Marketing Funnel: A Complete Guide
The first and foremost thing in online marketing is to find the right customer for your product. Simply creating a product marketing campaign won’t help you if you don’t know anything about your audience. That’s why you should maintain a marketing funnel in a professional way.
In simple words before starting your campaign ask yourself who is your target audience? Whom you are going to target as your potential customer?
How you are supposed to sell your product to an unknown audience?
As per the latest survey, more than 45% of the new businesses & marketers suffer huge losses because they are unable to find the right customers for their product.
This is the pain point for most of the beginner marketers as they really don’t know whom they are dealing with and what is the prime requirement of their audience?
See, while starting off as an entrepreneur your marketing strategy should be crystal clear. For example, What is your product target audience, what is the place you are selling in, what kind of locality is it and so on. it defines your marketing funnel process.
Nowadays simply launching a sales campaign is just not enough to create awareness about your brand, yeah it will help to reach out to the people but won’t be a game-changer.
Many companies make this mistake that they launch a marketing campaign, spend tons of money on online marketing, social media, email marketing, etc without properly analyzing their core customer base. It is also a marketing funnel system you should know.
And they end up wasting precious money & time.
1. AGE GROUP
In 2005, A small beverage company in North America started its business as a shop for local people and was aiming for an average of 40 yrs old people.
So, they started their marketing campaign as per plan and spent a whole lot of money on big posters & hoardings. Their main focus was on people in the age group of 40 or above with an image of a macho man who uses their beverages.
Initially, some people got attracted to the ads but not much improvement was found in the monthly progress chart of the company, as a matter of fact, they noticed a slight decline in their custom reports.
However, they suffered a huge loss but they noticed an increase in the total number of teens & young customers in the age group of 20 – 30 yrs. It happened because most of the people (who were in their forties) were working outside the town and used to remain outside during most of the day time so they have their drinks & snacks outside only.
However, the locality was famous for colleges & medical institutes with hostels where teen students use to stay.
As soon as they realized this fact, the marketing team immediately introduced a complete change in their strategy and launched a fresh campaign totally focused on teenage people and the results were astonishing as the monthly sales went up by 200%.
This clearly identifies the importance of finding the right customer for your product. But you also gotta consider various prospects before starting your marketing campaign. For example, what is your core customer?
Is it working men, housewives, gym freaks, cooking lovers, mothers, young girls or any other type of people, you’ve to find which one applies to your product.
2. ACCURACY
Suppose if you sell shaving cream, then who is your core customer base? Definitely it’s anyone above the age of 20 who hates to grow a beard. This gives you a clear idea of what I am talking about.
You have to aim for your prime goal as exactly what is your agenda whether you are going for teens or grown-ups, you should be extremely sure whether you want to have more customers of 20-30 yrs of age or 30-50 or 50+.
Again let’s say you have a bakery & you sell extremely delicious cupcakes, candy, coffee & much more, so what will be your strategy?
Whom you are gonna target as your prime customer?
The answer is very simple. It’s the adorable age group of 5- 10 yrs, the kids. They are the ones who will come more often to your shop to buy cupcakes, candies, toffees, every now & then.
So, your marketing campaign should be totally focused on how to allure more & more kids, that’s how things work here. To maintain your marketing funnel accuracy is a must thing. You should always follow it.
3. BEHAVIOR
Third comes in the list is the factor of user behavior, there are various small-small things that affect your customer & sales. Sometimes it’s a particular category of people in your core group who are more interested in buying your product & if you’re able to find those people, you can plan your strategy accordingly & easily dominate the market.
An online sneakers shop has the same problem in the year 2009, their marketing funnel plan was good, they were running full-fledged marketing campaigns, the staff was also full but still, the conversion rate was quite low with a high number of abandoned carts.
So, they decided to up the ante.
In order to find out the problem, they started to survey people about their product & asked questions like what did they like about it, what irritates them & complaints.
After surveying for a month or so, they found out that there is a huge demand for large size sports shoes in the market. However, people with large shoe sizes were not happy with this company’s sports shoes & were not able to find a good fit for them and that’s why they were moving to other sites.
So, the company did some manufacturing changes in the upcoming months and tripled the production of larger shoes.
Results show that they found the sales bar going up & running like never before.
