In the first four parts of this series, we've talked a lot about how to bring in new direct customers. These are people who heard about your business either through your marketing campaigns, or through some other kind of exposure, perhaps on your social media accounts or elsewhere on the internet. This method of acquiring customers can be quite labor-intensive, not to mention expensive, and when you factor in attrition, sometimes businesses find that they're lucky if they get any growth at all past a modest user base.
Now that we've covered the three As of the Pirate Funnel - awareness, acquisition, and activation - it's time to move forward to the R steps. This half of the funnel is where visitors turn to paying customers, and where that customer base grows to the point where your business can thrive. The first of these steps, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, is retention.
Parts 1 and 2 of this series on growth hacking were all about the process of bringing customers into your sphere of awareness, and acquiring them in the sense of getting them to engage with you on an informational level. Once those steps are complete, it's time to progress to the crucial turning point of activation.
Last time, in part 1 of this series on growth hacking, we talked about awareness, the initial step in the AAARRR funnel (also known as the Pirate Funnel). This time, we're moving on beyond the point of awareness to when you have your first transaction with a customer. This is referred to as acquisition.
As a business owner or startup founder, you know firsthand how important it is to grow a loyal and active customer base. The pressure to go from zero to self-sustaining is enormous, especially if you're a small enterprise starting with a modest marketing budget. Fast growth is the buoy that will keep your business afloat, and amassing that critical customer base is what growth hacking (or growth marketing) is all about.
You've probably already claimed your Google My Business page, right? If you're not familiar, GMB is now the standard for companies that want to claim their official listing on Google. It's a sort of "virtual storefront," providing businesses greater visibility and control over their optics on the world's most popular search engine. . What a lot of people don't know, however, is that Google has recently made some improvements to the service, and if you're not taking advantage of the new features, here are a few reasons why you should put it at the top of your to-do list.
