11 Laws of Sales Funnel Physics Every Business Needs to Know

Back in college, I visited this run-down pizzeria shop called Sammi’s.

I pitched Sammi repeatedly on my startup’s text message coupon product at the time. 

He never bought it.

But I’ll never forget the time I saw him hand a $200 check to some kid selling an ad from a local magazine like it was nothing.

$200 looks like a lot of money when you’re a 19-year-old college kid. And especially when all your customers are on free trial.

But what caused Sammi to buy a print ad but not what I was offering?...

The education you need to become an effective marketer is just a lot of little experiences like that.

Those experiences are like “flicks” to your forehead. They are the market saying “Pay attention!” as it tries to teach you something.

In the years since that time at Sammi’s, I've started and launched a SaaS business. 

Today, I run a 6-figure subscription-based service business. So far, my team and I have created hundreds of sales funnels and completed thousands of digital marketing projects for startups and small businesses like yours.

From this wide range of experiences, I've been able to observe several success patterns that every sales funnel follows. 

I call these success patterns the Laws of Sales Funnel Physics. 

And in today’s article, I’ll show you…

• The 11 Laws of Sales Funnel Physics that every successful funnel must follow
• Real-life examples of each law in action
• A slew of tips and strategies to help you make sure your funnel is using each of these laws to your advantage

Now, let’s jump in.

Law #1: The Law of Visibility

What is it?

Imagine two different scenarios.

Scenario A—Relaxing on the beach on a hot summer day with no sunscreen.

Scenario B—Relaxing on the beach on a hot summer day when your doctor shows up to tell you you’re at risk of getting skin cancer.

In scenario B, you’re going to react right away. You’re on the beach without sunscreen, and the doctor has given you urgent information on why you should wear sunblock.

If putting on sunscreen became your “conversion goal” after the need was recognized, B outperforms A because the offer is right in your face.

That’s why the first law of Funnel Physics is the Law of Visibility. In other words, people will convert on offers that are highly visible and noticeable to them.

If they don’t see it, they won’t convert.

So it all comes down to something being seen. 

Now, how can we apply this to your marketing funnel?

Example:

Andrew Warner and his team at Mixergy rolled out a new site design a little while ago.

One thing that stood out to me was the prominent call-to-action button in the top right corner of the landing page.

It’s visible on every page of the website.

This is an excellent example of the Law of Visibility in action. By featuring a highly visible call to action (CTA) for your core offer across your website, conversions are almost guaranteed to increase.

In fact, we did the same thing on our website a while ago:

We wanted more people across our website to see and learn about our productized service. You can see below how adding this button had a sustained impact on how many people viewed our homepage.

But this is just one example.

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

Let’s brainstorm for a second.

Where can you put in place a simple change like this on your website to cause more traffic to flow deeper into your funnel?

Think in terms of “global” or structural changes that will be seen across many pages on your website.

Here a few ideas off-hand:

• Navigational changes like the example above
• Redesign or add a CTA to your footer
• Install an exit pop-up
• Promote a lead magnet in the sidebar of your blog, as well as at the end of every blog post
• Run a new campaign using KISSMetrics Engage that targets only visitors with a specific offer

Those would be the top ones to implement, especially if your business is trying to grow via content marketing.

For other elements of your marketing funnel (lead magnets, sales pages, pricing pages, etc.), the Law of Visibility can be applied by making CTAs more easily identifiable throughout the copy. 

For instance, putting a CTA above the fold (i.e., immediately viewable after landing on a page without scrolling down) can lead to massive conversion jumps. 

In our Proven Sales Conversion Pack, we point to a case study where one ecommerce company was able to boost revenue by 27.39% by moving their “Add to Cart” CTA button from here… 

… to here…

Why the massive conversion boost? Because the CTA was immediately visible to people who land on the page. 

That’s the Law of Visibility in action.

The Bottom Line

Offers—free or paid—that aren’t seen, don’t convert. So shine some light on them!

Law #2: The Law of Repetition

What is it?

You’ve probably heard some guru say that people don’t remember a brand name until the 7th time they’ve heard it.

Unlike branding, this law is relevant to causing an instant and sustainable increase in results.

The Law of Repetition says that following up multiple times (via email automations, retargeting ads, or call-to-action buttons on your website) will cause more conversions within your funnel.

Yes, you could say that this law is saying, “beat your prospect over the head with your offer enough times, and you’ll get more sales.”

That’s true, and it’s why spammers use this technique.

But I’m not advocating for that. Rather, I’m giving you this universal pattern with the hope that you’ll use it responsibly.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Examples:

The Law of Repetition is about repeated messaging and consistent follow-up.

This happens when you’re presented with multiple lead magnets asking for your email address.

