7 Ways To Optimizing Your Customer Acquisition Rate

Want to become more effective at acquiring customers?

Today we are going to share seven ways to optimize your customer acquisition rate…

#1: Improve Your Product

Alex Hormozi argues that your product is the best marketing. Why?

If you have an amazing product, happy customers will recommend it to their families, friends, and colleagues without you having to ask them to do so. 

That creates a virtuous cycle where the more customers you acquire, the more positive word-of-mouth spreads, which leads to acquiring even more customers, and so on.

At first, you may not even realize that this is happening, but as the word-of-mouth velocity increases, it becomes impossible to miss. 

What this means in practice is that the higher the positive word-of-mouth velocity, the higher your customer acquisition rate will be because your customers will be promoting your product for you.

Of course, the flip side of this is that if you have a terrible product, disappointed customers will complain about it to their families, friends, and colleagues, leave you negative reviews, and take it to social media. 

The word-of-mouth is still going to spread but it will be negative. And the higher its velocity, the more difficult it will be for you to acquire new customers. 

Eventually, you will find yourself in a situation where you are pouring more and more resources into marketing, but acquiring fewer and fewer customers. 

By definition, most products are neither amazing nor terrible, they are mediocre. 

They don’t generate much word-of-mouth to begin with because people are lukewarm towards them.

Customers who buy them don’t rave about them but they don’t complain either. In fact, they don’t think about these products at all.

In such cases, you can expect to see a more or less linear relationship between your marketing spend and your customer acquisition rate. Meaning, if you want to acquire more customers, you will need to spend more money.

While you can build a business with a mediocre product, growing it will always be an uphill struggle. 

That’s why we recommend following Hormozi’s advice instead. Invest in making your product exceptional. Play the long game!

#2: Provide as Much Social Proof as You can

Social proof is one of the seven principles of persuasion that Robert Cialdini discusses in his book “Influence”.

This principle says that whenever people are unsure of what to do, they look at what others do in order to determine the best course of action.

That means that if someone is on the fence about buying your product, you can nudge them in the right direction by providing social proof in the form of:

• Customer testimonials – Each testimonial should mention a specific result and feature the customer’s photo and their full name. Ideally, you should also include their Twitter handle. All this conveys that it’s a real testimonial from a real person, not just something you made up. 
• Customer case studies – You want to have at least one case study for each customer segment that you serve. Focus on highlighting specific results. Include relevant data whenever possible.
• “As Seen On” media badges – Prominently feature the logos of media outlets that have covered your business.

We also recommend having a biography section if you have a personal brand or an “Our Story” section if you have a company brand. Use it to mention relevant credentials, accomplishments, awards, etc.

Finally, if you have an online store, allow your customers to rate and review your products. 

Do not moderate these customer reviews. Let people speak their minds, even if what they have to say about your product is unflattering. 

The only exception here should be removing completely unhinged reviews that feature inflammatory language. Other than that, don’t censor anyone. 

Displaying social proof will almost certainly help you increase your conversion rates. Provide as much of it as you can throughout your entire sales funnel!

#3: Ask for and Incentivize Referrals

We tend to primarily interact with those who are similar to us.

This means that if someone meets your dream customer profile, they probably know a few other people who meet it as well. 

Asking for referrals and offering referral discounts allows you to tap into the networks of your existing customers in order to acquire new customers.

Here’s how Alex Hormozi recommends going about it:

#4: Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel

The Value Ladder sales funnel is what allowed us to grow our business from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue.

The first stage of this sales funnel is called the Bait stage. This is where you convert visitors into leads by persuading them to give you their email addresses in exchange for your lead magnet.

The second stage is called the Frontend stage. This is where you convert leads into customers by pitching them your Frontend offer (your least expensive product or service).

The third stage is called the Middle stage. This is where you convert customers into repeat customers by pitching them your Middle offer (a more expensive product or service).

The fourth stage is called the Backend stage. This is where you pitch your Backend offer (your most expensive product or service). 

Building a Value Ladder sales funnel for your business and then driving traffic to it is the most effective way to acquire customers online. 

You can start with just the lead magnet (the Bait stage) and the Frotend offer (the Frontend Stage), then build out the rest of your Value Ladder later. 

We recommend joining our 5 Day Lead Challenge where our co-founder Russell Brunson and his special guests will walk you through it step by step.

