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A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

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Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#11

Post by barkingcat »

justiceforsaas wrote: post #8
barkingcat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your reasoning might be true for your (1) case, in (2) ... "a violinist who spent 1 year learning how to play" absolutely will not be able to teach you vs someone who spent 10 years. It takes about 2 years to sound not like a dying cat on the violin (you can ask anyone), and about 3-5 years to sound "ok". Vibrato itself take about 5-6 years to develop. Intonation (whether you are playing the right note) takes a…

Yeah, my point was to demonstrate the whole "curse of knowledge" principle, and something like "photography" would be more suitable. Edited the comment. This is why I love HN, you guys tear apart every single thing ;))

Sorry didn't mean to tear into you! It's just that violin really is a pretty difficult instrument. When people say it's difficult, it doesn't mean impossible. It means that goals are attainable through slow, steady, practice, investment (both time and money), and ultimately, drive, passion, and not expecting too much of yourself.

Being easy on myself is how I was able to get through 7 years of sounding bad. I had to sound unbearably bad in order to get here. and I am planning to sound bad for the foreseeable future until I get to my goals.

That's the way of fret-less stringed instruments, and probably a lot of other things in life as well.

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#12

Post by justiceforsaas »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #10
justiceforsaas wrote: post #2

I've spent the last 2 years researching what acquisition channels work consistently for founders [1] by reading over 500 founder interviews. I PURPOSELY avoid unicorn/"big corp" case studies/interviews (like the ones mentioned in the article) because of 2 main reasons: 1) They are almost useless to new founders. These companies were in their "early days" 6-10 years ago, back when MySpace was still a thing. Although y…

Thank you Darko for the research and I understand I should not complain about something I am getting for free, but I was rubbed the wrong way with the way you chose to distribute this—I was first asked for an email id, then sent an email with another link (I was expecting a PDF in the mail or at least a link to the content), this link then went to a page from where I could get another download link for the content, w…

Hey man, I just included the link so people can see I'm not BSing and that I really spent a lot of time doing research into this. I didn't expect people to sign up & analyze my report. I'll release an enhanced report tomorrow or so and update everyone who signed up. If you want just reply to the email where I sent the PDF and I'll send you the enhanced version.

This research is more oriented towards founders who are currently working on their startups/businesses. I plan to release further information on each of these acquisition channels and that's why I asked for an email. Plus, I think it's fair to ask for an email if you're distributing something that took 2 years to summarize.

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#13

Post by justiceforsaas »

barkingcat wrote: post #11
justiceforsaas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my point was to demonstrate the whole "curse of knowledge" principle, and something like "photography" would be more suitable. Edited the comment. This is why I love HN, you guys tear apart every single thing ;))

Sorry didn't mean to tear into you! It's just that violin really is a pretty difficult instrument. When people say it's difficult, it doesn't mean impossible. It means that goals are attainable through slow, steady, practice, investment (both time and money), and ultimately, drive, passion, and not expecting too much of yourself. Being easy on myself is how I was able to get through 7 years of sounding bad. I had to…

Wow, 7 years. Talk about persistence. I'm not really into violins (I play a piano, and have an ear for music so it takes me <10 minutes to hear something & play it). Seems it's the TOTAL opposite with a violin, and really appreciated that correction comment!

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#14

Post by justiceforsaas »

trhway wrote: post #7

strange, the post doesn't mention how in the beginning Airbnb was spamming the short-term rental posters on Craigslist https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-harvested-craigslist-... "[...]he placed a vacation rental on Craigslist [...] Hours later, he had an email from a young lady who said that Airbnb was a great site, and that he should list his rental on it. She included a direct link in case he wanted to check i…

That's the problem with writing on a "first-class" publication. They won't allow you to cover the "dirty stuff" (what? posting on a stupid classifieds website? Let's talk about the beauty of SEO/AdWords/beautiful viral growth graphs...)

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#15

Post by Kareem71 »

justiceforsaas wrote: post #5
briefcomment wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, your list is great. It would be great if some of the items had a sentence or two with details. For example, I’m not sure exactly “Marketplaces and Existing Platforms” entails.

Glad you liked it. Working on this as we speak. To be honest I didn't expect people to sign up lol, but since I'm seeing some interest in this, I'll spend some time and do an enhanced version & release it within the next 2-3 days & update everyone who signed up.

Signed up, think this research could be pretty valuable

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#16

Post by pedalpete »

I feel like this isn't a good article for "startups", as it completely misses the big equation of "who are your early adopters, and where are they?".

Rather than looking at different channels, if you first understand the target segment, and when I say target, I mean REALLY refined early target, then you will understand where they are. Speak to them there, let them guide you to where others like them are.

Looking at channels first feels a bit more like a spray-and-pray technique.

I was really surprised the other day when a VC couldn't grasp the idea that we knew exactly who our target customer is, and we are able to reach them with very little cost. They couldn't grasp the idea that we had a very focused customer compared to the rest of the market (because we're focused on early adopters), and that we knew this customer so well that we knew where to find them, where it doesn't seem other people in our market are.

