I know everyone is reading about this new amazing terminology commonly referred to as “Growth Hacking”.. It seems like a cool trendy topic but like most people you walk away scratching your head at the most obvious question. “How do I apply the growth hacking tips of the Wizards to my start up? ”
Below are 6 simple customer acquisition hacks that I always ask my clients when I consult. It usually creates a very clear picture of the goals that they are seeking from their online campaigns.
(A) Why?
First question, why are people buying my product specifically? A great example of this is a client I just met with today, he sells suits with custom tailoring.
He called his client’s up and asked them a very simple question, why are you buying my products?
They said it was mainly because his service was time efficient, his prices were reasonable, and he provided amazing customer service.
What this means from a marketing stand-point is the following
1. A lot of people who buy suits are really frustrated because it is a long cumbersome process
2. Some people who buy suits are scared that they might get ripped off and be hard-sold by their sales person.
3. Some sales-people in the suit business are hard to work with and don’t provide for the customer’s needs like they should.
(B) Who?
Who are your customers?
An easy way to figure this out is to place a Quantcast pixel on the main page of your web site. It’s also free.
You want to figure out the basic segmentation of your audience, which will allow you to write ad copy and build campaigns around this demographic.
Basic segmentation is the following:
How old are they?
How much money do they make a year ,range?
What language do they speak?
What gender are they?
What sexual orientation are they?
Where are they located,area of the country or world?
(C) Where?
Where is your customer hanging out? Which channel should you dedicate your time, energy, and money to? I.e. is it Google PPC, Facebook, Offline Direct Mail,
To figure this out the question to ask yourself is, are your users people specifically looking for your products such as the way a user would look for a “Washer machines”?
If a person needs a washer machine they are most likely going to search for a “washer machine” on Google and compare prices.
On the other hand are they people who didn’t know your products existed and are more likely to find your product by seeing a banner ad.
An example of this Beta Brands, which market’s Sweat Pants Dress Pants. I never knew sweat pants dress pants even existed but the concept seems cool, I am likely to possibly buy them after seeing a Facebook Ad as I am not specifically going on Google looking for sweet pants dress pants.
(D) How?
Now that you have found your marketing channel, the next question to ask yourself is how do I reach this audience? What is going to get this user to click over to your site?
Is it a banner ad if so what is my sales pitch? Time to put the marketing hat on.
What pictures should I test?
What headlines should test?
What body copy should I test?
(E) Goals?
Goals are very important, now that you have gotten this user to click over, what do you want them to do?
Do you want them to order a product, if so what product?
Do you want them to just like your Facebook Fan Page?
Ask yourself the exact goal of the campaign, for some people its very obvious and for other people its not.
(F) Tracking?
How do you track success or failure of your campaigns? You have spent X and you have made Y? How do you know which ads are working and which ads aren’t working?
The answer is you have to build out a tracking methodology to efficiently scale your campaigns.
This could be one of several mechanism’s usually including google analytics but also including an ad tracker such as Simple Engine (Free) and maybe an ad server like SiteScout depending on where exactly you are buying media.