4. PROFESSION
Same goes with the profession of the customer, you won’t believe how much money it brings to the table when you aim the right target segment.
See, how the Fan Bi company did it.
They use to run a website with a very common home page which was not bringing them many results but in a survey, it was revealed that most of their customers were old lawyers, professors, etc.
So, they made some drastic changes in their site as per the need of the customers as they placed a new pic on their home page with a well-dressed man wearing their shirt.
That’s why knowing your customers is not that bad after all. It’s an important part of your marketing campaign without which you are not likely to reach anywhere.
There are various aspects which you have to understand in order to hit the bull’s eye & it can be achieved by doing proper surveys and communication with your customer base. It may seem like a very small thing but it can do wonders for you but it has to be done with accurate timing & strategy.
However, this is just the first step of the marketing ladder, once you find your target customer group you have to implement necessary changes in your sales marketing funnel to fulfill the customer requirements & move on to the next stage.
That’s where your actual marketing funnel journey begins.
MARKETING FUNNEL
As soon as you are done with your customer surveys & communication with your customer to get the insights, the very next thing that comes into your way is to create a marketing funnel.
In short, now that you know your customers you have to understand your marketing system accordingly & we often call it ‘marketing funnel’.
Let’s get a brief of ‘what is a marketing funnel’?
The marketing funnel is a sequence of marketing steps taken to direct or guide your audience to buy your product, many marketers have designed their own marketing funnels, one of the most famous funnels is a ‘Pirate funnel’.
Most marketers are well aware of this concept of marketing funnel but still, they take this concept very lightly which is a big mistake.
Believe me, a good marketing funnel is like a highway leading straight to heavy sales conversion.
See, good marketing needs proper planning from beginning to end, simply testing is not enough to get good results.
I agree that testing is essential to find the loopholes in your marketing but to get the best results you have to be really precise in your marketing strategy like from where your customers are coming from?
Where they are starting?
Where they are supposed to go next?
One of today’s hot favorite cloud storage app Dropbox was once suffering really bad as they were not able to get more customers.
As per their initial marketing plan, they decided to go with Google Adwords ( i.e google marketing app) & the expense was almost 300$ for acquiring a single customer for a product that costs only 99$.
Google Adwords is that much costly.
But still they were not able to create awareness about their product in the market, the trend doesn’t seem to change at all until they finally came with an amazing referral program where they offered free storage space for referring the app to your friends.
The offer was very simple that every time any of your friends registers on Dropbox, you get more space into your free account.
That referral program worked like a charm and within a span of a few years they went on to reach a base of millions of users.
Answer to all these questions should be predetermined in order to make a good sales or marketing funnel, however, it’s not an easy task to create a perfect marketing funnel, 99% chances are there that it ain’t gonna work in the very first attempt
But as I said it’s a part of the game.
The concept of ‘know your customers’ is also a part of it.
Eventually, this is the most important part of your whole marketing game almost 55% of marketers get failed in their marketing strategy because of this very prospect as they don’t work properly on every aspect of the funnel.
Now let’s see exactly how a marketing funnel works?
What are its core concepts?
& how you should work on a marketing funnel?
Each marketer has his own way of planning & strategy of dealing with things, some give importance to one thing while others have completely different ideas about marketing.
But here we will be discussing a concept used by Sujan Patel in his million dollars business.
Marketing funnel has various parts where everyone has its own significance, let us discuss them one by one:
1. AWARENESS
One of the difficult stages of marketing lies at the beginning of the marketing funnel & that is to create awareness about your product.
Almost 70% startup businesses die at this very stage of their marketing funnel because they are not able to create an impact on the market, they are not able to show their value to the customers, hence they don’t stand out in the market.
The first & foremost thing in your marketing funnel should be to create awareness about your product in your customers, after all, people are gonna come only if they know about your product and that’s only gonna happen when you share your product details with them.
Now a straight forward question arises as to how to create customer awareness about your product?
How to tell them you are selling this product?
How to make your presence felt among customers?
Each marketing guru will give you different tips & there are a number of ways to do marketing, it all depends on which one works best for you.
They are of two types, you can go for either paid or organic marketing.
A) PAID METHODS: Paid methods are the ones where you use the power of money to create awareness about your products, some of the most common channels are as follows.
