E49: How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel Without Guessing or Burning Cash
If your marketing feels inconsistent, it is probably not because you need more leads. It is because you are not optimizing what you already have. Most business owners build a funnel, throw traffic at it, and hope for the best. That is not a strategy. That is gambling.
In this episode, I walk through step three of the Marketing Domination framework and show you how I actually optimize sales funnels for real businesses. We cover the exact data you should be tracking, what automations stop leads from slipping through the cracks, and how to use AI without turning your marketing into a mess.
Optimization is not a one-time task. It is how businesses grow, scale, and dominate their local market long term.
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P.S. When you are ready, here are a few ways I can help…
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Schedule A Call to Build, Fill, and Optimize Your Sales Funnel For More Leads: https://www.seangarner.co/
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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MARKETING DOMINATION PODCAST
Introduction
Sean Garner [00:00]:
Okay, so you’ve built your sales funnel. You’ve done all the right things to make sure your branding, website, CRM, and follow-ups are on point. You’ve even started to fill your sales funnel. You’ve got your SEO, your paid traffic, and all of your content in place to get people into your sales funnel.
How do you know if it’s actually working or not? Well, that’s the whole point of today’s episode. This is step three of the Marketing Domination framework, which is all about how to optimize your sales funnel so your business keeps growing and you stand out online. Welcome to Marketing Domination.
Data, Automation, AI
Sean Garner [01:59]:
Okay, so this part of the Marketing Domination framework is where we start to really dive deep and learn what’s working so we know what to double down on.
With that being said, not everything I say today is going to apply to every single business. What I want to do is get you thinking about how I approach things and how I would start to optimize a sales funnel. There are really just three key points you need to understand as you go through this.
The first is data. What data points do we need to be looking at to evaluate what’s happening?
The second is automation. What are some things we could automate in our business? I want to give you examples of things we’ve seen in other businesses and things we do in our own businesses so you can start getting your mind spinning about what’s possible.
The third is AI. How can we bring AI into some of these marketing tasks to better leverage what we’re already doing and get better results?
The first part of optimizing your sales funnel is taking a deep dive into what you’re currently doing and how you can make it better. What’s working, what needs improvement, and where your highest-paying or best customers are coming from.
This really comes down to your foundational data. Unfortunately, when we first start working with a lot of business owners and ask how things are going, the answers are usually, “Well, it seems like,” or “My gut just feels like.” There’s nothing concrete because they haven’t taken the time to build out proper data tracking.
So when business feels slow, they don’t actually know how things have performed historically.
Foundational Data Most Businesses Never Track
Sean Garner [03:52]:
A few things I always want to make sure you have in place for your business, marketing, and website are, first, knowing what data you should be looking at, and second, making sure you actually have access to it.
Unfortunately, a lot of times when we work with clients who’ve been with another agency, that agency controlled everything. The business owners don’t even have access to their historical data.
A few key things you want to make sure you have access to, or are actively tracking, start with Google Analytics. Google Analytics gives you a snapshot—a holistic picture—of all the marketing efforts happening on your website. It shows you how many people came to your site, what they did once they were there, and where they came from, whether that’s paid ads, SEO, direct traffic, or social.
Google Analytics gives you that big-picture view of what’s happening on your website. From there, we want to dive into more specific platforms to see what’s happening at a deeper level.
When it comes to SEO, one of those platforms is Google Search Console. Remember, SEO today isn’t just search engine optimization—it’s search everywhere optimization. Google Search Console shows you specifically how you’re ranking and performing on Google Search. It doesn’t take into account Bing, other search engines, or tools like ChatGPT and other LLMs.
But since Google is still the largest place customers are finding local service-based businesses, that’s where we really want to focus. Google Search Console gives us a strong indicator of how things are performing overall.
When you’re looking at Google Search Console, you’re going to see things like impressions, keywords, positions, rankings, and how you’re performing on Google Search.
Website and SEO Metrics That Actually Matter
Sean Garner [05:51]:
When you look at Google Analytics and Google Search Console together, that gives you your foundational data. That’s how you start knowing what’s actually working and where people are coming from.