For instance, Clay Collins and co. over at Leadpages have repeatedly pointed out that each of their blog pages have multiple offers and CTAs. This, in turn, has helped them quickly build an email list of 250,000+ email subscribers.

I applied and refined this technique on my company’s website in 2014 and later wrote about the results in a guest post on Leadpages. I gave the method a name—“The Every Page Rule.”

The Law is always in effect when you implement email follow-up sequences or retargeting ads.

In 2013, I tried my hand at launching an info product. The email sequence I wrote was “OK” so I rewrote it and kept iterating.

The final sequence was aggressive with the follow-up, but the truth is that it worked. People bought the course at a very consistent rate.

Noah Kagan later reminded me of this principle when he published some research from people using his SumoMe tool to help people build their email lists faster.

The research showed that people were more likely to opt in if they were repeatedly shown the pop-up on a website until they signed up.

Again, not saying that’s the best way to do it. In fact, I would say being too aggressive makes you look not cool.

Want another example? Look at the Kissmetrics’ funnel. If you sign up for a free trial or opt in to one of their lead magnets and request a demo, you’re instantly added into a follow-up sequence where an Account Manager will contact you to schedule a demo.

And here’s one more from a little-known multi-billion dollar company called Amazon.

Ever heard of Prime? Kidding. Of course you have.

Prime is a premium subscription which gives Amazon customers perks like free 2-day shipping and access to streaming movies and shows.

The Amazon website is covered with call-to-action buttons for Prime, and 112 million customers have opted into this service as a result. 

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

You can apply the Law of Repetition in a variety of ways to your own sales funnel.

Here are the best ideas, in order of priority:

1. On-site CTAs that are clear and relevant to the stage of the funnel the prospect is in. 
2. Follow up with potential customers using an email automation to get them on the phone, get their feedback, or nudge them toward signing up. 
3. Show an ad or link in your blog’s sidebar or navigation, along with an exit pop-up, to promote your lead magnet and grow your email list.
4. Get more return traffic with retargeting ads. Make sure to segment visitors based on where they are in your funnel. For instance, you may want to treat people who reached your checkout page differently from those who signed up for your free 5-day e-course.
5. Finally, you can get more advanced using a combination of tactics (Think: Amazon + Smart Funnels). For instance, after a customer checks out, you can upsell him/her on the benefits of the next level pricing package. Similarly, when he/she comes back to the website later on, he/she will see CTAs on the blog nudging him/her and offering benefits for upgrading. This can also be done over a course of weeks or months via automated email follow-up to anyone who has purchased.

The Bottom Line

Repetition yields higher conversion rates and can also increase the value of an average customer to your business. 

Don’t let leads forget about you and your services—constantly remind them of what you offer and how it can benefit them. 

Just be sure not to overdo it, or you risk hurting your brand.

Law#3: The Law of Clarity

What is it?

“Better to be clear than clever.”

When I was a little kid, I’d go to the doctor at least once a year for my checkup. 

I remember the waiting rooms were always gray and super boring.

So I’d pick up one of the outdated magazines they had laying around and flip through it.

I found most of the ads weird and frustrating, because I couldn’t tell what they were trying to sell.

Did they want to make money, or just confuse people? It was unclear to me.

Turns out, I was on to something.

Fast forward years later, I heard the expression, “Better to be clear than clever” from serial entrepreneur, Dane Maxwell, while he was being interviewed by Andrew Warner from Mixergy.com.

This expression highlights the biggest reason why most sites don’t convert well in the first place: people don’t buy what they don’t understand.

Many people make the mistake of focusing on creating a catchy headline, instead of focusing first on customers’ understanding by creating effective copy for their sales funnel.

Consider a few examples.

Examples:

The following case study documented on Visual Website Optimizer’s blog illustrates how clear copy converts.

Movexa is a supplement product with a direct response website funnel. In other words, they are looking to make sales directly to people visiting their site.

In an A/B test where they clarified what the product was by adding the word “supplement” in the headline, sales increased by nearly 90%!

Here’s another example from a company selling personal training subscriptions.

As cited by Unbounce, the company A/B tested a clearer “boring” and uncreative headline against the original. 

The result? 38.46% more training memberships were sold. 

Michael Aagaard, the author of the case study reflected after the fact: “I have yet to see a creative headline beat a clear headline in an A/B test.”

Clarity over cleverness, indeed.

Further, research has consistently confirmed that website users prefer copy that is “simple and direct.” Here are a few key nuggets from the research conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group:

• “Users often leave web pages in 10–20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people's attention for much longer.”
• Users will often have multiple windows or tabs open and leave and come back to your site within a single session. When this happens, having clear straightforward copy helps the reader to re-establish context.
• Of the first three items a user focused on, almost 80% was on text, not graphics.
• Reduce use of wording that could be seen as marketese (i.e. clever copy or slogans) in order to build trust. 

