Marketing Strategy
Once you have identified your market, know your value proposition, decided which sales channel you want to prioritize, and have a style guide, you probably feel pretty good about your venture. Of course, you need your product (more on that later), and you need customers. Marketing is the process of attracting customers to your brand. As a new company, your marketing will evolve dramatically from your first 100 customers to your first 1,000 and then to your first 10,000+. Each magnitude of growth represents its own opportunities and challenges.
First 100
Your first 100 customers are early adopters. They found your brand, were willing to pay money to try it out, and if you’ve done your homework, they’ll keep coming back. These first 100 customers are gold. You can reach out and talk to them - literally pick up the phone or send them a text - and hear what they think of your product. They’ll usually love that you care enough to reach out, but of course respect anyone who would rather not chat. You should dive deep into these first 100 customers’ opinions to understand what they like and dislike about your product. You can use this information to hone your messaging and groups you target through marketing, and you can keep notes on possible product changes for the future.
First 1,000
Once you’ve gained more traction and reached around 1,000 customers, it’s not as easy to personally connect with each one. But you can - and should - still seek out their thoughts and feedback from surveys. This group is still part of your early adopters, so their feedback is equally valuable, and since you now have more total customers, you can make more data-driven decisions based on their responses.
10,000+
Once you get up to 10,000+, you’re moving into exciting new territory and probably trying to scale your operation. You’ll be looking at hiring employees, and you should be working to build an organization on top of the brand that you created. This is hard - and frankly more than this guide can get into for now - but you’ve graduated to another phase and that’s progress.
Customer Acquisition Costs & Customer Lifetime Value
These two concepts are critical to your ability to accurately project growth and devise your marketing strategy:
Customer Acquisition Cost is how much it costs you to get this customer into your network and buying your product. Maybe these are advertising costs, or sampling costs, or maybe you just send them an email. Whatever it is, you should be able to calculate how much it costs you to acquire customers based on their demographics.
Customer Lifetime Value is how much revenue you can expect from a customer over their entire relationship with your brand. If they’re likely to buy weekly for the next 10 years, their lifetime value is pretty high. You can estimate customer lifetime value based on previous transactions, and your data will improve as you make more sales.
When you know both of these values, you can make informed decisions about how to grow your brand. Where is your customer acquisition cost lowest relative to their lifetime value? That’s where you should focus.