How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers – Asia Matos – MicroConf Starter 2019

0:00[Music] [Music] it's typically enough about the same exact way every single time read an article and it's like someone so scaled like 10fx Grove just by blogging and so then you're out the kitchen table and you're like I should maybe be blogging and then it happens again for Adwords oh my gosh we like so and so like two and a half X 10 gross just because of AdWords we should maybe be doing hot words thank you and then it happens again for Facebook ads and then it happens again for Twitter Twitter's the answer now we need to be doing Twitter all the time forever and my reaction to this is always can we

0:46not I mean but don't even wrong I completely understand I've been there I've 100% but in that boat but it's also a pattern that I see over and over and over again without the right context we suddenly jump into oh these are the channels that are gonna be the answer but the reality is that we actually really need a marketing strategy none of those channels actually mean anything if there's not something ultimately foundational and I'm not talking about the hashtag growth hacks and like you know all those bro at rate things like that I think that those things have a time in a place and I do not wanna get

1:20into that debate at least today but I am ultimately talking about the foundational stuff this is the stuff that as a founder as a business owner whatever it is that you do even a marketer you're starting with the very fundamentals the basics the things that over time continue to compound and grow because that's ultimately what gets you the big compounding growths that you actually want to see but it's really really really tough to do that if you don't actually have the groundwork if you don't have the foundation so Who am I whoa Who am I like what am i what am I here for what I do what's my life my

1:54name is Asia just like the continent so really really really easy to spell but then also mess up at the same exact time so an amazing name but anyway so I my background is primarily in marketing for technology companies my entire background actually has been exactly that and for the past three years I've been focused exclusively on startups I've been both an in-house marketer both at two ten and a half X 10 X etc growth startups but then also focusing exclusively on early-stage companies in my own business called demand maven and some other fun facts about me I play the ukulele a lot actually and I just recently learned how to play

2:34a piano so now I'm really dumb joke but now I'm all about the MVP so Minimum Viable piano because pianos are expensive thank you appreciate that pianos are really expensive and so I'm all about like what is to MVP and my husband's like it's called a keyboard and I was like awesome that's for me then but I think the most important part about marketing even my own personal journey and the journeys that I help founders with is that I almost always start out every single conversation discussion whatever the same exact way just do me a solid and forget everything you've heard about marketing before you entered into this room let's just

3:13pretend we didn't know even what it was and the reason for that is some people think that this is marketing trade shows conferences depending on your background your life your choices this might be the only definition of marketing for you for some it's like cold calling direct calling direct sales direct marketing got ability different names all the same thing for some this is marketing and then it goes on with Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads and all the other ads like this is marketing and maybe brand is the answer oh maybe brand is like what we need to hang our hat on the truth is that technically all of these are

3:49marketing but ultimately depending on where you came from depending on what your background is and what your experiences have been you already might have your vision of what marketing ultimately is and when you think about it we've been exposed to marketing our entire lives we all have opinions and ideas and thoughts about what marketing is what it should be and and how we react to it but there really does two things to keep in mind so if I'm gonna give you some groundwork I'm gonna give you some rules to just keep this in the back of your head they're just kind of like the fundamentals at least for now

4:23at least in the very first 100 I do firmly believe that a lot of rules are meant to be broken and I do think that's very true in SAS and marketing but at least in the first 100 let's just keep these two things you probably already know this but the customer journey isn't linear long gone are the days where you can come at the top of the funnel and convert all the way down perfectly seamlessly a hundred percent every single time the reality is that the journey is all over the place if you were to go research customer journey mapping right now I mean we've all seen them but if but there are so

4:58many definitions of them that's because they're not these perfect little things anymore people can jump in at any point in the customer journey and they can exit at any point in the customer journey and I think the reality is that a lot of us have many different paths to signing up for any kind of product or whether that's e-commerce or SAS or what-have-you so again just very very fundamental fundamental thing to keep in mind so as I talk about all the different ways that we can really hone in and focus on building this engine this is one thing that I will say that if this if this is

5:34true then we can then make these assumptions the second and this is gonna blow your mind focus on bottom of the funnel activity first now what do I mean by that okay so we've all seen the funnel we've all seen the journeys etc I don't think I have to go into too much detail about exactly what each like you know top of the funnel middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel it's the tofu mofo bo foo I think I have to go into too much detail about that I do have quite a few slides here about it but generally we're looking at there is some conversion

6:10point that you really really want as a business owner that could be signing up for the free trial that could be requesting the demo that could be anything an actual purchase like if you're more transactional and more ecommerce like there is some ultimate revenue generating thing you want someone to do and everything that happens right above that we're gonna focus on what that space looks like as a customer and it doesn't matter if you have zero customers or if you have ten or if you have 99 and you're trying to get that last 100 customer we're gonna look at this pretty much every single time this is going to be where we lay

