Conversion Funnel Optimisation: How to Drive Users to Action

Without a doubt, conversions play a crucial role in sales regardless of the business’s niche or size. And while you can convert a few users with a superficial approach, reaching game-changing conversion rates requires a well-thought-out conversion funnel.

However, creating an effective conversion funnel is a real challenge that requires expertise in multiple marketing fields. Likewise, you need advanced lead management software to be data-driven across the board and automate routines.

Continue reading to explore conversion funnel optimisation fundamentals and find the best practices to enhance your performance.

Book a demo to explore how Phonexa’s toolkit enhances funnel optimisation.

What Is a Conversion Funnel?

A conversion funnel is, in fact, a consumer processing algorithm that helps you send the right message to the right lead at the right time so you can effectively nurture and convert them into customers. Among other things, you coordinate emails, social media posts, website content, and ads, developing a comprehensive marketing strategy that caters to all your audience segments.

With a well-designed conversion funnel, you have every chance to surpass the average lead-to-sales rates while also building a strong base for continuous improvement:

• Study your customers in depth to learn to produce resonating content, from awareness to retention 
• Allocate your resources optimally, drawing on key performance indicators (KPIs) across your campaigns
• Improve customer retention by routing them through a funnel and nurturing them beyond

Comparing Conversion, Marketing, & Sales Funnels

Type	Objective	Key Metrics
Conversion funnel	Drives a user to convert into a buyer, subscriber, or application user, etc.	Conversion rate, click-through rate, cart abandonment rate, etc.
Sales funnel	Persuades a user to purchase without focusing on brand awareness and customer loyalty	Sales qualified leads (SQL) and deal close rate
Marketing funnel	Besides driving conversions, generates brand evangelists by nurturing users beyond the bottom of the funnel	Customer retention rate, repeat purchase rate, and customer lifetime value

Conversion Funnel: 3 Stages

Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

First of all, to get consumers into your funnel, you need to  build an ideal customer profile (ICP):

• Demographics: Age, gender, location, salary, and marital status
• Firmographics (only for B2B): Company size, industry, growth trends, and location
• Psychographics: Values, beliefs, goals, pain points, and interests

“For any campaign you’re doing, ask this: Who’s my ICP? How am I bringing value? Not, “what is my product due –” that’s not the question to ask. What’s their problem, and how am I solving it? Is this really being distributed effectively? – Talar Malakian

You want to use TOFU to establish your brand as a helpful resource, for which, according to an estimated 16.4 billion daily Google searches, SEO fits well. 

For example, if your audience is looking for financial services, you may target it with SEO-optimised “Where to Take a Loan?” or “5 Common Mortgage Myths Debunked” posts. While educational content like this builds trust for your brand, implementing banners or mentioning your offers discreetly plants a seed of interest in your audience’s minds – content at the following stages cultivates it into a conversion.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

After your prospects consume enough of your educational content, they start to evaluate their options – that’s when they’re in the middle of the funnel.

Now, you want to position your offer as a solution to one’s problem without being obtrusive. A popular way to achieve this is to create product comparisons for websites or, if your audience prefers it, social media.

If you deploy your content across multiple platforms, it’s essential to connect it to your omnichannel marketing strategy.  Add “Share” buttons to your website articles so readers can share them across channels.

Dedicate a significant portion of your MOFU content to gathering users’ contact data, such as email addresses or phone numbers, for personalised email and SMS campaigns – Phonexa’s E-Delivery powers both. 

With E-Delivery, you can measure the deliverability of your content, segment your audience by response behaviours, and gain granular SMS dissemination controls. A/B testing, a part of the E-Delivery package, enables you to test Phonexa-driven upgrades and identify what works best.

 

Take a product tour and explore how Phonexa’s E-Delivery can enhance your SMS and email campaigns. 

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

Your prospects are already well aware of your offer, and educational posts are no longer relevant – it’s time to roll out the strongest marketing incentives:

• Limited-time offers: Stress an urgency through expiring discounts and time counters
• Retargeting: Send emails offering discount codes for items left in the shopping cart
• Free trials: If you sell digital products, offer users to test them for free within a limited time or with restricted functionality
• Refunds: Promise users to return their money if they’re not satisfied with a product or service

While these techniques may work through social media or websites, it’s more effective to deliver them via email letters, which, thanks to their granular personalisation, are more capable of driving a reader to action.

Best Conversion Funnel Optimisation Strategies

1. Website Optimisation

Your website is a focal point of your conversion funnel – optimising it is a top priority.

These practices will elevate your website in search engine results pages (SERP):

Type of SEO	How to carry out
Technical	Structure your website, improve loading speed, and make sure your website is mobile-friendly, secure, and that all important pages are indexed
Internal	Use keywords, interlink your pages, divide your content into smaller paragraphs, lists, and headers, produce meta tags, and write alt tags for images
External	Acquire backlinks through guest posting and brand mentions

2. Social Media Page Optimisation

Much like websites, social media pages don’t gain visibility unless you put in effort.