At the same time, we're also defining a new category, so we're somewhat distanced from the rest of the market anyway.

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#17

Post by justiceforsaas »

pedalpete wrote: post #16

I feel like this isn't a good article for "startups", as it completely misses the big equation of "who are your early adopters, and where are they?". Rather than looking at different channels, if you first understand the target segment, and when I say target, I mean REALLY refined early target, then you will understand where they are. Speak to them there, let them guide you to where others like them are. Looking at c…

Can you be more concrete? This all sounds good on an abstract level, but that's where it stops.

1) What approach did you take to "truly understand" your target segment (there are 100s of them)

2) How were you able to reach them to "very little cost" due to "really understanding them"?

I really like the abstract idea of "understanding your target segment so well that you're able to detect where they are", but seen no one so far provide concrete examples on how they did it.

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#18

Post by pedalpete »

justiceforsaas wrote: post #17
pedalpete wrote: post #16

I feel like this isn't a good article for "startups", as it completely misses the big equation of "who are your early adopters, and where are they?". Rather than looking at different channels, if you first understand the target segment, and when I say target, I mean REALLY refined early target, then you will understand where they are. Speak to them there, let them guide you to where others like them are. Looking at c…

Can you be more concrete? This all sounds good on an abstract level, but that's where it stops. 1) What approach did you take to "truly understand" your target segment (there are 100s of them) 2) How were you able to reach them to "very little cost" due to "really understanding them"? I really like the abstract idea of "understanding your target segment so well that you're able to detect where they are", but seen no…

You may be over complicating things. Or maybe I'm oversimplifying.

For us, it's pretty simple to talk about our product because we're helping improve sleep. It's such a common problem in today's society, and the existing "solutions", focus on comfort, other physiological changes (cool pads, weighted blankets), ear plugs, eye masks, etc etc. We're using neuro-feedback to alter your sleep state. It's pretty magical. If you want to find out more, check out https://soundmind.co

So, we talk to people and not only about their sleep, but about how it affects their life, what do they do about it, what do they try, what works for them, what doesn't. From here, we were able to build comprehensive user personas, and those personas describe where our users are.

It was also super interesting for us to find that almost nobody talks to their doctors about sleep, very few people we spoke to had been to a sleep lab+.

When you say there are 100s of target segments, yes, you're right, but you don't care about those. I think you care about two things.

1) can you create a customer persona or two, which are large enough to be viable to get the business started

2) is there a common thing that they do, or place where they congregate to reach them?

Don't make a checklist of all the places they could be or all the possible segments, just talk to people, and look for the commonality, let them self-suggest.

That's my 2 cents anyway.

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#19

Post by westurner »

> For consumer companies, there are only three growth “lanes” that comprise the majority of new customer acquisition:

> 1. Performance marketing (e.g. Facebook and Google ads)

> 2. Virality (e.g. word-of-mouth, referrals, invites)

> 3. Content (e.g. SEO, YouTube)

> There are two additional lanes (sales and partnerships) which we won't cover in this post because they are rarely effective in consumer businesses. And there are other tactics to boost customer acquisition (e.g PR, brand marketing), but the lanes outlined above are the only reliable paths for long-term and sustainable business growth.

Marketing calls those "channels". I don't think they're exclusive categories: a startup's YouTube videos could be supporting a viral marketing campaign, for example; ads aren't the only strategy for (targeted) social media marketing; if the "ask" / desired behavior upon receiving the message is to share the brand, is that "viral"?

What about Super Bowel commercials?

Traditional marketing: press releases, (linked-citation-free) news wires, quasi-paid interviews, "news program" appearances, product placement.

"Growth hacking": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hacking

Re: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

#20

Post by unishark »

barkingcat wrote: post #6
justiceforsaas wrote: post #2

I've spent the last 2 years researching what acquisition channels work consistently for founders [1] by reading over 500 founder interviews. I PURPOSELY avoid unicorn/"big corp" case studies/interviews (like the ones mentioned in the article) because of 2 main reasons: 1) They are almost useless to new founders. These companies were in their "early days" 6-10 years ago, back when MySpace was still a thing. Although y…

While your reasoning might be true for your (1) case, in (2) ... "a violinist who spent 1 year learning how to play" absolutely will not be able to teach you vs someone who spent 10 years. It takes about 2 years to sound not like a dying cat on the violin (you can ask anyone), and about 3-5 years to sound "ok". Vibrato itself take about 5-6 years to develop. Intonation (whether you are playing the right note) takes a…

The curse of knowledge problem remains for the expert, though. A long learning curve just means you need to be clear what the 1-year student can teach you. Namely they will be better specifically at helping someone get from year zero to year one in their learning.

Perhaps a safer way to accomplish this is techniques like "peer learning", where students are put in groups and the ones who are ahead (i.e. they understood the concept when the prof presented it) can explain it to the ones who are behind in a way they understand better.

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