6:49the foundation the reason for that is because if you start at the top and try to work your way down at the bottom it's so hard to figure out what do you need to be doing at the top of the funnel to make a bottom of the funnel activity happen if you think about it so many of us we start with like the blogs we start with Alyssa's run ads but we're thinking about that from a very top of the funnel perspective at the end of the day we're not really sure if we're attracting people with the right pane which means we can't actually map it back to what

7:20we're all to mately trying to get them to do in the first place and it's also extremely likely that if you try to solve if you try to bring clarity around what's happening at the top of the funnel by the time you get to the bottom you don't really know who those people are you don't really know what's going on and it's really really really stressful and confusing and that this is where a lot of people get really frustrated with marketing but there's this another this this other very real just thing about how funnels work you don't know who they are until they convert you have no idea who they are

7:51don't even work there are some tools that you can use I'm not naming names there are some tools that you can use that will actually tell you who they are before they actually convert but not everyone can afford those we're all in coming from very different means of funding some bootstrap some some partially funded etc so not everyone can afford these really kind of creepy tools but ultimately you're not going to know who they are until they convert until they sign up on something which means if you're doing a lot of guessing at the top of the funnel you're gonna be doing a lot of guessing by the time that they

8:23get to the bottom of the funnel which means you might not be getting the results that you actually want or the right people as well that's why you just art with people who have the pain first if we were to start with people who have the pain first we can actually kind of reverse engineer this this the way that we think about what channels and marketing strategies we are ultimately laying in so for top of the funnel like I said talk the forum is gonna be very broad it's gonna be very wide you don't really know who they are until they come down into some kind of

8:54funnel that you've laid out at some point but bottom of the funnel is very different if we look at bottom of the funnel activity first we're really attracting mindset think about it the people who are going to sign up for your product purchase whatever it is that you're offering they are ultimately trying to solve some kind of pain that's a mindset if I have pain if I and if I'm looking for a painkiller I there's a certain mindset that I have we with bottom of the funnel are trying to attract those people first so if we start at the bottom it's like oh yeah look I'm

9:30solving a pain that I know that these people have already let's let's start here and then we move up to the two middle of the funnel which is now I'm teaching people about this pain and then we move all the way up to the top where it's kind of like they don't necessarily need to have a pain but they look kind of like the people who might so now let's let's make sure that like whatever it is that we're building those people actually have a have a way to come down into your funnel and actually convert sign up and enter in at any point as well that's the other part as well

9:58because remember the cosmic journey isn't linear so if people are entering in at bottom of the funnel we can make the assumption that as long as we're qualified in solving the right pain they're gonna sign up so that's all I'm saying start here let's not start at the top it's too scary too big too wide to open and way too noisy I mean how many blog posts are like published every single day way too noisy let's start with people who have the pain intent people who have the intent to solve their problem let's start here it's just another reminder the customer journey is not linear but

10:35we can actually use that to our advantage doesn't matter if you are a marketing guru or not if you have built something that solves someone's pain let's start with those people it makes the most sense so this is what we call marketing we're doing it yeah yes thank you it's actually really really really easy if you kind of take away everything else that you've ever heard about marketing and if you really start with the people who have the pain let's start there this is just an example of what that could look like this is actually modeled after a really popular heat mapping tool a hot jar but anyway so

11:15conversion create a free account that's all want you to do right create a free account they really want you to create a paid account but let's just start with creating a free account what is what is the most bottom of the funnel activity right above that I am looking for an easy to use heat mapping tool I already value heat mapping I think it's already great me as a marketer I would love to sign up for something like that if I value it let's go find people who value those things they might look like me they might look like my friend Liana they might look like anyone else but

11:44let's start with those people who already value it who do those people look like right above that how to run amazing a/b tests let's say just pretend not necessarily directly related to heat mapping but could be could be ultimately about conversion rate optimization let's start thinking about how we attract people in that space and then super top of the funnel like not even really related to heat mapping but might still attract like the same general profile top SAS marketers or how marketers can be more productive at cetera do you see how you can start at the bottom of the funnel first and then move your way up

12:18to the top this is actually another example that I will unpack later but this is about a client of mine actually like I said it doesn't really matter what industry you're in this is for a company that helps pre licensed therapists become licensed therapists and they do that by offering online clinical supervision you don't have to know anything about therapy you don't have to know anything about clinical supervision to know that people who are looking for a solution to this specific pain they immediately look for like well I need to find a clinical supervisor that's an LMS to you in Georgia I will explain all of this in a second but this

