Customer Acquisition: 15 Resources You Need to Reach, Convert, and Keep Your Customers

Marketing – it’s growing a brand; it’s spreading word of mouth; it’s capturing leads; it’s conversion; it’s retention – it’s a lot of pressure.

Unless you work for HubSpot – who has 200 people on their marketing department and a team dedicated to just doing webinars – you’re probably wearing lots of marketing hats at the same time.

Between writing blog posts, growing your social media channels, and creating your next lead magnet, it’s easy to lose sight of your main goal: customer acquisition.

You may be watching your Instagram followers and tracking your email open rates, but all you really need are customers, and customers that stay.

But setting your priorities straight doesn’t make the work easier.

Not to mention how best practices change every six months with algorithm updates and new “we’re the Uber of X!” apps.

To help you get by, I’ve compiled a list of trusted resources that cover the whole customer acquisition journey. From reaching new customers to converting them and keeping them happy, I’ve got you covered.

Don’t thank me just yet – you’re doing all the hard work – there’ll be a lot of reading to do.
No time to waste – let’s get to it.

Customer acquisition step 1: growing your brand to reach a bigger audience

It’s difficult to buy from a brand you’ve never heard of.

That’s why everybody talks about “growing your brand” and “engaging your audience.” You can find a million blog posts and ebooks on this topic. But not everybody knows what they’re talking about.

Our first five resources are from people who know more than a thing or two about growing their brands:

1. Grow your brand online with Neil Patel Webinar

As the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Kissmetrics, QuickSprout, and Hello Bar, Neil Patel has been named one of the top 10 online marketers by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world.

In this exclusive webinar with Mention, he shared with us his best marketing and growth hacking tricks, including:

• Best practices for growing your audience online
• Little-known social media marketing strategies
• Critical analytics to track KPIs for your brand growth

2. How to Maximize Engagement on Social Media

When researching a product or a service, your customers go to social media instead of salespeople.
In fact, for Americans buying a car, more than half say they’d rather go to the dentist than talk to a salesperson. It’s that bad.

So if you want to reach your potential customers, you need to be on social. Everybody knows that, and everybody’s doing it. But few see great results.

To see real ROI from your social media efforts, you need a strategy. This ebook helps marketers who want to get more out of social media than a few retweets.

You’ll learn how to measure success on social media and how to achieve it with easy-to-adopt strategies.

3. A Complete Guide to Instagram Marketing

With visual content being all the rage in social media marketing, Instagram is a great place to reach new audiences and tell your brand story visually.

Instagrammers also connect with brands more than users of other channels. 70% of Instagram users have looked up a brand on the platform, and brands enjoy regular engagement with 4% of their total followers, compared to less than 0.1% on Facebook and Twitter.

In this in-depth guide by Buffer, you’ll learn everything you need to know about:

• How to create an Instagram marketing strategy
• How to create a content plan
• The best frequency and timing on Instagram
• How to measure your Instagram results

4. The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Content Marketing

The one thing that everybody takes with them wherever they go is their phone.

So it should come as no surprise that 65% of content consumed today is on mobile.

If your blog or lead gen forms are still not “responsive” or mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on a big channel to reach your customers.

In Bitly’s ultimate mobile marketing guide, you will learn:

• The current state of mobile content
• How to create mobile content for web, lead gen, engagement, social media, and SMS campaigns
• How brands are effectively leveraging mobile content

5. Brand Monitoring: The Secret to Growing Your Brand

The most loyal communities online stem from a strong, unified brand.

But what makes up a brand?

Your target audience. Your role in the marketplace. How you’re actually perceived. What people are saying about you. Your brand is a network of associations around your company, products, and services. Brand monitoring helps you keep track of those associations.

With this ebook, you’ll learn how to build your brand identity and reach by keeping an eye on your brand and surrounding ecosystem.

Customer acquisition step 2: nurturing and converting customers

Okay. So you’ve expanded your brand’s reach. People now know you exist.

They might have engaged with you on Twitter or watched your videos. But how do you convert them? How do you turn vanity metrics – retweets or YouTube views – into sales?

Don’t panic. The following pieces will help you with that.

