4 Steps to Optimize Your Customer Acquisition Funnel

How To Build A Scalable Customer Acquisition Funnel In 4 Easy Steps

A scalable customer acquisition funnel is extremely important for the expansion of businesses It doesn’t matter if they operate online or offline. Sustainability is at risk for any business without a steady flow of new customers, as it becomes dependent on its existing customer base for all its revenue. Without a predictable system for growth, businesses could face problems that lead to potential decline in sales.

Outlined here is a 4-step system for creating a customer acquisition funnel that any business looking to grow can implement.

The Building Blocks Of A Customer Acquisition Funnel

Before exploring the four pivotal steps necessary to create an effective customer acquisition funnel. First and foremost, it’s critical to familiarize oneself with several foundational components that are vital for the success of the customer acquisition funnel in driving substantial revenue. 

These components are drawn from not only marketing strategies but also encompass product positioning and the engagement of sales representatives.

• Prospects – Identifying prospects is a preliminary step that ought to be taken before any financial investment. Understanding the ideal customer, including their preferences and needs, is crucial. With a clear understanding of the prospects, it becomes possible to devise an effective strategy to engage their interest and funnel them in towards making purchases.
• Offer/Service/Product – At the core of scaling a business lies the creation of an offer, service, or product that meets a crucial need of customers. High-demand and unique products greatly eases the process of scaling. While finding the most effective product may require experimentation, understanding your customers can help this process.
• Post Inquiry Sales Process – The experience that follows an inquiry plays a critical role in the customer acquisition funnel, especially for businesses in coaching, services, or B2B SaaS sectors. This process often involves a sales representative providing a detailed pitch via a platform like Zoom. Various strategies exist to make this phase more efficient, which is essential for keeping the marketing cost of customer acquisition funnels and profitability at reasonable levels.
• Understanding Of Client Acquisition Metrics – The significance of being knowledgeable about key client acquisition metrics cannot be overstated. The goal is to explore some of these metrics within the acquisition strategy, highlighting the necessity to monitor and adjust these metrics. This helps to fine-tune the customer acquisition funnel effectively.

Few Terminologies That You Should Be Familiar With In Your Customer Acquisition Funnels

• Total leads - This key performance indicator tracks the overall number of leads generated through various customer acquisition channels.
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) - This metric indicates the number of leads that fulfill the sales criteria, established in collaboration between the sales and marketing departments.
• Conversion Rate on Landing Page - This figure represents the proportion of visitors to the landing page who complete a form. This further highlights the importance of optimizing landing pages for higher conversion rates to maintain a reasonable cost per lead.
• CAC: ACV Ratio - The Customer Acquisition Cost to Average Contract Value ratio is a critical financial metric, especially for self-funded businesses. A ratio of 3:1 is generally seen as indicative of a business’s ability to scale quickly without additional capital. It also shows that marketing expenses result in proportional or greater sales revenue, thus ensuring sustainable business growth.
• Lead Close Ratio Of Sales Team - This measure is vital for assessing the effectiveness of the sales team in converting leads into customers, which in turn plays a significant role in controlling the Customer Acquisition Funnel Cost.

It’s important to grasp these metrics to forge a compelling client customer acquisition funnels strategy.

4 Steps For Your Customer Acquisition Funnel

The precise steps involve:

• Creating an offer that unifies the sales and marketing departments
• Setting up a landing page that draws significant traffic
• Applying a mix of paid and organic advertising strategies targeting the landing page
• Providing teams with comprehensive training on scripts, follow-up strategies, and re-engagement techniques (which is highly crucial)

Step 1: Create The Offer That Aligns With Your Sales & Marketing

It’s widely recognized that the impact of a sale rests not solely on the product or service being sold but significantly on the approach taken to sell it. This principle has gained validation through various experiences in the marketing industry. Thus highlighting that, the way an offer is presented to potential clients plays a crucial role in its success.

The foremost aim of any offer is to pinpoint a customer’s problem that they can identify with. Once identified, the solution must be seamlessly integrated into the offer or highlighted as an actionable step. Remember “Features tell, benefits sell,” use this as a guiding principle in how offers should be communicated to customers.

1. Effective Messaging For Your Offer/Service

Failure to properly position an offer is often a significant hindrance for many organizations attempting to increase customer acquisition funnels as well as their revenue. The importance of precise offer positioning cannot be overstated, as it influences every phase of the customer acquisition process.

Offers, products, or services that not only provide a solution to a significant problem within the industry but also include one or two additional perks tend to stand out, thus enhancing the main offer’s value against its cost.

2. Incorporating a Strategic Combination Approach

Adopting a strategy that addresses a primary issue while supplementing it with other sub-offers to increase overall value without resorting to substantial discounts is pretty important. To add a sense of urgency and further enhance the offer, bonus incentives could be included, for example:

• A free website audit + 3 months of free maintenance (as part of the package)
• A complimentary SEO Audit (also included in the package)

These extra incentives significantly bolster the main offer, rendering it an even more compelling option for potential clients.

Step 2: Create a landing page with your offer and CTA

To set up an inviting offer, the next step is to craft a landing page that effectively highlights the offer or key components of the product. This should be diplayed along with a clear call to action aimed at future clients. The three primary elements critical for creating a captivating landing page that effectively showcases the offer include:

• Emphasis Through a Striking Headline - The first thing noticeable on a well-prepared landing page is its headline at the top. It presents the call to action clearly, highlighted by a significant statement.
• Use of Videos - Adding a brief, straightforward video is crucial when promoting an informational product or SaaS solution. Such a video should concisely deliver the message and precisely direct the viewers towards the call to action.
• Focus on the Call to Action, Particularly for Mobile - To boost the landing page’s conversion rates, it’s important to make the call to action button instantly visible and distinct from the other content. Positioning the button in multiple spots across the landing page or using a floating format on mobile platforms ensures steady visibility.

