《Golden Rule》 5 steps to ‘automate customer acquisition’!

This time, the theme is marketing automation. Marketing automation, in other words, is customer acquisition automation. Wouldn't it be fun if customers kept coming in just by repeating certain tasks??

For those who are thinking, 'Huh, but can that really be done? It's super suspicious!', you should change your way of thinking right now. In fact, if you don't focus on automation, you'll never master customer acquisition. Anyway, it's important to have the mindset of creating a system that can automatically acquire customers with as little effort as possible.

So, how do you actually automate it?

First, to attract customers, an entrance is necessary. It's important to create an environment where interested people become interested in you and approach you.

A long time ago, unwanted information was constantly flowing to consumers through television, newspapers, and other advertisements. However, now that the internet has become widespread, it's completely different. It has become an era where consumers search for the information they need. And with the advent of the AI era, products and services that one potentially desires are automatically recommended.

Nowadays, there are almost no opportunities to be forced to recommend products or services you don't want at all. Therefore, you must first prepare the kind of information that is sought after. The places to publish information are blogs or your own media.

For now, as a start, let's actively publish valuable articles. Try writing about 100 articles along a theme, articles that you think will be necessary.

The key to customer acquisition is still search engines like Google and Yahoo!. By ranking valuable articles, videos, and other content high in search engines with appropriate keywords, automation will rapidly advance.

Are search engines still effective now?

On the other hand, if you say this, you might hear opinions like, 'Searching for information on social media is mainstream now, so wouldn't it be better to boost social media rather than blogs or owned media?' Of course, customer acquisition through social media is absolutely essential, but social media always requires continuously creating new content.

For example, if you stop posting on Instagram, you'll gradually be ignored, and if new content isn't produced for a while, fans will forget about the account's existence, and eventually, sales from the account will disappear. Update frequency is also important.

However, articles on blogs and media are different. While it's necessary to create new content, if the information is valuable, there's the advantage that by constantly refining and keeping it up-to-date, it will continue to attract customers.

Search engines can attract customers by 'maintaining' the same articles.

Once ranked high in search engines, it's important to continuously be the latest information by adding to the content and deleting outdated material. And it's crucial to raise your own and your company's authority, and to keep asserting that this information is the latest, most cutting-edge, and correct.

In fact, our share house business also gets many customers via search engines and our website. We also assist with a car charter business in Bali, and there too, an overwhelming number of people see photos on social media, then ultimately search on a search engine, and make reservations.

Search engines are still firmly integrated into customer purchasing behavior. And the important points are none other than these three: 'the information is new,' 'it can be proven to be an authoritative and correct article,' and 'it is continuously updated to be a good article.'

By the way, the reason for writing 100 articles is to make the numbers easier to see. If you write about 100 articles, access will gradually increase, making it easier to analyze reactions. It's important that the content density is high and up-to-date, rather than just the update frequency.

While writing 100 articles, use social media to build a list.

Is it okay for the customer acquisition channel to be only search engines? That's the question. No, there are tons of things you can do until you achieve a high ranking on search engines. High rankings take time, and instead of just steadily generating articles and content, let's accelerate things further.

What comes into play here is list building. A list refers to people to whom you can regularly deliver information from your side. For example, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter). TikTok and YouTube. It's no exaggeration to say that each SNS follower equals a prospective customer list.

If people follow you on any SNS, you can always regularly deliver information from your side, right? The method of delivering information using these SNS is indeed the shortest path to achieving results in marketing. We will explain customer acquisition methods using SNS in another article, so please look forward to it.

And now, let's finally start delivering information.

Eventually, when people gather and you can freely deliver information, please continue to provide your value using information, videos, audio, and other content.

The keyword from now on is thorough 'service'. Free. No returns. Imagine you've become a goddess or a Buddha, and continue to provide the maximum value you can for the world and for people. If you think, 'I'm working so hard now, but it's useless and what am I even doing?', then try some Zen meditation.

Honestly, at this stage, it's best to calmly do what needs to be done. Various distracting thoughts may arise, such as 'it won't make money' or 'it might not be profitable,' but let's steadily continue to give. That accumulation itself is your greatest weapon and will become the soil for significant blossoming later on.

Do not promote. You must continue to provide so that the other person can truly lead a good life in the future. Do not harbor ulterior motives. It's a test of patience. Based on experience, the period of continuous provision should be at least 1 to 3 months. Please continue for about half a year at most.

By the way, please continue to write and accumulate articles during this time. The recipe for creating a system that can automate marketing is not built in a day. In any case, thorough accumulation is necessary.

