Generate Outstanding Results from Scratch! The Fundamentals of Web Marketing

We are often asked how we generate sales on our website.

Since starting our business, we have generated the majority of our sales through web marketing. Many of these, from customer acquisition to revenue, are finalized entirely online without direct human interaction.

Especially when we developed and sold an online learning service, we achieved visible results in web marketing, such as acquiring about 300 paying users in 3 days.

Therefore, this time, I will explain the basic methods for achieving results with web marketing. I have summarized it in an easy-to-understand way, avoiding difficult terminology as much as possible, so please understand that it might be a bit lacking for those well-versed in marketing.

If you practice the flow I'm about to discuss through trial and error, you should see sales improvements in most industries. It's a highly versatile and applicable method for selling products and services online. Please take this opportunity to understand the basic strategies of web marketing and try to master them through practice.

Research market users to find empathy and problems

To be blunt, this is the most crucial point. To sell something, you must deeply understand the person you are selling to. What do they think about in their daily lives? What values and perspectives do they bring to that industry? If you cannot reach the user's perspective yourself, you won't understand "why they want to buy." Once you understand why they want to buy, all you need to do is "tailor your selling approach" to that.

So, what exactly is "the reason they want to buy"?

In a word, it is nothing other than "problem-solving." People buy products and services because they can solve the problems that individuals or companies are struggling with. There are various types of problems. For example, "I want to find good entertainment but can't," or "I want friends but have no opportunities to meet them." These range from such minor issues to global or national scale problems like "global warming is progressing" or "I'm scared a war might break out."

So, what kind of problems do users in that industry face?

There are several worries and problems. It is important to tailor your selling approach and messages to the problem that best aligns with your products and services among those you've identified. First, empathy and problem discovery for the user form the foundation of all marketing. Once empathy and problem discovery have progressed concretely, you can finally create a persona.

Design the customer journey to purchase

Next, let's consider the customer journey from reaching your website to making a purchase. If this journey design is done haphazardly, all future initiatives could be wasted. So, what kind of customer journey should you create? There are various patterns. I will introduce some basics, so please consider your industry's situation and incorporate them.

SNS Pattern

1. Share information and content on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and gather followers
2. Write and post blogs on your website to attract site visitors
3. Create a service or product introduction area at the end of articles to raise awareness
4. Direct access from the introduction area to the sales page for purchase

The basics of web marketing will largely be based on this flow.

SNS is a place where you can quickly connect with potential users. The flow is to gradually build interest from a low barrier to entry, eventually conveying the appeal of your products or services, and then having them purchase if they want to.

Unlike traditional outbound sales where companies push products or services, we create an inbound flow where we 'draw out user interest, and if they want it, guide them to purchase.' Most web marketing, if not inbound, simply becomes an advertisement, which can actually drive customers away. Pushy advertisements are always perceived as unpleasant.

Aim to reach a purchase within 3 to 4 steps. For every additional step, the number of users who reach the goal decreases. For example, even if 100 people see something on SNS, only 20 might access the blog, 5 might go to the product introduction page, and only 1 might make a purchase. The more steps there are, the fewer people will reach the goal.

That said, it's not such a sweet world that you can just post about products or services and expect them to sell immediately. If you post a product page out of the blue, people might instead think, 'Oh, it's just a sales pitch,' and leave the site, resulting in a lower purchase rate than if you followed the steps.

Conversely, if you follow the proper steps, you can collect data on how many people move to the next step. By carefully designing the user flow, if you can quantify data such as 30% of people accessing the blog from SNS, 10% accessing the product or service sales page, and a 3% overall probability of reaching a purchase, then you can make concrete calculations like, 'If we gather 1000 people on SNS, 30 will make a purchase.'

Once this is established, the rest is easy. By repeatedly improving to ensure more people reach the next step, increasing the conversion rate, and then figuring out how to attract people to SNS, which is the entry point, sales will increase.

Advertisement Pattern

1. Directly guide users from advertisements to product or service pages
2. Meticulously create pages to encourage purchases

This is simpler than the SNS pattern mentioned earlier, but it requires a budget. First, promote products or services using Facebook Ads and Google Ads. Then, attract visitors to your website and encourage purchases through these banner ads. Since this is the only step in the user flow, if you analyze and pursue 'how much money spent on which ads leads to what percentage of purchases,' sales will naturally increase.

However, the difficult part is that you can't get concrete numbers on what kind of ads to create or which ads will attract user interest 'without spending money.'