In essence, to effectively promote and grow any online offer via a landing page, it’s vital to include a captivating headline, an engaging video, and a call to action button that stands out.

Step 3: Getting Relevant Traffic To Your Landing Page

Once an enticing offer is established and paired with an engaging landing page, the focus must shift towards strategizing on how to direct relevant traffic towards that page.

A prevalent dilemma is whether one should invest in paid advertisements right from the start. Investing in organic content creation to attract traffic to the offer holds significant value. However, prioritizing paid advertisements aimed at potential customers from the start is deemed crucial for several reasons:

1. Paid advertisements offer quicker insights than any organic method.
2. They allow for the adjustment of the offer, thereby improving the investment returns from the client acquisition system.
3. Successfully acquiring customers through paid ads can be efficiently scaled, possibly involving a marketing agency for their management.

1. The Audience & Paid Channels – Key Components of the Client Acquisition Funnel

The chosen target audience plays a critical role in determining the cost of the customer acquisition funnel, accounting for about 80% of this cost. For example, targeting B2B marketing executives tends to attract higher traffic and a greater Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) compared to targeting small business owners. Although the costs are higher, the elevated price point of the products/services offered to B2B executives often justifies this approach.

Selecting the appropriate paid channels for advertisements is pivotal in maximizing customer acquisition. Depending on the target audience, these channels may include:

• Facebook & Instagram Paid Ads
• LinkedIn Ads
• YouTube Video Ads
• Sponsored Posts & Banners on popular sites visited by the target audience
• Google PPC Ads
• TikTok Ads
• Twitter Ads
• Ads on Reddit
• Paid placements on agency directory sites like Clutch or G2 Crowd

Utilizing multiple channels can boost scalability, but mastering one before moving on to others is recommended.

By understanding the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for a particular channel, strategic expansion to additional channels can be achieved easily. Making adjustments in the customer acquisition funnels and creating content optimized for each channel are often necessary to maintain a desirable return on investment when branching into new marketing avenues.

Given the hefty investment in social media ads, which exceeded $40 billion in the US last year, adopting an omnichannel strategy is vital to sustain growth in client acquisition.

2. Top or bottom of the funnel approach – which strategy to begin with for paid ads to your landing page?

Starting with a targeted approach is essential when launching new promotions or creating landing pages. Especially when utilizing PPC and Facebook Ads for digital marketing campaigns.

The emphasis on lead nurturing and its role in converting leads into paying customers is undeniable. However, the primary aim of initiating a new campaign targeting customer acquisition lies in gauging the offer’s appeal to the intended audience.

The strategy aims to reduce costs while generating sales, facilitating the fine-tuning of the acquisition approach to improve profitability. Upon observing positive outcomes in the customer acquisition funnel, the next step involves expansion and the testing of various audience segments in ad sets to evaluate the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

For certain sectors, starting with a webinar as the first point of engagement and discussing the product can be advantageous. For companies offering B2B products, proposing prospects to register for a demo through the landing page might serve as an effective strategy. Ensuring the right audience is targeted remains key to achieving a strong sales team conversion ratio. In conclusion, keeping the traffic-driving approach simple is the overarching recommendation.

Step 4: Converting Your Leads From Your Landing Page Into Paid Customers

The primary objective of any marketing approach is to convert leads into sales. Its a crucial determinant of the profitability of one’s marketing funnel, which encompasses four essential steps.

• It begins with the creation of compelling offers,
• Crafting a dedicated landing page for these offers
• Channeling targeted traffic towards this page,
• Setting a solid foundation for sales discussions.

Sales are the cornerstone of any business operation, with no entity capable of growth without a strong sales process or strategy firmly in place. Globally, successful businesses attribute their expansion to their proficiency in this critical area.

1. Crafting a Comprehensive Sales Playbook Inspired by Initial Sales Insights

The cornerstone of an effective sales strategy is the development of a detailed sales playbook. This playbook must provide an exhaustive outline of the sales presentation, including the slides to be covered, strategies for handling sales objections, and recommended responses.

A common challenge identified across various organizations is the inconsistency in sales pitches by representatives. This leads to uncertainty about the most effective presentation techniques and pinpoint areas that need to be improved.

Achieving consistency in the sales approach and during the discovery process is imperative for success. Regular updates to the sales playbook and conducting practice sessions, whether one-on-one or in groups, are crucial for ensuring the sales team remains aligned.

2. Maximizing Sales Team Efficiency and Follow-up Strategies through Effective CRM & Tools

With a well-defined sales playbook, it’s essential to assess the technological tools and software the sales team will employ to efficiently manage leads. Initially, simple tools like spreadsheets may suffice for a small number of leads.

However, as the business grows and the number of leads increases, the necessity for a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system becomes apparent. While there are various options available, ensuring the chosen CRM system refines the discovery and follow-up processes to manage a growing volume of leads is critical for managing customer acquisition funnels.

Enhancing sales team productivity involves standardizing lead management practices, CRM training, automating outreach emails, regular feedback through call recording reviews, and training on approved offers and discounts. Additionally, investment in quality headsets and conducting weekly pipeline reviews are recommended practices.

Keeping the team motivated with appealing commission structures and short-term incentives is equally crucial for sustaining high morale and productivity. In summary, a meticulous approach to these four strategy steps can significantly impact customer acquisition funnels.