#33 - Can you audit my funnel for me?

Broken funnels are hard to fix. Good funnels kind of have to be created that way from the start.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd, Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking, nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit, too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 33 of the Doing It Online podcast. I'm your host, Kate McKibbin from HelloFunnels. And today I want to answer a question that for some reason, just really weirdly, I've been asked a ton lately. And that question is like, people have been DMing me left, right and center saying, hey, I've built a funnel. It doesn't work. Do you do funnel audits? Can you help me fix it? So I wanted to create this episode today because, no, I don't do funnel audits, but I still want to be able to help and give you the advice that's going to help you get that funnel unstuck and working. So let's dive on into that.

Hey, guys. So like I said, there's been. I don't know what is going on in the world right now. I. It's almost laughable, but the number of DMS I'm getting right now asking me the exact same thing that, you know, do you do funnel audits? Can you help me fix my funnel? It's insane. I've never been asked the same question so many times, particularly a question that I'm not really out there talking about. Yes, I talk about funnels, but I don't talk about fixing them. I talk about building them. So I found this to be a little strange and I. Whenever you have obviously all these, you know, I took it possibly as a sign from the universe, Instagram, I don't know that obviously there isn't the information out there that is going to help these people. So that is what this episode is about. However, the advice I'm going to give you today is not advice that you might love up front, but bear with me because it is going to save you a lot of time and money and hopefully make you a lot of money and make you some extra free time as well. So the, the bad news that I have for you is funnel audit, most likely 99% of the time is going to be a total waste of your time and money. Funnel audits and just anyone trying to fix a broken funnel. That's not really how it works. Broken funnels are hard to fix. Good funnels kind of have to be created that way from the start. So if you've been hanging around my part of the Internet for any period of time, you may have heard me say that one of my mottos is always test before you invest. And that means both investing money and time. And this is something that I am so firm on in my programs is when you're setting up one of our automations, like so many people, they just want to skip ahead. They always is a question we get asked all the time. So much so that I actually have prerecorded FAQs in the module directly below it, which is, can I just automate this right away? Do I have to test it? Because everyone wants to skip the testing. They're impatient. They just want to get to that part of their business where they have this amazing funnel and automation set up that makes them money and they don't have to do anything for it. And I get it, it's great. I was playing at the park with my kid the other day and I made a sale while I was pushing him on the swing and I was like, what is this life? This is, you know, this is great. However, you know, there is a process, there is a sequence you have to go through. There is a bit of investment in time, yes, to make sure these things work in the first place. And usually people want to skip those initial stages, those foundation building stages, and get to the fun part. However, what usually happens is, yes, they go and they, they build this funnel and they whack it up and they start running ads to it and then they don't make sales, they lose money and they go, oh, funnels don't work, or funnels don't work for me. Or, you know, it's all bs and that's, that's not true. You just missed a few steps. So I want to bring you back to the basics here of building out a funnel that works so that you can, you know, yes, maybe one or two of these tweaks may help you to fix your funnel, or maybe it will just help you give you the little slight but loving wrap across the knuckles that you need to get your funnel set up properly in the first place so you don't have to go out there and ask for someone to audit it because you know, it works before you even automate it. So what I mean by that is, and this is like, this is what we do inside our programs. Is we get everyone to create each piece of the funnel piece by piece and test it live first. So that means you have to test your offer. You know, you don't go and create a completely different offer that you've never offered before and put it into your funnel because you don't know how well it works. It may work amazingly, but it may be a total flop. And if you. The other reason, so just to backtrack slightly, the other reason I say break it down and test piece by piece is because when you set up a funnel, and this is why auditing just doesn't work, if you've gone and you haven't tested anything and you've just set up a funnel, there's so many. There's a lot of different pieces even in a simple funnel that are all clicked, all linked together and all affecting each other. And if you haven't tested things, so you go, look, I know this bit works, I know this bit works, I know this bit works. This bit's new. Or like, if you don't have that kind of baseline of what does and doesn't work, then as you, there is no way of knowing which of the piece of your funnel is the piece that's stopping it from working. It could be multiple pieces. So this is why, again, test before you invest. People always, always, always. Yes, you have to test it live first. And sure, if you don't have much of an email list or following to test it too, you may need to do some Facebook ads to it first, but you're going it to a live version of it first anyway, that's unrelated. We kind of like in ecourse empires, we go through my preferred process for people with no, you know, no lists and creating your offer and the first few launches you do and how to do it, when to start doing Facebook ads and stuff. But that's not what we're talking about today. So before I go off on too much of a tangent, let's come back to test before you invest and what exactly you need to test to make sure your funnels are actually going to work. So first of all, your offer, and this includes, I said this includes everything, like the bonuses you have, the pricing that you have. Again, I think a mistake I see a lot of people make is they go, all right, so I did this launch, it sold really well. I'm now going to put into a funnel, but I want to change what the offer is when I put it into a funnel. And I'm going to take this out and I'm going to put this in and I'm going to automate it and expect it to do as well. I was like, well, but you don't know, that thing you took out could have been the reason everybody bought and now no one's going to buy. And you're going to say it's the funnel's fault, but actually now it's the offer. So every single piece has to be tested. Test your offer, test your opt ins. Yes, this can be done later once you know your funnel is working and you're adding. If you want to add in a few more opt ins into it. But if you, if your opt in is the first piece of the puzzle, you gotta know that it is working well before you start spending any money. Otherwise you're gonna most likely waste a lot of it. Test the emails. So know the emails that you send in a funnel are not exactly the same as the ones you send in a launch, but your subject lines can be the bulk of it can be like you can, you know, take emails that you've sent in a launch and go that subject line did really well. We got really good open rates. This email did really well. It got really good clicks. And you can take the important parts of that and know that yes you'll probably write some new emails as well, but you can also once. So again I have like probably an over tester but it is important.

