Marketing strategy -- optimize or higher-level approach?
Hey marketers! I've been thinking about overall marketing strategy and wanted to get your take on something.
Essentially I was wondering in what situations should I be optimizing a specific funnel (i.e. running A/B tests, usability fixes, etc.) vs when should I be taking a step back and trying out some higher-level strategies (i.e. think about positioning, partner with another company, etc.)
What's your recommendation for which part to focus on (and in what circumstance)?
Depends on the stage of your company. If you're in earlier stages (say, pre-product-market-fit or under 5-6 figure MRR), you should focus on the higher-level stuff.
Only once you have something that very clearly works, then optimize it.
In the big picture, I see the overall growth trajectory as follows:
Establish product-market fit
-Be entirely at the high-level here
With PMF, scale it upward by acquiring customers
Hey @blakerson, thanks for the tip! I definitely know that the approach you are suggesting is the best approach for creating a product (aka from the product management / product strategy perspective).
But wondering if it's a little different if I'm only considering it from a marketing lens?
Like at what point should I start optimizing the marketing funnel intensely (i.e. A/B tests) as opposed to try out different ways to position the product, work with different influencers/bloggers to promote our product, etc.
I believe it is the same, when viewed through a marketing lens.
If you have a small indie business and want to A/B test, resist the urge.
A/B testing only works at scale.
Just focus on measuring what's happening. The conclusions (and therefore changes you need to make) will likely be obvious.
https://twitter.com/blakerson/status/1266149255061868545
Put another way, the 3-step trajectory I mentioned earlier applies more specifically to marketing:
I do analytics and optimization in the day job. I've seen this curve of maturity plenty of times.
thanks!
We just got our first paying customer.
How do we get to 100 from here and then to 1000.
any specific tip there?
www.istorylive.com
Hi Kevin,
From a marketing perspective, I think you should try starting advertising for people that are having an intent for your services similar to your SaaS and people knowing about your brand. Once you have capitalised on the demand, you should then focus on the top funnel where they might don't know that they need your SaaS. In this stage, having a lead magnet (whitepaper, webinar, e-book) is crucial whereas in the lower funnel stage, the goal is to drive trials and demos.
Have you had success with lead magnet ebooks? I am looking to host one for my wife's renovation design guide, and am looking for best practices, would be super helpful to hear about your process if you can share it.
That's a good one!
Both! When it comes to marketing, it's never a single option. You have to always look for some better strategies in order to improve your marketing abilities but also, your approach should never go down because you can actually lose customers this way! That being said, I feel like the best option for you would be to take a good example from some of the best marketing agencies in order to see what would be better for your strategy or, why not, future agency. A place like https://marketingconsultant.com.sg/ would be just the right solution in your case. This is just an amazing company and I really think there are lots of stuff you can learn from inspecting it.
You know what my marketing strategy is?
Look at the most constrictive bottleneck of the funnel where the drop-off is greatest, and work ONLY on that stage of the funnel.
I either eyeball it or use industrial benchmarks.
Just to put it in context.
For Zlappo, I monitor very closely my:
Clearly, for Zlappo, the bottleneck of my business is the top of the funnel, which means I really need to work on my lead gen/driving traffic. Maybe build more backlinks, gain more visibility on social media, etc. etc.
The funnel numbers should theoretically scale along with the increase in traffic, meaning if I flood the top of my funnel, the trickle-down conversions to the bottom of the funnel should also increase accordingly, assuming I drive targeted traffic.
The reason I work only on my bottleneck is because it has the greatest ROI, whereas if I worked on the other stages of the funnel, it's more "diminishing returns."
Hope someone finds this useful!
Just 50 to 100 visits per day??? is it not less? (I have no idea, but it is way off from my wild guess :))
on website?
What do you do to generate the traffic?
Hello Kevin
I would recommend focusing on strategy on Growth Marketing. There are already many companies and startups who offer you that. You will be needing
-Person or company who will optimize the campaigns
-Platforms for Growth marketing