The sooner you get these set up, the better, because they cannot backdate data. If they’re already set up and you’re just now getting access, you can look at historical data. But if they’re not set up at all, you can’t install them today and see how your site performed last year. They only start tracking from the moment they’re installed. That’s why it’s critical to get this in place as early as possible and monitor it regularly.
I know this data can feel overwhelming, especially if you’ve never been inside Google Analytics or Google Search Console. So I want to explain some of the terminology, what you should be looking at, and a few high-level numbers that actually matter.
At our agency, Sean Garner Consulting, we put this into a clean, easy-to-read report for our clients. We even include AI overviews that help explain the numbers. But if you don’t have that, you still need to understand what these big numbers mean and how to view them to know what’s working.
The first thing I want to know is how many people are coming to your website. I typically look at this on a month-over-month basis. If your business is seasonal or newer, month-over-month trends are important. If it’s seasonal, I also want to look at year-over-year.
How is this month performing compared to the same month last year? That helps us make sure everything we’re doing is continuing to drive growth.
You’ll find this data inside Google Analytics, usually listed as sessions or events. That tells you how many people came to your website. If you don’t want to get overwhelmed, you can simply track this in a basic Google Sheet, or you can use free tools like Google Looker Studio.
Sean Garner [08:10]:
You can build custom reports and everything for this, but the first thing you should know is how many people are coming to your website every single month.
The second thing we want to know is how many people took an action on your website. Depending on your business, that action might be filling out a form, booking an appointment, or calling you. So you want to be tracking how many calls or conversions are coming directly from your website.
The next thing we want to look at is where those people are coming from. Are we seeing growth from social media because we’ve started posting more content? Are more people coming from SEO or paid ads?
A lot of times, business owners assume social media is working because their friends love their videos. But when we look at the data, we often find that very few people are actually coming from social. Instead, they’re coming from SEO or pay-per-click ads.
If we don’t pay attention to this data and make decisions based on real numbers, we’re just guessing. We keep spinning our wheels and wondering why things feel inconsistent. That’s because we don’t have baseline metrics to compare against.
At a minimum, you should know three things from your website: how many people are visiting, what they’re doing once they’re there, and where they’re coming from. Those give you strong indicators of where to spend more time and where there may be blind spots.
For example, you might think you’re getting a ton of traffic from Google, but when you look at the data, your organic traffic is actually really low. That shows a clear opportunity to improve and optimize your SEO.
The second set of data I want to look at is Google Search Console. Inside there, I want to see impressions, which is how many times your website shows up in search results. I want to see what keywords you’re starting to gain traction on and what keywords your website is currently ranking for.
Keywords are simply the terms people type into Google to find your website. Another key metric tied to keywords and impressions is your position or ranking. I want to see where you’re ranking for those keywords and whether those rankings are improving.
Google Business Profile, Calls, and Real Lead Signals
Sean Garner [10:28]:
The fourth metric is something called your CTR, or click-through rate. This is a simple math equation. It shows how many times your website appeared as an impression versus how many clicks it received. That ratio is your click-through rate.
The goal with all of this is growth. We want our website to show up more often. We want it to appear for more keywords. We want our positions to improve, meaning our rankings are increasing. And we want our click-through rate to go up so that not only are more people seeing our website, but more people are actually clicking on it.
The third area of data is your Google Business Profile, or GBP. I want to share how I typically show this to clients. Inside your Google Business Profile, there are a few key things you can see. By the way, what I’m describing here is just a sample of the report we send our clients. It pulls everything into one place—Google Search Console, Google Analytics, keyword ranking changes, pay-per-click data, and even LLM visibility tracking, which we recently started doing.
When it comes to your GBP, one of the main things I like to look at is heat maps. We build these for our clients so they can see exactly how they’re ranking for specific keywords in different parts of the city. You can do this yourself using tools like GMB Everywhere and checking locations one at a time. What we do is track keywords across geographic regions so we can see how well the map listing is performing in different areas.