6. How to Build Your Email List: The (Better Than) Ultimate Guide

After you pull new audiences in through social media, emailing is one of the best ways to convert them into customers.

In this Better Than Ultimate guide, Aaron Orendorff breaks down a clear, step-by-step strategy to help you build an email list.

From social media, to content offers, to pleasure and painful buttons (read to find out!) – you’ll learn all the ways in the world to capture email addresses.

7. 13 Email Marketing Trends to Follow in 2017: A Sumo-Sized Guide

Because despite what everyone says, email is still. not. dead.

It didn’t die when Facebook advertising was launched, it didn’t die when Slack took over the business communication world, and it certainly isn’t dying in 2017.

In this detailed sumo-sized guide by SumoMe, Sarah Peterson lays out all the key trends for email marketing in 2017 and how you should best prepare for them.

8. Wordstream’s Advanced PPC course

In case you haven’t caught on the hype, paid ads are pretty amazing.

You can instantly appear on page one and be in front of people who are searching for your solution to their problem. You can target customers by demographics, interests – even life events – to laser-target the exact audience at the perfect time. You can retarget ads to readers of your blog, fans of your Facebook page, or your competitor’s’ customers – it’s mind-blowing.

In Wordstream’s advanced PPC course, you’ll learn how to master paid ads with remarketing, mobile optimization, and more to convert your leads into customers.

9. 38 Retargeting Campaigns You’ve Never Heard Of Before 

Retargeting is one of the most powerful ways to reach and engage customers.

Retargeted visitors are 70% more likely to convert than those who aren’t.

Some people also call it remarketing, but they’re the same thing. It’s all about finding people who’ve already engaged with your brand – be it reading your blog, downloading an ebook or checking out your pricing page – and converting them into customers through targeted ads.

In this 94-page retargeting guide, Klientboost and Invoca share 33 different types of retargeting campaigns that they run for their own clients and how you can run them too.

Customer acquisition step 3: keeping customers happy and loyal

We know that customer retention is important. We know that!

But it’s easy to get caught up in “lead generation and conversion land” which is all glitz, glamor, and bling bling, and leaving all the retention work to your overburdened support team.


But retention is part of a marketer’s job. At the very least, it should be a joint effort with your support team.

You brought those leads in, you gotta see them through, right?

So here are six resources to help make sure all that sweat and tears spent on acquiring customers are not wasted.

10. 6 Easy Ways to Effectively Keep Your Customers 

So no, our work is not done after customers convert. How many of them stay?

This checklist – with six easy, actionable tips to keep your customers happy and loyal – is a perfect reminder you can stick on your wall.

11. 25 Ways to Thank Your Customers

Like in all relationships, it’s important to show appreciation. Your customers like to feel special and valued.
And while “thanks” has a nice ring to it, words just don’t carry the gravity of actions.

If you’re in the customer service business – and every business is – you should show your gratitude to customers in fun and memorable ways.

This resource from HelpScout features 25 outstanding ways to show your appreciation to customers. Beware, they get very creative!

12. Customer Loyalty: How to Win Customers & Build Trust 

Customers are expensive to acquire, and gaining loyalty is hard. They would switch brands for a coupon or an ignored complaint on Twitter. To win over customers, you need an amazing customer experience that exceeds their expectations.

And you’ll learn the best way to do that in our joint ebook with Bitly, where we share how to:

• “Wow” customers with an extraordinary user experience
• Nurture loyalty and trust
• Turn a customer complaint into an opportunity
• Provide fast support on every channel
• Use influencers to strengthen customer relationships

13. 6 Ways to Build Customer Loyalty with Great Social Support
 

As customers share buying experiences on social media platforms more often, brands need to increase their support presence on these sites as well.

Bad customer service hurts your business. With up to 88% of customers influenced by customer service reviews when making buying decisions, it’s no exaggeration to say that customer support is the new marketing.

You can’t stop customers from complaining online. But you can learn how to deal with them better. In this blog post, you’ll learn how to provide social support more efficiently and win back dissatisfied customers.

14. Delight and Retain Customers with Brand Monitoring

So we’ve already talked about how keeping customers happy isn’t just up to your support team.
To be a great brand that customers love, you need to offer a consistently remarkable experience at every touch point. Brand monitoring helps you stay in touch with your customers on social media. Learn what they like and don’t like, so you can keep them happy.