Therefore, before running ads, design several ad patterns and ask for feedback from people around you or potential users. It's crucial to repeatedly test what attracts interest and create the ad that receives the highest evaluation and generates the most interest. At the ad creation stage, qualitative data is fine, rather than quantitative data. In any case, show it to many people and repeat hypothesis testing and improvements.

Once the ads and pages are complete, set a budget and launch them on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc. From this point, quantitative analysis is important: record what percentage of people clicked on the ad relative to the number of views, and what percentage of those who clicked made a purchase. Moving forward, continuously make small improvements to increase the ad click-through rate and purchase rate.

SEO (Aiming for traffic from search engines) Pattern

1. Write a blog on your website to attract visitors from search engines
2. Create a service or product introduction area at the end of articles to inform users (also include links to SNS)
3. Direct access from the introduction area to the sales page for purchase

SEO, frankly, is the field with the most uncertainties and competition. For major SEO search keywords, if, for example, a large company starts operating media with full force, it's difficult to find elements to win. However, if you can achieve the #1 search ranking for a niche keyword in a field with a decent number of searches, thousands or tens of thousands of users will continuously view your articles.

It can be said that it's a field where the payoff is big if it hits, but getting it to hit is difficult, and coupled with Google's algorithm changes, a position once gained can easily be overturned.

Therefore, relying solely on SEO carries a high risk. That's why it's common to operate not just with SEO, but in conjunction with social media.

However, as long as the search ranking is high, users will continue to access the site without frequent information dissemination like on social media, leading to a phenomenon that can be called semi-automation. If you achieve results with your target keywords, you will be able to easily bring many users to your site for a while, compared to other methods.

YouTube Pattern

1. Distribute content on YouTube, gather followers
2. Introduce products or services, have users access the homepage, and make a purchase

In fact, products and services themselves become easier to sell when they are in video format. With other methods, purchase desire is gradually increased, for example, by directing users from social media to a blog, and then a purchase is made. However, if you can gain fans through videos like on YouTube, you can sell with a high probability just by introducing them in a video, much like TV shopping.

This is because there is a sense of trust in the seller, such as 'hearing their voice and seeing their face,' which shortens the steps to purchase. When conveying information only through text versus through video, video is more likely to provide a sense of security. This allows for a shortcut to purchase.

However, in the case of video, even more effort is required for content creation than writing text.

Videos allow users to purchase with a sense of security without taking many detailed steps. Text requires several steps to build trust with users over time, but the effort for content creation is less. Both have pros and cons, so it's impossible to say which is definitively better. If you consider which is more appropriate for your industry and which is more familiar to users within your industry, you will naturally know which path to take.

Continuously improve content and conversion pages

Once the user journey design is complete, the next step is content creation and dissemination.

For social media, it's posts and blogs; for SEO, it's blogs; for advertising, banner ads and text ads are the first content users interact with. Formulate hypotheses about what to disseminate to attract users most effectively, and then improve as you post. It's all about 'think while you run'.

Don't forget 'hypothesis thinking,' which involves forming and testing hypotheses like 'this might make users interested.' This applies to all aspects of marketing.

Of course, this applies not only to ads and content but also to product and service introduction pages. And always proceed by 'showing it to external people,' not just internal staff. If you create designs only with internal staff, you will be trapped by subjectivity. Subjectivity is the furthest thing from a user's perspective and ultimately leads to creating something that is not desired.

Furthermore, as criteria for judging good or bad, pay close attention to 'Is it engaging?', 'Is it memorable?', and 'Is it easy to understand?'. If you can get users to say YES to these three, there's a high probability that your ads and content will lead to results when actually disseminated.

Perhaps some may feel uneasy because the judgment criteria use an abstract standard like 'people's impressions.' Some may also feel that it's insufficient as a basis or evidence for sales.

However, at this stage, it is often more effective to focus on qualitative data, repeatedly improving based on human reactions. This is because ultimately, what drives users to purchase is how well you can evoke the feeling of 'I want to buy.' To 'create expressions' that move emotions and hearts and encourage action, relying solely on numbers can actually make it harder to measure.

Combine quantitative and qualitative analysis in all processes

Some people only judge things by numbers, but that is a roundabout way to come up with fundamental improvement ideas. While numerical judgments can tell you what worked and what didn't, they don't lead to hypotheses about what specific changes to make.

By listening to users, you can concretize improvement measures. Numerical analysis provides 'results,' but specific actions and solutions are best determined qualitatively using interviews and other methods. It's good to think of it that way in terms of roles.

