It was once said that startup companies live and die by their ability to drive customer acquisition growth. There are many ways to generate more interest in your brand; some being more effective than others. In this blog, we’ve ransacked the web to find you the most useful tips and tricks to increase your customer base.
Growth hacks, as the name would suggest, is an effective way of fast-tracking the success of a startup company. The primary purpose of growth hacks is to create more money for a business; but you’d be crazy to think that this is where it ends. Growth hacks, like content marketing, is about developing meaningful and long-standing relationships between customers and businesses.
So, without further pomp, here are our eight growth hacks to improve your digital marketing campaign.
1. Embrace longform content
You’ve heard us go on about longform content here at Neil Walker Digital, but we really can’t stress it enough.
Longform content has the almost-magical quality of increasing website traffic and user sharability. A fantastic blog by Neil Patel recently showed that there’s a direct correlation between word length and the Google Ranking status of a website. Here are his findings:
As you can see, Google Rankings actively rewards websites which use longform content. This isn’t just simple bias, however.
It’s the data which comes alongside longform content which gets Google excited. If you’re willing to spend the time writing content rich websites, then it makes sense to perfect your SEO and keyword research. Quite simply, people put more effort into making longform content.
You might wonder why writing content is a customer acquisition hack. As Neil Patel’s research demonstrates, websites which use longform content are more likely to attract online users and generate leads.
Now that you know, there’s simply no excuse for not embracing the tour de force that is longform content.
2. Share, share, share
Everyone knows how important it is to create content that people will not only read, but actually want to share. One of the most obvious ways to do this is through social media. However, many websites now feature a ‘vote’ plugin which allows customers to rate a webpage. This is an exciting development because it actually encourages people to get involved with company content. It also gives users a fantastic sense of agency in the creation and distribution of online material.
Some people have compared this trend to ‘gamifying’ online content.
You might wonder how voting plugins can increase your customer acquisition. Think of it this way: a voting system allows you to quickly gather data about which content is successful and what needs more work. It tells you something about your audience and helps you to gather data about their needs and preferences.
In terms of sharing, however, studies have shown that users are more likely to share content which they can interact with. To put this into perspective, nearly 27 million pieces of online content are shared on a daily basis.
Users have the impetus to share content; you just need to give them something worth sharing. This is how you increase your online following and customer generation.
3. Design infographics
Most people are visual learners, so it comes as little surprise that infographics and visuals are a great way to share content, fast. In our recent blog, I said that visuals are processed 60,000x faster than written text. It’s also true that, in the publishing industry, websites which include infographics receive 12% more online traffic. So why would you not use visuals?
There are plenty of websites out there dedicated to creating stunning images. Canva, for example, offers a quick and effective way to design your own images. If you’re deterred by the unfamiliar, then Photoshop is equally user-friendly and gives businesses the opportunity to make their content more exciting.
However, creating a beautiful infographic is only half the battle. If you want to hack your way into growth, then you should add a ‘share’ feature alongside your visual content. Now, we don’t need to tell you the benefits of that, do we?
4. Write a killer headline
This is something so obvious it’s almost painful, but a great headline is absolutely crucial in grabbing a user’s attention.
Here are some useful tips for writing a great headline:
One of the reasons that Buzzfeed is so successful is that their headlines are short, memorable, and irresistibly tantalising. For me, personally, Buzzfeed has a wonderful capacity to make me interested in things I didn’t think could be interesting.
‘10 things only kids from the 90s will know about’ Click.
‘17 unusual clocks that don’t look like clocks’ Click.
‘The 50 funniest headlines of 2011?’ You bet I’ll click it.
A great headline should draw people in and entice them to read more. That’s why it’s always good to experiment and try new things. Upworthy.com, for example, are known for writing 25 headlines per content piece; they then pick their favourites and individually test them. Only the headline with the highest share metric is finally chosen.
Creating a great headline is like the art of seduction. Practice writing them; then make them so enticing that users will have to click.
5. Record webinars
If you want to hack your way into growth, then try creating helpful and informative webinars for your users. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; online tutorials are wonderfully accessible and just beg to be shared.
