A common mistake founders, business owners and developers who try to sell their product/service make is assume that a customer purchasing is a one-time, standalone event. There are many steps that need to build on top of each other for it to even happen. And yet, there are many more steps to take afterwards in order to maximize the value of the opportunity of this new relationship. And to keep track of them, it is needed to outline a customer funnel system.
Also called get-keep-grow strategy, it maps out the journey your potential customers have with your brand, starting at finding it and ultimately coming through the cross-sale/up-sale phase. With this strategy missing, you not only will miss out on maximizing the value of existing and potential customers, but also will not have the tools to test/adapt, in order to understand if your product or marketing strategy should be improved.
High-level Overview
A get-keep-grow funnel system breaks down intuitively into three phases: get, keep and grow. Get phase covers the tactics and approaches you use to acquire/make customers aware of your company and product, as well as converting them to become users. Keep phase refers to how you will keep a high retention rate and achieve a decent voluntary login rate. Finally, grow phase covers what methods you will use to extract more value out of your existing customers, such as upselling.
Measure, measure, measure…
A good start is to set up quantitative trackers/metrics, to monitor the customer journey through each phase of the funnel. You need to keep track of your conversion rates, retention rates etc. It will give you a much better overview of the average journey a customer goes through with your business. Most importantly, you will be able to evaluate changes/modifications that you make to your strategy with real, quantitative feedback.
Direct Contact with Users is Inevitable
Secondly, start engaging more with your existing customers. Truly focus on your keep tactics and aim to provide a great deal of free value to your consumer base. It will make the job easier within the grow phase. Also, do not be afraid of training different ways to engage with customers. After-all, your goal is to move them to the grow phase, and it is very unlikely that you will implement the most optimal approach on your first try. Therefore, constantly adapt, evaluate feedback, and improve even more.
Finally, build on the previous point. Once again, do not approach each sale as a one-time event. Focus on building a true relationship with your customer. Keep them in your system and aware of your brand. Consistently doing it over time will also change the customer’s perception of your business. Instead of seeing your product as a solution they used at some point in the past, they will have a connection to the brand itself. And once you have that connection, there are no limits to maximizing CLV (customer lifetime value).
Do you have any other reasons in mind to have a customer funnel system? If so, let us know so we can share it with the community!