More specifically, this ebook will show you how to:

• Keep track of customers’ conversations about your brand
• Provide faster customer support
• Surprise and delight your customers on social media
• Identify at-risk customers early and prevent churn

15. The Customer Advocacy Playbook

Your marketing and sales teams are working day and night to bring in more customers and business. But it’s never really enough. You always want more leads, more sales, and more customers. So what if you could hand some of the hard work over to your existing customers?

In Web Profit’s Customer Advocacy Playbook, Sujan Patel explains the importance of empowering your loyal customers to become brand advocates.
You’ll learn the A-Z of customer advocacy, including how to:

• Develop an advocacy marketing plan
• Turn customers into advocates
• Design your advocacy program
• Scale your campaign

By the end, you’ll learn everything you need to turn your customers into your best sales team.

Apply what you learn

Of course, you won’t get customers just by reading a dozen ebooks. You need to actually apply the strategies. And chances are, you won’t get it right the first time. You’ve got to try, test, try again, until you find the sweet spot that works for your brand and your audience.
But learning from other people’s mistakes and victories will save you a ton of time. That’s why these resources are essential for marketers. So read them, use them, and go win those customers.

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How Instapage Uses Landing Pages for Content Marketing

The interest in and demand for landing pages has grown substantially over the past decade. The reason for this growth is simple: Landing pages are the best solution to optimize paid advertising campaigns and provide a personalized experience for the search user.

That’s because they help marketers target specific audiences and collect valuable user information — like email address and phone number. We don’t only use landing pages for paid advertising, though.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s start with a quick reminder…

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a standalone web page that a visitor lands on after clicking an ad or search result. Its sole purpose is to get that visitor to take action (to sign up, register, download, buy, etc.).

Landing pages contain persuasive elements such as compelling headlines, a short form, social proof, explanatory videos, and a strong call-to-action that gets prospects to convert.

One of the greatest benefits about landing pages is their versatility. They aren’t exclusive to any type of business or industry. With many industries conducting business online, landing pages are essential pieces to every marketing campaign puzzle.

At Instapage, our motto is that “every ad and promotion needs a landing page” and we encourage all marketers to create landing pages for each and every one of their campaigns.

  

We have a comprehensive marketing program that includes multiple team members — each requiring landing pages for their respective tasks. Because of this, it only makes sense that we use our own software to create landing pages to maximize conversions.

Creating a fully optimized landing page can be challenging if you’re new to the process. But with software like Instapage, it doesn’t have to be difficult. Take a look at some of these landing page examples and continue reading below to learn how Instapage effectively uses landing pages.

(All examples below are being A/B tested with an alternate version, so when you click through to the page, you may not see the variation displayed in this article.)

Learn how to build campaigns that drive landing page traffic that converts with our free guide to SEO, PPC, and email marketing!

How Instapage uses landing pages

1. Paid advertising

Paid advertising on Google AdWords is one of our biggest traffic sources. We like to determine which page variations perform best so we’re big proponents of A/B testing. Our landing page platform is home to the most advanced analytics in the industry, so it only makes sense for us to advertise on A/B testing related search phrases terms — and have a dedicated landing page for them.

For example, we bid on search phrases such as A/B test landing page, landing page testing, and split test landing pages, of which an ad like the one below appears at the top of search results:


When prospects click-through on the ad, they’re sent to this landing page (notice how “test,” “landing pages,” and “A/B test” are strategically placed in the headline and subheadline):


By keyword matching a personalized landing page to the search phrase, we are able to target people looking for landing page A/B testing and get them to sign up for service.

2. Sign up for services

As a SaaS business, our ultimate objective is to generate sign ups for our service.
The sign up page here highlights our landing page builder, custom design capabilities, and publishing options. In fact, it’s one of the most common Instapage landing pages we link to in our blog posts:

3. Webinars

Webinars can be used in different funnel stages, depending on their content.
A product demo, for example, is considered to be bottom of the funnel because prospects are aware of the problem they have, are considering a few options, and are in decision mode. On the other hand, a middle of the funnel webinar could be a brand demonstrating their expertise in a particular subject, like personalized advertising and landing pages.

