One of the most important things to understand about running a startup is that growth should always be a top priority.
Note that this isn’t to say that you need to grow as quickly as humanly possible. Depending on your industry, growing too fast might be as deadly as not growing at all. No, you need to set a steady pace that makes the most sense for you and, specifically, what you’re trying to accomplish. That means you need qualified leads coming through your door at all times.
They call this the “Startup Funnel” — and that metaphor was chosen for a very good reason. If it isn’t set up properly, your funnel can spring a leak — leaving potential customers behind at a moment when you should be propelling them forward.
Thankfully, there’s a way to fortify your funnel and ensure it is as strong as possible. If you want to optimize your startup funnel and ensure that you’re capturing every opportunity available to you, there are several key things you’ll want to keep in mind.
Addressing Common Gaps in the Funnel: One Step at a Time
Ultimately, optimizing your startup funnel comes down to your ability to identify how long it takes for someone to get between two points. The first is a position of the complete unknown. They may know they need or are interested in a product or service like yours, but their education doesn’t go beyond that. They certainly don’t know what it is that you do or possibly that you even exist. They may not even be aware that they have a problem — they’re at the beginning of information gathering.
The second point is someone who is confident enough to not only need to make a purchase but also knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that they’ll do it with you.
How do you get someone from “Point A” to “Point B”? That’s what your startup funnel is for.
Break that process down into a series of smaller and more actionable steps. Consider what someone would need to experience to move slowly from one end of the funnel to another.
This will be heavily dependent on your audience, so you need to know as much about them as possible. Don’t even begin this process unless you know who your ideal customer is, what they like, dislike, and more.
Note that this process will also vary depending on exactly what type of audience you’re talking about. A B2C or “business-to-consumer” audience means your startup sells its products directly to regular people. They tend to require materials like blog posts, videos, social media posts, and other similar content.
A B2B or “business—to—business” audience, on the other hand, is a bit savvier. Here, you’re selling to other professionals, meaning you’ll need to lean into many white papers and similar long-form content.
Either way, think about what someone would need if they knew nothing about your business and create that. Then, think about what they would need if they were trying to find more information about the service your product provides. Next, think about how you would warm someone up to the idea of purchasing from you, specifically. It goes on from there, but you can see where this is going.
Addressing common gaps in the startup sales funnel involves attracting the right audience and nurturing those leads until you’ve done the work necessary to secure conversions.
The Art of Outreach: Breaking Things Down
But sometimes, crafting compelling content isn’t the only thing you’ll need to do. Such is the case in industries like real estate, where you’ll need to leverage powerful outreach techniques to plug the holes differently.
Skip tracing in real estate is commonly employed, particularly among wholesale real estate professionals. Let’s say that you’re an investor who is trying to move into an up-and-coming area before anyone else can. The problem is that there aren’t many houses on the market right now.
That’s okay because once you locate a property you’re interested in, you can use skip tracing to help find out who owns it. At that point, you can reach out to them directly and make an offer. If you do this enough times, you’ll get lucky.
You can continue to do this, building some momentum until you have a foothold in the area. At that point, you can start to market yourself as a local area professional and tout your recent successes. Neighbors will begin to see what a fantastic job you’re doing, and if they’re thinking about selling, yours will be the number they call. You never know — you may even get some people who didn’t think they wanted to sell but changed their mind once you could communicate just how easy it would be.
Focus on Your Startup Funnel for Growth
In the end, remember that growing a startup isn’t something you do for the sake of it. Yes, everyone initially starts a business to make money, and yours was probably no exception. But you’re not just getting bigger because you can—you’re growing because you need to.
You’ve identified a strategic objective you want to accomplish that you can’t achieve at your current size. That means growth has become a priority. That means you need to build a robust funnel that fuels your startup’s growth in the right way at precisely the right time.
That’s why there’s no “one size fits all” approach to creating and optimizing a startup funnel. What works well for one organization may be woefully inadequate for the next. That’s why you always need to start the process by taking a look at two core things: your long—term goals and the audience you’ve dedicated yourself to serving. Once you know as much about those two things as possible, you have everything you need to build the funnel necessary to connect those two points as efficiently as possible.
