This is a post I wrote in 2014. I’ve updated the information to make it relevant for 2016 and beyond.
You’ve worked very hard to get your market, your event, or program – you have all the pieces in place. Trouble is, you aren’t making sales.
It is tempting to throw the whole plan out and start over. The thing is, most marketing plans are just a few tweaks away from being effective. Why waste your time and hard work starting over, when you can take what you have and make it work for you?
What Would Your Business Be Like If You Had An Effective Marketing Plan?
Imagine how much easier your life would be if you weren’t constantly creating new products? What if you could concentrate on making your marketing plan as effective as possible? Most people are just 5 or 6 pretty small tweaks away from six figures. I know that my breakthrough came when I made just a few minor changes to my business model. The changes were a result of a pretty big mindset shift – but the actual changes were quite small. After making the tweaks – my business tripled.
How Do I Know What to Tweak?
Ah… that is the main question. My clients tend to be too quick to throw things out if they aren’t bringing sales right away. People tend to overestimate a good conversion rate and underestimate the power of small tweaks. Getting just 10 more people signing up for a webinar – can end up meaning thousands of dollars in extra profit from a product.
In order to tweak, you need to know your numbers. Here is a basic list of the different parts of a funnel – and the conversion rates we shoot for in the coaching industry.
Website Traffic
Website traffic grows over time. But, you need to be tracking your visitors to make sure that your audience is constantly growing. You can find out how many people are visiting your site by using Google Analytics. Just being aware of your numbers is an excellent start. You can also drill down and find out what pages and blog posts are most popular with your audience.
Opt-Ins
The preferred opt-in rate can vary widely. For an opt-in for a webinar or teleseminar – our goal rate is 40%. You find the opt-in rate by dividing the number of people who signed up by the number of people who saw the page (you can find this in Google Analytics or LeadPages). Opt-in rates for cold traffic (from ads) can be much lower. It helps to be able to track opt-in rates from different kinds of traffic. But, in the beginning, a general opt-in rate is JUST fine. Here are the email metrics I track in my business.
Webinar Attendance
Even now, I am always a bit disappointed when only a small fraction of the people who sign up for my webinar actually attend. It is exciting to see 1,000 people signed up for a webinar – and heartbreaking when less than 200 make the call. We usually expect 20-30% of the people to sign up to register for the call. Sending multiple reminders can help get that number closer to the 30% range. We send out at least two reminders on the day of the webinar. Offering prizes (or other incentives) for attending live, can also boost your attendance rate.
Sales from Webinars
Even more frustrating than having less than 10 people on your call – not selling anything! Not everyone on your call will buy – we consider 20% of the people on the call to be a good number of sign ups from a webinar. It is really important to note that the 20% is after follow-ups. If you just do the call without any type of follow-up, the number is closer to 5%. Make sure that you are sending at least 3-4 more e-mails after the call and that you have a deadline for people to make a buying decision.
Sales from Strategy Sessions
It is really tempting to think that you can do all your selling via webinar. I’ve been in this business for over 6 years and the absolute truth is that the only way to get people into higher end programs is to talk with them. And, as much as we all would love to end with a yes on every single conversation, most conversations will end with a no.
If you are a good closer – you might get an enrollment 25% of the time. Most people start at 10% and go up from there. Since these are high end programs, those extra percentage points can make a huge difference in your bottom line.
Want some more tweaks to make your marketing more effective? Check out my video course – Highly Paid Authority.