12:53is the same exact funnel just same exact process what is that bottom of the funnel behavior look like to get to that desired action let's start there I don't get it twisted though because I think a lot of you might be like okay cool bottom bottom of the funnel matters top of the funnel does not matter anymore so I get it twisted you are going to need top of the funnel it's just not first it's all that's the only argument I'm gonna make just don't start there because that's where it gets really frustrating and annoying and you can't make sense of anything and we really just need to start at the bottom first

13:26and then over time you will add on middle and top of the funnel and you'll are playing around and being very creative and running all kinds of really fun tests but none of those things ultimately matter unless bottom of the funnel is there this is the next two slides and especially this one more for context but the any channel that you ever get exposed to ever and I mean like ever like um everyone snapchat like wasn't a thing and now it's a thing and it's kind of not a thing anymore but now I think there's a tick tock tick tock is a thing now like all the kids

14:04are using it no matter what channel you're exposed to it either falls into one of three buckets either owned its earned or it's paid it's a very old-school way of thinking about channels but I actually like it because for the most part it stands the test of time doesn't matter what new channel pops up you can put into one of these three buckets and you don't have to know a ton about like all the semantics around like okay like well is it really like does Facebook like perfectly fit like in this particular area won't kind of yes but the point of this is that anytime you're you come up against

14:40something new you pretty much always know where to place it the reason why this is important is because as you start building out your marketing strategy you're gonna be looking at okay what do I have an owned what do I haven't earned and what do I haven't paid owned meaning the things that you own the channels that you own that could be social media your website which is where I typically start there's paid media which I think everyone is pretty much familiar with because we've all been exposed to at some point but this could include sponsored content and then there's earned which is something that I

15:10actually think that many of us kind of forget about but it can be a huge growth driver depending on what your ultimate target audience is but these are the referrals people talking about you things that you don't control but other people are talking about you and coming to you so any new channel that you're ever exposed to think about these three buckets where would you place them this is gonna be important in just a second and then of course I have this exhaustive list of all the different kinds of marketing channels part of this is also to help you not be so afraid and and to help you kind of make sense

15:45of everything that you're also seeing even me as a marketer I get overwhelmed sometimes but I'm also a marketer which means that I have shiny object syndrome and I'm like I want to let go try this new thing so I feel you guys but no matter what every single time I always bring it back to the base which is where do these channels ultimately fit because depending on my market my target audience and my model and my product how can I pull all of these things together that makes something that makes sense and that is balanced and cohesive okay cool so what about bottom of the funnel

16:17strategies I mean like bottom of the funnels that matters let's focus on that but here's all the channels okay so bottom of the funnel bottom of the funnel strategies are again they're a hundred percent tied to the actions and behaviors that people do right before they sign up for your or they are embarking on the journey to discover your product they have the pain they're trying to figure out how to solve it and it's fine if they don't necessarily know who you are yet the whole goal is to understand well what do they do to make that decision how do they research it how do they how do they figure out how

16:55to solve this we typically see over and over and over again for most SAS companies at least everyone almost always as a customer searches for this solution to their pain they'll intern keywords and they'll go to Google a very small percentage will go to Bing and they will ultimately search for that solution and this is where a lot of people start and it's also where I start to as well there's a competitive landing pages for example alternatives to XYZ competitor a lot of people say I really like this tool but I'd really wish that there was something like it but had these specific things so alternatives to and then there's also

17:36like review sites there's my due to crowd kaptara well people will actually go to market places essentially and there's just actual marketplaces all kinds of all kinds of different ultimate strategies that people will use to find solutions and this is not an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination there's a more than this the whole goal here is really just to start getting you thinking about what would bottom of the funnel potentially look like what are some of the things that people might potentially do right up until they get to that very first they're exposed to your brand to your product and to solving that pain its what about both

18:16food channels what's actually pretty interesting about bottom of the funnel is that for the most part it's one to one so I mentioned a lot of people will start with searching for a solution well the channel would be organic search a lot of people will maybe ask for referrals like they'll go to their communities they'll ask their friends their peers hey where do I figure out how to do something looking for this how do I figure that out and then referrals of course happen there's also potentially partnerships so if you think about a channel in terms of a relationship that you can build with someone else

18:53partnerships are shockingly underutilized but an amazing channel especially if you have a product synonymous with another product and you guys have a very similar market for the most part no they're kind of the exact same I mean the channels and the strategies are almost one-to-one like they're completely almost the same that's kind of by design bottom of the funnel is very one-to-one top of the funnel is kind of one to infinity not knocking top of the funnel just saying it's it's gonna be all about awareness building and going broad and that's okay so you're gonna need that over time for sure and like I said don't actually need

19:28it it's just naturally wider Morgan spent more expansive I should say just don't get addicted especially to paid it's usually the easiest thing to turn on and the quickest way to burn cash in the front yard and rheton actually has an amazing article I did link to this I want to say you guys will get the the slide deck but if you were to look up Andrew Chen and AdWords or Android trend and paid media he's got a great article of warning early stage founders of the perils of getting to addicted to paid media too soon and not building anything else and having to live off of it and then of

