How We Onboarded 490 Websites in 5 Months

How We Onboarded 490 Websites in 5 Months

The AdNgin platform is growing and here is why:
Our top 10 onboarding tactics
If you skim the list too quickly, you might run the risk of misunderstanding them as just the basics. However, people do the “basics” all the time and don’t achieve the same results.

What’s different here?

If you’re interested in emulating our strategies and successful onboarding process, give some thought as to the finer details of how we use each marketing asset.

SAAS Sales Funnelling
Blog Lead Generation
Popup Distribution
Funnel Advancement
Available Pricing
Lifetime Free Account
All “About” Trust
Copywriting
Case Studies
Direct Onboarding

SAAS sales funneling

What we’ve observed is that the real challenge is understanding how your website functions as the axis of your full marketing funnel and how your users interact with it.

This includes multiple lead generation entry points. Our website is our digital marketing hub, which to be honest, is the case with many similar startups.

Courtesy of Stipso

Adding another level of complication are the funnels that “go both ways:

A more accurate depiction would have not only multiple entry points but multiple funnels pointing leads in different directions personalized for their specific needs.

Courtesy of ChiefMarTech

2. Blog lead generation
Our key traffic driver has always been our blog. You being here is a testiment. By the way do you have an AdSense account? Just kidding. Read on.

Our traffic wasn’t an immediate avalanche. However, it was recurring, accumulating, and growing quickly as we refined our content marketing strategy.

An example of a successful content marketing tactic
For a few months, our blog ran without much notice. We were producing “quality” content – unique, ever-green, over 1200 words blog posts that weren’t getting noticed.
Until, our 7 Essential Success Factors to Adopt from 12 Killer Blogs post changed all that..

Instantly we gained a few dozen new Twitter followers and just as important Google started to pay attention too. So if you take away one piece of advice from this post so far it would be:
write a unique and thorough post that features influencers in a flattering way. Then, point their attention to it. If the writing is engaging and the analysis – thought provoking, then you have a very good chance they will share it.

If you use those principles, the rabbit hole of complex SEO approaches isn’t something you have to get sucked into. However, SEO results are also much easier to achieve when you start out with a laser focused understanding of your target audience and the content that will serve them best.
3. Popup domination
Popups work! A carefully structured message delivered in a timely way… converts. However, we did not want to require our incoming users to have to search for these lead gen triggers.

Basically what a pop-up does is pancake your marketing funnel into a single stage. Every page becomes a landing page.
4. Call-to-action optimization
Popups are annoying when they are not highly targeted to the user’s intent.

Pop-up ask the reader to stop what they’re doing right now and perform a different action they did not intend to perform before….Ish. That’s hard to do but not impossible. The secret is to optimize your pop-ups to find the sweet spot where you can maximize conversions while maintaining a positive user experience.

That’s the theory behind exit intent pop-ups but they don’t always work. So we tested for:
Timing
Placement
Message
CTA
Fields

How do we know to find the sweet spot between user experience and conversion rates?

Cause our visitors convert at a high rate and they don’t leave, quickly anyway:

When you arrive at AdNgin, we try to deliver our pop ups that are a very close fit with your intent. We’ve achieved that through our content strategy. Of course, we like memes and fun stuff too – as you may or may not have noticed.

But as cool as the gangster, knife wielding crab is… if he makes it to our site, he has to relate to the topic. If you don’t believe us, just ask him.

5. Provide pricing
If you’re making a great pitch, one of the most frequent questions your visitor will have is: “How much?”

Before, we were strictly a “Request a demo” operation. The website did not provide any information on pricing or features per package.

By not having a pricing page, users were not aware that we offer a “Starter” package that is free for life. They had to go through the process of booking and attending a demo to find out, which obviously hurt our onboarding process.
6. Lifetime Free Account
As we noted, our Starter account is lifetime free. A strategy like this is only possible because we know that AdNgin will help our users grow and that one day they will be ready for a paying package.

Our focus is on long term relationships. When our Starter users are ready, they have the option to move into our commercial accounts. We let our users decide when they’re ready to upgrade. So far, this strategy has worked exceptionally well at onboarding new accounts and also in generating trust with our users.
7. All “About” Trust
Pricing was a good example. When we make that information available, we send a signal that we’re open about what we’re offering.

During our demos with potential users, we also noticed that they’re very interested in learning who we are, why we created AdNgin, and how we see our future. So we added an about page to the website:

8. Copywriting
We already gave you some insights into our copywriting methods. First, we use a style guide that we apply across the entire website. Second, we try to choose interesting topics to write about only. And third, we write with the basics of SEO in mind.

This isn’t too heavy reading, right? That’s because we target our blog writing to be informative, but also conversational. We want to give you value without making the reading too dull.

So since we’re talking copywriting, we’ll put it in as few words as possible: Know your audience, very well, and be consistent.
9. Case Studies
There are really two types of web visitors. Those who experience instant narcolepsy when they read the word “case study” and those that almost spill their coffee with joy.

Case studies can be that necessary push that one needs to fall down the funnel. It’s a key resource that compels a user into making that onboarding conversion. Keep in mind, that most of your paying users are going to check out some of your case studies at one point or another.
10. Direct Onboarding
We touched on this topic before but let’s dig in a bit further. When it comes to onboarding new customers, we found that a balance between a formal enterprize-style onboarding approach, and one that is more direct works best. So we’ve made that transition.

Having a demo get in between their initial early interest and actually trying it out may have cost us some early leads. By going direct, and removing that point of friction in the signup process, we’re doing better conversions.
How are you doing with your onboarding?
So those are some of the key factors that helped us onboard 490 websites to the Adngin platform in 7 months. We encourage you to leverage them in your web marketing funnel.

Are you doing anything differently? Which of these strategies do you already have in place?

Please let us know in the comments below. We are always interested in learning new strategies that are working. And playing with editor-friendly puppies.