So, regarding what to do specifically, 'Google Analytics' is often primarily used for quantitative judgment.

As many of you may know, by simply adding a short source code to your website, you can learn various information such as how many people visited each page, how they navigated through the site, where they exited, and if they made a purchase, what search terms led them to the site, and where they found the site.

From those numbers, you can understand where the problems lie, and conversely, what kind of content users are interested in.

Qualitative analysis primarily utilizes user interviews.

An easy user interview method is, for example, to have someone actually use your website and observe their operations next to them. When the user stops or gets lost, you ask, 'Why did that happen?' This allows them to articulate what they specifically felt, making it easier to derive hypotheses about how to modify the site.

If quantitative data helps find general problems, then analysis using qualitative data helps determine 'how to change' things specifically. By combining both quantitative and qualitative data to view the site, you can finally see concrete and results-driven improvement points.

Provide a story to get customers interested

When we say 'story,' we don't mean thinking about the narrative of the product or service itself. In this case, it's about defining the flow until the customer thinks, 'I want to buy it.'

There is a famous marketing concept called AIDMA. AIDMA describes the psychological transitions a user goes through from their first contact to making a purchase. Specifically, it follows the flow below.

1. Attention – Getting recognized for our presence
2. Interest – Becoming interested in the content being shared
3. Desire (Desire) – To make them like and think about products and services
4. Memory – Specifically recognizing the product or service and feeling a desire for it
5. Action (Action) – To purchase

Users proceed to purchase products and services through this flow. While AIDMA is sometimes said to be 'more complex in consumer behavior today,' it remains a fundamental concept as a core user purchase process, unchanged from past to present. When considering a marketing story, thinking along the lines of AIDMA makes it easier to create a narrative.

First, to get customers' attention, you need to be known, so for SNS, you need to actively engage in communication from your side. Especially in recent SNS content display algorithms, there's an increasing emphasis on communication. Posts from people you frequently communicate with are more likely to be displayed. Let's continue our efforts steadily.

Also, the most important thing is content. No matter how much you deepen communication, if the content you send out is not significant, marketing will not be effective.

Send out content that generates interest, gradually let users learn about your services and products. Then, convey how your products and services can solve users' problems, help them remember it, and ultimately lead them to purchase. If you decide what specific content to send out and how to act according to this flow, the story leading to purchase will naturally be completed.

Timing everything

The process is important, but if you get the timing of your message wrong, it can be ruined. This is the difficult part. For example, if someone recommends food when you're not hungry at all, you'd naturally refuse, right?

Web marketing is the same. You need to gauge the timing when the person desires it and when their interest in the product or service has sufficiently increased, then encourage them to purchase content, products, or services.

Recall the story conceived with AIDMA. This also means when and at what timing you should send out what. People without interest have no desire. People without desire will not take action.

Therefore, it's important to take one step at a time. You shouldn't skip steps as a shortcut. If you try to skip steps, your results will likely become more distant. It's natural to cause discomfort when you introduce something unwanted at an unwanted time.

Listen carefully to user feedback. Observe reactions to posts, such as likes and retweets. Pay attention to user voices, tweets, and posts, and it's important to grasp as precisely as possible what stage of satisfaction the user is currently at.

And you must send out content appropriate for each stage. As the saying goes, 'Haste makes waste,' so when you want to reach your goal as quickly as possible, it's important to proceed slowly and steadily, one step at a time, without rushing.

Summary

This time, the content mainly focused on explaining the overall flow. While there is a lot more detailed knowledge and insight, it's important to first get accustomed to this process. Try it many times to embed the methods and ways of thinking into your mind. And once you achieve results even once, it should become your skill. From then on, you will gain confidence in increasing sales.

However, that doesn't mean you can stop thinking. While there are general contents and processes, ultimately, what's important is the ability to form your own hypotheses, experiment through trial and error, and find answers. If you don't have the ability to think for yourself, you cannot achieve results.

Empathize with users, understand what they need and their problems, and then create solutions to those problems. If something doesn't work, investigate why it didn't work, create hypotheses for success, and try again and again. It is important to gradually approach the goal of success by repeating this cycle of hypothesis testing and improvement.

You may experience many failures before achieving results. However, it's important to gradually find hints from repeated failures and get closer to the answer.

The process shared this time is merely a rough scenario to facilitate hypothesis testing and improvement. Detailed measures need to be conceived and created one by one by yourself.

Even if you don't see immediate results, don't give up and continue to pursue them. If results are eventually produced, the world you see will surely change dramatically.