Optimism or Sabotage? Watch Out For This Marketing Pitfall.

The best marketing plans take a realistic approach.

A colleague reached out to me, unable to contain her excitement. After taking a small hiatus from her business for personal reasons, Susan was inspired to re-engage her business with a brand new $5,000 group coaching program - and wanted to sell 15 spots in two weeks. 

The icing on the cake? During her time off, Susan attended a free webinar for a funnel software system that promised “an endless supply of leads while you sleep” and she couldn’t whip out her credit card fast enough to purchase it.  

“So, can you help me create the funnel system so I can fill all the coaching spots in two weeks?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. How was I going to tell her that, despite the glossy promises from the webinar, she had seriously underestimated three critical aspects of selling her offer?

It’s not her fault - I blame the marketing hype. But the real question was: what to do next? We hopped on a call, and I shared 3 areas that she had unwittingly underestimated - and then we moved on to what to do instead. 

1. Underestimating your current visibility and reach.

When Susan took time off her business, she essentially disappeared. For several months, she wasn’t attending industry conferences or networking events. She wasn’t showing up on social media except for a handful of intermittent posts. She had neglected her email list entirely. 

I didn’t blame her - we’ve all had to take a break. But that meant that Susan’s visibility had softened while she was away. She was a solo professional and hadn’t created a “visibility maintenance plan” while she was away.

I’ll be honest here -  I have experienced this myself personally. For some planned time off, I slowed down my networking, connections, social media, and email marketing, and was astonished at how quickly our visibility can plummet - and how long it can take to regain it.

When setting up a marketing campaign or specific sales goals, take an honest look at your current visibility:

• How many people are opening your emails - and how often are you connecting with them?

• How many impressions are your social media posts receiving - and how often are you showing up online?

• How many events (virtual or in-person) are you attending?

• How many relationships are you actively cultivating? 

Don't underestimate the gap between where you are vs. where you want to be. This is important information! Once you’ve identified the gap, you can adapt your marketing plan (for organic and/or paid) accordingly to grow your visibility enough to get enough sales based on your audience and your conversion rate.

2. Underestimating your conversion rate.

Speaking of conversion rate, do you know what yours is?  A conversion rate is the percentage of sales (conversion) that you make on any given action or campaign. 

Let’s start with some industry averages here, using email as an example. Studies show that the average conversion rate for emails is anywhere from 2-5%.  This means that - all other factors notwithstanding - the average marketer can expect a well-executed email campaign to convert into a sale for about 2-5% of your qualified email recipients.  

Let’s take Susan’s example (and my apologies if this feels like one of those “train left the station” high school math problems):

• Susan wanted to sell 15 seats of her $5,000 group coaching program. 

• If she had a conservative 2% conversion rate, she would need to promote the offer to 750 highly interested buyers that open the email. And 15 is 2% of 750. 

• Let’s also say Susan’s average open rate was 30% (which is also industry average).  Since only about 30% of her email subscribers actually open her emails, Susan would need to send to about 2,500 of qualified recipients in order to potentially sell 15 seats, because 750 is 30% of 2,500.

At the time, Susan only had around 1,500 subscribers on her email list - and she wasn’t even sure they were good candidates for this type of group coaching. So she was definitely short of the 2,500 qualified email subscribers to sell this program in 2 weeks.

“But,” Susan asked, “What about this new sales funnel software that’s supposed to bring me a steady stream of leads?”

Which leads me to the third underestimation that can negatively affect your sales.

We've all done it....seriously underestimated how much effort it will take to successfully market and product or service.

3. Underestimating the amount of time it takes to convert.

Could Susan use a finely tuned organic sales funnel to fill this program? Absolutely, and she should.

Where I needed to counsel Susan was the amount of time it would take to find cold leads, attract them into her funnel, and convert them to the tune of $5,000 each. Especially when Susan was not a well-known brand (see underestimation #1). 

Because Susan had not been building up her brand equity, it was going to be harder for her to sell out her seats in such a short time frame. This was not a $5 impulse buy item that you might find at the end cap of the grocery story - this was several thousand dollars and a large time commitment.  

For each of these new (and cold) leads, she needed to build up their trust and provide proof that their $5,000 (and multiple hour) investment was going to yield the right rewards. Because she was not highly visible and had not cultivated a following (yet), she didn’t have a big fan base to provide the social proof. 

Susan had seriously underestimated the amount of time she would need to earn their trust in order to convert the sale. Not every offer needs a long conversion timeline. But the higher the investment (and higher the stakes), the more brand equity, trust, and proof you’ll need to convert the sale. 

So what to do?  Recalibrate your estimates (and expectations).

With a situation like Susan’s, I start by looking at all of these factors:

• Current visibility (brand awareness, channels, followers, subscribers, etc.)

• Business and sales objectives

• The gap between current qualified leads and desired qualified leads needed to achieve those objectives

• Ways to find and collect those qualified leads

• Time and approach to promote the offer (and what to do with the “not ready yets”)

It’s easy to underestimate the time, money, and effort it requires to put together thoughtful and successful marketing campaigns.

Glib marketing headlines such as “double your revenue” and “flood your inbox with leads”  are catchy but don’t always give the full picture. They show you what’s possible, but not always probable (depending on a lot of factors that won’t fit on a sales page). Here’s where working with a marketing professional is worth its weight in gold. 

I find that by embracing a realistic view of the entire sales funnel from top to bottom can actually inform a better plan to meet your goals, including adjusting your targets, forecasts, and resource allocation.

For Susan, she realized that the current situation wasn’t going to support a compressed time frame. In this case, implementing strategic paid ads, tapping into the network of her power partners, and extending the marketing campaign timeline would create a more effective approach. Not as immediate as the sales funnel system webinar suggested, but far more successful. 

Christine McShane is a content marketer, messaging strategist, and copywriter for Christine McShane Creative. She creates simple and effective marketing strategies for small brands, including crafting overall brand marketing and sales campaigns for specific offers. Want help? Contact Christine McShane Creative here. 

Images were created by AI to illustrate the points of this article.