20:03course it just drains everything it makes it really really depressing LTV the CAC depending on where you're at so don't get addicted but that's it so make sure I put that caveat out there we're gonna lay our channels over time we're gonna start with bottom of the funnel we're gonna layer all of this over time so even though the world marketing-wise is super expansive if we start at bottom of the funnel and even more specific to solving pain intent driven how do we base off of the pain that my product solves how do we attract people who are looking for that and then over time well of course layer things on

20:40okay cool but how asia you gave me all this information and like you told me all this stuff pretty cool are you sure channel is awesome bottom of funnel woo how do we take all of this and actually put a process to it and I'm not gonna lie this is my personal favorite part of this presentation because this is like the step by step nitty-gritty a very tactical it's going to get ton of information on these slides in like actual action items and steps you take and that always makes me really happy and excited as an audience member so I'm excited to go over this part of the

21:10presentation for the rest of this talk I'm actually gonna use a client example so I can show you how this looks in real life I mentioned there is a company out there that works with pre licensed therapists helps them get licensed which apparently is really hard by the way apparently it's like a really sad success rate there are more per licensed therapists out there who don't become licensed and we all know that the world needs more therapy in my opinion but so when is it happening is these pre licensed therapists they graduate and they have to find a supervisor someone who's more experienced and licensed to

21:52give them those to give them like basically like hours there's another way to explain this that probably will make a lot more sense but basically these people Isis therapists graduate from school in order to become licensed I got to spend time with a supervisor well then they have to go find a supervisor and the first thing that they do is they typically search for one but sometimes that supervisor is two hours away they also have to pay for the supervisors time as well so you've probably spent like 80k like on your degree and then you come out and you find out that you have to pay more money just to become a

22:21therapist surprisingly very challenging lots of pain and this is a national challenge so anyway this company led by an amazing founder named motivo decided to create a marketplace to connect these pre licensed therapists and these supervisors online so now they can do their supervision hours from the comfort of their couch through zoom it's amazing and in the process of building this product they actually did already have a few paying customers everything was manual product wasn't yet rolled out that's actually I've been working on for the past few months there's a huge market huge and they are in the arms race for their first 100 as well so what did we do first with motivo

23:04the first step is research and everyone's always like oh research for why if you went to Lana's talk yesterday she gave an amazing discussion about using customer research and I really hope you guys are doing it I'm gonna unpack why but everyone almost always starts with like market research competitive research like okay cool I'm bringing this product to market what's already out there or maybe you already did that before you ever built anything and then a few people will get into like the actual prospect research they might talk to a few people who might be a potential fit and then at the end of the day and I you say user research customer

23:45research can be replaced here as well but we might do a little bit of customer research too if we have a few paying customers but so few of us actually ask the right questions to get to the nitty-gritty of how we market to them and this is why I love starting here because when you do research I don't wanna say properly but when you do research effectively let's say you're gonna hear so much from your prospect and/or your customer if you don't quite yet have customers you can do this for prospects and if you have a few customers let's say five ten you can also do this process and

24:24reverse-engineer what your marketing strategy is gonna be it's gonna be magic and you gonna be like what but you're gonna hear certain things you're gonna hear patterns just distribution channels people will actually tell you like where they hang out same thing for content ideas knowledge gaps that you need to fill um objections and barriers to entry the two that are bolded are the ones that I am like I drilled down into any time I'm doing a customer interview but just because like that's gonna tell me what I need to do as a marketer we're gonna hear all kinds of things and if research makes your stomach turn a little bit

24:56it's kind of intimidating and you want a place to start I always always recommend jobs to be done if you've used it from a product development perspective and you're probably already familiar with it you can do the same exact process with customer research and for marketing it's awesome Liana actually also gave you some questions these are actually the exact same questions what were they doing before they search for your product or like what what behavior led to them feeling that pain you're not necessarily gonna walk up to your customer and say like so like where do you like what marketing channels do you hang out in

25:29because they're not gonna know but what you can say is what what was going on in your life that led you to search for this like what was going on just you know tell me tell me about your life and people will people love talking about themselves it's actually really really easy to do and very very underutilized another one of my favorite questions at least on this slide is yes what would have prevented them from signing up so if you have the opportunity to talk to a prospect and they're kind of not making a decision fast enough or for whatever reason there they decided maybe not to

26:05one of my favorite questions is what would have prevented you from signing up today it was around enough information about the benefits or the features was the pricing confusing like what was going on this is an amazing question to ask and there's actually a way that we can do this on your website today something that you have won what we heard so for motivo we went through this process when we interviewed I wanna say it was about 10 or 11 customers and we heard the same things over and over and over again some people were a little bit different everyone is not the exact same but we heard the same patterns over and

