S2E15: How to optimize B2B marketing funnels for growth - ft. Bas Hennephof, Co-Founder of Convert Calculator

- > Okay, so today I'm sitting down with Bas. He is the co-founder of Convert Calculator, - > which is a no-code builder for interactive content like quizzes, - > calculators, lead pages, - > and he has extensive experience in business, design, marketing, product, and strategy. - > In the past, he actually founded an online startup accelerator. - > He's coached multiple innovation teams, and he's led a corporate innovation - > initiative at the largest bank in the Netherlands.

- > So, boss, I am super excited to chat with you and dig into your background. Likewise. - > Likewise. Thank you for having me.

- > Yeah, absolutely. So could you tell me a little bit about what led you to co-found - > Convert with Calculator? - > Yeah, actually, it's an interesting story because my co-founder, - > Joris, he's the technical co-founder. - > I met him coincidentally.

He started this product. - > He usually or before worked as a freelancing developer, but every freelance - > developer wants to start their own startup. - > So he was working on some side projects. One of those side projects was Convert Calculator, actually.

- > And I worked with him from a business perspective, because if you're a lone - > wolf, it's sometimes a bit difficult to keep all the plates in the air, so to say. - > So we would sometimes meet up - > and then discuss different topics about the business, about the product. - > So we did that for a couple of years, but the product started growing and growing - > and growing and growing. - > And eventually, he learned that he could really use a co-founder.

- > And at the time, I was wrapping up a corporate innovation initiative. - > So yeah, timing-wise, it was very good. And we decided to link up. - > And that's how I became the co-founder of Convert Calculator, - > with mainly the focus on the overall product strategy and the business side of things.

- > But obviously, we're a small team. So responsibilities shift. - > In a small startup, you wear a lot of hats. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Cool. - > So since you've been building Convert Calculator, what would you say is the - > main insight that has allowed you to grow the business or promote the business? - > Yeah, so with Convert Calculator, we allow users themselves, - > so it's a no-code tool to create interactive content. - > And a simple, everybody has, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people have built - > landing pages, for instance.

- > But that's static content. So you have landing page, landing page builders. - > We have interactive content. So you have a sort of similar content as a landing - > page at different elements that you can bring alive with Excel-like formats.

- > So it is, what I want to say, it's a very horizontal product because it can - > be a lot of different things for a lot of different people and a lot of different businesses. - > So it has a lot of use cases within a lot of industries. - > And that's awesome, right? Because it gives you a lot of outs, - > but it's also a real challenge because it requires focus, and focus requires - > saying no to a whole lot of things, which is very difficult.

- > But in order to be successful, we need to focus. So we have an industry approach - > where we connect specific use cases to specific industries, and what really - > helps there is funnel thinking. - > So thinking in the funnel from your specific industry use case combination, - > right? because it forces you to think about who is the exact customer.

- > You have to have the persona, the profile, the audience. - > And what specific pain points are they trying to solve? How can they solve that with your product? - > So all of that really helps you create the proper messaging.

- > So we have, for instance, different industry pages on our landing page as well. - > So we can cater with more direct content to different audiences. - > Instance but it also helps in different templates for - > instance for them to get started to to go - > successfully through the activation activation state so digging down into the - > the funnels and yeah that really helped us with yeah with our industry use case - > approach so i would say that's the main that's the main thing okay that building - > funnels kind of allows you to be to look more - > specifically at that entire customer journey.

- > And it helps you kind of like improve over time and kind of have a systematic - > way of improving those conversions, right? - > Yeah, indeed, indeed, indeed. Because it also helps us deliver the right content, - > create the right content, - > create the right templates, create the right support structure with support - > videos, but also working with channel partners, for instance, and, - > So you really need to learn about the industry, about their specific pain points - > and how your product can solve it and then help them solve that successfully.

- > Because like I said, we are a do-it-yourself product. We try to make it as easy - > as possible, but there's still work to be done. - > And different industries come with different personas, different people, - > and they all need to be successful in our product. - > So sometimes I'm anxious or not anxious.