Many businesses will create e-learning courses and webinars based on their previous blogs. This is incredibly easy because you already have all the information at hand. It’s simply a case of transferring that material into videos, slides, or lecture notes.
There’s currently a huge market for online users who want to learn something useful in their spare time. When I finished at university, I had spend five long years studying Classics; it gave me useful skills, but I was really interested in Content Marketing. So, I signed up with Coursera.com and completed an 11-week ‘introduction to marketing’ series.
This was a great experience; but equally, I would have loved to do a course like this with an actual digital marketing company. There’s a huge potential for businesses, regardless of the sector, to offer tailor-made and useful content for their online users. One of the ways to achieve this is through webinars.
The benefit is two-fold – webinars help businesses to increase their status as a thought-leader, but they’re also great for SEO.
6. Build an ‘About us’ page
If you want to make your website informative, attractive, and useful, then you should seriously considering creating a detailed ‘About us’ company page. We have our very own one here at Neil Walker Digital. The purpose of these pages isn’t to boast about your company or your lovely members of staff. It’s to give your readers a more complete image of your brand.
Small biographies help to build a sense of loyalty between a customer and a business. Photographs of your staff are even better (you can see me at the bottom of this blog).
A great ‘About us’ page doesn’t just provide users with a friendly face to attach to a business. It’s the one page that should be dedicated entirely to your customers and their needs. Company biographies and photographs help online users to decipher your brand identity. The ultimate goal of an ‘About us’ page is to encourage customers to align their personality and values with your brand.
Customer loyalty is paramount to achieving long-term and valuable client-company relationships.
That’s one growth hack you definitely don’t want to miss.
7. Encourage users to sign up
If the recent success of Dropbox has taught us anything, it’s that there is a genuine advantage for companies who encourage their users to sign up for their product. For those of you who don’t know, Dropbox is a file-hosting server which allows users to upload and save their documents.
Dropbox’s success came from one simple growth hack: it encouraged users to sign up for their service, and actively rewarded them for recommending Dropbox to their friends. This might seem basic, but Dropbox gave its users an actual product for their loyalty; users were rewarded with more storage capacity. This helped turn Dropbox into a $4billion dollar business in the matter of 4 years.
Everything about Dropbox’s homepage is designed to be simple. Quite simply, users only have the option of either signing up or learning more about Dropbox. The very fact that the signing up process is so basic encourages users to join in. It also makes Dropbox fantastically easy to share between users.
How does this benefit your business, you ask? Well I’m glad you asked.
If you want users to sign up to your website, then you must have something to reward them with. Quite often, businesses don’t utilise their websites to give their customers a tangible product. This can be something as simple as exclusive content – mailing lists, for example, do exactly the same thing.
You might not have considered it, but there’s a lot to be said for encouraging users to sign up to your website and actively rewarding them for doing so.
8. Exploit Social Media
Everyone knows that social media is a vital tool for promoting content and generating interest in your brand. We’ve blogged about it several times before. So what can we tell you that you don’t already know?
To be perfectly honest, there’s no point in throwing your brand into the arena of social media unless you’re willing to fight for it. Small, sporadic efforts will get you nowhere. However, there’s something even more important that businesses often overlook. Your presence on social media (and your progression) should be ruthlessly assessed for its data analytics.
A social media timetable is an invaluable tool. It helps businesses to work out when to distribute their content, who to sent it to, and which social media platforms are the most advantageous. Without your analytics, you’ll never improve your performance and generate interest in your company.
Data analytics are the ultimate growth hack in your digital marketing campaign. When done well, they will help you to develop an overall picture of your user demographics. Once you know who your customers are, including what they want, you can hack your way into growth.
Growth Hacks: a summary
So there you have it; our eight tips and tricks to generate customer acquisition through content marketing. Chances are, you were probably already aware of the importance attached to longform content and data analytics. We hope, however, you might try your hand at webinars and find more unusual ways to create interest in your brand. After all, if you don’t, someone else will.
In 2014, there’s no indication that competition for online space will become any less fierce. The purpose of growth hacks isn’t just to generate more money for your company. A fantastic digital marketing strategy can breath new energy into a business and create a new brand identity. The internet may have taken away the friendly face-to-face contact between businesses and customers, but there’s no reason why it should be any less personal.