If you just steadily continue, you will eventually go viral in a big way due to some trigger.

I knew an picture book author and painter who became famous. That person was completely unknown until half a year ago, but recently, they went viral in a big way, and now they are called to lectures almost every day, their original artworks are selling like hotcakes, and they sold over 10 million yen in just one week.

So, how exactly did they go viral? I was surprised to hear their story. Apparently, until then, they had also been active as a performer, continuing to give about 300 performances annually across Japan.

By the way, requests for performances came through word-of-mouth, and it seemed to be the result of a chain reaction of introductions, where if they performed at one venue, others would hear about it and invite them too. However, even though they could earn enough to live, the situation was still far from ideal, they said.

Amidst that, by collaborating with a certain YouTuber, their name spread. Many people who had heard their performances before suddenly started subscribing to their channel, and the picture books they published and their original artworks began to sell like hotcakes.

Until then, they had steadily continued performing, and the fans who had gradually emerged, suddenly started flowing like water released from a dam that had been held back. Triggered by the collaboration with a YouTuber. It means that precisely because they had accumulated steady efforts until then, they were able to use the chance that happened to come their way as a spark. If they hadn't met many people through their performance activities, this viral success would never have happened.

If you don't satisfy everyone on the list who has gathered, there's no future.

The most important goal in list building is a high number of responses. If you have a list where 'if you deliver information, the majority of them will definitely be interested,' you can do anything.

What's important for creating such a great list is whether you can provide better support and services to the people who have joined it. If the quality is good, people will want to pick it up. And they will remember you. That's why you must continue to provide better information and services.

Even if you simply gather a large number of people, it's meaningless if the operation of the destination is sloppy or if they can't find much value in it. If there's no value, even if there's a temporary surge of excitement, eventually it will become a list that no one pays attention to.

Release your product, generate sales, and thoroughly analyze and verify!

Once you've gathered enough followers, accumulated 200-300 articles, and traffic from search engines starts to increase. The stage is set. It's finally time to monetize! It's harvest time! By this point, I'm sure you all have a product or service.

Create a page where people can buy your product. Make it as appealing as possible, speak passionately, as if you were conveying that enthusiasm directly by word of mouth.

Text is more important than design. You don't even have to create a website or landing page; it's fine to make it purchasable directly from a blog post. If the text introducing your product is poorly written, it's a non-starter. If the writing is bad, no matter how much effort you put into the design, it will be wasted.

First, thoroughly craft your text. And since it's no good if the product itself isn't appealing, if possible, create a system to continuously refine the product itself. Even if you sell a bad product with the power of marketing, it will only lead to a temporary surge of excitement. The text should be so powerful that simply by reading it, people are convinced that it will bring them significant value.

Regarding writing, I hope to discuss it separately again.

Anyway, once you've created a resonant product and a service introduction page, then widely announce it on the SNS and websites you've built so far. Standing out wins. Make it stand out appealingly.

However, it shouldn't become an annoying advertisement. Read it yourself or have others look at it, and if you feel even a slight hint of an advertisement, change it. What's important is the willingness to honestly accept results and how quickly you can make corrections.

And then, boldly publish it. How much sales increase here is the crucial point.

Be sure to install an analytics tool called Google Analytics. If you can't analyze later where and what kind of access came from, or what trends led to purchases, you can't expect future growth.

Once the above flow is complete, the automation mechanism is mostly finished. However, there are still things to do after that, and it's not something you can leave forever. Write articles, gather users on SNS. Deliver articles daily on SNS to provide value. And regularly announce products, analyze trends, and make adjustments to product pages and content.

Repeat the above actions. The goal is to create this state. Once created, the rest is operation. If you make fine adjustments during the operation of this system, you won't have trouble attracting customers for a while. If you get tired, once profits start coming in, you can hand over the entire system to someone else and free yourself.

Summary

Now, I've explained the general flow of automating marketing as much as possible. Explaining it is easy, but realizing it is a rather painstaking task. Rather, "patience" is required. However, the mechanism for safely attracting customers is only given to those who diligently continue and overcome the difficult parts.

If you don't continue diligently now, you will forever be tormented by customer acquisition until you retire. Will you work hard now, diligently build up and accomplish it, or will you give up and be troubled by customer acquisition throughout your working life? If it were me, I'd choose the former. No matter what.

By the way, I believe there are many who still don't know the details within the article written this time. I think there are various questions regarding Google Analytics, analysis, how to create valuable content, and so on.

For such people, we will continue to update our owned media. If you wish to know more details, please take a look at other articles as well.