You can get your sales funnel up and running in just five days!

Join Our 5 Day Lead Challenge Today!

#5: Create an Effective Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer in exchange for the potential customer’s email address.

Your lead magnet should:

1. Serve as a bait that enables you to attract potential customers and convert them into leads
2. Help you build trust that you can then capitalize on in order to sell your Frontend offer

So how can you create a lead magnet that is effective?

Alex Hormozi argues that a lead magnet should offer a complete solution to a narrowly defined problem. 

This is a helpful way to think about it because it clarifies what “providing value” means in this context: 

It means helping the potential customer solve a problem that they are struggling with. So how can you do that?

It will depend on what exactly it is that you are selling but you might want to check out Hormozi’s seven-step process for creating lead magnets:

We want to emphasize that the days when people were excited about random low-effort PDFs are long gone. No one is interested in digital junk anymore. 

This means that if you want your dream customers to give you their email addresses, you need to offer them something valuable in return. There are no shortcuts here.

Keep in mind that your lead magnet is the foundation of your entire Value Ladder. You need to get it right if you want your sales funnel to convert. So go all out and create a truly exceptional free offer!

#6: Create an Irresistible Frontend Offer

We recommend creating a new product designed specifically for the purpose of converting leads into customers (the Frontend stage). 

But how can you make your Frontend offer irresistible?

Here’s a formula that you should follow when creating all your offers:

High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer

Here’s how Russell explains it:

When it comes to the Frontend offer in particular, you want to remove all obstacles that may be standing in the way of the potential customer making the purchase. 

We recommend:

• Making your Frontend offer digital – Info products such as ebooks can work really well here. Consider creating a guide that provides a solution to a problem that your dream customers are struggling with. Ideally, it should build on your lead magnet, so that there would be a logical progression from your lead magnet to your Frontend offer. 
• Pricing your Frontend offer at $7 – This is the ideal price point because it’s not low enough to make the potential customer skeptical of the product’s value but also not high enough to make them stop and think twice before buying.
• Offering a 30-day money-back guarantee – This removes all financial risk from the purchase decision. It’s unlikely that the potential customer will ask for a refund at this price point but if they want to they should have that option. 

Implementing these three tips should help you make your Frontend offer a no-brainer purchase!

#7: Optimize Your Sales Funnel With A/B Testing

It’s easy to remain stuck in perpetual analysis paralysis where you keep reading articles like this one but never get around to implementing what you learned. 

That’s why we recommend this approach:

1. Build your sales funnel as quickly as you can
2. Launch it as soon as possible
3. Start driving traffic to it immediately

Your priority should be to gather conversion rate data so that you can then begin optimizing your sales funnel with A/B testing.

Look at the conversion rates for each page in your funnel, identify which page is the weakest link, and then keep tweaking it until you improve its conversion rate. 

Then move on to the next weakest link and repeat the process. You want to get in the habit of continuously cycling through your sales funnel and optimizing its pages one by one.

In all likelihood, your funnel won’t be profitable right from the get-go, but you might be able to reach profitability through relentless optimization. 

Here’s how Russell explained it in a video he made a few years ago:

Of course, sometimes there’s some fundamental flaw that cannot be fixed through A/B testing:

• Maybe you are targeting the wrong people
• Maybe your lead magnet doesn’t resonate with your dream customers
• Maybe there’s simply no demand for the product or service!

In situations like that, conversion rate optimization won’t help, you will have to throw out the whole funnel and go back to the drawing board. 

In fact, in some cases, you might need to re-examine your entire business model because it might be broken.  

But before you take such extreme measures, see if you can get your funnel to profitability with A/B testing!

Build a Sales Funnel For Your Business in Just Five Days!

Russell created our 5 Day Lead Challenge to help you build your first sales funnel.

In this super practical, hands-on online workshop, you will:

• Learn more about sales funnels
• Create your lead magnet
• Build your sales funnel
• Set up your welcome sequence
• Launch your funnel!

Russell and his special guests will walk you through everything step-by-step. 

All you need to do is commit to showing up every day, watching the main lesson, and completing the homework assignment. 

If you can do that then you can have a sales funnel that is all set up and ready to go in just five days. So what are you waiting for?

Don’t hesitate. Join our 5 Day Lead Challenge today. It can change your life!

Join Our 5 Day Lead Challenge Today!

P.S. This challenge is completely FREE!