Top 4 Mistakes That Lead To Underperforming Funnels And Campaigns

If you wanted to start an insurance company or an automobile manufacturing company, what would you do?

You’ll get approvals, licenses, and necessary permits. You’ll put in a huge corpus of cash as capital and you’ll borrow some more funds from leading banks and other corporations to start your venture. Then, you’ll then put all kinds of teams in place — for research & development; design; manufacturing plants; human resources and so much more.

At every step of the way, you’ll need help when you launch a major corporation – incorporation, taxes, manufacturing setup, research, design, etc.

There are processes and there are laws. There are certain ways to do things (depending on where in the world you are located). Even within the United States, each state has its own laws for business incorporation, taxation, labor laws, and others.

That’s how complicated it gets and yes, it’s serious business.

Underperforming funnels and campaigns

Doing digital marketing — for a completely online business or for a traditional business going online — is absolutely anyone’s game. There are hundreds of theories, thousands of different ways to achieve a singular goal, and varying levels of skill sets (depending on who you hire).

No matter how you are going to get to digital marketing in general, or your paid advertising campaigns or funnels specifically, you are bound to do those based on what you think, know, feel, or the advice you get. While not all of that is bad, there are a few myths that result in ineffective funnels and campaigns that bleed money.

Here are some of the mistakes that lead to underperforming funnels and campaigns.

Overdoing design

Countless funnels sit half-finished and many funnels are underperforming because of over-insistence on design. Looks might matter but what most people forget is that looks only matter up to a certain point.

Too many businesses fuss, waste time, and raise opportunity cost worrying so much about whether or not this ad looks pretty, or whether the landing page was designed well that they freeze to the point that they don’t even launch campaigns.

You need good design coupled with great copy to make your campaigns work. Overdoing it and wasting too much time, however, makes it even harder than it should be for you.

Too many cooks

The bigger the businesses the more people you see getting involved in a campaign and the more the chances are that the campaign won’t ever work as well as it could.

Too many people and too many ideas can only choke the progress of a campaign. While this is a problem everywhere, it takes on a whole new avatar when too many people become part of a digital marketing campaign. We don’t know what it’s about online marketing, but everyone seems to be an expert.

Even if people have a false sense of expertise, their suggestions (when implemented) can be disastrous for your campaigns.

Solution? Only work with proven experts.

Marketing stack? Anything goes

The marketing stack — or the set of tools you use — can’t be taken for granted. Some of the best businesses depend on tools only after using them, working with them, and testing them out. It’s, at best, a trial and error method. A chosen stack of tools (or a combination of tools) is unique for each business.

Some SaaS marketing tools have certain features that others don’t. Some will work well for your business and others won’t. A few tools — despite the hype — aren’t even good enough to start with.

You’ll arrive at the right marketing stack only after experimentation. Use first and decide later.

Build funnels and it’s over

Too many business owners and marketers tend to think that once a working sales funnel is up and running, the job is done.

In fact, work just begins at that stage. Funnels don’t always work the way they were designed to.

You might find out that your newly-built sales funnels are underperforming. Plus, there are a hundred variables that you’d need to look into to ensure smooth running sales funnels and ad campaigns.

• Ad campaigns themselves are never static. A/B testing and optimization is continuous work (even if you want to do it weekly). Multiply testing and optimization with the number of campaigns you run and you can very well imagine why it’s full-time agency work.
• With Facebook Ads, there’s the real problem of “frequency.” High frequency of ads would mean that way too many people are looking at your ad a lot more frequently. You will have embarked on Google Adwords Ad testing too. Plus, there’s the ongoing testing of ads on all traffic sources.
• Regarding your email marketing sequences or autoresponders, is the first email message going out immediately, consistently, and fast enough? If not, you’d have to work out the kinks either in your funnel, your landing page, or the email marketing provider itself.

Your funnels can never be “set it up and forget.” Ever.

How do your funnels look? Want to share them with us?