EPISODE 57 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
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In this episode, I tackle a listener question that hits a little too close to home for many online business owners:
“I’ve shown up so much more over the past few months, and grown my email list considerably, but I’m still not selling my offers. How do I work out what’s still stopping people from buying?”
And the answer is simple (but inconvenient):
More visibility doesn’t automatically mean more sales.
If your customer journey is broken, more traffic just means more people entering a leaky funnel… and quietly disappearing.
Let’s break down what a broken customer journey actually looks like, why “just getting more eyeballs” is not the fix you think it is, and how to identify the exact points where your audience loses confidence, clarity, or momentum.
What we cover:
The real reason your audience might not be buying, even if your list is growing
What a broken customer journey actually looks like in an online business
Why friction kills momentum (and momentum is what drives conversions)
How to create a strategic customer journey that reduces churn and increases lifetime value
Soundbites:
“There is so much potential in customer journey mapping and actually taking a step back, dissecting how people move through your offer suite. How many courses do you have in your business? How many different ways can your potential customer work with you? I bet if you have a look at your data, there is not one clear pathway your customer currently takes to buy from you. That’s where behaviour driven customer journeys come into the picture, anticipating their next step, listening to the signals they’re sending you, and then turning that into this beautiful transformation.”
“My brand new offer, the CX Catalyst is a great starting point. It is working with me one-on-one, done for you. It is where we fix the biggest bottleneck in your customer journey so it nudges your prospect to actually buy from you.”
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Episode Transcript:
Nadine Nethery (00:00)
Hello, hello and welcome back to the podcast. In this week’s episode, we are going to take a closer look why most business owners still think if they just get more eyeballs on their business, on their offers, they surely are going to get more sales, right? So today’s listener question goes this. I’ve shown up so much more over the past few months
and grown my list considerably, but I’m still not selling my offers. How do I work out what’s still stopping people from buying? So unfortunately, more visibility doesn’t necessarily equal more sales, which this listener has found out the hard way. It simply adds more
potential buyers who might never buy from you if your customer journey is broken, if your funnel is leaky. Your business isn’t struggling because no one sees you.
The problem here is that the journey your audience take once they do see your business, your offers, your genius is simply too disjointed or too lackluster for them to convert.
So while I don’t discount visibility, visibility is great. Visibility is absolutely a must for a sustainable long-term business. It is the first stepping stone on your customer journey.
And most people treat traffic like that magic fix. The amount of people I hear online that say, you know, if only you can add a thousand people to your audience, a hundred of those will become members. if you speak on all the stages and you contribute to all the bundles, you say yes to all the list growth opportunity and spread yourself too thin,
that traffic and that extra, you know, those extra set of eyeballs that you’re getting on your business still don’t equate sales. Traffic and eyeballs without a strategic customer journey and strategic brand touch points such as emails, sales pages, behaviour driven funnels, simply cause friction.
They cause friction and friction kills momentum. And once that momentum is gone, people are quickly losing interest. They’re unsubscribing and they’re moving on to the next best thing. So visibility gets you attention, but your customer journey is what drives follow through, what drives action, what drives sales. So visibility is only the starting point. What comes after is just as important, possibly
going to say it even more important because that’s where the magic happens. So what does a broken customer journey look like? It can involve confusing signup processes where, you know, they have to jump through a million hoops to actually get onto your list. It can involve emails that are disjointed. They don’t really take them on a journey.
There’s no logic behind them. You just send them because you feel like you have to send seven emails in your onboarding sequence, right? They could, that customer journey could involve, you know, sort of abandoning people after they say yes. So potentially you don’t have any process to take them from joining your list to that next logical step. It might be that your offers feel disjointed.
You’re leaving them to their own devices without actually giving them a map. And it could be that your post purchase sequence, your onboarding sequence when they actually become customers is like a ghost town. It leaves them hanging, leaves them to their own devices, which is more than underwhelming.
So if someone lands in your world, they usually come to you because they have a problem that they’re hoping you can help them fix. And if that next step, once they join your universe, doesn’t help them solve at least a piece of that problem, they quietly and gradually drift to somewhere else. They stop reading your emails. They stop paying attention to what you have to say.
they’re simply losing interest. visibility gives you a seat at the table. It gives you an opportunity to share your point of view, an opportunity to get in front of the right person, but your strategic customer journey gets you invited back. after that first purchase, after that first puzzle piece has fallen into place,
And in my business, I have seen lots of my customers with huge lists, huge member numbers, huge follower counts, still struggle to convert leads when they come to me because their customer journey simply feels like a leaky bucket, right? They have…
processes in place, they have emails in place, but there is little thought that has been put into how you turn these fresh lead, often driven via paid ads. So they’re investing money into getting those people onto their lists, but they’re quickly unsubscribing and disappearing because there is no thought behind that onboarding journey often a tiny fix
on the customer journey, tweaking that messaging so it really leans into the problem can have more impact on your conversion rates than doubling your traffic and speaking on even more stages and driving even more leads because, it doesn’t help putting more water into a leaky bucket. It’s going to disappear.
