales funnel. You’ve likely created an opt-in and built a landing page to help grow your email list.

 

You’ve also likely created a welcome sequence or nurture sequence for your new email subscribers, and you might even have a call-to-action within those emails to help you sell your products or book your services.

 

And, if you’re like many entrepreneurs, you want more leads and sales for your business and are likely focused on how to get them. You may even have found yourself thinking that all you need is more traffic to boost that funnel and make more money.

 

Sometimes, that’s true; all you need is more traffic, but honestly, it takes a long time to get to that point. Very often, people try to focus on increasing traffic, especially through ads, before their funnel is actually working and ready to grow.

 

I know it can be frustrating to feel like you are constantly adjusting a funnel, but the work is worth it.

 

How do you know if you need more traffic to fix your funnel?

The most important part of your funnel isn’t the traffic, it’s the metrics. You need to understand how your funnel is performing before you know where the issue is and whether traffic is what you need.

 

Focusing on adding traffic to a funnel that’s not fully optimized isn’t going to solve your issues; it’s only going to amplify them and, if you’re running ads, waste money.

 

I always recommend that my students and clients make sure their funnels are converting organically before starting ads. Ads will only work if your funnel is already converting.

 

 

What metrics matter to your marketing funnel?

To determine whether your marketing funnel needs more traffic, you need to understand how it’s working. These are the most important metrics for you to review to determine what’s working and what needs help.

 

 

Opt-in – this is step 1 of your funnel

You want to look at the conversion rate for your opt-in landing page. Your opt-in rate may vary, but you ideally want to see a conversion rate of 20% or higher on your opt-in landing page. If you’re running cold traffic (ads) to your landing page, then the rate will probably be on the lower side, like 20%. If you have a mix of cold and warm traffic, you’ll likely see a higher conversion rate of 30% or higher.

 

Click-through rates

You’ll want to watch your click-through rates in the welcome, nurture, and sales emails within your sales funnel. Ideally, you want to see a click-through rate of 1-2% or higher. If your rate is under 1%, it can be improved. You will likely see a much higher click-through rate on the very first email in a nurture series if there’s a link they need to click to download or reach your freebie that they’ve requested. Watch your click-through rates in the following emails to determine how it’s working.

 

 

Conversion rate 

You’ll also want to watch to see how many of your leads book consults or buy your products within your initial marketing funnel. If you’re running a webinar or offering a consult call, you’ll also want to track your show-up rates for your webinar or consult calls. How many people need to sign up for your freebie before someone signs up for your consult call, webinar, or other conversion event?

 

How many of your consult calls or webinar signups buy your product? You will want to know both of these numbers to make sure your funnel is converting.

 

Is your Marketing Funnel Working?

Before you focus on getting more traffic to your funnel, take the time to review each stage and identify any leaks (areas that aren’t performing at or above goal). Work on them. Once you know your funnel is working and is optimized for performance, then it’s time to add more traffic.  

 

How do you get More Traffic to your Marketing Funnel?

Once you know your funnel is working, it’s time to add fuel to it in the form of more traffic. You can increase funnel traffic in several ways: organic (SEO), social media, or paid advertising.

 

Using SEO to bring traffic to your funnel

If you’re going to use SEO to drive traffic, you’ll want to create great content for your ideal customer and add it to your website, blog, or podcast and optimize it for discoverability.

 

Your content can be found on podcast apps, AI search engines like ChatGPT, Google, or other traditional search engines. You’ll want to follow SEO best practices for each channel, create great content that’s helpful to your ideal customer, and then simply optimize it for discoverability on the chosen platform.

 

You’ll also want to make sure your opt-ins are available on the pages or podcast episodes that you’re doing SEO on so that the new people who discover your content hopefully become leads for your business. 

 

If you want to learn SEO, I have resources to help you.

For traditional Google SEO, get the Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

For AI SEO, get the Beginner’s Guide to AI SEO.

For your podcast, get the Beginner’s Guide to Podcast SEO.

  

Take the free class to learn how people are being found in AI Search and Google, and how to get leads from both. Then, join me in Simple SEO Content, and I’ll walk you through how to do it step-by-step.

 

Using Social Media to bring traffic to your funnel

If you want to use social media to generate more traffic and visibility for your business, choose the social media channel or channels you want to focus on and follow best practices for those channels.

 

 I don’t teach social media marketing, but there are people out there who focus on it and can help you learn how to do it the right way. If you decide to focus on social media, be sure to learn how to read your website analytics so you know if you’re getting leads and sales from your work.

 

I see a lot of entrepreneurs spend hours every month on social media, and it doesn’t help grow their businesses, so be careful there and pay attention to your ROI (return on investment).

 

Using Paid Ads to Bring Traffic to Your Funnel

If you want to use paid ads to fuel your funnel, you’ll want to decide if you’re going to use

Meta, LinkedIn, Google, or another ad platform. Once you’ve decided which one to focus on, learn the best practices and make sure you understand your goals within the platform.

 

For example, if you’re using Meta ads, you’ll want to track the following metrics

Ad click-through rate. You want to know how many people click on your ad. Your goal is to be at 1% or higher here. If your ad is below 1% that means there’s something about your ad that isn’t speaking to your ideal customer in the right way, or you’re not catching their attention with your graphics.

 

Landing page conversion rate

This is the same as the opt-in conversion rate we discussed above. You need to know if the landing page is speaking to the new customer. Remember, for cold traffic, you want to be at 20% or higher conversion. 

 

Frequency

You also want to watch the frequency of your ad. How often are people seeing your ad? You want to keep this under 4 so you don’t exhaust your audience with your message. 

 

Cost per lead

This is a big one for paid traffic. You need to track how much it costs you per lead so you can determine whether the ad campaign is working financially. Your goal should be to make money. If you spend more money acquiring new leads than you earn from those leads, your ads won’t be profitable. 

  

Break–even point

For me, this was the most important number I learned, and it’s one that I track especially closely for my ads. Your break-even point is the amount you can spend per lead and still remain profitable. This number will differ for each offer you have. What you’ll need to determine your break-even point is your sales price or the lifetime value of a customer, and your funnel conversion rate. You’ll take your price and divide it by your conversion rate to determine whether your ads are profitable. 

  

For example, on a $100 product, with a 1% conversion rate, your break-even point is $1.00. $100*1% = $1. If you run ads and your cost-per-lead is less than $1, you’ll be profitable; but if you’re paying $5 per lead, you are not profitable, and your business won’t be able to grow.

  

If you’re not sure how to figure all of this out, or you want someone to guide you through building your funnel, making it profitable, and getting it ready to grow, I’d love to help you. I work with private clients 1:1 as a marketing consultant, and I’d love to help you too. I do this type of work with clients every week.

Final Words on Scaling Your Funnel

Before you focus on adding more traffic to your sales funnel, especially if you’re considering using ads, be sure your marketing funnel is working. Walk through it step by step and review the metrics at each step to see how you’re doing. 

If you want my help with your funnel, I’d love to walk you through how to fix your funnel, get it working, and make it ready to scale. Learn more about my marketing consulting program here.