1. GOOGLE ADWORDS:
Google Adwords allows you to show your website on the top page of Google search results.
It’s an ad served by Google where you can put your keyword-based ads in Google search results.
So, whenever a user searches for keywords similar to your ad then they will see your ad at the top of results but of course, it’s a paid facility, where you have to pay big time to Google to appear at the top of search results.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA :
Nowadays people spend most of their time on social media whether its Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social platform.
They like to make new friends, to stay connected, to share their thoughts, it’s like an addiction for them, some working people who don’t get time in the day are found on FB at the night.
These social media channels provide a very good channel for marketing your products.
You can telecast your marketing Ads on Facebook in your preferred region, country or city, the same thing applies for Twitter, Insta & other marketing channels also.
Believe me, it works really great.
3. YOUTUBE:
YouTube is the second largest search platform after Google.
People go there to find answers to their questions, the only difference is that on YouTube people get to see a video in spite of text.
One of the major benefits of YouTube is that you can utilize this channel to create awareness about your product & brand.
All you have to do is to create a video about your business then submit it to YouTube and they will show your ad to all the visitors interested in your niche.
According to the latest survey, by the year 2020 more than 80% of visitors are likely to come over to your website from videos only.
Hence YouTube is a must-have for everyone’s business.
B) ORGANIC CHANNELS: Organic channels are those methods where you simply use genuine but lengthy & time-consuming alternates to bring traffic to your site.
1. SOCIAL SHARING:
Social media is a place which allows you to provide free marketing to your products.
On social media, not only you can share updates about your product but also you can ask your friends & relatives to promote your product with their friends.
It helps marketers to create awareness about their products in the initial stages & later also.
2. BLOGGING:
Nowadays, having a blog is mandatory for all the websites & marketers.
Blogging is like a gem for marketers as it helps them to share valuable content with an audience interested in their niche.
A blog not only allows you to promote your product but it also helps you to reach out to the public through various organic channels.
Whenever you create a blog post & publish it, you give your business a chance to be viewed by over 3 billion internet users all over the world.
3. AFFILIATE PROGRAM
There are a lot of techniques to acquire a customer base within a budget and the affiliate program is one of the hot favorites among them. It’s one of the best marketing processes and you can go with your marketing funnel system using this system.
An affiliate system allows you to increase your user base in the easiest manner.
All you’ve to do is to offer something to your current users or professional affiliates to promote your products on their website or social platform or by any other method.
The most common affiliate program is to offer an enhanced version of your existing product like the one we saw in the case of Dropbox where they offered extra storage space for referring their products on different social media platforms.
If you want you can offer discount coupons, it definitely helps in increasing the number of visits to every customer.
In its early days, PayPal launched a referral program where they gave away flat 10$ to its referrer on every successful registration.
And it brought them a massive amount of new registrations, so what does it mean?
It means that this method is really effective.
This technique is preferred by a lot of people because of its ease of use & flexibility.
But these are just the initial steps of any marketing campaign, you have to do a lot of work in order to run that campaign & get conversions out of it.
One of the important parts is to focus on how to convert your users into your evangelists.
(QUICK NOTE: An evangelist is your existing customer who is so impressed with your product that he voluntarily promotes your product to everyone).
If you can make evangelists successfully, then it will definitely create a buzz about your product.
That is too free of cost.
2. CONSIDERATION
Once you manage to bring traffic to your site, congrats you crossed the first hurdle but there are lots more to come.
There are various things to do in order to convince the customer about the usability, availability & other benefits of your product.
Do you have to convince them why your product is better? Why they should buy your product? What are the key qualities of your product? Why is it better than other products available in the market?
Most businesses work on the process of marketing & creating awareness about their products but they totally forget about this core concept of the marketing funnel.
According to research, consideration is the key concept responsible for more than 80% sales in any business
For example, meet Suresh.
Suresh did the same mistake while starting his online Ice Cream business in New Delhi, India.
He knows marketing as he had an MBA degree and was pretty sure about his marketing agenda like who is his prime customer base?
Which one is his main product?
What is the demand of the market?
He somehow also managed to bring traffic to his website but was not sure of exactly what is the next step like how to help customers in making a buying decision?
What to buy? How to respond to the ad?
As a result, the bounce-back rate of his website was skyrocketing day by day, more than 80% of customers use to come & leave without a purchase which was really irritating for Suresh.