Here’s how to optimise your Instagram, LinkedIn, or other media:

• Complete your bio and contact information
• Implement keywords and hashtags
• Create useful content, occasionally repurposing it from your website
• Encourage your audience to comment, like, and subscribe to leverage algorithms
• Post your content at the times of your audience’s peak activity

3. Email Marketing Optimisation

You only need 3 basic things to optimise your emails at a basic level:

1. Catchy subject line: Ensure that the subject line states the benefit, arouses curiosity, or even poses an exciting challenge, etc., while being up to 60 characters long
2. Reader-focused body: It should present benefits that are relevant to the recipient, while maintaining a tone of voice that aligns with your brand’s image
3. Clear CTA: Conclude your email with a call to action, ensuring there’s no friction between your offer and the reader

 

But then again, you can make your emails even more effective by coordinating them into a series. For example, if you know that a specific user abandoned a shopping cart before making a purchase, your series may look like this:

1. A friendly reminder that features the item a person wanted to buy
2. A small discount as a renegagement incentive
3. A time-limited discount to evoke urgency

 

4. Launch Ad Campaigns

• TOFU: Broad ads with rather educational than promotional content
• MOFU: Specific ads that retarget users who have already engaged with your content
• BOFU: Highly persuasive ads with a strong call to action, designed to convert a user

5. Gather Metrics and Continuously Optimise Conversions

Whether you operate a website, an email campaign, a social media page, or all three, conversion funnel analytics can help you optimise your conversion funnel across stages. 

Here are some of the primary conversion funnel metrics:

Metric	Stands for	Applies to
Click-through rate	The percentage of users who click your link in SERPs	Websites
Reach	The number of unique users who see your content through feed, shares, or recommendations	Social media
Open rate	The percentage of recipients who opened your email letter	Email

Use these and other KPIs to identify faults within your funnel and eliminate them. For example, if many people open your emails but don’t convert, it means that your subject line is persuasive, but the overall message is off.

6. Collect Users’ Data through Sign-Ups

Some marketers don’t realise that you don’t necessarily have to collect users’ contact information through submission forms – you can also do it through sign-ups. 

To make it work, hide some useful website content behind the sign-up and enable registration through email or social networks. Next, ask registered users for permission to send them marketing messages, which is essential to avoid jeopardising your deliverability, and append new recipients to your campaigns.

7. Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

CRO is a marketing practice designed to simplify the conversion process. To achieve it, you must collect users’ behavioural data, which you can’t do with mere UTM tags – you need a comprehensive solution like HitMetrix.

Here are some of its features:

• Session replays: View recordings of website sessions to identify areas of frustration 
• Heatmaps: Inspect your website pages through colour prisms that highlight friction points, clicks, mouseouts, and more
• Friction evaluation: Explore decisions that yield conversions or cause users to bounce

 

CRO algorithm available to HitMetrix users:

1. Identify friction points: Analyse behavioural data through recordings or heatmaps to reveal problematic spots
2. Develop solutions: Devise several solutions that you believe must eliminate friction points
3. Test results: Measure KPIs to identify what performs optimally

 

Get Your All-in-One Performance Marketing Software Suite with Phonexa

Relying on guesswork when optimising your conversion funnels won’t get you far. That’s why you need Phonexa, an all-in-one solution that provides businesses with actionable insights and game-changing performance marketing tools:

• LMS Sync: Track your leads’ journeys, distribute them according to pre-set parameters, and receive real-time feedback to enhance your campaigns
• Cloud PBX: Score your agent’s productivity to stimulate their improvement and integrate with an uninterrupted cloud-based phone system
• Call Logic: Track and distribute your callers and set up an interactive voice response to handle larger call volumes
• Lynx: Acquire tracking links that reveal the traffic sources, such as specific campaigns and channels

 

Get Phonexa’s all-in-one performance marketing software suite at a single price:

 

Build your plan now, or take a product tour to explore Phonexa’s innovative solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between conversion and sales funnel optimisation?

Given that the sales funnel is a type of conversion funnel, their optimisation strategies align:

• Get your SEO in place
• Produce personalised emails
• Deploy ads
• Conduct CRO

The only difference is that the sales funnel coordinates its efforts to drive a sale, while the conversion funnel may focus on generating app downloads, subscriptions, or other actions. 

What tools can I use to optimise funnels?

Any service that gathers KPIs, such as conversion, bounce, or click-through rates, is a foundational tool for funnel optimisation. You should build upon it based on your business needs. Thus, interactive voice response suits companies with high call volumes, while email automation software is great for managing multiple email campaigns.

What is funnel optimisation for affiliates?

Affiliates align their funnels with business goals, such as generating leads or driving sales. They produce content that sets the stage for affiliate links, banners, or forms that promote specific products or services.