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

Of course, you could jump right into A/B testing. 

But this wouldn’t be much better than taking a wild guess. 

You’ll be more likely to see growth if the changes you make are inspired by feedback from prospective customers. You want to hear from users currently “stuck” in your funnel who are actively considering your product.

You want to hear the questions they have, ask them open-ended questions, and hear how they react to your website’s current copy.

Here are the two best ways to do that:

1. User feedback survey tools can be set to automatically ask visitors leaving the site a question. Survicate is a free tool that works well for this purpose. HotJar is also a very solid option with lots of additional features, which now has a free plan for basic use as well. 
2. Order a user test where complete strangers will test your website. It’s ideal if you have people in your target market test the site, but when it comes to knowing if your website communicates clearly, feedback from strangers can provide a just as actionable insight. I recommend browsing Fivver for user testing services or check out UserInput.io (this one gives you more options for targeting).

After you have some actionable feedback (make sure you get enough so you notice patterns), it’s time to test.

If you have less than 10,000 visits per month, it could take a while to reach a high level of statistical significance for your A/B test. It might not even be worth A/B testing, despite one of the common myths surrounding A/B testing.

In that case, you might just want to do a sequence test (“before and after”). With this test, you can see an impact on your bottom line in as little as a month with a reasonable degree of certainty. Just make sure you’re accurately tracking results before and after, while also tracking conversions that matter, like leads and sales.

For example, at Growbo, we saw 25% MRR growth from June to July after we re-launched our new homepage, pricing page, and free email course.

The sales results from this test were s significant compared to other months. When considered with the fact that no other major component changed on the site, the only conclusion we can draw is that the changes caused this growth.

Side Note: This example highlights both the application of the Law of Clarity (we did research on our target audience’s needs and questions before rewriting the copy for greater clarity), as well as the Law of Big Changes covered above (copy completely revamped along with the design).

The Bottom Line

The words you use to communicate about your product matter more than design.

Site visitors need to trust you; providing them with a clear understanding of the product’s value and how it works is a critical lever for growth in your sales funnel.

Law #4: The Law of Confidence

What is it?

Quick quiz hot shot: you’re new in town and you’re hungry. 

You’re not a super adventurous eater. And more than anything else, you just want a good, high-quality meal without having to window shop all over town to find it. 

What do you do? 

The answer for most is… Yelp. 

Yelp is one of the world's leading depositories of reviews for restaurants, stores, and more. 

And when you’re in the dark about where to go and what to do, you (along with 92 million others monthly) are likely to use Yelp to get some direction. 

Why? Because Yelp is built on customer ratings. 

As social animals, we as humans are wired to take other’s opinions into account before making a decision. 

The more positive reviews there are for an establishment, the more confident we feel in giving them our business. 

The point is, your customers operate the same exact way when they enter your sales funnel and become interested in your product.

The Law of Confidence says that people are more likely to invest time and money in that which they see as low risk and likely to give them the result they desire.

This confidence comes from displaying proof (or “social proof”) that your product works. Or that past customers are happy. Or that other trusted sources put their faith in you. 

That kind of proof can come in a wide variety of forms:

• Testimonials
• Reviews
• Case studies
• Examples of past work (e.g. from a designer’s portfolio)
• Vanity stats (e.g. “over 10,000 happy customers serviced since 2010”)
• Customer logos
• Press logos
• Networking groups
• Third-party accreditations (e.g. certified Google Adwords Partner)

Other than making your business look legit, social proof elements will increase conversions in your funnel.

Example:

WikiJob, a website with over 500,000 monthly visitors ran an A/B test on their homepage.

The one thing they changed? A simple testimonials section was added. Here’s what it looked like.

The result?

Here’s the response from the company owner:

[Adding the] testimonials increased sales by 34%. The testimonials we used are very ‘sober’ (compared with the overly enthusiastic ones you so often see in marketing literature). The test results were surprising. Although such increases of sales can be quite normal in split testing, I did not think that testimonials would make such a difference (and indeed put off testing them, thinking they were irrelevant). The increase in revenue was very substantial.

Social proof can make a huge impact because it influences how trustworthy people perceive your brand to be. It lowers perceived risk.

Research from Nielsen showed that 70% of people trust recommendations from people they don’t even know. That’s compared to 90% of people trusting recommendations from people they do know.

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

Test adding social proof on key landing pages.

Generally, it’s a pretty safe bet ASSUMING you have taken into account the context and the user’s intentions for that POINT in your funnel.

Here’s what I mean:

Derek Halpern documented a case where adding social proof did not grow conversions. See graphic below where the middle version won.

However, this is actually an example of the Law of Friction (discussed below) vs. The Law of Proof and NOT an argument against the effectiveness of social proof in general.

