Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley graduate, and growth marketing nerd who has scaled Uber, Postmates, Chime, and various startups.
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Someone clicks on your ad on Facebook and buys the item for sale. We’d be in utopia if 100% of user interactions happened like this. But as you might have guessed, such instant success is far from what happens in real life.
Many startups focus early on on the click-through rate (CTR) of their ads and the conversion rate (CVR) on purchases. This is good information, but it leaves so much more to be desired.
Welcome to the first touchpoint misconception:
First touchpoint misunderstanding. Photo credit: Jonathan Martinez
A bit of history
A lot has changed since the launch of Google Ads (formerly AdWords) in 2000 with just 350 advertisers. By 2015, the number of advertisers and thus competitors had increased to 4 million Macquarie Research.
One surefire way to increase conversion rates across all touchpoints is to diversify your messaging.
Paid social channels like Facebook started with just one primary ad format. Today we have dozens of formats. What does that do? It emphasizes the importance of being more creative in getting consumers to click on those ads.
This increased competition means startups are focused on beating the competition in first few clicks. I firmly believe that amazing writing and creativity can make or break paid acquisition. However, it is also all too easy to get lost if you only focus on the first touchpoint. I’ve seen this a lot with early-stage startups.
The general user path
Instead of a user converting immediately after clicking or viewing an ad, the path to purchase typically looks like this:
A shared user path. Photo credit: Jonathan Martinez
I’m always surprised how much the second, third, fourth, etc. touchpoint is neglected in the analysis. I would much rather have a full lifecycle than a CTR of more than 50%. Consider the following example:
Photo credit: Jonathan Martinez
Startup A only focuses on the first touchpoint and Startup B on all touchpoints. While Startup B had half the total number of clicks, it saw a higher CVR due to retargeting and lifecycle emails, resulting in a lower CAC.
Even in one or both of these scenarios, you’re not going to maximize your paid acquisition without retargeting, email marketing, and diversified messaging for every touchpoint.
How to approach all touchpoints
Let’s break down the ways you can combat First Touchpoint Misconception. We’ll cover this topic through the lenses of retargeting, email marketing, and diversified messaging.
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retargeting
Every startup should have an “always on” retargeting campaign. 99% of the time it is cheaper to acquire a retargeted user than a net new customer. This can be a simple 5% commitment of total paid acquisition for a retargeting campaign. If proven, it can also be very robust when it comes to recency nesting and different user segments. A simple recency and user segmented structure for an ecommerce store might look something like this:
- Visitors in the last 30 days
- The last 30 days have been added to the shopping cart
- Visitors in the last 90 days
- The last 90 days have been added to the shopping cart
With this structure, you want to exclude the audiences in each of the campaigns so there is no overlap.
The beauty of this structure is that it allows you to direct more spend into higher propensity retargeting buckets that perform best. Without segmentation, it’s difficult to measure which audience pool is performing best.
Email (and Push) Marketing
Many will argue that email marketing should only be activated after you’ve acquired a predetermined number of customers. I believe email marketing should be activated immediately. Why try to find the product market without doing your best?
That’s not to say that you should set up nine fully fleshed out drip campaign series on day one. Far from it. When a new lead comes in from a web or app campaign, leverage the emails you recorded on signups as these users have shown interest.
Below is what a simple drip campaign setup can look like:
A simple seven-day drip campaign. Photo credit: Jonathan Martinez
If a user signs up but doesn’t complete your conversion event, email them on Day 1 (T1), T3, and T7. Each email can have different topics, e.g. B. Including additional value props, social proof or discounts. It also doesn’t hurt to ask for feedback on the last message as to why they didn’t finish the funnel.
Diversified Messages
One surefire way to increase conversion rates across all touchpoints is to diversify your messaging. The first message should be different from the second, and so on.
Pay attention to how companies communicate when you interact with them. I can almost guarantee that you’ll see very educational sales messages early on, with more social proof sprinkled into subsequent touchpoints.
Below are some of Headspace’s ads that draw heavily on the promotion of meditation: Release Stress and Be Happy.
Facebook ads by meditation app Headspace. Photo credit: Jonathan Martinez
In Headspace’s email communications, they push more about discounts and how easy it is to get started (for example, that meditation can be done at any time of the day).
Emails from the meditation app Headspace. Photo credit: Jonathan Martinez
I’m not saying you can’t have a discount code at your first and last touch point. Instead, think about varied messages and experiment with which styles resonate best at different stages.
Between the initial ad view, email/push sends, and retargeting, I strongly recommend that all touchpoints should have slightly different flavors.
use resources
You are not alone when thinking about the different touchpoints. There are countless resources that can help you uncover valuable insights and insights. One of my favorites is that Facebook Ad Library, which is a repository of all the platform’s ads that are currently live. Not only does this library provide you with information about competitors, but also valuable information about others in the same industries or brands who are simply running a great performance marketing program. Another goldmine is an email repository called Really good email.
There are hundreds of other resources, but I won’t start listing them all. Instead, I’ll leave you with a question: how often do you, as a customer, make a purchase at the first touchpoint?
