Introduction

Without effective, strategic customer onboarding, here’s what happens:

Spend thousands on user acquisition
Get new customers
Lose those customers
Repeat

Ouch – what a waste! And yet, it’s true. It’s all too easy to treat building a great product and getting new customers as separate processes – especially since those goals are handled by different teams.

That’s where customer onboarding comes in. Customer onboarding is the bridge between acquiring new users and turning them into highly engaged customers.

In this blog post, we will walk you through three powerful customer onboarding best practices to acquire more customers.

#1. Map Customer Journeys

To help people understand why they need to use your product, you’ll need to help guide them through the journey. Give them a guided tour of what their customer journey will look like. This will also help you prioritize and organize your message.

To start, you’ll need to have a clear image of your product’s user. Create a concrete user persona by answering the following questions:

What are their needs?
What motivates them?
What are their goals and values?
Do some users need more education about your product than others?
Who will be the final decision maker to make the purchase?

Use these insights to build your customer avatar, which is a fictional character that represents your ideal prospect.

#2. Show Value Immediately
Before using a product, you’d want to know what’s in it for you, right? Onboarding is more than just showing users how to use your product. To be successful, you have to show them why they need to use it. And it’s important to show them the value immediately.

This means giving users a compelling value proposition: a simple, clear description of what makes your product unique.

Potential users shouldn’t have to guess or work hard to understand your product. They should be able to understand what it is and why they should use it in less than 5 seconds.

#3. Create Onboarding Flows and Connect Teams
If your product or service is meant to be used by teams, make sure to get as many people on board as early as possible.

Once you’ve shown the value to an individual user, give them an opportunity to show others. Create an onboarding flow that includes other teammates so your teams will stay connected. As part of your user onboarding strategies, give each user the necessary access and resources they need to understand the product or service.