26:42over again when we asked these more marketing kind of research questions we heard everyone everyone tried typing in these this exact formula and it was whatever the licensure type LM FTL PC whatever clinical supervisors in their state so L MFT clinical supervisors in Georgia LPC clinical supervisors in Tennessee and every single person did this and they couldn't find anything at the time which told me aha we need to be there when other future providing therapists go through the same exact behavior was just a behavior and they told us the channel they searched it we also heard over and over and over again everyone asked their friends and just other leaders it the

27:33more that you interview people and your customers whether their prospects are not the more that you're gonna hear about just how they view their world and how they view their industry everyone tried asking their friends no one really had a solution but the ones who did ultimately become paying customers were referred in some kind of way so that tells me hmm we got to tap into their communities gotta figure out how to tap into their watering holes essentially everyone felt underwhelmed we don't motivo doesn't really have a whole lot of true competitors and if you're in that boat I would be listening for competitive behaviors things you

28:07don't ultimately compete with but they are technically an alternative to your solution Psychology Today is not a competitor moti but like at all its I called you today it's like article is about like burnout and stress but they do offer connecting therapists with supervisors but everyone was underwhelmed so that told that gave me a lot of other information as well basically the research that you do can tell you so much about how people think about whether they know that you exist or not how do they think about solving their pain how do they think about solving their problem this is crucial when it comes to just figuring out how

28:46to attract that very first 100 and this is another test that we ran with motivo so I actually did a tend to boss business software last year and I saw a roll from super human speak and he I don't I'm not actually don't know don't kill me on this I don't know if he actually built this questioner himself but he does talk about a product market fit survey that he ran and ultimately helped him build an incredibly sticky product it's an email platform but he's charging for it it might sound kind of crazy like who would pay for email well when I would but also he he was able he and his team

29:23they were able to build an incredibly sticky product that makes email going through email is just like a breeze now it's amazing but anyway very it's for questions there's a link to it here but if you were also to look up superhuman product market fit survey you could also find it super easy to implement even if you just have ten paying customers you could run this survey and it would still give you some really interesting insight and if you if you're around the 60 mark you're gonna get even more relevant data here we ran this test for motivo they weren't starting at zero they did have a

29:58few paying customers and ninety-five percent were very disappointed if motivo suddenly disappeared that's an insanely high percentage ninety five percent would be very disappointed in this particular survey it basically just says however many people are very disappointed that tells you how how close are you to that kind of product market fit and depending on who you survey you might get a different answer this gave us a ton of confidence to say okay cool so we could pretty confidently go to market and not have to I don't want to say worry cuz we're in startups we're always worrying but we could more confidently go to market and we can more

30:40confidently test channels and know that we're probably going to attract the right people bottom line research your customers will tell you how to market to them but you do have to ask you have to ask the right questions and you do actually have to do it it does amaze me how many how many people choose not to and to me it's like the best marketing gold ever you can actually start now so there's if you especially if you have a website and it's currently getting some traffic you can actually start right now using hot jar full story tools like this running polls and just asking well what prevented you

31:21from signing up today you're gonna get a wealth of information extremely powerful tests to run and remember I don't wanna bother my customers that's an excuse don't listen to it that's like that's yeah don't run out just don't if you're solving a real pain people are gonna want to talk to you I promise even if you're not solving a pain yet if it's not strong enough yet you can position it much more as a I would love to solve a pain for you let's figure out how we can do that together and you're still gonna get people we're gonna be like yes so doesn't want their pains solved no

31:56one no one in this room was like yep I love all of my pain not a single person you can talk to your customers okay funnel analysis so you do your customer research step two you're gonna hear some things that are gonna be pretty relevant but the next thing I want you to do is to take a look at what you've already got even if you aren't even in beta yet even if you are actually very mature you've got you've got two hundred paying customers take a look at your funnel what's really going on here I want to understand and this is kind of from my

32:30perspective at least but I want to understand how much traffic do you need to get to just get one sign up and how if if you're more pure SAS free trial two paid conversion that kind of thing if that's where you're at how many of those do you need to get to a paying customer if you have an app if you're more transactional your funnel might look a little bit different but I'm basically looking for what is the actual conversion rate across the entire the entire journey and this is gonna be important but just purely because it's gonna give you a place to really understand what you need to improve

33:05there's a saying that if it doesn't if it's not measured it can't be improved and I hundred percent standby that how many people come up to me and say like yeah I need more customers and it's like cool what's everything looking like right now it's like I don't really know it's like your problem might actually not really be acquisition it might be something completely different maybe but it's still good to know it's still good to have a pulse on this this is just a really quick story on leveraging an analysis I almost always recommend just if you have at least a few users even if the freemium what have you just

