Can you fill my funnel? then contact me

By Tim Norton | Feb 10, 2008

One thing that I notice a shortage of in the network is people who are good at web marketing, specifically people who can take an existing site generating revenue and get it visible and consistently drive traffic through search engines and referrals.

Using PlanHQ as an example:

  • We get a certain number of visitors
  • A percentage who sign-up for a trial
  • A percentage who become paying customers and
  • A percentage who churn after a period of time.
  • This gives us our current paying customers, and we’re growing and getting there

Getting more in the top of the funnel

But now its time to get more people in the top of the funnel! We have plenty of product and marketing initiatives in place or in progress to get people to become paying customers and stay on as customers, but we now want to focus on simply getting more coming in the top of the funnel. To date we have built up traffic through word of mouth, people reviewing and blogging about us and now the majority of our traffic comes from referrals, which is cool and often very qualified (high conversion to paid), but now we want more search engine traffic and we want more visibility in general, its time to throw some traffic at this machine!

Is this you?

If you get where I’m coming from with all this, then you’re who we want to be talking to. I have some people in Silicon Valley who are pretty switched on this space and may well have to use them, but every web company needs this capability, and we need to build it up here in NZ, so if you’re in this space, and or moving in this direction drop me a line at tim at planhq.com – the need for this isn’t going to stop at PlanHQ, so we should at least know each other and you need to be known in the community.

3 Comments so far
  1. Hilary Goodwin June 17, 2009 9:19 pm

    Hi

    I have been working on a website for over a year. I just had an idea, I am not an experienced business woman, definitely not cut throat, very naieve, no experience in IT and initially all I wanted to do was create a website that would provide me with a part time job I could fit around my family. I totally didn’t bargain for what I have ended up with.

    I needed to find a company that could complete the functionality of the website as the programmer I was using started a full time teacher training course and the delays were getting longer. The graphics had been especially created for me and I was happy with the design and feel of the site, something I was extremely keen to keep.

    The new company who buid systems gave me two prices to finish the work – one to complete the work in a month ($14,400) and the other to complete the work in two to three months ($10,000).

    So…. 3 months later, the design I initially went to them with is unrecognizable, they told me it was necessary, it isn’t finished, it doesn’t make sense and isn’t user friendly, they are deliberately, slowly but surely recking my website.

    Last week I found out that they have just built a website with a few elements that are similar to mine and that one of the director’s of the company I am using, is a shareholder in this business. On checking through the Companies register – there is another company that has just been listed by the same people and the name of company would strongly suggest this company will be very closely related to mine. (Not that I have one anymore)! The director of the company I am using is not listed as a director or shareholder but is associated with the people that are.

    The name of this company would also suggest that they have got their sites set on either competing with or attracting Trademe.

    To add insult to injury, they sent me the final bill even though the site isn’t finished! They have made no deduction for the fact that they didn’t complete the work in a month and have based the remainder of the invoice on $14,400, I had already paid a 40% deposit.

    The site I have been trying to create would have contributed to the community but I am not sure if this will be included in their site.

    An finally, to top it all, the director of the company I am using is a business mentor for New Zealand – I trusted this.

    I am a little fish in a pond which seems to be getting bigger by the minute, completely out of my depth.

    Is there anything that you think I can do?

    Many thanks

    Hilary Goodwin

  2. Richard June 28, 2009 10:59 pm

    Hi Hillary. Email me at richard@salessuccess.co.nz or call on 0274993847
    I will see if i cant put you on to someone who can help you .
    Richard

  3. Jonathan July 22, 2009 1:18 am

    Just some thoughts that may or may not be helpful. You could approach this challenge through a more traditional marketing approach: Firstly did you do any semi-qualitative market research (not interviews of colleagues but proper reseach) before launching and what did that tell you to expect? Secondly who is the ideal target customer and are they really going online and searching for solutions like yours? I would imagine there are some more effective ways to reach your ideal customer and that there are perhaps other customers types that could be easily reached.

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