That’s what I want to see for Google Business Profile—how rankings are improving by location. You can also look directly inside your GBP to see impressions and whether your listing is showing up more frequently. You don’t need special reporting for that; you can see it right inside the platform.
Sean Garner [12:36]:
A few other data points I want to look at are phone calls. If you don’t have call tracking set up, I strongly encourage you to do that. There are a few ways to handle it. At a minimum, you should be tracking how many times the phone rings each month.
Even if you don’t want advanced call tracking that shows whether calls came from PPC, SEO, or your website, you should at least know how many calls you’re getting. Not everything will be perfectly accurate, but if your marketing is working, your phone should be ringing more and your website forms should be getting filled out more.
If you don’t track this and have a real number to look at month over month, you can’t get frustrated when marketing feels like it isn’t working. If you won’t take the time to track the data, don’t be surprised when it feels inconsistent. At the very least, log how many calls or text messages you receive each month.
The next data point is email. This refers to outgoing email and SMS campaigns, not inbound messages. For these, there are two key metrics to look at: opens and clicks.
With SMS, open rates are usually close to 100 percent because when a text comes in, people almost always see it. With email, open rates are largely dictated by the subject line. If your open rates are low, it doesn’t mean the content inside the email was bad—it means the subject line didn’t entice people to open it.
That’s the kind of data we want to review so we can start optimizing email and SMS campaigns more effectively.
Automation That Stops Leads From Falling Through the Cracks
Sean Garner [14:36]:
When it comes to click rate, that’s tied to your calls to action and the content inside your marketing campaigns. If you’re getting high open rates but low clicks, it means you had a strong subject line that enticed people to open, but the content or call to action wasn’t strong enough to get them to take the next step.
On the flip side, if you have a really high click rate but lower open rates, that means your call to action is strong, but your subject line needs work to get more people to open the email.
That’s a high-level overview. If you’re still listening, I hope you didn’t zone out, because this stuff is important. That’s also why, at Sean Garner Consulting, we handle all of this for our clients—to make sure everything is optimized.
These are baseline data points that you need to, at a minimum, know exist, track, and review consistently so you understand how your marketing is performing. That’s the first part—data. Knowing your numbers.
The second part of optimizing your sales funnel is automation. Automation is all about identifying the things that need to get done in your business every single time. This is where I want you to put your marketing hat on and start thinking about which tasks you can automate inside your sales funnel so nothing gets missed.
The first one is appointment reminders. If your service allows people to schedule appointments or sales calls online, you should have automated reminders going out so they actually show up. This applies to service appointments and sales calls.
The second one—and this is a big one, especially for local service-based businesses—is Google review request automation. This should be a no-brainer. As soon as someone finishes their service, or when a specific event is triggered, they should automatically receive a Google review request.
And here’s the key: you don’t just ask once. You should ask at least three times. In the review automations we build for our clients, we send three requests, spaced three days apart.
Sean Garner [16:57]:
So we ask, wait three days. If they don’t leave a review, we ask again. Wait three more days. If they still don’t leave a review, we ask again. That gives us three total asks. What we’ve found is that the majority of reviews actually come in on the second ask. The next highest number comes from the third ask. The fewest reviews come from the first ask. That’s why following up is so important. And if you don’t automate this, you’re most likely going to miss it.
Another thing we automate in the Google review process is taking those five-star reviews and automatically turning them into social media posts. We don’t do this with every single review, but typically we build an automation where, if a client receives at least one five-star review in a given day, the next day it automatically gets turned into a social post and shared across social media platforms.
That way, content is consistently going out, and it’s also reminding potential customers why you do what you do—because you’re really good at it—and you’re showcasing that social proof.
Another automation we use is called missed-call text back. Think about this: you can’t always answer your phone. Whether you’re a solopreneur or you have a front desk, calls are going to get missed. People are busy, handling other calls, or working with clients.
With missed-call text back, if someone calls your office—during business hours or after hours—and nobody answers, an automatic text goes out immediately. It might say, “Hey, this is Sean from Sean Garner Consulting. Sorry we missed your call. How can we help?” That instantly engages them in a text conversation.
