Today, the marketplace is very cluttered. Some call this a challenge, while others consider this an opportunity. But, regardless of the opinion, this is what it is.
So, today, at threeminutes, we have started this new series called “What a professional says” for our young readers where we bring to you some tips, insights and best industry practices which will help you excel in your careers (and case study competitions)
Stay tuned for this segment every Friday!
Today, let’s talk about how to acquire new customers as a marketeer?
The best strategy here is “Engage, Analyse and Acquire”, typically what we call as funnel targeting. Let’s understand this strategy for Performance Marketing (Facebook Ads, Google Ads etc.) as that’s how most of us market today, digitally!
Before I explain the concept (read: magic) of funnel marketing, digest the fact that not every ad of yours should intend to create conversions (bring in sales). It’s a step by step process as -
a. You can’t accurately determine who will be your customer and thus need to communicate/sell your idea to all – ENGAGE
Please note: You should not stereotypically define your customers as per what is logical or intuitive. For example: Assuming the customers for a keto brand to be a young gym and fitness driven individual will be a lost opportunity for the brand as you never know that even working professionals who don’t have time to go to the gym and are looking for healthy food alternatives may make a good customer base for them. Hence, engage with all.
b. Once the ads are launched to all, now you need to analyse the reception of the communication that how many people clicked the ad and what is common between these groups. Basically, start profiling your engaged audience- ANALYSE
c. Post analysis, you now have an idea of warm leads/potential customers and now you must strategically put out a revised communication to them with loud CTA’s and messaging as per their profiling. This boosts up your conversions - ACQUIRE
How funnel marketing can help us to acquire new customers?
Leverage Performance Marketing. Here is a step by step guide:
1. Develop performance creatives such that they -
a. Highlight USP’s of your business
b. In the case of videos, it is not more than 10 secs
c. It has a clear objective and communication etc.
2. Create few variations of these ads with respect to video lengths, CTA buttons, images, text, colours etc, launch them in a limited but well representative audience and see which ones are performing best – this is the learning period.
3. Once you identify the best performing creatives, upscale and make the ad available to larger audiences. This audience represents the total market and not everyone here will be interested in your brand. Thus, your first creative should be more engagement-driven.
4. Now let’s say you showed your ad to 10000 people and only 10% are those who watched at least 25% of your video or only 10% clicked on the image or strolled through the catalogue- this shows interest. This is what we call as the top funnel.
5. Now to this top funnel, you re-market, focussing on more conversion and informational advertisements for them. Out of these 1000 (10% of 10000) top-funnel audience, let’s say only 10% engaged with your second ad again, clicked and entered your website/ watched the video or signed up for a newsletter etc. This 10% (100) makes up the middle funnel.
6. Now out of these 100 people that became engaged to your brand again, came to the website, signed up etc., given the conversion rate of your website is let’s say 2%, also 2 people will make the purchase. Hence, 2 new customers acquired in the whole drill in this given example.
Notice how we went on optimising the campaign by engaging with all but then only nurturing the leads and guiding them to the bottom of the funnel. You might feel that we have just got 2 conversions but look at the bigger picture. You have three funnels now and you know that where and how you want to invest in each funnel.
Few tips to optimise your performance ads:
1. Video Ads work the best for performance marketing. Ideally, you should keep the ratio between images and videos as 2:1. The top funnel, being unaware of the brand might not stop to watch videos and should be exposed to lifestyle images and GIFs while middle and bottom-funnel should be shown videos with more product attributes focus.
2. Make the CTA button more prominent. Use unconventional but relevant CTA buttons to invoke urgency and excitement. For example, Grammarly in one of its ads used a “Write the Future” as a CTA button. How empowering, no?
3. Put out your USP’s in the performance ads – UNBREAKABLE, LONG-LASTING, AWARD-WINNING etc. Put out the benefits to the user and not always talk about the brand.
4. Use carousel ads to weave a story. Make the user swipe and watch all your carousel ads out of curiosity.
And how would you know that your performance ads worked?
CTR! Click through Rate i.e. how many people clicked on your advertisement. Ideally, it should be >2% but 1% is a good number to start with. Along with this, as the costing on these ads can happen, either way, one being CPC (cost per click) or CPM (Cost per 1000 Impressions) on a case by case basis, you should also keep your CPA (Cost per acquisition) under control. (an ideal CPA is a subjective parameter)
CPA: Total cost incurred/ Conversions
A final word of caution: You should not always run after conversions. Without testing and engaging, you will never be able to optimise and create an engaged audience which will drive your conversions. Later, with this learning, you may even create your lookalike audiences on Facebook and look for conversions in them
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