We are at the second last episode of our unstuck series, and we are asking the question, how do I get customers for my product or service? We often spend so much time working on designing and building the product that we often neglect this question. And in the previous episode, we talked about the best way to launch a product.
So let’s discuss a framework that will help for not only getting customers, but in the last episode, in the next one, after this, we’ll ask, how do you keep customers? But we’re going to break the customer question up into two parts, and we’re going to talk about how we get customers.
And we’re going to use some thinking that is growth marketing. You might’ve heard of growth hacking or growth marketing. We’ll look at three key questions that represent three steps in the growth marketing funnel.
So growth marketing is quite disruptive in the world of marketing and advertising because the historical way that the marketing world has tackled launching products and selling products is they try to make as many people as possible aware and tell them to go to a destination or to a retailer. This is what we call the top of the funnel.
But what’s really interesting is that growth marketing is enormously disruptive because it says, well, that’s only one third of the funnel, there’s still another two thirds. And in fact, the only way to think about the funnel is in whole. So you think about the end to end cycle, that customers, that audiences, go through when they actually experience a product or a service. So much money is invested on the awareness and the reach stage in traditional marketing, but growth marketing is about the whole funnel.
Every step of the way is a key moment of conversion. So conversion is the magic thing inside the funnel. This funnel is made up of six steps and at each step you’re looking to convert as best as possible. So if you’re not familiar with the growth marketing funnel, let’s dive in and look at the first three steps in the funnel.
So to understand the whole funnel, we’ll need to break it up into two episodes. So make sure you listen to the last episode in this series where we will talk about the second half of the funnel: How do I keep customers?
So you have a funnel and you want to reach as many people as possible and go through a series of conversions with them. Breaking it down, this funnel we use is called the pirate funnel, why, good question, because it’s the acronym of the funnel – AAARRR!
Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue
That is the pirate funnel. The first three A’s stand for awareness, acquisition and activation. And the second half is Retention, Referral and Revenue. They all come in a logical sequence, so listen in and join us for this and our final episode of the product management unstuck series at the BottomUp Skills Podcast for more bite sized product skills and at BottomUp Skills for free courses on Design Thinking, Agile, Lean and much more. Free skill courses for product people and innovators.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, and welcome to the BottomUp Skills Podcast. I Mike Parsons, the CEO of Qualitance and we are at the second last episode of our unstuck series, and we are asking a mighty. Big question.
But we’re going to break the customer question up into two parts, and we’re going to talk about how we get customers. And we’re going to use some thinking that is growth marketing. Inspired now you might’ve heard of growth hacking growth marketing.
Let me tell you a little bit about those. And then I’m going to give you three key questions that represent three steps in the growth marketing funnel. So growth marketing is quite disruptive in the world of marketing and advertising. The historical way that the marketing world has sort of tackled, launching products and selling products is they try and make as many people as possible aware and tell them to go to a destination or to a retailer.
Growth Marketing
This is kind of what we call the top of the funnel, but what’s really quite interesting is that growth marketing is enormously disruptive because it says, well, that’s only. Like one third of the funnel, there’s still another two thirds. And in fact, the only way to think about the funnel is in whole. So you think about the end to end cycle, that customers, that audience, go through when they actually experience a product or a service. And so much money gets spent on the awareness and the reach stage in traditional marketing, that growth marketing is like, Oh no, no, no.
We run the full funnel. And every step of the way in this funnel is a key moment of conversion. So conversion is the magical thing inside the funnel. This funnel is made up of six steps and at each step you’re looking to convert as best as possible. So I’m going to introduce to you the funnel and we’re going to use the first three steps in the funnel. To tackle, how do I get customers? And we’re going to use the last three steps on how we keep customers. So this is going to be great. So make sure you’ve listened to, by this episode in the following one.
If you want to see the whole funnel, it’s kind of big. So I thought for the podcast, let’s make it two parts. Okay so you got a funnel and you want to reach as many people as possible and go through a series of conversions with them. So I’m going to break it down, but first let’s talk about the name of this funnel.
