Today’s topic is going to be about something that every new business, startup or small business wants and needs for their business to survive: Your first few customers.
The most common questions we hear from startups and small business owners getting started with digital marketing:
- How do you acquire new customers?
- How do I make my website grow with SEO?
- Who are your most important, aspirational or target customers?
- What’s the cheapest way to acquire them?
These are all the questions that could be in a formal business plan prior to launching, but it’s always good to continue asking yourself these questions over time.
Nothing is constant except for change, and the rules of acquiring new customers is no exception.
At Frasca Digital, this is what our experience has been. Yours may be different, but the fundamentals and principles from this post may inspire a couple new ideas. To us, that’s a win.
Let’s get started!
Why would someone want to buy from your business?
We start with this question first because sometimes we need to stop and think about the process equally or more than the product itself.
Here are our top reasons why people want to buy from you:
- You’re a friendly and empathetic person
- You have a solution for the customer’s problem
- Your prices are fair and deliver value
- The quality of your product is high or exceeds expectations
- Customer service and delivery was predictable, fast and friendly
- They feel your company has a high sense of urgency to help a customer
Marketing and sales are rocket ships for growth, but we think it all starts with mastering the basics of your customer’s buying experience.
Why? Understanding how customers interact with your brand and the customer experience you create is vital in your success. Consider the following:
- When customers are unhappy, there’s a 91 percent chance they won’t do business with a company again (Lee Resources).
- Dissatisfied customers typically tell nine to 15 other people about their experience; some tell 20 or more (White House Office of Consumer Affairs).
- A negative customer experience is the reason 86 percent of consumers quit doing business with a company (Customer Experience Impact Report).
- Good customer experiences lead 42 percent of consumers to purchase again (Zendesk Customer Service Study).
Establish a digital presence for your small business
It’s 2021. Every company needs a website that grows in tandem with their business.
Simply put: some of your first few customers are looking for you on Google Search. Not on social media; not direct mail; and if you want to do any paid media to turbo charge your revenue growth, you need your first website.
A quality website for a new company just starting out will be somewhere between a $5,000 – $10,000 investment for a simple WordPress website.
Think you can get it cheaper? Check out our one blog post on what happens when you go to Fiverr for a website design.
Many of our clients go the cheap route first before realizing how much effort and time goes into starting a website from scratch.
So, how do you get your first few customers as a new business?
In the beginning, the name of the game and your first few customers are likely to be referrals. In fact, 83% of the customers are open to referring a business after conducting a successful purchase.
In terms of getting started with marketing, you need decided on and allocate a monthly budget for (digital) marketing.
This is also a moment of truth for most business owners. When you launch a new company, expenses are high, but marketing should be seen as an investment. And that’s not just because it’s cliche to say that; it’s very true.
How does a business grow? Increasing your sales and marketing budget.
How to reach new and targeted audiences.
When you need customers fast, the best place to start is with paid media. The problem? It’s more complicated to manage ads than to hire a PPC consultant in Baltimore to take care of it for you
If you’re not confident or good at setting up Google ads, Facebook ads, or YouTube video ads, then we would insist: don’t try to.
Don’t listen to all of the “PPC gurus” who say you can put $1 into Facebook and get $2 back. Sure it’s possible, but if you’re just starting out and doing everything yourself, you’re going to struggle with that. Trust me. Paid ads are easier when you’ve identified your target market and have proper messaging.
Real talk: we’re business owners too. It took Frasca Digital over a year to launch its own website, and we provide these services to our clients every day! We get it: running a business and growing it with marketing and sales at the same time is not easy. This is why owning a business is so difficult, yet can be so rewarding.
The solution? Delegating.
In fact, we have a real life example on this.
When one of our clients first started with PPC at their former agency, they set a Facebook ads budget of about $3,000/mo ($100/day). This was a few years ago when Facebook ads were super hyped and everyone claimed to be making massive returns. And, we’re sure a bunch of people were. They probably had years of experience and spent millions of dollars learning.
The problem? After reviewing their previous advertising efforts, it was clear the PPC agency knew very little about Google or Facebook ads. The ad copy was not optimized for their audience; they had set up a bunch of audiences; made some nice images (they actually weren’t the greatest); and set the budgets.
The 2 co-founders thought they would be getting a couple fresh leads every day. Hard no.
After 2 weeks and $1,500 of their hard-owned money burned, we thought it’d be good to try something else.
How about their story with the same company at the same time but with Google ads? Similar story. They set daily budgets at $100 and didn’t get any leads. Biiiiiig oof.
In that first month of running Google Ads, they think they got 2 leads from paid ads. The operative word is “think” – didn’t even have tracking/Google Tag Manager set up properly, so they couldn’t attribute these leads 100%.
Focus on the business while being in the business
This is a common yet true a metaphor I commonly refer to when starting or growing a company: you have to build the bicycle while riding it.
In other words, the multi-tasking associated with operating and expanding a business is overwhelming. But, we believe there is a rewarding formula to grow that doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.
Don’t forget about retention
We follow the 80:20 rule: 80% of your revenue should come from the top 20% of your customers. This holds true for website traffic as well, though we feel the average is more 65:35 when it comes to the traffic ratio between returning and new users to your website, respectively. If this ratio seems off to you, feel free to reach out to us and we can articulate why this may be.
Regardless, in business, timing is everything. A quality retention strategy should include as many touch points as possible so you can stay top-of-mind for your customers.
Here are 4 quick touch point efforts that are relatively easy and inexpensive retention efforts to implement:
- Post-Purchase, Follow-up Phone Calls
- Routine Email Marketing Blasts and Cadences
- Retargeted Paid Advertising
- SMS Marketing
This can take effort, but acquiring customers is expensive – sometimes as easy as 5x the cost to acquire a new customer versus the cost of retaining an existing one.
Don’t sleep on email marketing either. From our experience, this is the marketing channel with the highest ROI, next to SEO and SEM.
Get New Customers Online with Frasca Digital
Starting, running and growing a new business is a lot of work. You wear every hat in the company, and are limited be how much you can do in a single day. Does this sound familiar to you or someone you know?
If so, contact Frasca Digital immediately so we can help manage your website design project; increase organically-generated traffic with our monthly SEO services; and even help implement new marketing technologies (MarTech) such as CRM, Marketing Automation, E-commerce simplification, and tons more.
Already have a website? Let us provide you with a no-obligation, literally “0” risk Competitor Gap Analysis & Website Audit.
