The early stages of a startup are often the most exciting for new entrepreneurs. The anticipation, passion, and desire to create something meaningful drive the majority of entrepreneurs. And as exciting as these early stages are, they are also the most critical. In fact, of all the small businesses that launched in the U.S. in 2014, less than half were still standing in 2018—a frightening statistic. While there are various reasons why businesses fail, “poor marketing” falls squarely in the middle of the top 10. It’s no surprise then, how critical it is for startups to have a thoughtfully designed marketing strategy and go-to-market plan in-place early on. When new business owners take the time to define brand messaging and positioning prior to launch, they will have a better understanding of their audience, can more accurately position themselves to effectively compete in the market, and build authentic interactions with their target customers. What sits at the foundation of every successful marketing plan? Predictable, repeatable, and profitable systems that drive long-term, sustained growth—also known as the customer acquisition process.
What Will a Customer Acquisition Plan Help You Accomplish?
Acquiring new customers is challenging and can be costly, which is why getting it right early on is so critical. It’s also important to keep in mind that in order for an acquisition strategy to succeed, it needs to be dynamic. It should be designed to adapt with your brand’s evolution and the ever-changing trends in the marketplace. Before we dive into the how-to’s of customer acquisition, let’s take a look at what a well-designed customer acquisition strategy will help you accomplish.
- Define your customers: You can’t attract people to your brand and best serve their needs if you don’t know who they are. Taking the time to thoroughly define customer personas will help guide your marketing efforts to the right people, at the right time, and for the right reasons.
- Create a comprehensive, cohesive, multi-channel strategy: As a business owner or fledgling entrepreneur, it’s your responsibility to identify your brand’s key differentiators and how to communicate them to your intended audience. Every channel in your strategy should work to support the next. A disjointed marketing plan can be as detrimental to a company as the absence of a strategy altogether.
- Build a scalable model that lasts: The funnel is an often overused term in marketing, but an essential component to the long-term growth engine of your startup. Demand generation should be at the foundation of your marketing efforts because without it, everything else you build will eventually crumble.
How to Build a Customer Acquisition Strategy
We’ve covered what it is, why it’s important, and what it does—now let’s dig into how to build a successful customer acquisition strategy to prepare your startup for launch.
Position Yourself in the Market
Before you can build a predictable, repeatable, and profitable system—you need to position yourself in the market. To get started, take some time to answer the following questions:
- What makes us different?
- Who are our competitors?
- How do we fit with our competitors?
- What does our product or service solve?
- Who is our ideal customer?
- What is the total addressable market?
Ultimately, you need to identify why someone would choose your business over the competition. Get inside the minds of your target customers and imagine how they would answer questions like these:
- Why should I give my money to this company?
- Why now?
- Why should I make a change?
- What are the benefits and future outcome?
When done right, positioning will tell your brand’s story and help define your customer’s journey.
Develop Market Personas
Developing market personas is the most effective way to understand who your customers are, what they want, and the messages they need to hear to take action. Hubspot defines a market persona, or buyer persona, as “A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” Your company will likely have more than one market persona, especially if you’re in the B2B space where multiple people play a role in the decision-making process. When developing buyer personas, here are some things to consider:
- Who they are: This can include their background, demographics, and identifiers such as communication preferences.
- What they want: This incorporates goals, challenges, and what your brand can do to help them accomplish and solve for each.
- Why they should choose you: Imagine the words they would use to describe their goals and challenges, as well as the objections they might raise when it comes to your product or service.
- How you can reach them: This part includes refining your marketing message to reach your defined personas. How would you describe your company to them and how would you sell them on choosing you over your competitors?
Developing comprehensive market personas is important because it encourages you to think about the people you’re serving, not just about the solution you’re providing. Because even the most exciting product/service/solution will fall short if your audience isn’t interested in engaging with your brand.
Identify Channel Strategies
A solid content strategy is an essential component of successful marketing. Once you define your place in the market and who will be attracted to your offering, you can develop an effective content strategy to reach them and communicate your key message. Your content strategy can be used to:
- Build awareness for your company (top of the funnel)
- Educate on the solution you offer (middle of the funnel)
- Communicate why your company is the best at what it does (bottom of the funnel)
There are multiple acquisition channels available, but most falls into one of the following main categories:
- Paid Search
- Paid Social - Facebook Ads, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
- Social Media
- Organic Search
- Retargeting, display, native ads, programmatic
Once you figure out what channels are right for your brand, you can begin to build out your marketing and sales funnel.
Move Customers Through the Funnel
When you know who your audience is and what they want—you can create content that moves them through each stage of the funnel at the most opportune time. When an unqualified lead enters the funnel, for example, they will need to be nurtured differently than a qualified lead. If leads aren’t properly nurtured, they will inevitably lose interest and drop out. The result? You’ll lose the opportunity to earn them as a customer. Demand generation is a series of focused marketing programs designed to help drive awareness, consideration, and revenue. It is a key component to building out and moving qualified leads through the funnel. Tactics include:
- Pay-per-click
- Content
- SEO
- Social Media
- Retargeting
- Events
Are You Ready to Launch?
At CSTMR, we’re super passionate about helping startups launch and thrive in the fast-paced world of fintech and finance. We believe that building a strong foundation through a solid customer acquisition strategy is a core component to the sustained success of every new business. Be sure to have the following in place before your official launch:
- A documented pipeline flow and sales cycle
- Clearly defined use cases detailing what problems you solve for and how
- Exact steps someone can take to buy your product or service
Before wrapping up, I want to leave you with one final thought—credibility, trust, and exchange of value are crucial to building a predictable and profitable customer acquisition process. With this strong and solid strategy at the foundation of your business, customers will trust what you say, believe in what you do, and turn into loyal, long-term customers. Rory Holland is a fintech and financial services digital marketing expert, currently serving start-ups and mid- to large-size companies as the founder and CEO of CSTMR (pronounced, ‘customer’). Rory and his team are on a mission to make hearts beat fast by empowering every person on this planet to take ownership of their money; delivered through impactful brand stories and purpose-driven marketing strategies for fintech companies around the world. At a recent Yodlee Incubator bootcamp, Rory shared his insights about an effective customer acquisition plan with the 8 startups in our 5th cohort. If you are interested in learning more about the incubator check us out here. If your startup could benefit from experts like Rory, apply to be a member of our 6th cohort here.
