Unscalable Marketing Tactics – Tactic #1 – Get Feedback
Nothing about this title makes sense to the modern day marketer. We are all about scalable marketing tactics that maximize efficiency and are easily repeatable.
The biggest problem most businesses have is getting more customers. Business owners believe that if they could just find that one magic growth tactic, their business would be set.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of them will never find that tactic. And while they’re searching for that magic bullet, they’re passing up on smaller, unscalable tactics that could be getting them a consistent stream of new traffic. Unscalable tactics cost more per acquisition but deliver customers when other tactics are failing. These are best applied early on in a business, when scalable tactics (advertising, really high quality viral video campaigns, etc.) are not realistic.
People who sign up for a trial but don’t purchase usually have a reason for doing so.
Some marketers are so focused on getting new customers that they don’t realize that what happens after a signup or purchase is the most important factor behind growth. Growth comes from creating a product that is as close to the needs and wants of your customers as possible. You can’t create that kind of a product going on intuition, without any actual customer feedback.
No feedback is feedback: If someone signs up for a demo or a trial or purchases something from you, that tells you something.
It tells you that:
- They need a solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.
- They like the sound and/or look of your product.
But if a customer stops using your product right after they start using it (particularly for software products), that’s your feedback. Their problem didn’t just disappear. What happened is they concluded that your product couldn’t help them sufficiently.
What’s the point of getting new customers if you barely retain any of them? On top of that, you need to absolutely thrill customers if you want them to recommend you to others.
The solution? Get feedback: As long as you collect email addresses when people sign up, you can contact them. If a large portion of your new signups are disappearing on you, personally send them an email and find out how your product fell short.
The customer is still in “pain” because they haven’t solved their problem, which makes them pretty receptive to outreach.
It’s not scalable to email every single new customer you get, but this type of feedback is how you’ll make your customers love your product. You could even survey a fraction of your customers and still get really valuable feedback.
You can also preemptively get feedback by sending your customers a welcome email, asking them how they found you and what they’re hoping your product can do for them.