33:36understand how they are currently using the product this is another client of mine an amazing project automation tool project management automation software very different than standard typical project management software anyway they something that one of the activities that we did was before we ever even went to market we took a look at what we already had and we noticed that there were a few key behaviors every single time and if you can identify what those key behaviors are you can actually leverage that all across your website you'll get a slightly better feel for what some of the benefits might be but you'll also get a better feel for what

34:11people actually get hung up on what prevents people from experiencing your product this is also this is useful for every single founder to know in terms of getting to that very first 100 it's gonna give you a very good feel for when you start acquiring these customers and once we get into the marketing strategy piece you're already gonna have this foundation you're organized you're already gonna be in the practice and in the habit of looking at these things anyway so it's not gonna be totally new and that's why we start with this next right after research we kind of look at what we already got yes so why is this

34:49important to know you got to understand what people are currently getting out of it this is going to inform the strategy so if you can see even like the free trial or what have you behaviors you can start to understand ok have a general feel for how people are navigating this where they're getting stuck and it's also going to either give you the confidence to go to market or it's going to say ok maybe we need to take a step back talk a little bit make sure this is looking a little bit better alright your very first bottom of the funnel tests I mentioned we start with the bottom of

35:19the funnel right so I'm not gonna tell you exactly what channels to use and the reason why is because we did step number one we did customer research and we listened for what those channels are see what I did there didn't tell you exactly what to do but I will say there are rules here there there there are things to keep in mind at least in the first 100 whatever your channels are that you've landed on that you've heard from your customers the behavior that maybe everyone went to G to crowd they looked for something whatever that is you're gonna start hearing the movin over again you're gonna make a list of

35:54them and the tests that you're ultimately going to build you're also gonna get ideas on what you can put in front of those people that would attract them and what you might need to say it must directly correlate with the pain if the if the campaign that you're building doesn't ultimately correlate with the pain that your product solves there's probably not bottom of the funnel general general rule doesn't have to be exactly perfect um you might be doing more education but for a general rule let's just say if it doesn't directly correlate with the pain it's probably not bottom of the funnel next it's got to be in the channels that they've

36:29described this is crucial I can't tell you how many times I hear well I don't really like LinkedIn and I don't really think that we should be doing LinkedIn but a hundred percent of the customer said oh yeah I use LinkedIn like that's the first place I go I like I eat you know drink and sleep with LinkedIn on my computer all day long like that's all I use but you know it's like but I don't like LinkedIn it's like no customers first so it's got to be in what they describe and lastly you should use their exact words in the messaging whether that's whatever copy that you're

37:06writing and just use their exact words if you do if you're doing the research use what they're saying exactly to the T so how do we do this for motivo what were the very first bottom of the funnel tests remember when I said every single person said I typed in lmf T clinical supervisors in Georgia so my brain immediately it was like cool now we need to create a licensure type page for excuse me a page for every single licensure type and for every single state I think if we if I multiply that I think that was like in the end it's like a hundred something landing pages costs

37:43us nothing to build it's free to create pages on the internet but they're targeted to these specific keywords and the results were amazing from an organic search perspective we're ranking number one depending on whatever credential type you're looking up but we're ranking number one for these queries and of course we ran a few AdWords campaigns to test it to see if there was a pulse there and we absolutely found one the goal of course is to move away from paid we don't want to depend on it for too long but these landing pages are I mean it's it was exactly what our customer told us like

38:20to the tee I didn't have to I didn't make that up but that said that was the very first like just immediate result immediately started generating customers the next was we actually did actually start creating content because one thing that a lot of people had a lot of challenges with was choosing the right kind of clinical supervisor cool we're gonna go and create that now and we're going to push it to the channels that we heard and the last thing was and this is really more of a business just overall business development piece but we also know for a fact that pretty much every single pre licensed therapist is going

38:54to be a part of the ACA and other really well-known agencies and also communities and associations so we made sure that we are starting to form some kind of relationship with them partnerships super untapped channel if you will or a strategy but that's gonna be what gives us the big waves of customers okay so what were the results from just these few tests and it really wasn't a ton like I said it's super easy to create web pages we doubled the number of monthly signups which was awesome it was very very awesome to see we got the ninety five percent very disappointed and it was reflected here

39:34we are essentially increasing in the signups month-over-month anywhere from 12 to 38 percent it is a little bit seasonal which is something that we have learned a little bit seasonal at least in the beginning but we've also and this is something that I'm super proud of because I believe in acceleration we've reduced the average number of days to first supervision by 32 days that's an entire month that's an entire month of MOR we weren't gonna see until that turn that 32 days it went by we've shortened it now to is anywhere from like 10 to 14 days and depending on the seasonality it does lengthen but we