For service-based businesses like plumbers, electricians, HVAC companies, roofers, and similar trades, people are usually calling down a list. The first business that answers or responds is usually the one that gets the sale. Having missed-call text back ensures you don’t miss opportunities and gives you a much better chance of winning that customer.
Sean Garner [19:01]:
Another way we can handle this is with a voice AI agent. We’ll talk more about this in just a second when we dive deeper into AI. If you don’t want to rely solely on missed-call text back, you can use a voice AI agent. We’re rolling this out with several of our clients.
If a call comes in and no one picks up, or it’s outside of office hours, the voice AI agent can answer the call, engage with the customer, and collect their information so you can follow up when you’re back in the office.
Other automations we can set up include response and follow-up automations. You’ve probably seen things like “DM me X for this free guide” online, or follow-up reminders on social media. If someone follows you, an automated direct message can be sent. Payment reminders are another big one. Really, any repetitive follow-up tasks that you or your front office are constantly doing are great candidates for automation. This saves time and ensures things don’t fall through the cracks.
Another major automation is your CRM—your customer relationship management system. This is how you track leads and build out pipeline stages. When we first do this for clients, a typical service-based business has stages like a new lead comes in, a phone call happens, follow-up is needed, an appointment is booked, and then additional follow-up depending on whether the lead is hot or cold.
We build pipeline stages based on your specific sales process. Then we layer automations and sequences on top of those stages. For example, if someone shows up for a sales call but doesn’t close, you move them into another pipeline stage. From there, they might receive a follow-up sequence with case studies, testimonials, or additional information.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all setup. What I want you to do is think through your own process—your sales process, how your pipeline stages should be structured, and which tasks need to be automated. The goal is to maximize the effectiveness of your sales funnel and ensure it’s actually making you money.
So to recap: number one, we need to understand and review our data. Number two, we need to start automating key tasks. And number three is AI.
Using AI Without Breaking Your Marketing
Sean Garner [21:20]:
AI is a huge buzzword right now, but the truth is, a lot of businesses don’t actually know how to leverage it or what’s really possible with it. One important thing to understand when integrating AI into your sales funnel is that your outputs are only as good as your inputs.
If you’re just trying to connect something like ChatGPT without properly building it out for your business, you’re going to get frustrated. The results will be inconsistent, and it won’t sound like you. We actually did a podcast episode about a month ago on how to create the ultimate prompt using your brand script and how to build that out. You can feed that into LLMs or AI agents so they sound like you and use the right words. Make sure you check out that episode.
When leveraging AI, the key is making sure you’re feeding it correctly. If you’re using a tool like ChatGPT for content creation, you want to build out a folder or give it custom instructions. That way, every time you use it, you’re not re-explaining your business, your products and services, or your best case studies and testimonials.
Instead, you build all of that into a single, powerful prompt—almost like an SOP—that you save and upload into the custom instructions for your ChatGPT project. I tell clients this all the time: AI is the laziest, most literal employee you’ll ever have. That’s what makes it great, but it will only do exactly what you tell it to do. If it doesn’t know, it will make things up.
It’s like a very enthusiastic yes-man. If you want good results, you have to feed it properly. We do this by building an SOP-style document for the business—things like phone number, operating hours, location, website, and other core business details.
Sean Garner [23:26]:
What’s the booking process like? What services do you offer? Testimonials, case studies—we build all of this into a document, save it as a PDF, and upload it into tools like ChatGPT. That way, when you’re using it for things like social media content, emails, or even blog posts, it has a ton of context to pull from. It’s not just generating random content based on what it thinks might work.
Making sure this is set up properly is critical. The next step is how you actually use it once it’s built. This is where things like chatbots and voice AI come into play. We touched on this a bit in the automation section, but this is another opportunity to stop missing leads, phone calls, and sales.
You should look at adding some type of chatbot to your website so when people are there, they can ask questions and engage. That chatbot can then feed into your automations. If someone asks a question or wants to book an appointment, it can notify you or your front office so they can pick up the conversation and engage that customer.
