Business gurus say this all the time, that the ultimate goal is to “move the needle” in your business – but what does that mean?
Do you know what needle you are trying to move?
For most people, it comes down to revenue. But does it really?
Let me ask you a question…
If I put you in the cockpit of an airplane, removed all other instruments, and told you to fly from Boston to California focusing on nothing else but the needle on the speedometer, could you do it?
Of course not.
There’s a reason you have a speedometer, a fuel gauge, oil pressure gauge, engine temperature gauge, and so forth in your car.
It takes more than one “needle” to successfully operate your vehicle…
…And more than one “needle” to successfully drive consistent, predictable cash flow in your business.
Once you identify your “needles,” it’s easy to find out what’s working and where to improve.
For example, let’s take a look at a typical webinar funnel… Most people look at it like this:
# of Webinar Registrations > $ in Sales
Those are the two “needles” by which they measure success.
Like flying a plane by simply looking at the speedometer, there’s not enough information there.
The first step of The Funnel Audit Process is to look for all the “dials” that help you get from where you are now to your ultimate goal.
What are all the measurable steps someone has to take to reach your goal?
We call these steps “Macro Dials.”
The Macro Dials for a typical webinar are:
In the example I shared with you earlier, the client believed his webinar funnel wasn’t converting well enough because he was only focusing on revenue.
As a result, he almost got rid of it, all because he was only looking at one dial, revenue.
When we started going through The Funnel Audit Process and looking at the Macro Dials, we noticed that he had a good webinar registration rate. About 50% of who registered attended, but people weren’t staying for the full webinar.
The problem he saw was this:
When the real problem was this:
Getting people to watch!
So, all we needed to do was figure out a way to fill in this little gap.
I suggested he take some time to look at when people dropped off of the webinar, and run the funnel again.
Each time we made an improvement, his numbers got better.
We’d go back to the Macro Dials, and figure out what else we could do to make an improvement.
In this case, he simply increased the visitors to his registration page (which he could do through JVs and a number of paid media options).
Now that he has a finely tuned webinar marketing funnel, he can increase the traffic.
When you examine your funnel, perform The Funnel Audit Process, and identify all your Macro Dials. It’s simple to see where the problem is – and how you can fix it.
Folks, that’s what The Funnel Audit Process is all about.
STEP #1: Identify each action someone has to take from the start of your funnel to the end.
For example:
- Clicking on the advertisement
- Register for the webinar
- Attending the webinar
- Staying to the end of the webinar (and seeing the offer)
- Visiting the order page
- Purchasing
Step #2: Draw a horizontal line on a piece of paper. The left side is the start of the funnel, the right side is the end of the funnel
STEP #3: Insert your starting and ending metrics.
The left side is generally the amount of people who entered your funnel, and the right side is your ultimate goal (typically sales).
STEP #4: Make small, vertical markers along the line and write down all of the actions taken in STEP #1.
STEP #5: Identify the number of prospects who took each action (write this below the horizontal line).
STEP #6: Above the horizontal line, write the percentage of people who took action from one step to the other.
STEP #7: Highlight the section that you need to fix.
So, we’d dig up our webinar metrics to see if we can identify a particular point in the webinar where we lost people, adjust the script, and give it another shot.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
In Part 2, we’ll take a closer look at The Funnel Audit Process in action!