40:08were able to take off an entire month of waiting for that money to come in it's crazy and another one of my personal favorites 80 to 80 percent lift and conversion rate just across the board we started with these campaigns first and it was easily the best performing campaigns we'd ever done and you're running wondering about the revenue what happened to them or our Asia tell us about the money we've tripled it since October thank you okay how do we define that strategy how'd it how did we define those pieces this is this page is the simplest marketing strategy you can ever put together it is a very very easy

40:53questionnaire who do you want to target and get real specific like just violently specific why do you want to target them you also have to know where you are going to target these people and how you're going to actually do it if you are capable of putting this into real action items then you truly do have a real strategy it's really really easy to put like you're ever gonna get some goals and we're gonna do some stuff with the website and yeah it's we're just gonna magically make it happen a good strategy has action items and it has success gaps there's a chasm that we're trying to cross so how are we gonna

41:36cross it how are we gonna do it and for who why and what do we expect and as long as you're super duper specific again if you did step number one if you'd a customer research and you did your analysis you're gonna have ideas I promise you you're gonna have ideas but this is gonna help you actually put it into terms that you can start with and this is gonna change over time it's not gonna be perfect the first time you do it either mine certainly aren't perfect every single time but that said it's gonna iterate over - it's gonna iterate over the span of you

42:05actually attempting to acquire and you're gonna learn really really fast just make sure that you take those learnings ok the yellow cards I always like to anytime I see a marketing strategy and I'm like okay hold on wait I've got the yellow cards and the red cards these are my yellows if you've built a marketing strategy and you're kind of like I don't know if this is good or not if as long as you're not doing in my opinion these three things you're probably fine you've got conflicting strategies I see this a lot where especially with sadly enough marketing and sales teams marketing is over here

42:39but sales is over here and customer success is like peace we're out I think we don't care about any of that uh but someone has to ultimately align that and especially if you're the founder you've got a line whatever your strategy is ultimately are it could be in the team it could be wherever it's it's tough to say exactly but if you've got conflicting strategies you expect to see growth coming from over here but everything you're doing is over here if those pieces don't align it's gonna be really hard to actually accomplish what you've set out to do next you don't have enough resources dedicated any one

43:12direction I I hear and see this a lot I'm like oh yeah sure like I want to tackle marketing but like I just don't have a time or it's yeah like I know I need to be doing this but everyone is focused on just complete different things that's cool make peace with that I think that's awesome that you're at least you know like yeah I admit I don't have the time to do this but if that's the case don't sit down and make this whole marketing strategy and then don't execute it it doesn't make any sense so if you don't have enough resources whether that's your

43:43time whether that's contractors whatever it is that you want to use if you don't have enough resources to actually dedicate to doing something with it it's gonna be again really really really hard for you to actually build this engine and then lastly nothing really adds up this is probably one of my favorite ones but anytime you let's say you like you look at your ultimate funnel and you reverse-engineer okay this is how much traffic I need to get this many signups to get this many paid or yeah paid conversions and then this is how much turn I have so okay so now I've adjusted the numbers my favorite thing is always

44:17awesome so now I'm gonna set a goal for like five hundred paying customers but when I'm reverse engineer the numbers I need like a million monthly signups or monthly visits to my website if nothing really adds up if if something seems kind of crazy and you're gonna know cuz anytime I do anything like that I'm like whoa we're gonna need in crazy crazy numbers to accomplish something realist or maybe it's not realistic I know but it's nothing adds up then maybe the strategy might not might need some I need some tweaking that said I love an aggressive goal I love aggressive goals they they put fire under me I'm an achiever so I'm

44:58like yes goals love them especially when like they feel just a little bit out of reach they personally motivate me but if we look at the numbers and we find out that oh my gosh we're gonna have to get this much traffic to the website qualified traffic to the website just to get this much then we happens are asking ourself some questions what's not adding up here so okay the red cards um you needed em our our yesterday this one's always my favorite because uh if you need em are are right now like right now you're like I need I need the money now marketing building marketing doing

45:36me wrong markings dope but building marketing right now might not make the most sense if you need it right now but just because sales is right there nothing moves the needle faster than picking up the phone and prospecting and I don't love this phrase but tiring the pavement like nothing works faster than that it just doesn't nothing but if you're thinking six months from now a year from now two years from now that's where the marketing engine really makes a lot of sense for you to start building right now but if you are in desperate dire need of customers today I would always say that sales is probably gonna

46:13be a lot faster for you you don't have any clear action items huge red red flag yeah like take your marketing strategy off field you're not playing any more games you need action items there's there's no action items out of your strategy you have a problem and lastly you couldn't get any customers on the phone if you don't have any customers right now I would sub that with prospects you couldn't get anyone on the phone you couldn't talk to anyone if you've built a strategy and you've talked to no one like I said you're out you're out again sorry come back when you've done that piece because that's gonna it's just