You know they say measure twice, cut once, stitching time, saves, whatever. That's what this is all this all is peeps. It's basically Nana's advice but applied to two funnels. But when it comes to actually, you know, once you've set up a certain email sequence, I still encourage people to invite their existing email list through that email sequence and see how you go again before you start spending money, before you start, you know, promoting it out in the world, make sure it works. Then you're gonna obviously test whatever your conversion event or tool is. So this could be a webinar, it could be an application, it could be something else, it could be a three part video series, although I don't love those. Evergreen whatever your conversion event is going to be, you need to have tested it live first. You need to know that it converted really well. So well in fact that if it only converted kind of half as well, you'd still be pretty happy with it if that was just running in the background without you having to launch. Because that's what's going to happen when you evergreen it. You usually expect about it to convert at about 50% of what you converted it live, but with the bonus of zero effort on your part because it's all running and you're doing all this stuff for you. So those are the four things that if you were going to try and self audit yourself or if you are setting up your own funnel and you know you're wanting to make sure you do it properly, make sure you've tested these four things. You've tested your offer, you've tested any opt ins and that includes like if your opt in is like a direct to a webinar or a workshop or masterclass, it's still anywhere people put their emails to enter your funnel counts as an opt in and you want to make sure that converts correctly. You're like, you want to make sure you're hitting the right milestones and right numbers there. Test your emails, send them to your existing list, make sure they get open, make sure they get clicked and test like all importantly testing those that conversion event. And I'd say that probably the two biggest areas I see where people's funnels aren't working and the reason why is it's the offer isn't, you know, isn't compelling enough or that conversion event isn't compelling enough and you know, there's lots of different tweaks you can do to make those to improve those. We go through that in heaps and heaps of detail in the program. I don't have time to do it today, but if you just know that those four things are working well, then you should be good to go with your funnel. And if your funnel isn't working and you kind of want to pull it apart slightly, you know, look at those things. Although I probably would suggest that you actually start from scratch, test each bit bit by bit and build it that way. That would be yes, I know it takes a little bit longer, but my gosh, it's oh so worth it. Like I said, pushing the kids on the swings and sales coming through, like what? Particularly if you're a new mum and it's pandemic, not much more that you could ask for really. So that's it for today, guys. Want to keep it short and sweet. Sorry if it wasn't exactly the silver bullet that you were looking for. I know that how tempting it can be to just want to just skip all those steps ahead, but it never really works in people's favor. No matter what kind of skip, what kind of steps you're looking to skip, you always kind of have to come back to the basics, make sure they work, master them, and then that will give you a really solid foundation for your business. So that's it for me, guys. I hope you've loved this episode. If you have, make sure you subscribe, make sure you share it with your other nerdy business friends. And until next week, guys, keep doing what you do and I'll see you online.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.