Yeah, he managed to come out of it, how? That we’ll discuss in a minute.
(So, this is the stage of your marketing funnel where the customer starts to interact with your product, tries to explore your product, look for the pros & cons of your product.)
Sometimes if he likes your product he or she will compare your product with other products in the market in order to get some additional benefits along with the core product.
This is where a powerful term called ‘Lead Magnet’ comes into the picture, let’s first understand what is a lead magnet?
A Lead Magnet is an offer given to your site visitors in order to check out your products & services, it’s like setting up a perfect stage for presenting your product to the customers.
There exist various methods to do it.
They are easy to use and highly result oriented provided used with proper planning, let’s discuss some of the most effective lead magnets & their using techniques.
A. FREE INFO: As a part of your marketing strategy it’s highly essential to attract your customers towards your product.
This is where your difficulty begins because you’re trying to attract a customer towards a product which they have never seen before, never used before, in short, they know nothing about it.
So, how do you do it? How do you tell them about your product?
You can’t just put all the creamy stuff on your home page and pray that they come and read it line by line.
No.
That ain’t gonna happen and even if they read it still what are the chances that they are gonna like your product?
Don’t know, well let me tell you that there is only 10% outside chance that they are gonna move ahead to see your product, rest depends on the quality of your product.
You gotta plan your strategy to perfection to make them explore your product and one of the best methods to do it is by providing free info.
This info can be the latest info any insight fact about your niche which your audience may find interesting.
Now the question arises what is the best way to share your product insights?
It can be done sharing info via your blog or by arranging a webinar.
Almost all the big brands and websites are using blogs & webinars to share info with their followers & to connect with their audience.
Nowadays it’s like a trend to make a webinar and put it on your site while blog is like a must have a thing for every marketer.
You should give it a try.
B. FREE STUFF:
Giving free info is the first step of marketing but the thing is that everyone is doing it so how does it matter?
How do you stand out?
So, if you want to move further ahead with your lead magnet strategy then you can move ahead by giving away free stuff like an e-book or discount coupons to your website visitors & ask them to register on your site.
But the important question is how do you present this free stuff to your visitors? How did you ask them to get this free stuff?
This free stuff offer has to be presented very precisely then only it’s gonna work.
Some websites put their lead offers at such a place on their website that they’re barely visible to anybody as visitors don’t even notice them while some other pages overdo it which is really annoying.
The best way to do it is to place a good visible product picture on your most visited page by using high contrast colors to gain visitors’ attention.
The offer should not ask too much from your visitors, it should be like a simple subscribe button or email bar & that’s it you are done.
Remember that the offer should clearly explain your free stuff like “Subscribe” and get a free e-book on “Top 10 ways to make a blueberry cake” or “100 best travel packages this summer”
And believe it more than 50% of visitors are easily gonna signup to get that amazing free stuff & why they are gonna do so.
It’s very simple because nowadays people are very lazy, they don’t want to spend their whole day searching for the best travel packages and when you will offer them such exclusive content free of cost, they will immediately grab it.
C. HOT QUESTIONS:
Some times you don’t have to go that far to make visitors signup for your services and products and furthermore not everyone has the time, money or resources to generate a free e-Book or coupons.
Here the marketers get a little bit stuck as to how to move ahead? What should be the alternative of an e-book? Or what should be the alternate?
But if you are thinking to skip lead magnet then it will be your biggest mistake because it will increase your bounce back rate and your product reach will decrease by as low as 20% or even lower.
In such a case how would you manage, well the first thing you should know is that people don’t come to your site to see your core product or services.
Most of the time people will reach to your site to read your blog content & that’s when you can present your lead magnet.
Now we know that lead magnet is a method to attract your visitors towards your core product.
You can fulfill that purpose by asking a burning question about your niche or market like if you are in a computer software business, then you can ask “what is the easiest way to deal with spam? Or how to fix common window problems?
Ask something which is a big issue in your niche, which everybody is looking for and doesn’t forget to provide an effective quick fix for the problem, that should definitely do it but wait there is more in the bag.
D. FREE SERVICE:
Free service is another kind of lead magnet that you can offer to your customers, on some websites this free stuff method doesn’t work at all.
It happens because they sell a kind of product which doesn’t fit in this category.
