advertisingCurrently my overhead is quite low. Server costs are manageable, I’m the lone developer and it’s all open source. So right now my highest cost is customer acquisition.
I’ve tried using twitter, perusing message boards, and trying to involve all social media connections. However, I would like to accelerate my growth. I’ve looked into things like Google Ads and Facebook ads but the cost spent to new customer is not where I’d like it to be.
What other options should I consider?
Fully understand and document your sales process. Then refine it.
Really. Oftentimes this is the weakest link in marketing.
Here’s how most SMEs do marketing: they slap some copy on a website, and then focus on lead generation while mostly ignoring the rest.
And here’s where you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck (at least my clients do): by properly understanding and documenting your customer acquisition process. Because there’s absolutely no way you can optimize it if you have no idea what it looks like.
With this in mind, here are a few things that most companies can do:
Proper landing pages. Make several. Tailor them to the audience you reach out to and to the message that gets it there.
Proper ads. Don’t make it about you. Make it about the user. And be informative rather than salesy. Follow up with more of the same on the ad-specific landing page. And use remarketing.
Collect – and use – email addresses. Tons of stuff to do here – far too many to list in a Q&A format.
Content marketing. Tons of stuff here as well. Don’t forget guest posts, forums, social media, etc.
Referral marketing. Sometimes nudging happy users is enough. Other times, you need to incentivize a bit. Other times still, you’ll want affiliates or outright resellers.
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