The middle example simply requires less “mental load” to understand. It could be as simple as the fact that the number “14,752” is difficult to read and the middle variation is visually more attractive because it’s simpler.

Similarly, in the past years we A/B tested a Leadbox for our newsletter in the sidebar of our blog.

The one without the social proof won by a large margin.

Here’s one more case study to drive home the importance of understanding context and user expectations when considering where to integrate it in your funnel.

Security seals—also a common example of social proof—build trust, right? 

Well, it didn’t work as one might have expected when tested on this lead generation form.

Version B increased conversions by 12.6%. In this case it didn’t work out, because security seals are associated with online checkout. As a result, users were confused or put-off by it.

The Bottom Line

Social proof is a key point of leverage when optimizing your sales funnel.

However, you’ll need to A/B test to know for sure. If your traffic is too low for A/B testing to be a realistic option, do a sequence test after taking into account user context and intentions.

Law #5: The Law of Friction

What is it?

Since I began my career as a web-based entrepreneur at 19, I’ve done many A/B tests and been part of many research-based website design projects.

I’ve spoken with hundreds of business owners about their conversion issues since that time.

I’m always learning, but I can say from experience that this issue is one of empathizing with the end-user who is on your website.

That’s what it comes down to because people on your website have goals.

Often the business owner doesn’t know the potential customer's goals or how their website is “blocking” these customers from buying.

This is what is meant by friction. When friction is minimized—and a user’s goals are made easier to accomplish—conversions go up.

Let’s look at a few examples that support this principle.

Examples:

An online retailer was able to increase annual revenues by $300 million by changing a button.

In a now-famous case study, Expedia was able to increase profit (not sales) by $12 million by removing a single text field from their checkout form.

And Barack Obama’s re-election campaign was successful in part because of rigorous A/B testing that minimized friction and in turn grew donations by 49% and sign-ups by more than 161%.

Let’s walk through each case briefly.

Kyle Rush was on the optimization team for President Obama’s re-election campaign.

They conducted numerous tests, and in his own words, Kyle explained how much he was able to learn due to the high traffic the site received. 

This made A/B testing different designs and copy ideas easier because they only had to wait days or even hours for results. 

Here’s the Law of Friction at work in one of their tests.

In the variation they tested on the right, the idea was, “maybe we can convert more people to make a donation if we make the donation process appear easier by breaking it into steps.”

The result was a net increase of 5% in donations. It might not sound like a lot, but over the course of a campaign and raising many millions of dollars, it is.

Jared Pool observed the Law of Friction at work for a major online retailer. He saw that 160,000 people per day were requesting a password reset on their account prior to checkout, and 75% of these people ended up not completing their purchase.

The issue was people would go to check out and be confronted with a simple but supremely annoying form that asked them to register in order to check out.

As one user who tested the site for Jared said: “I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.”

The solution? They replaced the Register button with a Continue button and added a note: 

“You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”

The result? +$15 million in new sales in the first month and +$300 million in additional sales for the first year.

Finally, the case of Expedia:

Simply by removing the “Company name” field, profit (not sales) grew by $12 million per year.

Of course, the question is, why?

Well, the field simply confused users and set the wrong expectation. For instance, some thought that the company name meant the name of their bank, which would cause them to put in the wrong billing address and then the payment would fail. This, in turn, killed sales.

The user interface was causing friction in this case.

Or, as Jon Correll from Conversion VooDoo put it, “Conversion rate optimization gains are often just a function of getting your broken UI the $!@$!@ out of the way of your end-user.”

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

Start by understanding where the bottlenecks are in your sales funnel.

Where are people dropping off? Look for outlier numbers.

For instance, a couple of months ago I saw that 60% of people clicked through from our homepage to our pricing page, but then only 7% made it to the checkout or consultation pages.

Numbers like this serve as a compass because they point you toward what should be worked on.

Next, as I discussed in Law of Clarity above, you want to gather lots of feedback from users.

You can have strangers test it, or you can talk directly to existing users of your site.

Both have worked in my experience. However, getting at least 10–15 people from your list of existing users will yield more accurate results. 

If you’re doing it over the phone, establish rapport first, then ask open-ended questions and listen.

Maintain detailed notes as you go through this process. Look for patterns, but NEVER guide or do anything to influence the answers.

Again, you’re gathering this feedback, because, without this data, you’ll not gain a clear understanding of what’s blocking sales on your site.

Once you have identified a pattern—perhaps a recurring type of complaint directly related to the bottleneck in your funnel—then you can start testing possible solutions.

Don’t expect an immediate $300 million change in your business overnight, like in the example above.

But also don’t underestimate the impact you can have with small, deliberate changes that work to address the source of friction in your funnel.