46:48gonna influence everything else that you do alright executing this step 5 executing that strategy smart execution is always going to be your number one threat even if you have the worst marketing strategy on the planet you'll never actually know until you do it don't let your dreams be dreams just do it if you go through the motions of doing all this research and development and like maybe you like you taking a look at your funnel and like you've got some ideas you've got a very strong feeling of what's gonna Altima to get you there but then you never act on it kind of like what is that that's so

47:24silly do it just do it and and if fear is what is preventing you let's do some soul-searching let's think let's unpack what is terrifying you about going to market with this now there is a case for maybe we still need to build a little bit longer I totally get that but I am also like I said hello I'm an achiever I love goals let's just do it smart execution it's gonna be number one threat forever you're never gonna know until you try ultimately that sounds so cliche but it's so true because so many people don't try these things all right last step this journey doesn't ever actually

48:01end the path to even the first 10 customers it's it's not I'm not gonna lie it's gonna be a journey so if you're at zero when you're getting to the first 10 it's gonna be a journey if you're at the first 50 and you're trying to get to the next 100 doesn't really matter where you're at in the cycle it is still going to be a cycle always you're going to acquire more customers you're going to have people turn you're going to talk to those people and figure out why or maybe you want multi multiple transactions but you only got one you're like how do I

48:31get people to buy again doesn't matter where you're at this is a constant cycle it's a constant feedback loop this process never ends and I think that shouldn't small one that shouldn't scare you I hope that feels much more comfortable if anything is kind of like I know yeah this is truly perpetual emotion we're always going to be doing this but as you start to acquire more customers you're going to start to learn you're gonna get more interesting feedback you're going to hear different channels that's gonna influence your strategy remember when I say we start at the bottom of the funnel then we layer on middle and the top and then we start

49:02testing and like trying new different things that's going to continue to happen over and over and over and over again till you get to the next really big goal or whatever it is milestone that you're trying to get to it's a constant constant just feedback loop forever and that's a good thing as you start to acquire more customers you start to learn more you start to see more markets you get exposed to different kinds of people and pains and things and this is how we continue to grow and build the engine I will say out of the slide at least feedback to me is usually almost way more important than

49:39the result that might make a lot of people cringe but I usually value feedback way more than just like the pure dollar number but that's just because if I don't get the feedback I can't learn which means that we can't learn that said I always try to prioritize the momentum so execution is going to be the number one threat it's gonna be the number one thing that will prevent you from achieving any of this it's just not doing it but I would also say that right in line with execution is lack of momentum not continuing the process trying something seeing at work but then that channel dies or something

50:14goes away if there's nothing else I want to make sure I at least leave you with this the number one rule just give your people what they want if you're solving a pain give them what they want and get in front of them nothing to lose here the only thing that you have to gain is learning what else do you need to potentially build or who did you potentially attract let's start there and if you're wondering about motivo what's the next steps I'm really honored to say that I am I have actually this I don't know this is past tense I actually already hired my replacement super

50:47amazing marketer that I know and next steps remote Evo is I mean similar journey we're working to the next 100 but we're basically replacing paid media as a channel because we know that that it's gonna help us in the beginning but we know that we need to expand and like broaden our horizons the next is actually take advantage of those partnerships that I mentioned which as of this week has already gone underway which it's been pretty awesome so those are next steps in this particular sense these are actually the prayer hand emojis but I don't know what happened thank you guys so much hi Asia thanks so

51:26much for your awesome talk um I have a question just about you talked about a lot about the bottom of the funnel and sort of focusing on that at what point does it really like how far up the funnel should I go if if I'm talking about my customers you know their dreams is that is that too far up the top of the funnel like they're my target market is our veers so like people who are thinking of you know maybe someday becoming our veers is that too far up like I have a very specific product for people who are already RVing should I be even focusing on that or only after I've

52:03really covered the bottom of the phone so the first question was when when do we start looking at top of the funnel and is what you currently have to top of the funnel too soon I don't typically even think about what top of the funnel or middle of the funnel even looks like until we've solved that very bottom layer and it's just because I kind of forgot to mention this but any if you don't have the bottom of the funnel mostly figured out if it's not solid or as solid as it possibly can be anything that you add on the top it's it's it's just like like trying to hit like a

52:37target and just completely missing every single time you might get lucky but that said yeah I mean I I would typically say could I find people who are already looking for that right now the dream conversation might be too high in the funnel and that's just that's just I'm hearing you describe it I don't actually know but I will say if you were to talk to people who are your ultimate customer what is the step right before becoming that or making that decision but that said and you could probably tweak that idea into being more like a bottom or middle of the funnel piece just depending on how you frame it so

53:19maybe maybe my gut says it might be but I I don't I don't know I I always go but my gut but I love data even more so I would test it honestly [Applause] you