At Instapage, we provide both types of webinars to our audience. Each week our Lead Marketing Educator, Ander Frischer, presents a live product demo. We also host webinars on personalized advertising and landing page strategy, sometimes with external guests. To generate traffic for each presentation, we use in-app popup messages, email marketing, and paid advertising channels.

Let’s look at our middle of the funnel webinar to learn how we persuade visitors to register. Once prospects arrive at our personalized advertising webinar page (below), we take advantage of personalized CTAs relevant to the offer, a countdown timer, bulleted copy, and a hero image of Ander:

At the conclusion of this webinar, we frequently help push attendees further down the funnel with an incentivized offer. Specifically, in the past, we’ve offered a 50% discount on the first month of our Premium Instapage plan.

4. Promotions

Since our company motto is “every ad and promotion needs a landing page,” this section should come as no surprise.

Frequently, when we announce a new product feature that is only made available to certain customer plans, we offer customers the chance to upgrade (at a discount) to have access to the feature. To do this, we use a token-based promotional system where the discount expires after a short time.

For other special deals, we use a dedicated landing page for that specific promotion.

Just recently, we designed the following landing page to promote our 2016 Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal for customers. When customers converted, they would save 30% on their first three months when upgrading to a Pro or Premium Instapage account:

You’ll notice we use a countdown timer and two CTA buttons above the fold to encourage visitors to upgrade. What you won’t find anywhere on the page are exit links or any unrelated content. The goal for this page is to persuade visitors to upgrade. That’s exactly what it accomplished.

5. Offer gated content

At Instapage, we offer a variety of content that is not gated behind a form, like this list of landing page and marketing terms. For content that we do gate, it’s used to demonstrate our expertise and enter prospects into our marketing funnel.

For example, we encourage all marketers to always A/B test because this takes the guesswork out of landing page conversion optimization. Since we emphasize split testing so much, we offer our top 10 A/B testing tips for other marketers as a gated piece of content:

Once someone converts, they’re sent to a thank you page which notifies them to check their email for the A/B testing tips. They are also entered into our lead nurturing campaigns that push them further down our marketing funnel with related content — ultimately offering an Instapage product demo and to sign up for a 30-day trial.

6. Highlight a specific product feature

Brands often use landing pages to introduce a new product or to highlight a feature of an already-existing product to its customers. The example below shows how we use a landing page to highlight the importance of, and encourage the creation of, mobile responsive landing pages:

7. Affiliate program

This last example is a bit different than the previous pages. It’s not about signing up for Instapage, downloading our content, promoting a webinar, or any special feature. It’s about getting marketers to promote the Instapage software.

This Instapage landing page simply encourages visitors to become an Instapage affiliate, by providing an entire list of compelling reasons to partner with us:

To promote our affiliate program, it wouldn’t make any sense to use the previous landing page examples. That’s why we created this dedicated page for our affiliate program. Remember, it all comes back to our motto: “every ad and promotion needs a landing page.”

Some final words

In every landing page example above, notice that each one contains a strong and compelling headline, persuasive copy, cooperative CTA buttons, as well as several trust signals, including statistics and customer testimonials. These are all key components we’re sure to incorporate each time we create an Instapage landing page.

Now that we’ve showed you ours, how does your company use landing pages?
 

 

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The Kindness of God

The Kindness of God

GOD VALUES KINDNESS BECAUSE HE IS KIND.

Bible Reading of the Day: Read Psalm 145:17-21.

Verse of the Day: “Since God chose you to be the holy people whom he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12).

Janna studied her reflection in the dressing room mirror, then stepped through the curtains to show her friends.

Tammy shook her head, smiling. “That dress makes you look like your mom!” she said, stifling a giggle.

Janna looked confused. “What do you mean?” she said. She stepped in front of another mirror. “I think my mom’s pretty!”

“Yeah,” said Gretchen, “but who wants to look like her mom?”

“It could be worse,” Tammy said. “The last one she tried on made her look like her dad!” Both girls laughed.

Janna shook her head and turned sideways to look at her reflection from a different angle. “I like it,” she said. “I’m going to buy it.”