I'm jealous about businesses that have - > a really specific, that target a really specific niche because they can focus - > their entire company on that niche. - > And for us, it always itches because we can do so much more and there's an abundance - > of ideas and opportunities. - > But then, no, getting back to the drawing board and sticking to your plan and - > working from those funnels, it really helps. - > So it kind of helps you stay focused on what is really most important to be - > building or what's the most important thing that you could be working on that's - > going to benefit your customers?

- > Indeed. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, indeed.

So to make progress, you need to take steps, - > many, many small steps, steps ahead. - > And yeah, dialing it down into a level that's concrete enough and a funnel approach - > helps with that. It helps you, allows you to make the progress, - > to define actions and finish actions and continue. - > Yeah, I'm curious, what was it like before you started taking this funnel-based - > approach to systematically learning about customer pain points and improving your product?

- > It was chaos, right? Because we could do so much for so many people, right? - > And our name is, for instance, Convert Calculator, because that's how we started. - > It we we created for instance quoting - > calculators yeah but but over time - > the product and the functionality functionality grew and - > we're not a calculator anymore it's way too it's - > way too narrow so yeah it's and then we started thinking about our positioning - > and what are we are we interactive content builder but that's also that's also - > vape right so you need to narrow it down in order to make sense to people coming from a certain angle.

- > If you have a cleaning business, you get a lot of quotes, quote requests online. - > Okay, for you, for that cleaning business, we are a way to automate that first - > part of the sales funnel with a quote calculator on your website and start getting - > those quotes automatically instead of you having to answer phone calls or emails all day. - > And for a different kind of industry, we're a different product or it can be a different product. - > But yeah, like I said, the industry approach, it really helps.

- > Okay, that makes sense. So let's say that I work in a BB SaaS and I want to - > start being more systematic and intentional using conversion funnels to figure - > out my audience and what to build with my product. - > So like step-by-step, what advice would you give me in order to implement that. - > Yeah, I would say the pirate metrics funnel, going from awareness to acquisition, - > activation, retention, revenue referral.

- > Those are the top line funnel steps. - > And then work your way from the top down again and again and again. - > So for instance, on activation, you have this funnel where people sign up for your product. - > What happens after the sign-up?

So you start building your level one funnel, - > for instance, but that's still very high level, right? - > And then you pick one step of that funnel and you start dialing it down again - > into different funnel steps. - > And there you will find issues to improve or work to be done, - > different pain points or how your solution can solve for those audiences. - > Audiences so starting starting pretty - > high level and then taking each funnel step - > and dialing down onto into that funnel step - > that i would say is a pretty systematic approach and you will also learn that - > you will do that you don't know a lot but that will give you give you that will - > give you the clues to do some further uh yeah customer exploration for instance okay you said something - > really interesting because I have, I'm aware of these steps, - > awareness, acquisition, activation, retention.

- > Referral. But the idea of picking one and then saying, okay, - > we need to fix our awareness piece. - > So now let's look at these six steps again and try to figure out within the - > awareness piece or within this very specific thing that we want to fix, - > what are the pain points and issues of - > customers like for that specific piece of the - > overall marketing funnel yeah and - > indeed so for awareness for awareness you - > need to define who your customer is because if if - > you cannot define who your ideal customer is you cannot - > define the channels to reach them right so and - > then you start thinking about doing all that work the customer - > segmentation building personas whatever strategy - > you like to employ and then - > for instance start building your awareness funnel i - > i don't know it could be a solution that you set up - > with with search engine optimization or with - > different ads leading to the end of the awareness funnel which is the acquisition - > sometimes they they are taken together but i like to separate them to the acquisition - > step where people your audience lands on your landing page and recognizes your - > message and also finds your message desirable, right?

- > So they take the next step on within that funnel. - > And for us, it's a sign up to the free trial. - > But a lot of things happen for your audience when they reach your website, right? - > So you can build a funnel for that as well.

