The most common customer acquisition channels for early startups
In our previous blog we presented a rough plan that may help early stage startups reach initial traction. In this one, we are going to simply present some of the major channels which startups utilize for marketing that we had identified.
Specific sites under each category, however, should vary based on the nature of your business, and the industry that you are working in.
Content Marketing
- Blogging
- Social Medias
- Infographics
- Email Marketing
Community Building
- LinkedIn Groups
- Hacker News
- Quora
- Professional Forums
- Reddit Groups
- etc
Other Platforms
- Launch Platforms like Product Hunt, Hacker News Show HN, Behance, PreApp etc…
- Product platforms provided by tangential services, like (Gmail plugin, Evernote Integration, Salesforce integration, facebook messenger etc…)
- Traffic sources like StumbleUpon
Organic Traffic
- Search Engine Optimization
- App Store Optimization
- Redirecting traffic from relevant sites (e.g. AirBnb < Craigslist)
Natural Growth
- Word of mouth
- Free & Incentivized Referral
- Viral coefficient
Key partnerships
- Trade groups
- Professional organizations
- Conferences
- Any online/offline partnerships relevant to your company
Traffic Hacks / “Viral Marketing”
- Spamming LinkedIn InMail with bots
- Making mini apps that are easy to share
- etc
App Store Marketing
- Get featured
- Third party app stores
Paid advertisements
- Social Media Ads
- Mobile Ad Distributors
Press Release and Media Exposure
- Bloggers / Content Creators / Influencers in your niche
- Major tech medias
- Niche medias
- App Publishers and Reviewers
- Winning competitions and awards
To wrap thing up — it is perfectly fine if you start off trying a bit of everything.
However, never Spray and Pray
To wrap it up, the easy part is what we did here — listing out all the possible channels you can utilize. The hard part is finding the channel that works best for your own business. Therefore, three things that you should do as you get more focused on growth include
- Track everything! Without understanding where your traffic comes from, and which channels are more effective, you will never be able to filter out the ones that don’t suit your company.
- With proper tracking, you will be able to identify THE campaign, or few campaigns that give you the lowest Customer Acquisition Cost, and highest quality users.
- Continue exploring new channels and pay attention to those key metrics. Keep revising ‘abandoned’ channels as your company moves onto a new stage.