That evening, Janna told her father about the incident in the clothing store.

“You’re right,” Dad said. “Your mom is a very pretty woman.”

“I know,” Janna said. “They were just trying to be funny.”

“You do look like your mother, you know,” Dad said. “You’re both beautiful.”

Janna smiled shyly. “I look a little like you, too,” she said. “Everybody says I have your nose.”

Dad ran a hand over his bald head. “At least you don’t have my hairline!” he said, chuckling. Then his face got serious. “I’m glad you got your mother’s good looks, but you know who I want you to look like even more?”

“Who?” Janna asked.

“Your Father-your heavenly Father. I think you resemble him more and more each day, and that makes me really happy. I think you even resembled him when you were in that store, when you refused to say unkind things about your mom and dad.” He winked lovingly at Janna. “You see, Janna, God is kind. Kindness is a part of his nature. The Bible says his lovingkindness lasts forever. It’s just a part of who he is. And when you’re kind-whether you’re kind to your parents or your friends or somebody you don’t even know-you look and act like him … no matter what your friends say about your clothes!”

Janna smiled. She laid her head on her dad’s chest. “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

TO DO: Using Psalm 136 as a pattern, take turns listing the many things that show God’s kindness. (For example, one person may say, “He gave me loving parents,” after which the whole family responds, “His kindness lasts forever.” Someone else may say, “He sent Jesus to die for my sins,” and then all respond, “His kindness lasts forever.”)

TO

PRAY: “Lord, thank you for the kindness you showed by sending Jesus to die for us. Help us to be kind this week in many practical ways.”

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The Tyke and His Trike

The Tyke and His Trike

GOD COMMANDS KINDNESS BECAUSE GOD VALUES KINDNESS.

Bible Reading of the Day: Read Jeremiah 9:23-24.

Verse of the Day: “We have proved ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, our sincere love, and the power of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 6:6).

Mom sat with her sister at the picnic table in the backyard, watching Evan and his cousin playing in the driveway. Evan’s new red-and-white tricycle gleamed in the sunlight as he rode it around the driveway. His cousin Vincent sat on the low brick wall that lined the driveway, swinging his legs and kicking the wall with his heels.

Finally, Evan stopped riding the tricycle he had gotten for his birthday, trotted across the driveway to the fence, and reached over the fence to pet the family dog for a few moments. As he petted the dog, however, he saw Vincent slowly climb down from his seat on the wall, stroll over to the tricycle, and sit down on it.

“No!” Evan shouted. He forgot all about the dog and ran to his tricycle. “I’m not done riding it,” he said, and waited for Vincent to get off the tricycle seat.

Mom waited a few moments, then walked over to Evan, who was furiously pedaling the tricycle in circles around the drain in the center of the driveway.

“That’s a really nice tricycle, isn’t it?” Mom said.

Evan nodded and stopped pedaling. “I can make it go really fast,” he said.

“You really love it, don’t you?” Mom asked.

Evan nodded again. “It’s the best birthday gift I ever got!”

Mom crouched beside the tricycle and took one of Evan’s hands into her own. “You know how you value this tricycle, how you think it’s really neat?”

Evan nodded.

“Well,” Mom continued, “God values things in much the same way. But you know what he thinks is even neater and better than tricycles?” Evan didn’t move. He looked at Mom with curiosity.

Mom smiled. “God really loves kindness, Evan,” she said. “He thinks being kind to other people is really, really neat—just like you think this tricycle is neat.”

As Mom stood, she mussed Evan’s hair. Then she walked back toward the picnic table where her sister, Vincent’s mom, still sat. Before she reached the table, however, she saw a smile cross her sister’s face. She turned to look back at Evan. She watched as Evan rode his tricycle to the low brick wall where Vincent sat.

“Do you wanna take turns riding my neat tricycle?” Evan asked.

Vincent smiled and jumped off the wall.

TO DO: Post a sheet of paper on the refrigerator. Have everyone in the family list one chore or task that he or she needs help doing. The whole family can model kindness by doing one of the tasks for someone else this week.

TO

PRAY: “God, we know that you command us to be kind because you value kindness. Help us to be kind to each other and to everyone else—even those we find it hard to be kind to—because we know that pleases you.”

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