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Funnel Mistakes: Start to Avoid Them Once and Forever

Even professional funnel builders conduct silly mistakes that may ruin their business. Creating a sales funnel is something more complicated than projecting a building or preparing a piece of art. In fact, it’s a combination of two. If you have a desire to expand your existing customer base by encouraging new hungry customers to buy your product or service, this strategy will definitely work.

In case you are one of those entrepreneurs who start their business online and you have a string desire to make money through selling, you don’t have to be a great sales person. It’s crucial to avoid typical mistakes that young start-ups face.

1. Single Founder
It may sound a little bit boastful when one says he will handle everything all alone. That’s exactly how you look like when you decide to run a business all by yourself in order to “gain more.” In fact, you risk losing more money due to the lack of support. Mind that such successful companies you think of as having one founder, like Oracle, possess two or more “fathers” who are both investors and big bosses.

Having a single owner is a vote of no confidence. Perhaps, his idea was a failure from the beginning. Serious partners prefer companies with two or more co-founders. Sooner or later a single owner realizes he needs someone to brainstorm with, cheer him up, or prevent from potential mistakes without fearing that his original ideas will be shared with any third party.

2. Being “Yes” Man
C’mon, it’s not just another Jim Carrey movie. If you wish to become good at sales, there is a lot of money to be made. This goal requires certain sacrifices, including saying “no.” 

People who provoke you to say “yes” are your customers, of course. When seeing how much you depend on his money, the customer may start overloading you with different requests by turning you into the slave. It is better to evaluate your opportunities and learn demand & supply curve before agreeing on everything.

3. Not hiding details
Telling just EVERYTHING about your product or service is not always good. It is critical to mention the main features and price. However, you don’t need to open all secrets so that the customer remains intrigued but ensured in the product’s quality at the same time.

Besides, too much information leads to confusion. Only those who are sure in what they’ll get are ready to pay. Avoid including technical jargon. Instead of technical writers, it is better to hire creative and business-oriented copywriters who will make all descriptions clear and concise. 

Marketing automation is a separate art on how to attract your customers with individual messages. As it is admitted by Michal Leszczynski in his book on marketing automation and e-commerce, “the barriers to entry for new players tend to be relatively low.” That is why the best way to stand out from your competitors is to create unique text and visual content that can be sent to your existing and potential customer base on a regular basis.

4. Selecting location carelessly
You may think that coffee machines will be equally profitable everywhere, but that’s not true. As statistics shows, Silicon Valley dominates, then Boston, Seattle, and so on. Houston and Chicago are far behind when it comes to the portion of start-ups.

Some cities become startup hubs without being overpopulated. You have to be ready to move elsewhere to launch your business or work remotely. You can also hire freelancers to do job in different regions.

5. Underestimating the role of testing
Testing is not another buzzword in marketing. If done correctly, it can lead to the brand new way to run your business.

For instance, an A/B test of an e-mail marketing campaign can assist in evaluating and deciding if your target audience reacts to personalization, specific calls-to-action (such as urgency or exclusivity), image placement, etc.

Testing can increase conversions and provide you with future vision.

Melissa Burns is an entrepreneur with six years of experience in marketing and SEO. Burns began her career as an independent journalist, right after graduating from Iowa State University in 2008. Her favorite fields of research are startups, marketing, and IT--in particular, IT implementation in the sphere of education.