HOW TO VIRAL YOUR BUSINESS PART 6
Building A Funnel
Much like a bottleneck, a funnel
begins with a wide end and then narrows in a triangular shape to a small
opening. Funnels are needed when filtering uncooperative materials, in order to
make them cooperate accordingly.
In terms of funneling customers,
the goal is often to sort out the unpredictable individuals in order to find
those who are searching for your product or type of information.
Essentially, you will want to
guide visitors through the site in order for them to end at a signup or
checkout point, inviting them into your community.
Imagine the large end of the funnel as the
initial goal of “Inviting Visitors.”
These may be fans or they may be
those who have literally stumbled upon the site by accident for the first time.
Either way, the goal is to build a relationship with those who should belong to
your group.
With this in mind, the next step would be to “Activate
Members,” which consists of building a relationship with a customer or
potential customer.
The third step would be to “Retain the
Customer.”
Three-Step Breakdown
Imagine the three steps as the
beginnings of a relationship. The first step (Inviting Visitors) results from a
type of activation upon their part. Imagine this is an attractive individual
flirting from across the table. Much like a wink, new users must join an email
list, create an account, or purchase goods on the site.
The next step (Activate Members)
will then require that person to continue to use the product, much like being a
romantic relationship where dates are the standard. This could include individuals
who read and share emails or continue to purchase products on a regular basis.
These users (Retain the Customer) most resemble getting married.
Understanding Successful Rates
It can be discouraging to have a
scenario where thousands of individuals are visiting the site while only a
handful of customers are actually making purchases.
In this scenario, it’s important
to understand which conversation rates signify normal success. Honestly, the
deeper into the funnel, the less traffic exists. Mathematically, imagine
100,000 visitors resulting in 1,000 members, which would be a 1 percent
conversion.
Of those 1,000, let’s only 600
stick around, which would be a 60 percent conversion. While the numbers are
helpful to determining individual growth, they are almost impossible to compare
to one another.
Knowing the Variables
The first thing to consider would
be whether or not your overall traffic specifically identifies with a product.
If the product in question is an ebook about woodworking but the articles are
about welding, many visitors will quickly move on to something else.
Much of this depends on the
relationship of products available as well as the headlines of feature
articles. With that in mind, there are specifics types of traffic sources that
can convert members at higher rates than others.
Sometimes, this will be current
trending topics or any of other countless examples.
In another scenario, consider
your specific activation goal. Trying to get an email is much easier than
trying to make a sale. Asking for smaller favors results in larger results.
This is also true of high membership fees.
When considering retention rates,
it’s also important to consider others within the same market. Certain products
will feature more repeat users than others.
For example, high-end
hand-crafted pieces of furniture may not have repeat customers while a
fruit-of-the-month club will invite shoppers to purchase goods each month.
Determining Success
Once a growth hacker understands
the variables, there are additional facts to keep in mind when tracking and
expanding growth. The first rule is that numbers should always be
improving.
Much like an athlete, there is
never a reason to slow down or lose a step in a monthly training regime. In
terms of analytics, visitors should grow each month on a steady incline. This
has nothing to do with unknowns because growth should happen like clockwork
despite any adventures in trial and error.
After setting up steady growth,
consider tracking growth with a fellow hacker. Find somewhere with a product in
a similar field that doesn’t specifically compete with your product and work
together to find the most successful rates of growth.
Check one another’s numbers in
order for both of your organizations to succeed. These examples may work better
for area-based businesses such as a coffee shop in New York and another in Los
Angeles. Another example may be two online companies who sell winter gear,
where one sells hats and the other scarves. These methods truly help determine
realistic conversion rates.
Finally, make sure that you are
reading the data correctly. For example, if number of visitors increase but
retention drops, take this into account correctly, rather than only looking at
the drop of retention.
The main goal of tracking this
data is to create conversion rates in various key points within the funnel.
These various stages will work together over time to create a greater impact on
the business as a whole.
Setting Priorities
Funnels actually help determine
where to place the most emphasis to build growth. While methods still aren’t
soundproof, the results are usually within the analytics.
Imagine a 60 percent conversation
rate from visitors to members and a 50 percent conversion rate of those members
to users, with only 100 new daily visitors. In this scenario, the conversation
rates would be high but the new visitors are relatively low and should
therefore be the focus of the growth hacker in this scenario.
Moving aside from growth, it’s
time to think back on the product. The term “product-market fit” applies to the
priority of the product on the market.
Essentially, if the product
completely disappears from the market and 40 percent of that product’s users
were not extremely disappointed, then it may be time to reevaluate the
product.
The team behind the product needs
to focus more on the actual product, helping to create something that will
demand outrage if it were to ever leave the stands (online or otherwise). Make
sure the energy going into the growth of a product is for a product that
deserves to grow.
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