Before You Scrap Your Funnel and Start Over, Check This First

In this episode of Abundant Funnels, Jayne shares a real behind-the-scenes client story that highlights one of the biggest mistakes business owners make when a funnel is not converting, assuming the whole thing needs to be rebuilt.

The client was running Facebook™ and Instagram™ Ads into an evergreen masterclass funnel with a $197 low-ticket offer at the end. She wanted to change the masterclass from free to paid because registrations were coming in but sales were not. Before making that move, Jayne looked at the data and found something far more important. Out of 488 registrations, only 4 people had actually reached the pitch. That changed the entire diagnosis.

Jayne walks through how they used the data to identify where people were dropping off, why patterns inside the masterclass mattered, what they changed in both the training and the first few emails, and why this kind of targeted optimisation is how successful funnels are built over time.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why low sales do not automatically mean you have a sales problem
• Why changing the pricing model can sometimes add the wrong kind of friction
• What numbers to pull before making a big funnel decision
• Why masterclass consumption matters more than registrations alone
• How drop-off patterns can help you diagnose the real issue
• Why early email messaging affects whether people even click play
• The difference between rebuilding and refining
• Why successful business owners get curious instead of starting over

Connect with Jayne:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/webonize

Website: https://webonize.com.au/

FREE Resource - The Facebook™ Ads
$3 Lead Formula: https://learn.webonize.com.au/leadformula

Join Abundant Ads Academy: https://courses.webonize.com.au/abundantadsacademy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I'm Jane Day and welcome to Abundant Funnels. I help coaches, course creators, and online experts get high quality leads and consistent sales without relying on guesswork, constant content creation, or $10 leads. In fact, I'm known for getting some of the best cost per lead results for quality buyers in the industry. This show is where we break down the ad strategy, the funnel, and the numbers so you can grow your revenue and buy back your time in a way that's actually sustainable. Let's get started. Hi there and welcome back to episode 30 of the podcast. Wow, 30 episodes already. For those that have been listening in for a while, I'm so delighted you are enjoying the episodes. I get so much wonderful feedback from listeners, and it's really nice to know that I'm not just here talking to myself. And if you are a new listener, welcome. I so hope you find this episode insightful and inspiring. Today's episode is actually inspired by an email I received from a client last week, which was followed by us examining her funnel in order to get it converting better. We're currently running Facebook and Instagram ads to an Evergreen masterclass funnel for her. The masterclass is free, and at the end of the masterclass, she offers a low-ticket product priced at $197. She emailed me and said she wanted to change the masterclass from free to paid. Not a completely different masterclass, the exact same one. The only difference was she wanted to start charging $7 for it. Her reasoning was pretty simple. People were registering for the free masterclass, but they weren't buying the offer afterwards. And if I'm being honest, I can completely understand why that seemed like the logical solution. If people aren't buying after a free masterclass, it can feel like charging a small fee will increase commitment and improve the quality of leads coming through. But before we changed anything, I wanted to understand what was actually happening inside the funnel. Because if the funnel isn't converting now, charging $7 doesn't automatically fix a problem. In fact, sometimes it could even make the problem worse. Because now you're adding another layer of friction before someone even gets into the funnel. So before making any changes, I asked her to pull together the numbers. And this is something I encourage every business owner to do before making big decisions in their marketing. Look at the data first. Don't guess, don't assume. Look at what is actually happening. I already knew the opt-in landing page was converting quite well as we were getting a cost per lead on the ads well under $3. So I asked the client for some data to look at. This included the open rates and click-through rates on the email sequence. I wanted to know whether people were actually opening the emails and clicking through to watch the masterclass. Then I asked for the masterclass data. How many people started watching? How many people finished watching? Were they dropping off and where were they dropping off? And finally I wanted to know how many people were reaching the sales page. Because if people aren't getting to the sales page, then we already know where part of the problem sits. So we dug through the numbers and something jumped out immediately. Out of 488 people who had registered for the masterclass, only four people had actually reached the pitch. Four. Not four percent, four people out of four hundred and eighty eight that registered. Now all of a sudden the lack of sales made a lot more sense. Because if only four people were hearing the offer, we don't really have a sales problem, we have a masterclass consumption problem. This is why I always say you need to examine the data and identify where people are dropping off before you start changing your strategy. Don't guess and make assumptions. Because imagine if we'd immediately switched to a paid masterclass. We could have spent weeks rebuilding the funnel, changing the pricing, changing the positioning, and changing the messaging, and we'd still have the same underlying issue. People weren't getting through to the pitch. So the next step was figuring out why. We started looking at where people were dropping off during the masterclass itself. Was it random? Was it happening throughout? Or was there some sort of pattern? And sure enough there was. Because people were consistently dropping off around the same point. That's actually good news because it made it easier to diagnose the problem. It gave us a clue. This and it gave us some patterns to look at. Patterns help us identify what needs attention first. Once we could see where people were leaving, my client was able to review that section of the masterclass and make some changes. She ended up re-recording the masterclass and tightening things up considerably. At the same time, we also looked at the first few emails people receive after registering. Because if people aren't watching the masterclass, sometimes the issue starts before they even click play. We updated some of the messaging in those first few emails. We made the value of attending clearer. We gave people stronger reasons to watch with urgency added in. And we made sure the focus wasn't just on registering, it was actually to go and watch the masterclass. Because those registrations don't create sales, it's people that actually watch the masterclass. We need people watching all the way through, as it is those people that see the pitch after the masterclass training that are most likely to purchase our offer. Now we're only in the early stages of testing the updated version, but the initial results are looking really promising. In the first week alone, we've already had more people reach the pitch than we had previously, which tells us we're moving in the right direction. Now we'll continue monitoring the funnel closely. We'll watch how many people get through to the sales page, we'll monitor the sales emails, we'll look at conversions, and then we'll optimize the next piece if and when it's needed. Because that's how successful funnels are built. Not through guessing, not through starting from scratch every time something doesn't work, but through testing, measuring and improving. And I think this is one of the biggest differences between business owners who are struggling to grow and those who are successful. The struggling business owner sees something not working and immediately assumes everything is broken and continues to start over and over. They scrap the funnel, they create a new lead magnet, they record a new webinar, they build a new landing page, they start again. The successful business owner gets curious. They ask where is the problem? What's actually happening? What are the numbers telling me? And then they make targeted improvements. Because most of the time you don't need to rebuild the whole thing. You just need to identify where the first problem is and fix it before moving on. I often think about funnels like renovating a house. If you walk into a house and notice one or a couple of rooms need attention, you don't automatically bulldoze the entire thing and start again. You fix the first room that's not working, then you move on to the next area. And over time you've transformed the whole house. Funnels work exactly the same way. You don't need to rebuild everything every time results aren't where you want them to be. You identify the area that needs attention first, improve it, and then look at the next piece. The goal isn't perfection, it's continuous improvement. Because even the best marketers in the world don't get everything right the first time. They test, they refine, they adjust, and they improve. And then they do it over and over again. So the key takeaway for this episode is don't automatically assume everything is wrong when your funnel isn't converting. Before you burn it all down and start from scratch again, look at where people are dropping off. Look at where they're getting stuck and fix that piece first. You might be much closer to a profitable funnel than you realize. Thank you so much for listening in today. I hope this episode encourages you to get curious about your own funnels and look at the data before making big changes. And if you need help identifying where your funnel is leaking, that's exactly the kind of thing we work through inside Abundant Ads Academy. As always, if you've enjoyed today's episode, I'd love for you to leave a review or share it with another business owner who would find it helpful. Thank you for listening in, and I'll catch you again next week.