Customer Acquisition: It’s every entrepreneur’s biggest headache.
“How can we get new customers to try our product?”
When Wishpond started out in 2009 this question was constantly swirling around in our CEO’s head. Like most entrepreneurs, Ali Tajsekandar was faced with the hard task of mapping out Wishpond’s customer acquisition process. He knew it wouldn’t be predictable or linear, but a well planned strategy would be essential to the company’s success.
Where We Began
As a tech startup we needed our target audience to discover our platform. We believed strongly in what we had to offer, and were ready to share it with the world.
We poured our resources into advertising. Google Adwords and Retargeting Ads seemed like the best (and fastest!) way to spread the word about Wishpond.
And they worked. The ads instantly led to tons of new customers trying out our platform.
But, as all marketers know, Google Adwords comes at a price. In a competitive industry, they’re not cheap and were by no means easy to scale for our business. The low margins were not ideal for a company just getting its feet on the ground.
But then, after spending a frustratingly large amount of money, we discovered another effective way to drive new traffic to our site.
Content is King
When we implemented our content marketing strategy in 2012, we didn’t exactly know what to expect. We wanted to be a problem-solving resource for marketers. We wanted to craft content that would solve our customers’ needs.
We weren’t as interested in short term wins from advertising, we were looking to play the long game. Developing helpful, creative content seemed to be the logical next step for our company.
What we didn’t realize was the impact our content strategy would have on the rest of our business.
The results have been phenomenal.
Our content fuels our lead generation strategy. Wishpond gets 2,000 new leads each month from content marketing. That’s 24,000 new potential customers each year.
I know, how can blog articles and infographics drive numbers like these?
SEO (or search engine optimization) is the answer.
We’ll admit it, we’re pretty darn good at SEO. When marketing professionals search online for information or help, Wishpond is always at or near the top with hundreds of articles, infographics and slideshares. We rate higher for our chosen keywords than businesses with a million readers, thousands of social endorsements, and 10 to 15 years of experience.
Don’t believe me? Search on Google for “Increase Facebook Likes”, one of the most competitive search keywords, or check out the screenshot below:
Having valuable content as part of your customer acquisition strategy is like making a property investment in a booming housing market. As prices rise, all you have to do is sit back and watch the value grow.
But like a housing investment, content comes with costs. It takes a lot of time and effort to figure out exactly what your audience wants. Also like the housing market it doesn’t always pay-off right away. It’s a reward that gives back over time.
Here is a graph from our Google Analytics of traffic to our blog over the past year. You can see that it has been a fairly gradual increase of weekly visitors:
Once you publish content that’s beneficial to your target audience, it does all of the dirty work for you. It can remain on the web for years, bringing in leads as you sit back and watch your customer base flourish.
Even articles written more than a year ago still bring in tons of leads. Our article 7 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Likes Guide brings our blog thousands of views each week. That means consistent new visitors to our website each week.
Our Current Strategy
Eventually it got to the point where our company was getting way more traffic through SEO than paid Google Ads.
So we stopped. We no longer needed Google Adwords.
SEO, on the other hand, continues to work wonders for us. It allows us to generate new leads and nurture them with content. We get to build relationships and trust with potential customers. This soft sell strategy better suits our youthful startup as a less aggressive way of moving leads through the sales funnel.
Wishpond now relies very little on advertising. Our current customer acquisition strategy involves helpful content and retargeting ads.
Retargeting ads allow Wishpond to track who visits our website or blog and then show them ads for our products or content as they visit other sites online.
We currently do Youtube video retargeting ads to:
- Promote bi-weekly webinars
- Educate people on how to run great marketing campaigns
- Educate people on how to run great marketing campaigns using Wishpond’s tools
We also do display retargeting ads for these 3 topics. These ads show up on websites within the Google Ad Display Network as banners at the top or sidebar.
Retargeting allows us to specifically target those individuals who are interested in online marketing. This means we can remain top-of-mind to possible customers or readers, thereby increasing the chance of them returning to us in the future.
Moving Forward
Wishpond’s customer acquisition strategy has come a long way since 2009. We now have a full content marketing team with 2 graphic designers working by our side each and every day.
You may have read that we are changing our focus from SEO-oriented articles to actionable, engaging posts that people will read as soon as they’re published. We want our readers to know that Wishpond will provide them with something new in every article. Whether it’s a formula, strategy, or case study, we want our blog readers to know they can count on us to help boost their marketing instantly. Read more about our new strategy here.
Believe the hype around content marketing. It’s not just talk. Content is the most viable way to get traffic to your site. Who knows, it may even become a key part of your customer acquisition strategy as it has for Wishpond.
– Written by Claire Grayston
Claire is a digital content marketer at Wishpond. When not racking her brain for new content, you’ll find her hiking or snowboarding the local mountains or cozied up in bed watching a sappy rom-com.
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