1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:02,080 - Your approach to customer acquisition 2 00:00:02,080 --> 00:00:04,020 is going to vary dramatically 3 00:00:04,020 --> 00:00:06,060 based on the type of product that you have. 4 00:00:06,060 --> 00:00:11,000 If you have a business-to-business software product, 5 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:12,050 there's going to be a set of techniques 6 00:00:12,050 --> 00:00:14,080 that you would use for customer acquisition 7 00:00:14,080 --> 00:00:16,060 which you're going to likely going to be very different 8 00:00:16,060 --> 00:00:21,020 than if you have a retail food product, 9 00:00:21,020 --> 00:00:24,090 or a consumer internet-related product. 10 00:00:24,090 --> 00:00:27,000 Understanding the types of techniques 11 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:28,010 for customer acquisition 12 00:00:28,010 --> 00:00:31,060 for your particular product category are really important. 13 00:00:31,060 --> 00:00:34,050 Recognize that the very beginning of your journey 14 00:00:34,050 --> 00:00:37,000 a lot of those tools are going to be ones 15 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:40,080 that require a lot of effort on your part as a founder, 16 00:00:40,080 --> 00:00:42,060 and the co-founders of your company, 17 00:00:42,060 --> 00:00:44,080 you're going to have to really sort of just wrestle 18 00:00:44,080 --> 00:00:46,060 customers to the ground 19 00:00:46,060 --> 00:00:49,040 versus hope that you've figured out some technique 20 00:00:49,040 --> 00:00:52,020 that all of a sudden generates lots of customers. 21 00:00:52,020 --> 00:00:55,050 So, the idea that when I was young, 22 00:00:55,050 --> 00:00:57,050 there was a great phrase that I love 23 00:00:57,050 --> 00:00:59,040 that's been lost in the sands of time 24 00:00:59,040 --> 00:01:00,090 called guerilla marketing. 25 00:01:00,090 --> 00:01:04,080 And this idea that you have to behave like not a gorilla, 26 00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:07,040 the animal, but a guerrilla like in the forest, 27 00:01:07,040 --> 00:01:11,000 that's defending their turf against other people 28 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:12,050 who are trying to attack your company. 29 00:01:12,050 --> 00:01:16,060 So this very scrappy organic approach. 30 00:01:16,060 --> 00:01:20,040 Use that in this context of customer acquisition 31 00:01:20,040 --> 00:01:23,080 to start to learn some techniques that are going to scale. 32 00:01:23,080 --> 00:01:27,020 So, at first when you have no customers 33 00:01:27,020 --> 00:01:30,010 the idea of getting any customers to something 34 00:01:30,010 --> 00:01:31,080 that you could get one-by-one, 35 00:01:31,080 --> 00:01:33,020 but as you scale up your business 36 00:01:33,020 --> 00:01:35,010 you're going to need mechanisms for that. 37 00:01:35,010 --> 00:01:36,070 And those mechanisms are ones 38 00:01:36,070 --> 00:01:38,080 that are going to have to be able to be used 39 00:01:38,080 --> 00:01:41,000 over and over again in cost-effective ways, 40 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:43,010 that over time the cost of acquiring 41 00:01:43,010 --> 00:01:47,040 an incremental customer goes down. 42 00:01:47,040 --> 00:01:49,080 Understanding how that works within your market 43 00:01:49,080 --> 00:01:53,010 is something I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't do 44 00:01:53,010 --> 00:01:55,050 very early on in the product development cycle, 45 00:01:55,050 --> 00:01:57,050 in the early product launch cycle. 46 00:01:57,050 --> 00:02:01,020 There's a lot of value to doing that research 47 00:02:01,020 --> 00:02:03,090 even when you're tra-ning your customers one at a time, 48 00:02:03,090 --> 00:02:06,080 so that when you start to see some patterns that work, 49 00:02:06,080 --> 00:02:08,070 let's say all of a sudden you wake up one day, 50 00:02:08,070 --> 00:02:09,090 and you have five customers 51 00:02:09,090 --> 00:02:11,040 that came from a particular channel 52 00:02:11,040 --> 00:02:13,030 that you hadn't thought of before, 53 00:02:13,030 --> 00:02:15,030 you can all of the sudden put a lot more energy 54 00:02:15,030 --> 00:02:18,060 into that type of customer acquisition. 55 00:02:18,060 --> 00:02:21,020 There is no formulaic approach that works generically 56 00:02:21,020 --> 00:02:22,060 across any business. 57 00:02:22,060 --> 00:02:24,030 And one of the interesting things about, 58 00:02:24,030 --> 00:02:25,080 especially technology companies, 59 00:02:25,080 --> 00:02:27,050 is that the customer acquisition approach 60 00:02:27,050 --> 00:02:29,080 is even though the frameworks may be the same, 61 00:02:29,080 --> 00:02:32,080 tend to change and evolve with new technologies. 62 00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:35,000 So in the same way that you're potentially disrupting 63 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:36,080 potential existing companies, 64 00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:39,070 and existing products in the market you're going after, 65 00:02:39,070 --> 00:02:41,080 you could also find that you're changing the way 66 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:43,090 that customer acquisition works 67 00:02:43,090 --> 00:02:46,060 based on some of the characteristics of your products. 68 00:02:46,060 --> 00:02:48,050 So don't be afraid to experiment with that, 69 00:02:48,050 --> 00:02:51,000 and continue to look for those opportunities.