The Bottom Line

Friction is caused by design or copy that’s not fully optimized to help people entering your funnel accomplish their goal. This matters whether their goal is buying from you or efficiently learning what you have to offer.

Law #6: The Law of Alignment

What is it?

Johnny rides a red bike.

He arrives at your imaginary bike store.

You try to sell Johnny a new set of tires, but he declines.

Why did Johnny not buy it? Because the offer wasn’t aligned with his needs.

The difference between alignment and friction is that friction comes after alignment in the buying process. 

Alignment deals with helping customers to identify the need your product can address.

Friction deals with the interactive experience of buying and how easy or difficult it is.

Alignment deals with the customer’s intentions, questions, or context (like what previous website or page the customer came from).

Get it? Got it. Good!

Examples:

Here’s an intriguing case study to demonstrate the Law of Alignment in action.

An SEO link-building company called The HOTH originally relied on a fairly straightforward homepage to generate leads for its service.

Leads were converting on the page at 1.39%.

Ok, not terrible.

So they tested the page against a minimalistic design.

The results? 13.13% or almost a 10X increase in the number of people converted to leads by creating an account.

The reason this worked was explained by the case study’s author:

[The] majority of visitors coming on The HOTH website were from the direct and referral category. Hence, they had some background knowledge of the company already. This was also true for the social traffic. A very large portion of their search traffic also came from branded keywords...

In other words, the context of the people arriving on the page meant that they didn’t need a lot of information about the service in order to convert. They were already aware of the company’s service, and many already had some trust built with the brand.

The simplicity of the form aligned best with what they already knew or felt about the company’s offer. They didn’t need a long landing page in order to convert.

Important note: The HOTH’s website today looks a little different, with a video at the top above the form. This pushes the form and call-to-action button further down, below the page.

I would speculate that this introduces some friction on purpose. 

Why? 

I would guess—from direct experience doing lead generation for similar businesses—that the friction is good, because the leads are more educated and higher quality. 

After all, you have to assume that a significant percentage of the traffic that does come to that homepage isn’t 100% familiar or clear on what the company has to offer.

Here’s one more example to prove the pattern of the Law of Alignment.

A personal organization service drove search traffic to a landing page via pay-per-click ads.

Which version do you think won?

Version B would seem to have a clearer, more benefit-oriented headline and subheadline.

But actually version A was the winner, increasing leads by 115%.

The reason is version A’s copy was written to align with the PPC ad copy that the user clicked on before arriving to the page.

The ad created an expectation of ideas in the mind of the user. So arriving on the page where the copy complemented and reflected those same ideas made them more likely to convert.

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

Traffic arrives on your website from 5 basic sources (a.k.a. Your funnel “fuel”): 

1. Direct (people typing in your website or clicking a link in your email)
2. Search
3. Social Media
4. Referral
5. Paid ads

The source heavily defines the context for people on your site.

One key to using the Law of Alignment in your funnel means tailoring the page that people enter into your website to the context of the traffic source.

Of course, you can take this to an extreme (i.e. if your traffic comes primarily from Google, that doesn’t mean you should redesign your site to have a similar UI and layout to Google with the hope of increasing conversions).

A more practical approach is to ask yourself: 

• How can we make that “on-ramp” into our funnel more inviting and anticipatory of the visitors’ needs?
• What answers do visitors expect to find on each page based on what they searched for prior to arriving there?
• What reassurances, if any, do they need once they are in the funnel, browsing our site, and evaluating our product?

As covered above in the Law of Clarity and Law of Friction, you have to do your research and listen with empathy to gain the biggest insights that will lead you to alignment.

The Bottom Line

The context from which a visitor comes to your site needs to be addressed, as does how you will deliver the information they need prior to making a buying decision.

Law #7: The Law of Loss

What is it?

People buy what other people buy. That’s because we seek to minimize the risk of potential loss by relying on what other people are saying.

We are programmed to be loss-averse creatures.

Don’t believe me?

Watch yourself the next time you’re picking out a movie on Netflix or browsing for a new book on Amazon. 

Personally, I won’t buy a new book without at least 250 reviews and an average rating of 4 stars or higher. Even 4 stars is “iffy.”

I use the same risk minimization when it’s time to kick back and enjoy a new movie on the weekends. Less than 4.5 stars? That’s a no-go.

Your habit for loss aversion might be slightly different. Maybe you read individual reviews.

That all-too-human tendency is exactly what the Law of Loss taps into. 

We think much more about losses than we think about gains. If you frame things in terms of a loss, then, rather than a gain, you’re more likely to get clicks. 

Makes sense, right? 

Examples:

Let’s look at a few examples proving this point. 

