How Did You Acquire That Customer?

It may be hard to remember starting your company all those years ago (or it may seem like yesterday). Most of us embarked on the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship. We all had successes and challenges in the beginning (and still do). 

Many of the challenges then and now are around finding new customers. 

Craig Zingerline, CEO and Co-Founder of Growth University, recognized these common pain points himself while founding several companies and then realized while doing mentorship startups, they all had similar challenges. 

“I started to put a bunch of puzzle pieces together, and there were 5-6 themes that were in almost every conversation I had with a founder, and finding new customers was in all of them.” 

He found very consistently that founders wanted to know the same things:

How do you find customers?

What channels work?

How do you convert?

How do you retain them?

What metrics really matter?

You may be wondering the same things as your sales team fails to hit the goals you (and your investors) are counting on them to hit. (Small reminder, sales and marketing have to be aligned and working together on this.)

All of this is important, but it starts with finding customers. Whether you are just starting up or your company is 20+ years old, this advice from Craig Zingerine on finding new customers is highly beneficial. 

Craig’s four main channels every Go-to-Market (GTM) team should look at: 

1. Paid Acquisition: Spend money on ads to draw in your ideal customer
2. Organic Strategy: Along with search engine optimization (SEO), Provide thought leadership, share ideas on podcasts, blogs, and social media. Engage with your ideal customer.  
3. Partnership Strategy: Actively look for partners who are working with your ideal customer. 
4. Cold Outreach: Outbound – LinkedIn, emails, calls, events. 

In that order because cold outreach is the hardest and usually most expensive way to acquire new customers. Craig’s advice, experiment and figure out what works best for your company. 

I’ll add one more vital channel, and that is referral. Partners may be in a position to refer, or they may resell for you. 

Referrals from customers are an overlooked channel that lead to sales more easily and rapidly than cold outreach. 

How did you acquire that customer?

Whether you’re a startup or a 20-year-old company, it’s important to know how your customers found you. 

Why is it important? So, you know where to allocate more money and attention to get the right customers! 

When I ask CEOs to find out from their sales leader where their leads come from most can’t accurately attribute which method works best. By setting up the tools, processes, and analytics to track this, your company will be able to get more of the right customers.

We talked about many things that will be useful to your team in attracting new customers and retaining them, so listen here to learn more.