The Pirate Funnel
This is called, the pirate funnel. The one that I use it is called the pirate funnel because when you actually take the acronym of the six steps in the funnel, it’s are just like a good pirate. So it’s a R R R. That is the pirate funnel. The first three A’s stand for awareness, acquisition and activation. Okay.
Now they all come in a logical sequence, so let’s break them down and let’s talk about. What really matters in each of these stages. So awareness let’s imagine we’re running. Um, and, uh, we’ve built a SAS software as a service product, and that’s the context of these questions.So we’ve got the product. We’ve just launched now we’re on the mission to go get customers.
Taking The First Step
So the first step is asking ourselves what’s the awareness look like? How many people do we reach? And for me, the, the key key key thing here is it’s all about. Being present in, in the case of a SAS startup, it starts with Google.Um, so the key question is how many people are you reaching? Are you even in Google?
And you start to see here, that awareness starts with being find-able to being. Present out there in the world because you know, so many people forget, even some of the basics of what is crucial to making sure that people are even aware of you.So let’s go through like a win. Um, and then this is really where you build your brand.
So you’re going to want to make sure you’re on a you’re indexed on Google, but also you’re going to find all sorts of marketplaces to launch a product like product hunt or beta list. Want to be in there. Step further.
You, if you’re a SAS, you can list yourself in all sorts of directories, um, where people review SAS products, G2 being one of the bigger players. So awareness is all about being listed.
If you’re running paid, how many impressions do you get? you’re really looking, uh, For SEO as being a big practice in your awareness.The other thing here is that as you get more mature, you do want to see some more sophisticated advertising things like retargeting. And if you’re on directories or review sites, you might even have affiliate partnerships to drive that reach. So that’s really the top of the funnel. So that’s a witness that we’re talking about.So once you’ve got that awareness, you need to drive people to your website.
This is what we call acquisition. So as you start looking at the acquisition part, this is like, how many people are visiting, visiting our site? So, you might see people turning up, visiting your site, bouncing on your site. You want to start looking at what content they’re looking at, you know, what are the things in their behaviors that they’re doing on your site really starting to discover? What’s interesting.
A big clue here would be, what is the most popular content on your site? What’s getting the most indexing from search, obviously.Um, you know, we shouldn’t forget part of the awareness is social media, so you should be on LinkedIn and Facebook and all those millions of other social networks. You really want to be driving that engagement with your content, um, with your services and then comes the next big step.
This is activation, activation is super important because in activation you’re really presenting your customers with the first step in the relationship. This could be a trial. This could be a freemium signup. This could be some sort of request to fund demonstration. Could be any sort of metric that you have for activating the customers.
The first step, it’s not necessarily the full value in a transaction, but it could be something that feeds into your funnel. Maybe it’s a webinar who knows. But what you see here is this clear funnel, awareness, acquisition, and activation. The key question for each of those goes, how many people did I reach? How many people visit our website and how many people take the first step?
Now, what you’ll notice is obviously there’s going to be some attrition here. So you know, if you reach a hundred people, you might get 22 website and only five take the first step that’s okay.
Because there, you see the conversion rates and your job in terms of getting customers is to improve those conversion rates. Obsess on the conversion rates and make those numbers better. That’ll force you to come up with innovative new ways to engage your customers, to drive them through the funnel, more efficiently to create more value for you as a business.
How do I get customers? Make sure you have the awareness, the acquisition and activation. It’s the first three. A’s. Of the pirate metrics.
It’s all part of this universe of growth, metrics of growth marketing. A fantastic world is pretty, it’s still pretty new, growth marketers are very hard to find. They’re almost as hard as product people. But if you can start getting your three, A’s going, you’ll be all set up for the three hours, which will be in our next episode.
So if you keen to know more about building brands, building products, head over to BottomUp.io, where you’re going to find all sorts of free courses and master classes. Okay. That’s it. For another episode of the BottomUp Skills Podcast, that’s a wrap.