One of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s arsenal is scarcity. By putting a limited time window on a product, it speaks to consumers’ fear of missing out (FOMO) and drives purchasing decisions. 

For instance, an online luxury apparel store saw an impressive 5.94% growth in revenue per visitor (and an 8.16% increase in the conversion rate) by adding a simple exit-intent pop-up. 

The message, “We cannot guarantee the availability of goods if you do not place an order now,” clearly communicates the idea that this could be your last chance to get these goods before they’re gone forever.

Putting a specific date on the expiration of a deal is even more effective. 

For example, Proimpact7 added a “Limited Time Offer” label to their pricing page—good choice.

But they took it one step further. Instead of leaving it at that, they actually said that this offer was expiring on March 31st. 

The result? A whopping 24.5% uplift in revenue. 

Conclusion: scarcity works. And the more specific you can get, the better. 

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

There are two ways in particular that you can apply the Law of Loss to your digital marketing objectives. 

1. Scarcity-Based Approach – This approach is all about FOMO (fear of missing out). This deal won’t last forever. Only available to the first 20 customers. First come, first served. By letting your customers know that, hey, you won’t be able to get this product forever, it’s enough to compel many of them to buy then and there rather than wait a little longer. 
2. Fear-Based Approach – This approach taps into your customer’s fears about what will happen if they don’t fix their problem. If you’re a software development outsourcing company, for instance, you might say that hiring a team of developers on your own can not only take a lot of time, but may also leave you with a team that can’t get the work done. Without your solution, the customer will be worse off. That’s where the fear comes in.

Of course, these two approaches can and should both be used within your marketing to maximize conversions. 

That being said, don’t overdo it. You don’t want to seem like one of those late-night infomercials trying to catastrophize an unrealistic situation. 

The Bottom Line

Humans are loss averse. And if you can effectively tap into the Law of Loss (with scarcity and fear-based marketing) you can gain a massive boost in conversions. Just don’t go overboard with it. 

Law #8: The Law of Maximization

What is it? 

Okay, so we’re much more afraid of losses than we are excited about gains. That much is clear. 

But even still, that doesn’t mean we don’t try to get as many benefits as possible while minimizing costs. 

In the end, customers want value. And they want as much value as they can get. 

Loyalty programs, for instance, are all the rage today. 

Why? Because they maximize the value of shopping at store again and again. 

Ultimately, the more value you can offer for your customers at the lowest costs, the more likely they’ll be to buy from you. 

Example:

Let’s look at an example of value maximization in action. 

We’ve written about this example before in a previous article on upsells. But it’s worth mentioning again here. 

One way of maximizing customer value is by creating add-ons that people can—you guessed it—add on to their current cart. 

Namecheap, for instance, includes plenty of additional services that you can add on to your domain name purchase in just a few clicks. 

See?

Right from the checkout page, you can add hosting services, a private email address, and a site security option, all with just a click of a button. 

This is a great example of upselling because the extra services are all highly related to the original product. And on top of that, most users are going to want these services anyway. 

In the end, it’s a winning combination that delivers more value right at the perfect time of the buyer’s journey. 

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

The Law of Maximization is all about delivering more value to your customers while incurring fewer costs.

So, how do you accomplish that within your marketing?

Well, there are a few ways of doing so. 

• Adding loyalty discounts
• Upselling, downselling, or cross-selling on other products
• Providing monthly subscription prices 
• Referral rewards
• Service bundling

However, value maximization doesn’t have to be related solely to money. It can also involve valuable information. 

Here are just a few ideas to add more value to your clients’ purchases with information rather than discounted prices. 

• Free ebook on best practices for using your product
• Membership program where customers can connect and discuss how they use your service
• Continuing learning programs that help up their skills in the industry (like our 6-Figure Sales Training Course, free with our done-for-you service)

The Bottom Line

In the end, your customers want more value and lower risk. The more you can provide that for them, the happier and more likely to buy they will be. 

Law #9: The Law of Range

What is it? 

You’re craving a slushy. You’re practically drooling over the thought of one (we’ve all been there). 

So you walk into a gas station and see that glorious machine. But unfortunately, they’ve only got 1 flavor. 

Disheartening, right? 

The thing is, you know the gas station across the street has a machine too. 

And in fact, you can see through the window that they actually have more choices, not just the one. 

So, which store do you get that delicious slushy from? The one with more choices obviously!

The Law of Range speaks to this situation in particular because people love choices. They like having options. 

They like being able to choose which kind of product they’re getting, even if those choices are the same price. 

It’s the joy of customization and the freedom of choice all bundled neatly into one law of funnel physics.

And people really respond to it. 

Examples:

One of the best examples of adding range to your product offerings is grouping your services into different tiers. 

For instance, Growbo has 4 unique packages: Supreme, Ultimate, Superhero, and Hero. 