- > So the highest level step is, okay, I come from an ad, for instance, - > I click on the ad and I land on my landing page. - > That is the high level step. And then you can dial down that high level step. - > Okay, when a visitor lands on the landing page, he starts reading the hero, - > the header, and he maybe looks at a video, he starts scrolling, - > he clicks through a couple of pages.

- > Those are also different steps you can think about and analyze in a way. - > And everything is a funnel is conversion, right? - > Because for us, it's very important that every visitor we attract, - > as many visitors as we attract, we want to convert them into customers. - > But customers is way down the funnel.

- > A lot of things need to happen before people eventually become a customer. - > And the same thing applies to a visitor, a new visitor on your website, - > from visitor to sign-up. - > Everything is conversion and conversion rates. - > Conversion rates are usually pretty low, which can be a bit depressing.

- > But for us, improving conversion rates with % already has massive effect. - > Hmm. Okay. Yeah.

Cause I assume you guys are getting a lot of traffic, so. - > It's, it's, it's work in progress, but the more traffic you get there, - > if you can just improve conversion rates minimally in each of those different - > steps, it has huge effects. - > So approximately when you're, when you're doing this, approximately how long - > is it taking for you to see results in terms of like a higher conversion rate at each of these stages? - > Yeah, so I can share a recent example where my co-founder, Joris, - > has focused a little bit more on on-site SEO.

- > So improving the webpage, creating new pages with all the different keywords, - > research etc but also fixing some fundamental - > fundamental issues on our - > website and we saw instant results - > we we saw maybe a percent increase in in traffic obviously you need a little - > bit of time to see if it's significant and and if it's not from a singular yeah - > from an outlier, of course. - > So some things can go pretty quickly. And also with each action you take. - > Each experiment, so to say, you have the experiment, but also how you will measure it, right?

- > And when you will feel that you are successful or not. - > So, for instance, an activation experiment could be that in our onboarding funnel, - > we ask some qualifying questions to our new users. - > And based on their answers, we provide specific template options for them. - > Because then we can match the customer and the specific template better.

- > And the idea is, the hypothesis, if you would like, is that you help them become - > successful easier in a way. - > And you can measure that. You can measure how many people fill in that segmentation. - > You can measure how many people actually start with that template, - > start working with that template, publish that template, have that template - > on their website, and start gaining visits on that.

- > So all of the things, if you dial it down to a deep enough level, - > you can build, measure, learn in a way, which is obviously the lean startup approach. - > But lean startup is sometimes a little bit vague. But if you dial it down to - > a detailed level, detailed enough, then yeah, you can really make progress. - > That said, it's a lot of work, right?

We are a small team and we have way more - > ideas than we can put to action. - > Because a lot of times I hear podcasts with people who say, yeah, - > you work with a marketing team and a product team and a customer service team and a sales team. - > To us, it's only a couple of persons in a way. - > So we wear a lot of hats.

that does make us pretty efficient as well because - > we punch way above our weight with product, with marketing, basically with everything. - > But still, it's still a lot of work. - > And that has me a little bit curious about, - > maybe what are some of the pitfalls that people might encounter counter as they - > try to implement, you know, this conversion funnel and conversion rate optimization - > at different stages of the funnels? - > Yeah.

So in a lot of teams, it's separated functions, right? - > So being a smaller business allows us to have insight into all the different steps, right? - > So we can really connect all the dots. And if you work with bigger teams who - > have separated responsibilities, that overall holistic overview might not always be there, right?

- > So it really requires a lot of communications between the different functions as well. - > And to me, that can be a pitfall, right? - > Because then you spend a lot of time on communicating instead of producing, - > instead of really making actual progress. - > So yeah, there's always a balance there.

So how do you handle that balance, if that makes any sense? - > How much of your time as a founder within your team is spent on improving conversion rates? - > And how do you balance that against everything else that needs to get done? - > Yeah, it's difficult.

It requires a lot of discipline. - > We only have a success rate of %, for instance. - > Instance, where our goals or our internal goals are just not met because you - > are observed by just the daily business and all the other things you need to do. - > So yeah, there's no magic pill.

