Reach more customers

Increasing your customer base is a key factor in growing a business. But it’s easier said than done. We're overwhelmed with marketing messages, so it takes effort to cut through the noise.

Work smart by focusing your efforts

A common mistake that brands make is to cast their net too wide. Look for people who could become your ideal customers, and reach out to them. Explain to them exactly why your product is a great solution for their problems. When you focus your efforts like this, you might get fewer conversions in the earlier stages of your marketing funnel, but you get better results throughout, because you’re pulling in quality leads.

Make use of your existing customers

If you make a difference in your customers’ lives, they’ll appreciate you. Make it easy for them to help you out by referring friends and acquaintances.

Steps

Put together a profile of your ideal customer. Include data like company size, revenue, location, industry, objectives, and position in company.

Use information that you know about your current customers. Identify high-value customers, analyze and average out their data, and use it to develop your ideal customer profile.

Playbooks about other ways to understand your customers

Visualize user research using empathy maps
Define buyer personas
Create a customer journey map

Use website analytics and user research to understand buying decisions and behavior.

Run customer surveys and track customer behavior on your website. Record patterns and triggers in your customers’ buying behavior. Segment customers to better customize content for them.

Analyze the channels you currently use to find the ones that best reach your ideal customers.

Research your current channels, analyze which ones are providing the best audience reach for your ideal customers, eliminate poorly performing channels, and test new ones.

Harvest email addresses for your customers when they buy from you, whether or not they decide to create an account.

Allow customers to check out without an account, make it easy to register for an account straight after buying from you, and offer incentives to create an account with you.

Consider modifying your checkout process to ask for a shopper’s email address first.

This allows you to record their email address even if they don’t complete the purchase. Some services like Shop Pay keep user information on file and prefill checkout forms for them, reducing form fatigue and making it even easier for you to harvest their email address.

This is also useful for following up with people who abandon their cart during the checkout process.

Gain brand mentions on industry and review websites, create shareable content, and ask customers to recommend your brand.

Publish guest articles, quote others in your industry, get listed on review sites, and create useful, shareable content. Offer useful insights on industry blog posts and social media posts. Start a referral program for your customers.

Run an influencer marketing giveaway based around one of your products.

Set your goal, choose a platform, research legal requirements, and set the rules for the giveaway. Tell your influencer how you want them to promote the giveaway, track its progress, and record your learnings.

Run a paid ad campaign using a lookalike audience based on your ideal customer.

Choose ad networks, build a lookalike audience, and write creative to introduce your brand. Test your campaign against other ad types and different lookalike audiences, then analyze your top-performing campaigns for key learnings.

Optimize your product and checkout pages to make it as easy as possible for new visitors to transition to being customers.

Implement product comparisons, add social proofs, and ask for as few details as possible. Use persistent shopping carts, and remember user information so they don’t have to enter it more than once.

Research the keywords that your target audience regularly searches on. Write blog posts and other resources specifically targeted to these keywords.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-01-15T23:04:55Z

@hesh_fekry I added this step. I think it fits in fairly well because it bridges finding your ideal customers and getting your current customers’ help.

I could’ve sworn I’d seen a playbook about harvesting email addresses during the checkout process rather than relying on the customer to go all the way through the checkout. You know how ShopPay prefills a customer’s details as soon as they hit the Checkout button, and sends at least the email address to the seller? So even if a new customer abandons their cart, the seller still has their email address. I can’t find that playbook, though, if it exists. Any ideas?

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I had a quick search and found this step

8. Include the option for a guest checkout, or create an account for them automatically based on their email address and an auto-generated password.

Not forcing someone to sign up for their first purchase can save people time and reduce friction.

in

I think the entire playbook is relevant for this. What do you think?

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Not quite what I was after - I was looking more for the email-harvesting angle. But you’re right, that would make a decent step.

There are lots of playbooks on email collection. Hard to identify which one, but perhaps something here fits the purpose?

https://community.cxl.com/search?q=collect%20email

Nah, I can’t find it. I’ve skimmed about 50 playbooks now. Either I read it somewhere else, or it’s truly buried.

@hesh_fekry I just chucked this in. I think it’s a decent point to make, and if we find a playbook that fits, we can slot it in?

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I feel there should be a step that mentions SEO-driven content marketing. A lot of the advice in this list is about re-marketing to the customers you already have (e.g. harvesting emails) rather than attracting new customers. Content marketing is a good way of doing this. What about…

  1. Understand what your target audience regularly searches on and write blog posts and other resources specifically targeted to these keywords.
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This is great, but it focuses on ICP which is just one approach to who your customers are. It would be good to link to playbooks on empathy mapping, buyers personas or even customer journey maps.

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This is also really useful for following up with people who abandon their checkout process.

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Thanks @boagworld! I’ve incorporated these points into the playbook.