Now, what works about the pricing tier method is that doing so creates a price anchor and a service anchor. 

A price anchor helps establish a baseline price that makes other prices look more appealing. 

For instance, our Supreme package, while being very popular, is actually not as popular as the Ultimate package. And part of the reason for that is because for some, $1799 is much more palatable than $2999.

A service anchor works in the opposite direction: it makes the smallest package look less appealing to the other higher packages.

Why? Because those higher packages offer more services that the lower tier simply does not have. 

For example, Supreme offers highest priority support and 1-on-1 Live Chat—two services that you just don’t get with the other options. 

And depending on the needs of the customer, that can come off as much more appealing and actually end up driving the sale. 

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

In order to give your customers the most freedom possible, be sure to give them plenty of options to look over. 

For instance, offering different product tiers is a fantastic way to give your customer a variety of options to consider before they ultimately make the decision to buy. 

But the Law of Range can also be applied before the buying decision too. 

For instance, try offering your customers an on-demand demo video as well as a live one. In fact, we’ve done the exact same thing at Growbo and have heard some pretty great things from customers about it. 

Adding more options can also be applied to:

• Contact methods
• Content marketing (blogs, infographics, videos, podcasts, etc.)
• Educational resources
• Social media presence
• Advertising methods

The Bottom Line

Variety is the spice of life. And your customers are sure to appreciate more options when choosing how to partner with you and purchase your product or service. 

But don’t stop there. Diversify other aspects of your site and your marketing methods to reach and convert the most customers possible. 

Law #10: The Law of Scale

What is it? 

This one is based specifically on marketing strategy. 

It states that in order to get to scale, you need to leverage that which has scale.

Or to put it another way, to grow bigger (i.e. more website traffic), you must leverage that which already has distribution.

Sounds a bit vague, right? 

Well, let’s break it down. 

If, for instance, you’re running a candy shop (are those even around anymore?). 

And it’s the best damn candy shop in the country. It’s got Whatchamacallits, it’s got Scrumdiddlyumptious Bars, Everlasting Gobstoppers—everything you could ever imagine. 

But the problem is, you need to market yourself so you can open up more stores across the country. 

Now, one way to do that is to reach out to people directly. Send them mail, knock on doors, put flyers under their wipers—whatever it takes to get your product in front of them. 

But the problem is, your efforts aren’t really scalable. Sure, you can hire more people to do it for you, but that can get expensive fast. 

So what do you do instead? You tap into the marketing power of a channel that already has a large audience like a newspaper, radio station, or TV channel (again… are those even around anymore?). 

In doing so, you’re harnessing the power of an already-established audience rather than building one by hand on your own. 

The result? You reach more people faster and for less cost than doing it on your own. 

And that is the Law of Scale in action.

Examples:

One of the best examples of the Law of Scale is using referral marketing to boost your sales. 

Referrals are worth their weight in gold in the world of marketing. 

Here are a few stats to show you why. 

• 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know (Nielsen).
• People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend (Nielsen). 
• Customers referred by a friend have a 16% higher lifetime value (Journal of Marketing). 

The power of referral marketing is that it’s extremely scalable. 

By offering your customers an incentive to spread the good word about your company, you can bring in exponential growth in customers. 

For example, if each referral partner brings in just 2 new customers in a month, you can increase your customer base by 6400% in just 6 months!

As you can see in the graph below, ROI from referral programs is slow at first. But over time, it eventually grows and grows at an exponential rate. 

Source: Business2Community

The more people you have using your referral program, the higher and faster your ROI will rise. 

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

So, how do you apply the Law of Scale to your marketing funnel? 

Well, in addition to the referral program idea referenced above, there are a few other ways you can use scale to your advantage. 

The first is by utilizing social media in your marketing efforts.

Shares and likes are more than just social currency on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They’re also powerful ways of spreading your brand recognition and expanding your influence without spending extra on marketing. 

A campaign that goes viral, for instance, can get in front of the first wave of your audience for cost. But if that audience shares your campaign with friends, you’re reaching those extra possible customers for zero added cost. 

That, my friend, is using scale to your advantage. 

The Bottom Line

If you want to scale your business, you need to tap into the power of scaled distribution. Utilizing social media and referral programs are fantastic ways to use scale to your advantage. 

Law #11: The Law of Emotion

What is it?

“We buy based on emotion and justify it with logic.”

Practically every professional marketer has heard this saying before. And any worth their salt incorporates it right into their marketing. 

Humans are emotional creatures. We cry at the end of Titanic. We clench our fists during an especially rousing chorus. And we’re overcome with genuine feeling of fulfillment after finishing a well-written story. 

And those feelings are powerful. 

Why? Because they’re often driven by emotion. 