For example, consider a software company like Dropbox, they sell online cloud storage software hence an e-book or a coupon won’t be much effective.
That’s a tough nut to crack as they are selling a daily use product but somehow costly so how they are gonna deal with it?
For such a situation there is an alternate option available in which customers are offered a free trial of the software for a certain period of time, various websites offer a 10 days free trial or a 14 days free trial.
There are two benefits to providing a free trial.
1. The customer gets to know your product, its full-fledged detail, pros & cons.
2. People get so much used to this free luxury service that once the trial period is over they feel a bit helpless with their work & they immediately look forward to buying your product.
Do you remember Suresh about whom I told you at the beginning of this topic (i.e Lead Magnet) who was suffering from the same problem as customers were leaving his sneakers site drastically after the first visit?
So, to solve this problem what he did is, he used a magical pop-up on his main page which says
“You arrived just on time, we are having a sale going on with flat 60% off! Hurry up. Get your new sneakers now” & this small pop up proved to be a game-changer for his site with a 35% increase in his sales.
That was just the part of the ‘consideration’ stage where the customer starts to think about your product and maybe they want to know more about your product but that’s not your objective.
Your main purpose is to find out its overall effect on your sales chart? Did the customer go all the way to buy your product? Did he felt like “YES, I want this product, I wanna buy it?
All the things which we discussed till now were focused on making your customers consider your product.
Well there is a lot more to do in order to make your customers buy your product and quite frankly that is why we are here, that is what every marketer wants & this is the most important part of our marketing funnel and it’s called “Sales Conversion.
3. SALES CONVERSION
Once the customer knows about your product they want to get insights about your product, I mean what is the x-factor in this product?
Why is it better than other products in the market?
Why should I buy it?
This stage is like a Bermuda triangle for most of the marketers as they don’t know how to convince the customers to buy their product.
This is the make or break stage of your website.
It is the point where the customer looks to make a move and buy a product.
According to research, almost 80% of the customers leave your site just at this very point of the marketing funnel.
Let’s take a classic example of selling a ballpoint pen when you are telling your customer about your pen features like its pointed tip, its high-quality material, French-made ink, then the first thing that will hit the customers mind is gonna be
“Oh this pen has so many features, it must be costly”, that’s the instinct, the gut reaction which will hit anyone while buying something.
And if you don’t focus on this point carefully, customers are likely to go away without buying your product and that’s what you don’t want to happen but unfortunately, most marketers don’t even know about this concept.
So, what is needed to be done? Where are we wrong?
Let’s see exactly what happens, when a customer reaches this stage they are only 30% convinced about your product and rest 70% are just the concerns about the consequences.
Now it’s your job to increase the convincing percentage above 70% and decrease the concerns below 30% all the way down to 0% Remember that you’ve to sell the value of your product rather than focusing on the price.
Are there any hidden things?
Let’s understand the hidden concept behind it.
Make this strategy as your rule of thumb for selling anything to anyone whether online or offline.
So, whenever a customer comes to buy a product his main aim is to find the best product with the latest features in the least prices.
Did you get my point?
When a customer comes to your site he has 3 things in mind:
1. Best product.
2. Latest features.
3. Least price.
Now you know these three points are revolving in your customer’s mind, all you have to do is to make your strategy which covers all these things as John did in his online electronics store.
In John’s online store customers are greeted with the best sellers which are mostly preferred by everyone, he presents them with big shiny pictures & bullet points describing the key benefits of the product, it immediately grabs customers’ attention.
However, some customers are geeks.
They do a lot of research before buying the product, they know everything about the product & they don’t compromise on quality as they always want the latest features.
So, how to deal with them?
What John did is he made a separate catalog of latest hot seller products with special labeling on the products about the special features added which holds the geeks to explore the product.
However, my suggestion would be to not waste too much time & effort in planning a strategy for geeky customers as they don’t get satisfied easily.
But, what about the pricing?
John has this special sale going on where he is selling the product at a 20% discount but most interesting is the way in which he is presenting it.
He had a special pop up which launches after 15 seconds on the product landing page and it says” Limited period offer! Use this code ‘20%OFF’ to get a flat 20% discount on all products”
So, customers started coming to his site but wait for not only this pop-up coupon helped him to get more sales but also it made the customers revisit the site in order to avail the discounted price.
