While I don’t believe there is one universal “best” way to acquire customers, some of it will come down to the type of business. What is your Customer Lifetime Value?
All of these CAN work:
Content marketing: blogging, YouTube, podcasting
SEO
Paid acquisition: Adwords, Meta ads, etc.
Conferences
Referrals and affiliates
Partnerships and Integrations (especially for software)
M&A - just buy your competitors
Some of these will be cost prohibitive if you have a lower priced product, or a lower LTV, so you’ll want to filter the list with that in mind.
But generally I’ve found that most any company can grow in almost any customer acquisition channel, the challenge is sticking with ONE of them long enough to make it work. We as founders love the shiny object and want to go try something new when things get hard…but the successful companies all know that sticking with something until it works is the real key.
While I don’t believe there is one universal “best” way to acquire customers, some of it will come down to the type of business. What is your Customer Lifetime Value?
All of these CAN work:
Some of these will be cost prohibitive if you have a lower priced product, or a lower LTV, so you’ll want to filter the list with that in mind.
But generally I’ve found that most any company can grow in almost any customer acquisition channel, the challenge is sticking with ONE of them long enough to make it work. We as founders love the shiny object and want to go try something new when things get hard…but the successful companies all know that sticking with something until it works is the real key.