Thoughts on Customer Acquisition

Had an interesting conversation yesterday, which I thought might be worth sharing.

The conversation was around customer acquisition, how difficult it can be, and how and where to focus energy on acquiring customers. At ReviewCycle, we were talking about how we should put together a marketing plan - what channels we should hit, what the frequency should be, type of content, ideal targets, all the normal stuff.

As we were talking through it, we came to the conclusion that trying to hit a bunch of channels simultaneously (Twitter, FB, LinkedIn) was a bad idea. We don't have the resources to give all of those the right degree of attention. So, after a bit of critical thought, we settled on LinkedIn, for a few reasons, the details of which I'll spare you.

Ultimately, part of the decision to focus on a single channel was to ensure that the conversations we had with customers were as rich as possible. We're not going for quantity here, we're going for quality.

This is really, really important. In the earliest days of a startup, where you have almost no customers, your job is NOT to try and amass as many users as quickly as possible. That's a GROWTH task, and you're not at growth yet. In those early days, you're still trying to validate the assumption that what you built is even valuable to people - otherwise known as finding product/market fit.

With that, I think that the customer acquisition mindset really needs to be split into two phases: pre P/M fit, and post P/M fit.

Before you have product/market fit, your ONLY goal is to get people in the product and find out why it's not right (spoiler alert: it's never right on the first go). That's NOT about getting as many users as possible, it's about generating rich conversations with users, so you can build a small, but really fervent fanbase around what you've built. By the way - if you can get to 20 people that you have meaningful conversations with about your product, you're probably ahead of nearly everyone. That's how small this number is.

Once you've found product/market fit (real product/market fit, not the fake validation you THINK you have), then you can switch over to focusing on customer acquisition as a growth strategy.

As with everything, order of operations matters. I see so many people asking things like "How do I get users", when in reality, the question should be "How do I start good conversations with a handful of potential users about my product, so I can make something they really love". That changes everything, from where you find them, how you talk with them, and what your expectations are.