The same goes for voice AI. You want these AI agents to sound like you, which is why feeding them the right context is so important. There’s a deep rabbit hole you can go down with AI assistants and voice AI. Personally, I prefer to start simple and expand from there.
A lot of people, especially with automation and AI, try to build these massive, complex systems right out of the gate. Start small. Be consistent. Do the little things first. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Maybe it just answers the phone, gets a name and email, and says, “Hold on while I transfer you,” or “Someone will call you back.” It doesn’t need to trigger a bunch of advanced automations, especially if you’re just starting out and managing it yourself.
The more moving parts you add, the more opportunities there are for things to break. But there is a huge opportunity for small business owners—especially local service-based businesses—to leverage AI for content creation and lead follow-up. Unfortunately, many are missing the mark. They either do nothing, or they try to do too much too fast, things break, and they say, “I tried that, and it didn’t work.”
Sean Garner [25:35]:
The third area where I think more business owners should be leveraging AI is data review and analytics. If we look across our entire marketing agency, this is probably one of the areas where we use AI the most.
We’ve talked about how important data is, but let’s be honest—looking at reports isn’t fun, and it can be overwhelming. We use AI to help interpret reports, review historical data, and make better data-driven decisions. Even for us, we don’t want to guess. We want to see what’s actually working and where we need to double down.
AI can analyze hours—or even days—worth of data and break it down in a very user-friendly way. That’s something more business owners should be leveraging, but most aren’t.
One thing to remember, though, is that it’s only as good as the inputs you give it. Tools like ChatGPT aren’t directly connected to your first-party data. That means you can upload reports and have it analyze them, but it’s not fully integrated with your website, Google Search Console, or Google Analytics. It won’t automatically know how to optimize everything.
Again, your output is only as good as your input. If you upload an SEO report and ask, “What keyword opportunities do I have?” or “Where should I focus?” it can give you some solid recommendations—but only based on what you provide.
Sean Garner [27:41]:
If AI isn’t connected to your first-party data—meaning directly into your actual sources—it’s not going to have a complete picture. That can lead to inaccuracies or incomplete insights because it simply doesn’t have access to everything.
One of the things we do at Sean Garner Consulting is use Domination AI, which I absolutely love. Domination AI integrates directly with your first-party data. As we’re making SEO decisions, we have AI agents working on our clients’ websites 24/7. As data comes in, those agents analyze it and make real-time adjustments. That’s honestly one of the biggest reasons we’ve been able to get such strong results for our clients so quickly—we’re effectively doing SEO around the clock.
So when it comes to automating and optimizing your sales funnel, there are several key steps. Number one: know your data. Please, please, please start paying attention to your data. I tell clients this all the time—many business owners worry more about how a website looks than how it’s performing. I want it to look great, but more importantly, we need solid data points to understand what’s actually working.
The second thing is automation. Make sure all repetitive tasks—or things that can easily get missed—are automated. Things like review requests should never rely on memory or manual effort.
The third is AI. How can you leverage AI to expand and scale the work you’re already doing? That includes interpreting data, using AI chatbots, and generating content to feed your sales funnel.
One important thing to understand about the Marketing Domination framework is that the optimization step is never finished. We are always optimizing and always looking for ways to improve. After we optimize one funnel, we go back and build another—maybe for a specific product or service. Then we fill that funnel and optimize it again. This process continues over and over.
Why Optimization Never Ends
Sean Garner [29:58]:
This three-step framework—build, fill, and optimize—is exactly what local service business owners need if they want to grow and dominate their industry. That’s what we do at Sean Garner Consulting.
If you want us to build a sales funnel, fill it, and optimize it just like we’ve talked about over the past three episodes, we’d love the opportunity to speak with you. Visit our website at SeanGarner.co, click the link, and schedule a call. You’ll be speaking directly with me.
We’ll do a complete audit of how your business is currently performing and identify blind spots and opportunities in your marketing so we can help you stand out and grow online.
I’m looking forward to talking with you soon. Have an awesome day.
