Acquiring Customers
Dan Marques at Summer Venture Program
Unsure how to grow your business to 10, 100, or 1,000 customers? Dan Marques, marketing guru and Babson alum, hosted a Summer Venture Program lunch and learn session to provide strategies and resources for teams in this precise situation.
If your goal is to reach ten people, Dan’s advice is not to worry about whether your strategy is scalable. The first ten customers will help you learn and test your value proposition, so it is best to get to know them personally. You can try cold-calling (or cold-emailing), walking door to door, using an alumni network, and of course, having friends and family use your product. The objective at this stage is to gain every insight available in order to have the most successful business.
Once you have surpassed ten customers and are now aiming for 100, spend time determining potential customer acquisition channels. Then, prioritize and test each channel quickly and cheaply, tracking all results. Consider experimenting with partnerships, crowdfunding, sponsorships, paid search, SEO, and paid social ads.
Finally, once you are looking to acquire over 1,000 customers, it is time to focus on just one or two channels that generate the highest amount of customers. One of the most popular channels is online, such as through Google or Facebook.
Dan highly recommends the book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth if you want to learn more about potential channels for customer acquisition.
Hear from the 2016 Summer Venture Program Wellesley cohort on Thursday, July 28 at the Summer Venture Showcase!