There is another category of customers who have a limited budget.
For such kinds of customers, you have two options either you can let them go which is not an option for me or you can provide them an alternate mode of payment like offering them a monthly payment system.
So, what happens here is that the customer is still buying the same costly product but it’s not gonna hurt him as he will pay in chunks in spite of one big payment.
Some customers will have money but they still won’t buy your product as they are not sure about it, i.e. they are concerned about the product so how you’ll convince such customers?
All you have to do is to help them to make the right decision and buy your product.
There is one and only one thing which can help you to achieve this goal and that is by showing them the value of your product.
Well don’t just tell the benefits of your product, tell them why its better than the other products, how is it gonna help them in their work or business, how they’ll get more returns for their money spent.
This will help them to understand the value of the product as it’ll clear their doubts.
Have a look at how Andrea does it.
Andrea had an online bakery shop where she tells her customers how her cupcakes are good for health, they don’t have any artificial elements added, they are used heavily in parties & functions and of course, they taste delicious.
By using this technique her sales rate went up by 56% compared to the previous month.
So, you should try it too but wait that’s not it there is yet another step in this funnel which is needed to be considered before enjoying the sales and that is retention time or the time period in which the customers revisit your shop.
4. RETENTION PERIOD:
The retention period is the time period in which a customer revisits your shop again to buy something.
Most of the marketers focus on selling the product, they make it their ultimate goal and that’s not a bad thing either but a smart marketer not only plans to sell a product but also strategize on how to bring back customers for a second sale and a third one …so on.
This is the point where retention time comes into the picture.
For example, Facebook, they have the least retention time as people are so much addicted to FB that they stay online almost the whole day.
The last thing they do while sleeping is to post a ‘Good Night’ message & the very first thing to do next morning is to update a ‘Good Morning’ status and say hello to their friends.
They almost never leave the site, that’s why Facebook is one of the leaders in the social media industry as their users keep on coming back for more.
Now some people must be saying that a social media site is completely different from a business website and there is no way we can do to bring a customer back again & again.
Well, that’s where you are wrong as the customer always want to buy from you, they want to come back again, its just your mindset that’s stopping you as well as them.
According to research, almost 60% of marketers fail in their business as they aren’t successful enough to bring customers back again.
So, what should be done to bring a customer back?
How to reduce retention time?
Somebody once said that the best way to bring back customers is to sell a faulty product & they will definitely come back again…Hahaha.
Jokes apart, see customers are always curious about the latest offers, products & services, they always want more.
For example, Facebook, users go there to see something new whether it’s a new like or share or comment and that’s what attracts FB users as whenever they log in they get something new like a notification or a message & that’s why they keep on going there.
Similarly in your business, you can also introduce an element of freshness & suspense.
When you are selling something to your audience it should have something unique like a hidden treasure which makes them come back for more.
There are various ways to do it and the most effective & user-friendly ways are mentioned here.
A. COUPON: One of the most effective methods to keep your customers intact is by giving them a discount coupon for their next buy.
A well known multi-utility mobile app ‘Oxigen’ really knows how to do it.
They have created a system in which after every sale they give away free discount coupons on different products for next purchase.
After every buying customer is redirected to a landing page where they get to select a free coupon from a list of free coupons and whichever coupon customer selects gets automatically saved in his login account.
But that coupon is for a limited period of time so that customer comes back to app more often.
This is a good trick for any business, you should try it.
B. FOLLOW-UP:
Following up is an important method to solve this problem of high retention time.
Most of the online businesses use this very method.
They have achieved immense success by using this very method of continuing to follow up whether through email or push notification or something else.
Let’s briefly discuss the most powerful follow up methods:
1). EMAIL:
When it comes to conversion results email is one of the successful methods.
According to research, Email is said to have a conversion rate of almost 80% more than any other method.
Whenever a customer comes to your site & subscribes for updates or new letters, he is giving his acceptance to sell to him and that’s where you have the chance to talk to him.
By email, you get the chance to get to know your customer, to introduce your product and finally sell your product.
The thing is that most of the marketers know the success rate of email marketing even then they are not able to properly utilize this opportunity.
So, how to use email to sell your product to the customer?
