What does your customer acquisition funnel look like?
5 great resources on converting tactically
Have you ever wondered why similar buyer profiles, facing uniquely identical problems, belonging to businesses of same size and nature, make contradicting buying decisions, when presented with the same solution and positioning pitch?
That’s probably because they have a very different understanding of the problem they have.
One might have realized the problem and started searching for a solution, which makes your selling easy, while the other might have just started to realize the existence of problem. When it comes to pitching your solution you need to have a tailored message, depending upon where your prospect is identified on your conversion funnel. Even if you have one targeted user persona for your solution your message cannot be the same to every prospect you meet.
Here are some of the great articles about building an effective customer acquisition funnel that could help you figure out who your prospect is, where he/she is on the funnel, when to position different messages and how to convert effectively.
1. Sales and Marketing Machine:
The article written by David Skok (@BostonVC), who is well-known for his thought provoking ideas on SaaS metrics and his experience working with Startups, has broken down the whole process of customer acquisition in granules. Rather than taking a funnel approach he presents several flowchart models that would help you build a “Sales and Marketing Machine” by identifying the steps your prospects go through in the buying process, actions you need to take at each step to drive them to the next level and get the whole process repeated like an automated machine.
2. Your path to sales
The visual blog by Ritika Puri (@ritika_puri) explores the conversion process through three steps: Brand awareness, consideration and conversion. The journey of a prospect through the funnel begins once he/she identifies your company or visits your site. The content curates the way to engage visitors through user experience and also brings out the key performance metrics essential to track the progress at each step of your conversion funnel.
3. See, Think, Do:
Projected as a business framework, Avinash Kaushik’s (@avinash) See-Think-Do is a brilliant funneling strategy which explores the nuances of each buying stage process from different perspectives including: content strategy, social media enablement, marketing focus and key performance metrics.
Do not miss on the last but very important stage of the framework that would help you determine the success of your effort, holistically.
4. Optimize your Customer Acquisition Funnel:
Here is another great read from David Skok on how B2B companies can optimize their customer acquisition process, which talks about the bottlenecks that would block your prospects from progressing ahead. The ideas promoted by David to remove such blockages include:
- Using a free version of the solution
- Using data to drive customers
- Wow’ing customers upfront
- Getting a meeting with decision makers
- Applying the above techniques to your website design
5. 4 ways to convince your prospects:
Lastly my own (@vijaytweetin) simple idea on how you could easily identify the conversion stage your user-persona belongs to and how you can guide them to the next stage. See if your prospect comes with any of the following cues:
- “I don’t need” to “I sure need it”
- “I know i need it, but why should I consider you?”
- “I can trust you, but I do not know where to start”
- Now it all boils down to “$”
Just understanding a customer’s mindset will help you position your message better.
All the above funneling techniques focus on few things, starting from understanding your prospects/customers, to helping them move closer to buying your product or service. Explore what would suit you the most and feel free to share your experience while implementing them.
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