3 Step Digital Marketing Strategy for Customer Acquisition Funnel Validation

Is the time you’re spending creating content and posting them on your social media pages worth the effort?
Is your content reaching your target audience?
Is it generating any real business for you?
If your answer to these questions is “I don’t know,” then it’s time to step back and figure out what you may be doing wrong. 
In my experience, the number one mistake most people make in their social media efforts is they fail to validate their customer acquisition funnel before launching their business on social media platforms.

So, what is customer acquisition funnel?

It is a process or a framework that allows you to convert prospects into customers. It is essential for every business to have a funnel in order to acquire customers.

Related Article– 6 Steps Customer Acquisition Formula

Either businesses don’t have this kind of a funnel or they have this funnel but fail to validate it on social media. How do you do that? That’s what I’ll talk about in this blog post.

You’re Pouring Your Resources Down the Drain

A study by AdParlor, a leading social media advertising technology firm, found that most companies wasted 20-50% of their social media budget. And, it’s not hard to see why.

A vast majority of businesses simply hop on as many social media platforms as they can and try every trick in the book without validating their business model. They go ahead without clearly understanding whether their product/service is being accepted by their targeted audience on social media or not. As a result, they end up spending a lot of money on running ad campaigns, creating blogs, videos, and a ton of other marketing assets that ultimately don’t generate any value.
How do you fix this problem? Here’s the master tip for success: Identity, collect the data, and sell irresistible offers.
I’ll explain how to achieve this in a step-by-step process. But first, let’s see what this master tip really means.

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Decoding the Mastery Tip

Identify, collect the data, and sell irresistible offers — in other words, it means that you should be ready to give away freebies (lead magnet) in order to convince a prospect to let you collect their contact information, and then pull them into your funnel with the help of an irresistible offer.

The freebie or free offering is also referred to as a lead magnet and it could be in the form of a workshop, webinar, case study download, ebook download, a competition, or contest, to name a few.

The purpose of the lead magnet is to hook your audience, and a great way to do so is to address a couple of their pain points and offer solutions to remedy them. After they consume the free offering, it’s time to put forth your irresistible offer.

An irresistible offer is something your audience can’t say no to. Essentially, it’s about giving people more value than what they are having to spend on your offer, so it’s too good to refuse.
Some examples of irresistible offers include free demos, limited period trials, inaugural discounts, pre-launch offers, free consultations, and so on.

Things to remember:

• Identify the right audience

Profile your target audience and then narrow it down to those who have the problems that your product/service can solve. These are people who will be interested in your offering.

• Identify their pain points

Spend time to know what problems are bugging your customers, what’s keeping them up at night? If you don’t know the problem, how will you offer a solution?

• Test the demand

Are your freebies being accepted by people? Are these free offerings aligned with the needs and aspirations of your target audience? For example, if you created a free webinar that no one attended, you simply wasted your time and money.

• Time it right

After you collect the information from your target audience, you sell the irresistible offer within 1 week. Why 1 week? Because the faster you act, the sooner you can recognize the viability of your product offerings and tweak the loopholes in your strategy till you see the desired results.

• Keep sale in mind

Let’s be real — your marketing activities are ultimately aimed at boosting your sales figures. When you don’t approach social media with sales in mind, it’s easy to get caught up in vanity metrics and lose focus of the end goal. Remember, it’s not about reaching more people; it’s about how many people buy from you in the first touchpoint. Now, let’s talk about how to implement this master tip.

The 3 Rs of Customer Acquisition Funnel Validation

Step #1 Reach: Find Your Target Audience

Irrespective of the size of your business, before you invest time, money, and resources on social media, you need to know who your target audience is and where they are and what is the Strategy to collect their data. This exercise will help you to narrow down your choices of platforms and let you answer the following questions:

Related Article– 10 Most Powerful Digital Marketing Strategies for 2020

Activities in Reach Step are as follows

1. Assume your Target Audience based on Social Media Customer Variables 
2. Design Lead Magnets and Show them (Lead Magnets Should Solve burning Problems)
3. Collect 100% of the data  (either Cookie or Contact Info) of the action Takers 
4. Use Email CRM to Store the Lead Data and Use Social Media Ads Platforms to Store the cookies

Reach Step will enable you to identify the ideal prospective customer for whom you can easily sell your product or services. Now the next step is to make them loyal to your brand, so that they buy from.
The free offering is also known as a lead magnet and it can be a free workshop, webinar, case study download, ebook download, a competition, or contest, to name a few.
The lead magnet serves as a hook to capture your audience. And, this is where you apply the customer insights you developed in the first step. Ideally, your lead magnet should address 1-2 of your customer needs and offer solutions.

Step #2 Register: Capture Your Audience’s Attention

Register contains the below activities which are intended to convert the data that you have collected in the previous step into your loyal fans.

Related Article– 6 Simple social media hacks to convert contacts to contracts

Getting your audience to notice you among your competitors takes some extra effort and this is where you can truly make a difference.
Sales and marketing expert, Jill Konrath says:
“In order to get customers to consider changing from the status quo, you have to give them a good reason,”
In other words, you have to show them a promise of value. And, a great way to do this is by giving them a free taste of your product/service, which will convince themselves to buy from you. This allows you to pull them into your customer acquisition funnel.
In this Step, activities are as mentioned below

1. Data Segmentation (Visitors/leads/Buyers/Non-Buyers)
2. Create 3 -5 Personalised Content pieces to convinces your audience to buy from you 
3. Reach at least 80% of the audience who you have identified in the reach step using email Marketing or Social Media Retargeting platforms

Step #3 Regain: Start Selling and Monitoring Your Process for Success

This is where you start seeing the result, aka the sales figures. So, how do you know this system that you’ve put in place is working?

Once they have consumed the lead magnet and the register content, it’s time to present your irresistible offer. Smaller percentage of the start becoming loyal after consuming lead magnet and the register content. These loyal audiences will be ready to buy your offerings.

Show them irresistible offers and keep track of CPA.

Related Article– 11 Step Content Creation Strategy To Convert Your Contacts To Contracts

NOTE : An irresistible offer is, as the name suggests, an offer that your prospect can’t refuse. Some examples of this include limited period trials, free demos, inaugural discounts, prelaunch offers, free consultations, and so on

Here’s the key formula to keep in mind at this stage to check if everything is on the track.

Cost per Acquisition (CPA) Should be Less the Cost of the irresistible offer => Validation
Let me break this down.
Your CPA or Cost Per Acquisition is what you spend on digital marketing activities divided by the number of sales.

If your CPA is less than the cost of the Irresistible Offer (IO), it means that your product/service is being accepted and you have the license to reach more people.

Ideally, 5% of your lead magnet leads should convert into paying customers in this step. Less than 5% of conversions means that you need to tweak either your target audience or customer acquisition funnel till you arrive at a Point where your CPA is less than the cost of the irresistible offers. As you can see, your social media marketing activities shouldn’t be a shot in the dark. It can — and should — create tangible results for your business. And it’s possible to achieve such results through a process to validate your product/service on social media. How long should it take? Depending on your business and the needs of your target audience, it could take anywhere from one month to 24 months. 

But once you put this process in place, you’ll be able to evaluate what’s working, what’s not working, and what should be changed in your customer acquisition and social media strategy.