How do you keep leads from dropping out of your funnel?

The first step to keeping your leads from dropping out of your funnel is to understand who they are, what they need, and how they behave. The second step in my opinion is to stay persistent in communicating with your leads. I am aware this can be harder said than done but can be great practice.

I would also recommend analysing the lead generation channels and the communication used to obtain those leads. For example, I find a lead generated through a search campaign more effective than a lead generated through social media. The needs and drivers are different, social media leads may need more nurturing, while search leads may be more qualified.

1.Know Your Audience: Understand your target audience's needs and preferences. 2.Segment Leads: Group leads by their stage in the sales funnel. 3.Personalize Communication: Tailor messages to individual leads. 4.Provide Value: Offer valuable content to keep leads engaged. 5.Nurture with Email: Use email marketing to nurture leads over time. 6.Offer Incentives: Provide discounts or free trials to encourage action. 7.Use Retargeting Ads: Re-engage leads with targeted ads. 8.Prioritize Customer Support: Offer excellent support to build trust. 9.Simplify Conversion: Make the conversion process user-friendly. 10.Analyze and Improve: Continuously measure and optimize your funnel.

From the perspective of a solo entrepreneur and social media influencer, my goal is to always be in front of my prospects. It’s impossible to be physically in front on them all every day, but I can be on their phone every day. When they scroll social media they’ll see me giving value, being authentic, getting to know me. It’s a great feeling when you meet someone in person for the first time and they act like they’ve known you for years. That’s how I know my social media presence is impacting them. I’ve had people say they look forward to reading my posts daily. When your potential prospects enjoy following your social media journey, you’ll never lose them as a lead. Inspire them, make them laugh, and let them into your life.

RELEVANCE. your funnel must be relevant to solve their issue, or they drop out. If you don't do a convincing job out of guiding them toward the solution in a clear and relevant way, they wonder where they are and why and they leave.

What I find helpful is understanding the needs of your clients and prospects is essential and trying to tailor your offer. Doing a thorough segmentation exercise will also help. Follow up, follow up and be sure to add value

The key thing to watch for prior to establishing a lead nurture strategy for your campaign is to transparently and objectively evaluate the stage your leads are in at the moment. From experience, I find that marketers and opportunity identifiers (be it digital sales, face to face sales or channel partners) tend to overestimate their leads' readiness to purchase and, consequently, leads are placed on an unrealistic lead progression/nurture track resulting in frustration for both the customer and the brand. Moreover, an agile approach to lead nurture is needed to continuously assess if leads are progressing through the funnel or if they stopped responding to the brand efforts to increase their purchase readiness.

When you know what your following wants, keep giving it to them. For example, I know most of the people that follow me love personal development, they want to be motivated, and they want to read about real life experiences. This is the type of content I continue to share day in and day out. The result is a strong, loyal following. They keep coming back because they know exactly what to expect from me, and I deliver.

Do not try to sell right away, Understand why the customer engaged with a certain content or what are they working on or what is their pain point - Post which share relevant content or inputs that is of relevance to your prospective customer. Keep in touch over an email or phone and progress the lead.

When nurturing your leads, you need to develop a digital strategy to engage and convert prospects. This involves creating a well-connected content calendar that includes different types of content to present to prospects to increase their engagement and impressions. This means that your content can sometimes be either images, text, visuals or audiovisuals. A well delivered and informed content will always leave a mark on the prospect's mind and keep them coming back for more.

Not all leads are sales ready and this requires specific marketing and sales plans, online and offline, to engage with the warm and cold lead to increase the awareness, create trustability and convince the prospect to became a customer.

In my experience the most optimal and organic way of generating leads is a self-perpetuating process which is “Word of Mouth” referrals. By being consistent in your quality and authenticity, your existing customers are your lead generation tools. Give your best and find your customer base expanding on its own. In my business, I create post to engage my customers only. Branding is keeping your existing funnel intact and capitalizing it with the authenticity you deliver. Less cost, less pain, and more output! 🤞

Segment your leads list for personalized marketing efforts. Then, nurture them with content and engagement tactics relevant to the lead(s), depending on the stages of the conversion funnel: ToFu, MoFu, BoFu. Your best chance is to influence them as PQLs and build trust by giving them the chance to explore your product firsthand. On the other hand, sales promotions will also entice them to give your product a chance, especially if you’re selling a SaaS product. Being present, listening to what they like and don’t like through metrics, and enhancing your purchasing journey will be your go-to strategy.

Make sure you have segmented correctly and use your segmentation as another tool for optimization - checking which messaging and channel works best with each segment

A great way to optimize your funnel is to review your analytics and find the specific step(s) where you are losing most leads. Then, go through the experience of the lead at that stage and place yourself in their shoes. What is a possible reason they could have churned at this stage? Write out your hypotheses and test them one by one to find the element that is causing churn.

Firstly you should understand why the leads are dropping out of your funnel followed by knowing their characteristics - was a problem statement defined, did they have a roadmap in place and why even they contacted you at the first place and has that changed over time. These data points will drive you to onboard the leads that are worth your and your teams time than reaching out to all leads. Understand you are adding value to those customers who value what you provide not forcing them to be your consumer.

Retention is very important, as the companies need time to achieve the marketing and sales ROI and maximize the customer lifetime value. To recover acquisition costs need time and personalized marketing and sales programs to reinforce the relationship with customers and increase the sales. In this phase I suggest to implement the Account-based Marketing approach and methodologies.

To retain existing customers you should follow closely usage data for your product and have a process in place specifically for customers who are not using it enough or have a drop in usage.

Close the loop by using positive customer feedback in your lead acquisition strategies and your communication to existing leads. Not only is social proof one of the best conversion mechanics, using the verbiage of your customer will often resonate better with existing leads than the copy you wrote yourself. This is the language they use to describe you, and using their voice will help you communicate more effectively with them.

Here’s what’s hard about building leakproof funnels. They are complex for you, and super simple and natural for your leads. At every stage of the funnel, the next step should feel like a natural progression. Along with that, there should be several options for the lead to self determine which way to move forward. Everything else is considered in other points, except this crucial point of actually designing an effective funnel.