So what a good customer journey looks like is a number of brand touch points that help reduce friction. As I said before, friction leads to, you know, loss of momentum and people, people lose interest. A strategic customer journey also creates forward momentum. So it anticipates that next step. It…
keeps people on their toes, it keeps them excited and it makes them want more of what you have to say. A great customer journey also builds trust through continuity. As I said, there is this continuation of messaging, of touch points, of connection points with you and if you approach it strategically, your subscriber, your lead, your potential customer simply can’t get enough of it because they need to know what is next.
What do you have in store for them? Basically, you need to link every touch point to an intention and to that problem that people came to you for in the first place. And your customer journey ultimately needs to make things feel easy. That working with you, buying from you, getting results from you is going to be an easy process.
Your job is to be seen in the right light. You want to show up as someone who opens up doors, someone who opens up possibilities, someone who can solve their problem for them.
You’re not pushing your offers at any cost. If you do it strategically, you are simply giving them a pathway to work with you what I often hear is that customer journeys
don’t have a place in the online business space. They’re for the big end of town, the big corporations, which is absolutely not true. There is so much potential in customer journey mapping and actually taking a step back, dissecting how people move through your offer suite in the online business space. How many courses do you have in your business? How many offers do you have in your business? How many different ways can your potential customer work with you?
If you have a look at your data, there is not one clear pathway your customer currently takes to buy from you. That’s where behaviour driven customer journeys come into the picture, anticipating their next step, listening to the signals they’re sending you, and then turning that into this beautiful journey, this beautiful transformation they go on before they even buy from you. So, so much potential in the online business space and no, not
reserved for the corporates. I also often hear that, you know, I just need one more funnel and they’re going to buy. Again, not true. Funnels are definitely tactics and strategies on the customer journey, but customer journeys always, always, always lead with holistic experiences.
A funnel is one tactic on the customer journey and you need to work out as the business owner what signals you need to see before you enter them into the funnel Adding the wrong person into the wrong funnel is not going to get you the sale. I keep saying that to my customers. We can build you all the funnels
But if you’re adding a person that is not in the right mind frame, that is not interested in this particular offer because they haven’t sent you any signals that they are, it’s not going to sell for you. Another one is automation kills human connection. Again, not true. Automation, if it’s executed and strategised with intent,
only amplifies it. So in my business, in my clients businesses, I love, love, love automating things. But we do it in a way that it feels totally bespoke. And the moments that matter, that’s where we go non scalable. And there is that element of actual human interaction, because in that moment that matters, this is what’s going to move the needle. So we are adding
actual human touches, where it drives action and where it gets you that sale. And we automate in a totally bespoke way where you do not need to get involved. But there is a magic formula to that and definitely a strategy and looking at your data. So knowing what works, knowing what people need to hear, talking to your customers, to your potential customers to truly understand what made them sign up, what made them
decide not to sign up. So there’s a lot of strategy that goes into holistic and intentional customer journeys, but once you have those in place, they are working a treat and your customers cannot wait to stay in your universe and buy from you again. So ultimately retention is the outcome of a customer journey that’s mapped with your customer in mind, right? Those conversations, those data points, the behavior,
driven signals that your customer and your audience are sending you. Great customer journeys, absolutely reduce churn in your membership. Great customer journeys, definitely increase lifetime value.
They make referrals easier and they also make those next logical steps feel like a natural progression, something that you’re not pushing on them, something that they are choosing for themselves And what I would love you to take away from this episode today is that we need to, as the online business space, step away from
asking ourselves why is this social media post not converting? Why did this email not make any sales? We need to flip the coin and start asking ourselves where does my prospect lose confidence, clarity or momentum along the way? Because it’s not one email that’s letting them down, it is
beyond that. is not one social media post that makes them, not act. It is the bigger picture. So where in that bigger picture on that customer journey is your prospect losing confidence, clarity or momentum.
And if you now feel that you want to be more strategic about your customer journey, it is something that you want to explore in your business and dip your toes into the waters. My brand new offer, the CX Catalyst is a great starting point. It is working with me one-on-one done for you.
and it gives you the strategy and assets to make all this happen in only two weeks. And when your customer journey feels effortless, like it just flows, you have minimal involvement because it’s automated, your metrics all of a sudden look more like
relationship markers than data points. So if you’re constantly chasing visibility like the listener in this episode and you’re ready to actually move people through your business with intent, I would love to execute just that with you as part of a CX catalyst. I’ve linked up the sales page in the show notes
Thanks so much for listening in this week. If you haven’t followed or subscribed yet, please do so in the show notes because there’s another juicy episode coming next week. And as always, thank you so much for tuning in. I will see you next week.
