Attracting customers is important, but most of your profits will come from your ability to keep them long-term. It’s more expensive to focus on attracting customers than to sell to people you’ve already done business with. For instance, you can run paid ads forever, but those leads will cost you more than if you were to sell more to your existing customers. And that’s why you need a cost-effective strategy for attracting customers and turning them into loyal, repeat buyers.
This article will cover how to build a low-cost marketing funnel that works.
Understand how your marketing funnel works
Even if you don’t have a strategy you officially call a funnel, you still have a marketing funnel. It just might need some work. Your marketing funnel consists of the steps customers take to go from one stage to the next in the buyer’s journey. It’s a predictable path that can be optimized.
- Awareness. Potential customers first discover that you exist through ads, social media posts, word of mouth, or other channels.
- Consideration. Next, a lead will contemplate if your offer is the right solution by comparing you against competitors in terms of features, benefits, and price.
- Decision. Once a lead has considered your offer, they’ll either choose to buy or not. This choice is based on a variety of factors, including how easy it is to buy from you and how trustworthy you seem.
- Loyalty. After customers buy from you, if they’re happy, they’ll come back to make additional purchases, refer friends and family, and these people will cost less to market to in the future.
Your goal is to guide customers from one stage to the next without overspending on any step. What’s considered overspending varies based on industry, but as a general rule, you don’t want to spend more attracting customers than what that customer will spend with you. For example, attracting customers might cost you $150, but if your customers purchase a $1500 product and ongoing services for $500/month, each lead is $150 well spent.
Know when to call in the pros
First things first. If you aren’t a seasoned marketer, it’s worth hiring a professional marketing agency to get you going. It costs more up front than a DIY approach, but it’s cost-effective because you’ll avoid all the pitfalls and costly mistakes that many business owners make trying to handle it all.
Launch a referral program
Since word-of-mouth is one of the most effective ways to generate conversions, it makes sense to launch a referral program. It costs next to nothing and requires little effort to ensure it works smoothly.
Most companies offer discounts, freebies, or small cash rewards for customers who bring them new customers. You can offer anything that works in your industry. Referral programs are typically run with software that provides customers with a referral link, images, templates, and pre-made social media posts designed to encourage referral signups. The easier you make it, the more likely your customers are to promote you with their referral links.
Email marketing helps build long-term relationships
Email marketing is cost-effective because it gives you significant leverage. You can drop your leads into any email sequence you want based on where they sign up and what interests they express. For example, if you run local car shows, you can create individual sequences to separate Acura lovers from people who prefer classics. When your audience is separated, it allows you to be more specific with your marketing messages, which is the key to increasing conversions.
Invest in paid ads
Paid ads and email marketing work together to increase your profits. The right ads will generate targeted traffic that converts. If you can reach the right audience and get those conversions, those customers will be more likely to become repeat buyers when you nurture them through email.
Make use of retargeted ads
Not every visitor will buy the first time they see or click on your ad. In fact, most people need to see an ad at least a couple of times before committing to a purchase. When you run a retargeted ad campaign, your ads are only shown to people who have previously interacted with your ads or who have visited your website, and that’s why they’re so powerful.
Retargeting campaigns consistently deliver higher ROI than regular ads because your audience is already warmed up and knows you exist. When a lead is already aware of your brand or product, it’s easier to nudge them toward making a purchase.
Smart strategies win
You don’t need a bottomless marketing budget to get results. You can start retaining and attracting customers by focusing on smart, cost-effective strategies, like the ones outlined in this article. Once you build momentum, scaling will be easier and more profitable.
Photo by Redd Francisco; Unsplash