It’s no wonder, then, that emotion plays a central role in our purchasing decisions as well. 

In fact, Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman suspects that as much as 95% of our purchasing decisions are driven by the subconscious. 

In order to tap into that power, you’ve got to make your copy, your design, and your marketing appealing on an emotional level. 

Because when you do, it can mean massive gains in conversion rates. 

Examples:

Let’s look at a few examples of emotional marketing done well and how it helped increase conversions. 

First off, using human faces in your imagery is a great way to tap into the emotional side of your audience. 

We’re actually designed to be extra good at identifying minute changes in facial expressions to judge the emotional states of others. In fact, there’s an entire area of the brain devoted specifically to doing just that. 

As such, one way to tap into the power of emotion is by including human faces on your page. 

For instance, Basecamp experimented with changing their design from fact-based to face-based and saw a whopping 105% conversion increase. 

Source: Basecamp

That being said, a face isn’t always the best option out there for tapping into human emotion. 

Take the example of an invitation company from our Proven Sales Conversion Pack. 

Check out the design before…

Not bad, right? There are plenty of faces to really get into the heads and hearts of viewers on this page. 

But here’s what happened when they did a redesign to this…

They saw a whopping 65% increase in revenue!

That’s huge. 

So, what’s the ticket here? 

Cute dogs in unusual situations sell. 

Faces are great, sure. But when they seem like stock photos, they don’t really bring as much emotion to the equation as they should. 

How to Apply this Law to Your Marketing Funnel

So, emotion sells. That much is clear. 

Now how can you use that to your advantage? 

Well, here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing. 

• Find Evocative Imagery: A picture tells a thousand words. And when you choose the right one, it can evoke an array of emotions in your audience that words may not have the ability to tap into. Incorporating human faces into that imagery is often a good idea. But as we saw in the example above, they aren’t always the best options out there. 

• Use Storytelling: A good story speaks to us on a deeper level than pure logic and facts. Part of that is because when people get wrapped up in a good story, they lose the ability to counter-argue (or justify not going along with what you’re saying). Wrapping up your marketing in a good story, then, can make the selling process far more effective. 

• Appeal to a Wide Range of Emotions: Pain, empathy, joy, guilt, anger, excitement, even sadness—these can all be used to tap into the subconscious of your customers and push them ever-closer to a buying decision. 

That being said, it’s important that you don’t oversell the emotional aspect. Emotion is best triggered by coaxing it out of your audience. Bashing them over the head with overly sappy messaging won’t do you any good at all. 

So be sure to approach emotional marketing with a steady hand. 

The Bottom Line

People respond to emotion. And when your marketing taps into the emotions of your customers well, it can drive purchasing decisions. 

Conclusion

I titled this article as “Sales Funnel Physics” because as in physics, these laws identify the universal principles behind why people do or don’t buy online, assuming there is a market need for the product.

I have not been able to find any case studies or A/B tests that do not fall under one or more of these principles:

1. The Law of Visibility says that offers must be seen in order for sales and conversions to occur. Sounds obvious, but it’s too often forgotten.
2. The Law of Repetition is different from the Law of Visibility, because it says that the frequency of exposure to your offer has a direct impact on conversion rates. More exposure to the offer causes more conversion, though ROI diminishes after a point because people get annoyed.
3. The Law of Clarity says that before people become interested and decide to buy your product, they must first understand what it is.
4. The Law of Confidence says that people care a lot about whether or not your product actually does what it claims. People are risk-averse, so they desire proof in order to minimize perceived risk before buying—in the form of testimonials, case studies, etc.
5. The Law of Friction says that the easier you can make the experience for an interested buyer, the more likely he/she will buy!
6. The Law of Alignment says that people will convert more often on offers and landing pages that better align with their context, like from which site they just came.
7. The Law of Loss says that people are loss-averse and will do everything they can to avoid missing out on value or a deal. 
8. The Law of Maximization says that your customers want to get the most possible value out of their relationship with you as possible. 
9. The Law of Range says that audiences respond to having the freedom to choose a variety of products and services.
10. The Law of Scale says that in order to scale your business, you need to tap into distribution channels that scale as well. 
11. The Law of Emotion says that people respond to emotion. And in fact, as much as 95% of customer purchases are driven by that. 

Mastering these 11 laws isn’t easy. But when you do, it’s bound to lead to a massive boost in customers, conversions, and sales. 

And hey! If you ever want to partner with a full-stack all-in-one instant digital marketing team to tighten up your funnel for you, we at Growbo would love to hear from you. 

Have you noticed similar patterns when designing your sales funnel?

How will you apply the Laws of Sales Funnel Physics to grow your business?

Tell me about them in the comments and I’ll respond :-)

Keep funnelin’, stay focused,

Matt

Share

PREVIOUS
NEXT