Email is a personal one 2 one conversation with the customer where he is available all the time, email is like an online workplace where people login every day to connect with their business, colleagues & to share important information.
Basically it’s a necessity for working people.
Now as a marketer all you’ve to do is to find the right person (i.e. customer prospect), once they subscribe to your email you have all the time to display key features & benefits your product.
You can tell them how it will help them in the long run & so on.
2). PUSH NOTIFICATIONS: Many of you might have heard about the push notifications it’s a very useful tool to connect to a large range of audiences.
With great use of modern technology, push notifications are really a gift for the online community.
Most marketers are either not aware of push notifications or they don’t know how to use this thing.
See, marketing is not just a thing to sell products, it helps you to stay connected with your audience and also it gives you a chance to convince your audience about the quality & consistency of your products.
In the online market, thousands of websites grow every day & it’s your responsibility to stay alive.
Push notifications allow you to do that.
A push notification is like proof of your existence & it tells users that this site has sent some latest information.
A push notification instantly pops out on the screens of users whenever they come online.
It also allows you to share your latest offers & products with your existing subscribers instantly.
Now let’s see how push notifications work?
Basically push notification is a quick slide-in notification that provides instant updates to your subscribed users on their desktop, tablets or mobile.
To get started with the push notifications you have to register your website with a push notification service provider and just follow the steps to get going in less than 5 minutes.
There are various service providers in the market and some of the well-known service providers are pushengage & pushcrew.
You must check out their websites.
3). LINE EXTENSIONS:
The name ‘Line extension’ itself suggests that it has something to do with ‘extension’.
The word extension here refers to increasing the number of products and it’s a normal thing in the business world.
Whenever you buy a product, most of the products have some associated products that you need to buy along with the core product.
These products can be either in the form of an accessory or a side product.
For example, when a customer buys a costly iPhone 10 then it’s almost mandatory to carry a mobile safety cover.
So, if you can manage to increase your number of products to a wider range, customers will definitely come back to buy related products.
And to make it a further strong offer you can add an extra discount on that additional purchase to really close the deal.
For example, Josh has a crockery store where he sells all the kitchen items, which a lady can dream of.
One fine day a well-dressed lady came into the store and said that she is looking for a 6 person tea set, so Josh showed her the best product that he had and after having a look at it she selected a beautiful bone-china tea set.
Now Josh understood that lady likes bone china products so he immediately pulled out a bone china bowl set that goes really well with the tea set and told about the additional product.
So, what happened is that the lady realized that buying a bowl set is not a bad idea after all and she bought it then & there.
Sometimes it might happen that customers will see the additional product and come back again later to buy that product, it happens a lot.
And that’s how you use a line extension to make more money.
4. MEMBERSHIP PLAN:
The membership plan is another interesting method to bring customers back to your website but this method is totally different from the previous methods.
Most marketers usually ignore it because they consider it an overused trick but what they don’t know is the amount of money they’re leaving on the table.
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book where marketers offer a membership plan to their customers, this plan provides access to some extra benefits along with the core product and it plays a key role to bring them back to your website or shop.
Reliance JIO, a well-known telecom company in India is doing it perfectly.
They offered prime membership (in order to avail access to the exclusive plans with extra benefits) to their customers at a minimal price of 100 Indian rupees.
Well, customers happily went through the membership phase to get to the juicy stuff and that’s where JIO managed to make a loop to make the customers come back again & again.
In this way, the company also got an opportunity to offer its other paid products directly to its existing customers.
Let me tell you that the company made a huge additional profit through this method.
Membership plans are like making relations with your customers where you get to know each other and you share your stuff & thoughts with each other.
Therefore these plans are crucial in your marketing plan and a must-have too.
Let’s see how to use a membership plan?
It’s not that complicated.
All you have to do is to offer premium membership at cheap prices so that users won’t hesitate to opt-in.
And the stuff which you offer should be really exclusive.
Remember that you are doing it for one purpose & that is to bring the customer back to your website so the membership plan shouldn’t be too much costly.
But wait there is one more thing which can increase your website traffic & that too free of cost.
It’s called ‘Advocacy’.
5. ADVOCACY:
At this point in time, you must be thinking that we have covered all the major parts of marketing.
We created awareness, brought into consideration, made a sale and increase loyalty among the customers now it’s all over.