It's just discipline and discipline is hard - > and it's also hard for us. - > We have, like I said, half of the time we are not disciplined enough, - > but a hundred percent discipline is difficult. - > Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but indeed, we are growing the team.

- > And when you're growing a team, it becomes more difficult, right? - > So then probably new structures need to be in place. - > However, you still want to stay productive. - > We prioritize productivity over the rest.

- > Okay. So is this like an ongoing initiative? Like, do you just, - > you just set some metrics like that you guys want to hit and it's just part - > of like your quarterly goals or, or whatever. - > And you say, okay, well, we want to focus on like the acquisition, - > activation and retention part of like this, this, this, and this, - > and this, these are our percentage goals.

How do you manage it? - > Yeah, I can give an example because you can, you can work backwards, - > right? So we have a certain revenue goal, just to call it an arbitrary number. - > But say we want to hit a million in revenue per year.

We know what we do right now. - > And we know the funnel steps. So we know how many customers we need in order - > to reach that one million. - > We know our conversion rates.

So we know, for instance, how many visitors we - > need to attract all the way down in the funnel. - > And there's little dials that we can turn because within that funnel, - > for instance, in the activation step, if we are able to activate a little bit more users, - > then we have to attract less new customers or less new visitors because our - > funnel is becoming more efficient. - > And if you dial it down to these steps and apply specific actions within each - > step, right?

So, for instance, for attracting new visitors, you need content, you need pages. - > So, yeah, we need to create new content every week, for instance. - > That's a process that you put in place. - > After a while, how you measure it, you measure if that content ranks already.

- > You measure if visitors start appearing from that page. - > You can measure what they do after they land on the page. Do they sign up? - > If they sign up, do they become active?

- > If they become active, are they becoming a customer? - > So everywhere, there's different dials you can turn, but it all needs to be in balance, right? - > So if I attract visitors a month on my website and almost nobody signs - > up, I do really well on the awareness step, but I do horrible on the acquisition step, for instance. - > So in your entire funnel, there can be things that can be optimized, basically.

- > Okay, that makes sense. So it's like you're setting these overarching goals - > for something like the amount of customers that you want to get. - > And then you say, OK, well, let's focus on a piece of the funnel or let's try - > to set let's try to set metrics for each piece of the funnel. - > Like we need X amount of visitors and we need X amount of people going to the - > landing pages.

And then you try to optimize each of those. - > And then once you optimize it, like, let's say you make more landing pages or - > you improve your landing pages, then the conversion rate goes up. - > So then you dial down the amount of traffic that you projected that you would need. - > Indeed.

Indeed. And if everything works in your favor, you go way past your goal in a way. - > But it's not a perfect world. I would say we are a bootstrap company.

- > So we are an actual business. We make more money than we spend. - > And that also requires you to be disciplined in a way. - > It's not so difficult to grow something if you lose a lot of money in the process.

- > Process sometimes i would say it's it's it's it could also be beneficial to - > have a little bit more free cash flow where things can fail in a way and because - > you it all has to it all has to do with the, - > correct balance between being opportunistic and and being too being too rigid in in a way. - > So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. That makes sense. - > Well, I really appreciate this, Bas. - > And as we're wrapping up, I'd just like to ask if there's any projects you're - > working on, anything that you'd like people to know, and anywhere you'd like - > people to get in touch with you?

- > Yeah, we're always working on cool projects. So indeed, if you are a marketeer, - > then interactive content, that could be the next new wave that will help you - > improve your conversion rates in your process. - > So really do check out the product, ConvertCalculator.com.

- > Play around with it. It's a super - > versatile, flexible product and have a little bit of a learning curve. - > But we are working on that to alleviate, lessen the curve. But if you want to - > create cool things, you sometimes need to put in the effort.

- > So yeah, I would say check out our website, play around with the examples. - > And if you're inspired, yeah, go play around with it a little bit yourself and we are there to help. - > If you have a specific use case, we are there to help you through the process as well. - > All right.

Makes sense. Sounds good. Well, thank you so much, - > Bas, for sharing your story and all the insights. Yeah, you too.