Stop asking how to get more customers
It is the most common question we are handed and almost never the one worth answering first.
3 minute read
The question assumes the business is already good at turning a customer into money, and that the only missing input is volume. Most of the time that assumption has never been checked.
Try a different question. How much is a customer worth to you over two years? If you cannot answer that inside a minute, more customers will not help. You will simply lose money faster and with more confidence.
Then ask what happens to the people who already found you and did not buy. In most businesses that group is larger than the customer base and nobody has ever spoken to them twice. Acquiring a stranger costs several times what it costs to go back to someone who already raised a hand.
Then ask what your current customers would buy next if you offered it. Almost every business we look at is sitting on a second sale it has never built.
Volume is the most expensive lever available and it is the one everybody pulls first, because it is the only one that feels like marketing. The cheaper levers are price, offer, follow up and retention. They are unglamorous, they rarely require new spend, and they compound.
Get those right and acquisition becomes arithmetic. Get them wrong and acquisition becomes a subscription you pay forever.
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