Top Takeaways
- Sales and marketing funnels need to be built holistically. Yes, focusing on a specific channel improves effectiveness, but only concentrating on one activity along the funnel is a waste of money.
- More than half the companies in every industry do not understand how to do conversions right. In nearly every industry, the average conversion rate is double the median.
Twitter reportedly building paid subscription “Twitter Blue” | E1216
How to optimize your conversion funnels — and how not to break them
Marketing and conversion funnels
- Marketing funnels are the process from when someone first learns about your business, all the way through their life as a customer. Some people will drop off at each stage, forming a funnel shape.
- Conversion rate = percentage of people exposed to your marketing content that complete a desired goal (example: buy your product)
- Conversion rates are not standardized. Marketing activities have indirect impacts on your conversion rates, it is not simply optimizing ads.
- The optimization of the funnel itself is just as important as how many people enter the top of it.
- At every step, there are actions you can take to optimize the funnel.
Optimizing the steps of your funnel
Brand Building – People need to be able to find you and know who you are and what your brand stands for. A strong brand can also reduce customer churn.
- Research (know your competitors, have a target person, etc.)
- Branding
- Strategy
First contact – Your first real interaction with the prospective customer (prospect).
- Advertising
- PR & Events
- SEO
“Things happen” – The nebulous stage of multiple interactions that may be required before a conversion. These steps nurture the prospect by providing them value.
- Video
- Audio
- Content (blog, how-to guides, product updates)
Conversion – When the prospect takes the action you want.
- Website (optimized for conversion)
- Email (newsletters, offers)
Onboarding
- Product
- Sales
- You can waste a lot of money by not understanding the entire funnel. (For example: spending your budget on FB ads that get a lot of reaches, that doesn’t convert, or it just creates users that churn shortly after converted)
- You need to focus on specific channels but not just a specific activity. Find the funnel that works for you.
- More than half the companies in every industry do not understand how to do conversions right. In nearly every industry, the average conversion rate is double the median.
Product | Scaling Your Startup S2 E5: Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra & Fitbod’s Jesse Venticique | E1214
Misconceptions about conversion
Misconception #1
It doesn’t matter if my website or logo isn’t pretty. As long as my product is good, customers will convert.
Reality: You need to build trust with your potential customers so they are more likely to convert and stay using my product.
- Elon once said, “Tesla doesn’t do marketing.” What he actually meant was Tesla doesn’t do paid TV advertising like other car companies.
- Ads are just one marketing activity. Marketing encompasses the full buying experience (Elon’s Twitter, TV interviews, Tesla on SpaceX, Tesla Showrooms, etc.)
- At first contact, 73% are not ready to buy
- Remember, the whole conversion funnel happens before customers even experienced your product. You need to build trust before they use your product.
- Provide value throughout the conversion funnel process.
- Create many opportunities for them to interact with you.
- Marketing is like building a friendship, strong bonds are formed from multiple interactions over time.
Misconception #2
A flashy article in the press, a pushy online ad, and tons of social media followers will trigger FOMO and make them come.
- The Clubhouse effect: Everyone was talking about it, and it had huge momentum. Part of the reason for the drop-off was that there was no funnel for users to know what to do to further engage with the app.
- PR stunts can create a lot of reaches but can create negative effects without a reason for customers/ users to stay. These same users may leave and have a negative impact on your future acquisitions. (Example: Friend 1 “Have you tried X?” Friend 2 “Oh yeah, I checked it out but didn’t really stick around, it wasn’t for me.”
Misconception #3
Once my customer is converted, I won!
- Companies focus a lot on acquisition because it looks good for the next board meeting or for investors to raise more capital.
- Churn wastes free marketing potential; once you have a customer, you can upsell, cross-sell or use them for referrals.
- Superhuman is really good at onboarding. They have an onboarding specialist set you up for success and serve as a future point of contact.
Actions to take to improve conversion
Assess what assets & skill you have across your company
- Research
- Strategy
- Branding
- Video
- Photo
- Content
- Website
- Outreach
- Social
Build funnels and conversion goals
- Example for B2C Mobile App: Ad campaign> Video Podcast> Landing Pages> Free Trial > Inside App Suggestions
- B2B SaaS: Influencer campaign > Virtual Events> Email Marketing > Website Signup> Demo Call
Create a timeline and budget (LTV > CAC)
- Non-marketers tend to underestimate time and cost
- Need a realistic timeline to assess what activities are worth investing in
- Increase conversion before increasing reach
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Outlaw Soaps Co-Founder and CEO Danielle Vincent will cover the importance of SEO and how small fixes can bring big results.
Search Engine Optimization – SEO Fundamentals
- SEO provides incredible value for free (only upfront cost)
- SEO is not paid Search Engine Marketing (buying ads on Google)
- Google is the dominant search engine and what you are optimizing for.
- Google delivers what people are looking for by looking for relevance cues.
How Search engines work
- You must think in “code” understand what elements of your site google uses to assess the relevance.
- Google uses robots to crawl the web and create a massive index of every webpage everywhere.
- Update your site often because google will check more often.
Making the most of keywords
- Keywords are the most important words that searchers would use to find your product.
- Focus on specific keywords to begin, something that others are not focusing on. Once you have more traffic, you can expand to more competitive keywords.
- Google determines the hierarchy of your site with heading tags. Only have an H1 tag on every page. H2 is used for subheaders.
- Use Trends.google.com to find what people are searching for
- Sometimes there are arbitrage opportunities (Example: there are lots of searches for “Jobsearch” and about half as many for “find a job,” but no one has pages optimized for “find a job” this might be a big opportunity to create a page to rank)
- Do a search in google for your keyword and write down related searches. This becomes your content calendar.
Blogging for SEO success
- Blogs update your home page, causing Google to revisit it.
- A blog creates cross-linking between pages, link to other pages on your site.
- Content takes time to write but a lot less than you think.
- Don’t duplicate the same text across your site, it will confuse Google and it may penalize you.
- Keep a high keyword density on your blog.
Building backlinks across the web
- Links boost a page’s credibility.
- Your “about page” will have a higher authority than other pages on your site. Links from one of your pages to another are free SEO.
- When other sites link you, this boosts your site’s credibility. (this is hard and can cost money)
- Linking to other sites helps too (but the least).
Q&A
Do you need to have a dedicated SEO person?
- Your content writer should be well versed in SEO.
- It’s better to pay up ($300-400) for a high-quality article with SEO than to just buy an article at whatever price you can.
What should the cadence be for content marketing?
- Outlaw posts almost every day.
- Twice a week is a good target for B2B.
Is there too much content? Can you repost content in multiple places?
- Reposting the exact same content across the web (medium, company blog, etc) can hurt your SEO.
- It is better to reword and summarize content appropriately to fit the medium.
Does quality matter? How do you know if the content is low quality?
- On average it’s better to post more often.
- Posting low quality is worse than posting nothing
Do the platforms matter? (TikTok vs. Instagram vs. LinkedIn)
- There is no magic recipe.
- Go where your customers are.
- Think about what the platform rewards, for example, Instagram is great for beautiful products and packaging.
- Outlaw excels at community-based marketing, which Facebook does better.