But wait, what if I say that there is one crazy factor which can simply double the effect of all these four strategies and can quadruple your sales.
Yes, you heard it right.
So, when we launch a product in a new market then the most difficult part is to create awareness about your product but what’s even tougher is to bring them back to your site voluntarily.
Focus on the word ‘voluntarily’.
It means that users will come to your site willingly without any effort from your end.
We have already discussed effective strategies on how to get your customers back to your site but still, more than 70% of marketers are unaware of this secret ingredient called ‘Advocacy’.
Let’s understand what is ‘Advocacy’.
Advocacy is a strategy focused on creating a loyal customer base for your products & brands such that they promote your product voluntarily.
For this to happen you need to build a connection with your customers which can be achieved by providing excellent customer support to your users.
Most marketers start to jump up & down after making a sale but they don’t focus on various other aspects of the marketing funnel.
(This is very important, stay focused)
Once the customer buys your product, once the money has exchanged hands then the status of your relationship with the customer is changed, his expectations from you are now way more than normal.
You can see it like a marriage, where before marriage you have all the right to make an excuse to your girlfriend.
Suppose she calls you and asks “honey lets catch up” but you have some other plans with friends so you say” my friend crashed his car & I gotta go to the hospital to see him”.
But once your GF turns into your wife things totally change, you gotta listen to her, look after her & respect her.
Why is that so?
It’s a mandatory step to carry your relationship ahead.
These small-small things bring the best out of your married life and also help you to maintain your social life.
The same thing goes with marketing.
Suppose you make a sale, the customer takes your product home, starts using your product & he finds a defect.
What’s the first thing he is gonna do? Whom he will contact?
It’s you the seller who sold him the product or if you are a big company he will contact your support team, in either case, he will seek help from the seller.
At this point, he will be in dilemma & totally stressed out cause he spends his hard-earned money on your product.
Now once he contacts you, the first & foremost thing to do is to relax him, listen to his problems and try every possible solution to help him.
1. Relax him.
2. Listen to his problem carefully.
3. Provide easy to apply solutions.
This is where you create a relationship with your customer and provide yourself a chance to stand out in the crowd.
When their problems will get solved easily without any trouble, they will be more than happy to see that they made the right decision to buy your product & services.
This will instantly trigger a switch in their minds with a positive attitude towards your product and services hence they will definitely recommend your products to their friends & relatives.
Now word of mouth is one of the most popular methods for creating awareness about your product but it takes a lot of time to affect your audience.
So, you can promote your product using other quick methods like:
A. SOCIAL SHARING: Have you ever noticed why every website has that long list of social media sharing icons on their main page, well they are there for this very purpose to create awareness about your product. They allow your visitors to share your content which brings more customers and eventually makes more sales.
Remember larger the number of shares you get, larger will be your brand reach. The shares are proof that your product is good & they create a social status about your brand.
They show your customers that your product has been accepted by similar customers & that’s what today the customer is looking for.
B. REVIEW:
Reviews about a product play a key role in marketing, they create an image of your product.
(QUICK NOTE: A review is feedback given by an existing customer).
According to a survey, almost 95% of customers read reviews before buying any product, especially while shopping online.
When it comes to online products a positive review can prove to be a game-changer. A review acts as social proof to your customers that your product and services are worth spending money & time. So, how do you ask your customer for leaving a review?
Nowadays asking for a review is like a mandatory concept. Almost every online store uses to ask its customers to leave quick feedback about their products. A review instantly gains the attention of new visitors. It also helps you “the seller” to find the pros and cons of your product.
So, a review works for you as well as your customers and gives you a clear idea of where you stand in the market and eventually gets the best out of you. The most powerful way to ask for a review of your product is immediately after selling your product.
Now concentrate here
Surveys say that when the customers were asked for a review right after the payment then the rate of positive reviews was more than 20% & it happened because they never used the product as they just bought it.
The happy feeling of buying a new product got translated into a positive review & they left quick feedback. For example, a Nice product, good product or I am happy with it, etc.
However various customers would want to wait for using the product for some time before putting their thoughts online, in such a situation what you can do? All you have to do is to keep on asking for a review through various methods like push notifications or pop-outs. But you don’t want to irritate your customers so keep it sweet & simple.
This trick has been tried and tested by many pros of marketing, so you should definitely try it out.
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