Every company has a customer it’s fighting for. Presently, all companies are vying for the same customers. They’re all buying the same keywords. They’re all targeting the same demographic. They’re all hoping that their message cuts through the noise more than anyone else’s. It’s stressful, it’s expensive, and quite frankly, it’s less effective every single year.
But while that may be true for the majority of companies, there exists a smaller universe of companies that grow at exponentially high rates. They don’t spend much more money. They aren’t much better at what they do. They’re just savvy enough to find a competitive advantage where their competitors either miss – or fail to acknowledge – some of the best opportunities to acquire customers actually come from where no one else is looking.
Acquisition Where Everyone Is Looking
Where do most companies look for customers? They’re looking on social media. They’re paying search ads for the most engaged keywords they’re targeting. They’re looking to demographic segments that “we all know” will yield conversion and revenue.
But when too many people are in one space, it creates two effects. One, it increases costs. There’s an auction for space and time, and companies compete with dozens or hundreds of other companies at once trying to do the same thing. Two, it dilutes messaging. Consumers see social posts from “everyone” who wants to sell them something every day at every turn – and a good offer falls through the cracks at best, ignored at worst. Three, consumers have become so seasoned in avoiding commercialized messaging that they’ve passively turned away anything that approaches them like it only wants to know them for commercial gain; a good offer gets lost in the fray when essentially historical offering of audience segmentation exists for reliable conversion success.
This isn’t new – but it’s getting worse by the year. Ad costs per click have skyrocketed platform by platform over the past decade while engagement massively dipped across the board since high levels ten years ago. The low-hanging fruit audiences are inundated from every angle – and they’ve developed “banner blindness,” a social phenomenon where audiences can’t pay attention to an ad without disregarding any offer – even if it’s good.
Where Smart Companies Go Instead
Companies that grow consistently don’t forgo these large avenues of customer acquisition – they just don’t put all their eggs in one basket. Instead, they seek avenues from which others either don’t realize exist or have deemed outdated/ineffective so far in the acquisition campaign process.
Sometimes these are advertising formats that have fallen out of favor but work extremely well under certain types of offers. Sometimes they’re audience segments that require slightly different language or positioning but yield similar enough conversion results if positioned appropriately. Often, they’re avenues where far less competition warrants even mediocre campaigns working decently.
For example, alternative advertising formats. Banner ads and social placements rule most advertisers’ worlds; pop advertising still yields strong results for companies that understand how it effectively works. The unifying factor is knowing how best to fit the message to what needs accomplishing and acknowledging different groups will respond differently based on approach.
The same goes for the audience targeting point; most companies target high-intent prospects because everyone wants them – but there are often adjacent audiences – people with similar yet different enough demographics or behavioral needs – that boast far cheaper acquisition efforts and convert just as well if messaging is properly situated.
The Geographic Advantage Companies Fail To Acknowledge
Here’s something companies don’t want to acknowledge – they have some of their best customers located where they haven’t attempted to access them just yet in a realistic and viable situation to do so.
Most companies appeal locally to start or focus on major markets where they can garner better resources to attract consumers toward them. This makes sense on its face – but when opportunities exist down the road in satellite/semi-international markets, many businesses either fail to expand because it’s too obvious, their internal factors complicate access beyond their established domains through additional dynamics – or they fail to acknowledge that they might be the only company in another market trying. Therefore attracting customers who will be drawn only to them without competitive distractions down the line; still, this is not the case as typically where it is less saturated it will cost you tenfold than it would in larger markets.
Moreover, fewer competitors mean fewer efforts to find a fugitive audience through – it’s not just you’re paying less but often finding better results.
That doesn’t mean you can’t keep your primary realm and revisit it as a secondary area of acquisition focus – but extend sensibly to areas where there’s little competition; it benefits customer acquisition financial opportunities naturally.
Testing New Channels Without Risking Everything
Part of exploring new realms makes executives anxious – if channels work (even at a price) why will we take great assets and invest them into something relatively unproven that’ll be risky?
This is where most executives get caught up – they know better – but they’re afraid of wasting money/resources, so they do the same thing even if it gets less effective over time.
But it’s not that simple; it’s not just a plunge into the deep water without testing – over time, guided planning for acquisition includes assessments along the way; ideally, set aside 10-20% (the first time should be lower until you know you’re sure) within your budget exclusively for exploratory results efforts over time – budgeted just for this purpose works well to accumulate a sense of new channels/formats to test along the way without going in blindly. Set success criteria beforehand so success isn’t determined by gut instinct – always air on data-supported determinations along the way.
Some tests will fail – and that’s good and acceptable – but those that succeed will become substantial drivers over time when an acquisition system sets itself up as systematic so it doesn’t rely on one success – or failure – unless it’s universally accepted first across all channels with ultimate determination established down the line once thoroughly tested.
Why Diversification Actually Stabilizes A Company
There’s this myth that focusing on what’s producing the most successful channel is logical; why divert budgets across disparate channels when additional investment into what’s performing best seems like common sense?
What fails to acknowledge is that what’s successful can stop being successful any moment; algorithms shift; competitors come out of the woodwork; costs increase; consumer behavior fluctuates – if all of a sudden your customer acquisition engine comes from one or two channels, any disruption raises an alarm with emergency red lights flashing throughout your entire operation.
Companies that have multiple sources for customers not only de-risk their exposure but often find different channels work better at different times for different consumers via different segments via different techniques; when one sours another picks up; business operations become steadier – and therefore more valuable – because they’re no longer held hostage against circumstances beyond their control anymore.
The Time-Tested Advantage
Here’s another advantage of testing customer acquisition efforts on less crowded levels – competition’s caught on sooner than later but at higher costs and less effectiveness; those companies who have figured it out by expertise before market dynamics shift down the road always find themselves operating in superior performance status until eventually things change down the line.
This happens consistently across channels/formats; social media advertising was created by word-of-mouth link appeal to anyone who jumped on board ahead of everyone else who jumped on board – and then got saturated by too many new entries. Search ads have been available long enough where although great potential exists for all businesses – even basic existence underlined potential – still there’s never as strong an effect afforded compared to those who initially discovered them – and native advertising has occurred too many times across platforms for years running indiscriminately.
Companies that grow consistently aren’t especially savvy about figuring what’s going to work best – they’re just more willing to test it while competitors argue whether it should even be tried in the first place.
Making It Actionable
So how can this be reasonably implemented? Honestly assess where you’re getting your customers from now – and determine if a concentrated amount exists from central channels OR if there’s speculative efforts elsewhere that could benefit from no synergies at this point – then assess where your competitors are focusing most (that’s likely where everyone’s maximum effort expansion will get saturated/expensive).
Then assess geographic opportunities; this could be similar audiences on different platforms or different advertising formats – as well as different markets that have yet to be explored seriously enough – where companies won’t fight enough for attention/awareness/etc….the goal isn’t to reinvent your wheel but expansively into areas with less competition so your message won’t get steamrolled along the way.
Create small tests within thresholds – budget/time allocation – to give your cutoffs enough leeway to make an impactful determination without giving up too fast but also not so much leeway that if you fail it sinks your company completely – track what’s successful from there and scale efforts against those initiatives that succeeded longitudinally over time without fear of cutting potential losers along the way.
Companies that grow consistently aren’t doing anything spectacular – they’re just more willing to stretch beyond what’s obviously presented today and thoughtfully test in a systematic fashion to create a customer acquisition system with multiple realities across channels instead of one single focus that’s not reliably assessed across all channels first as such. It’s harder at first but more sustainable and scalable over time.