There’s a saying among entrepreneurs: “Simple, but not easy.” The blueprint for building a business is simple: Develop a great product, reach customers who want to buy it, repeat. But the execution isn’t always easy. Even once you have a great product, finding your target audience—and converting them into paying customers—can be a challenge.
For those willing to think outside the box, there’s still plenty of opportunity to build a loyal customer base. Below, seven business owners share their best customer acquisition strategies. Take a page out of their playbooks to find your own community.
1. Build pre-launch demand online
Testing ideas and building demand before going into production can help ensure you’re investing time and money in the right things. For example, hydration brand Waterboy’s founders Mike Xhaxho and Connor Saeli focused on telling their story on TikTok before officially launching their product. They shared who they were and how their single-serve hydration sticks were filling a gap in the market. It resonated: They gained 7,000 followers after their first video—and only grew from there.
Next, they ran a presale campaign, allowing people to place orders for their product before it was made. It was a huge success. “We decided to do a presale to see if people were actually willing to buy and spend the money,” Mike says on Shopify Masters. “That’s when we sold what would have been the entire first production run in the first hour.”
This strategy has benefits beyond the buzz: Presales give a business crucial early cash for production and brand-building. In Waterboy’s case, the success of the team’s presale gave them the validation—and capital—to buy the domain waterboy.com. Not only did this boost the brand’s public-facing legitimacy, but it also prevented competitors from taking the domain for their own gain.
If you’re not ready to commit to a full presale for your idea, you might consider crowdfunding. Running a crowdfunding campaign through a platform like Kickstarter provides many of the same benefits as presale: You get to validate your idea, build groundswell buzz, and acquire customers and cash. The time-bound nature of crowdfunding can help convince potential customers to take a chance on you. And it has the added benefit of de-risking for both the customer and the entrepreneur—if your Kickstarter doesn’t hit its target, it automatically returns backers’ money.
This was the approach taken by camera brand Moment, which raised its initial funds on Kickstarter. That DIY approach is now part of the brand’s DNA. According to founder Marc Barros, Moment still uses crowdfunding about once per year to get particularly ambitious projects off the ground and gauge interest—without committing funds. “When you do a harder project, there’s a lot of financial risk,” he says. “We do crowdfunding because it helps us figure out: OK, we’re about to press the manufacturing button. Is this worth doing or not?” The interest drummed up via crowdfunding validates the product and signals that it’s worth the investment.
2. Connect with customers in person
Part of the power of modern commerce is the ability to reach your customers online, but it’s not the only way. In-person events allow you to meet customers face to face, get real-time product feedback, and ultimately build a deeper brand relationship.
Craft fairs were crucial to the early success of P.F. Candle. “The amazing thing about craft fairs is that you’re put in front of thousands of people who are your audience,” says cofounder Kristen Pumphrey. “When do you ever get that chance?”
These in-person touchpoints also provide P.F. Candle with crucial audience insights. When Kristen went to shows with her husband and cofounder, Thomas, she noticed there weren’t many products that appealed to men. “I got this idea when I was developing the look of the container candle to create something that was unisex,” she says. “And that actually created our niche in the market. A lot of our scents are unisex, and because of that, we were able to have this large male customer base. When we started, I think it was probably 5%, 10%, and now we’re up to 30%.”
In-person events are also crucial for building retailer relationships. Travel bag brand Aloha Collection’s founders put a large portion of their initial funds into attending the Magic fashion trade show in Las Vegas, and it paid off. “We ended up getting some of our very first accounts that are still our customers today,” says cofounder Heather Aiu. “That was 10 years ago already.” The right retail partners are not only large customers on their own—they showcase your product to their customers. For a small business, this can be a massive multiplier in reach.
3. Spark interest with education
As a business owner, you know what makes your product great. Share that information with your audience—especially if you’re introducing a new product into the market or reintroducing an existing product to a new audience. This was the case when Sugardoh introduced Gen Z to at-home body sugaring, the hair-removal practice that, in the US at least, is largely done at salons. Sugardoh’s founder, Aliyah Marandiz, reached a younger generation with a TikTok marketing strategy focused on sharing sugaring tutorial videos that felt authentic, satisfying, and snappy. In other words, not like typical educational marketing.
“The best education is education that people don’t know they’re actually learning from,” says Aliyah, whose videos’ ASMR-like qualities capture viewers’ attention. “They’re watching because they’re sucked into that satisfying element. Then, at the end, they’re like, ‘Wait, I just learned how to sugar.’”
This strategy has two customer acquisition benefits: The videos’ viral reach creates new interest for their products, and the educational content turns that interest into purchases.
4. Drum up user-generated content with gifting
Content that showcases real customers’ experiences with your product is a compelling marketing tool, especially when it happens organically. If you’re operating at scale, some of your happy customers will naturally share their experience on social media and review sites, but smaller brands can kickstart this type of testimonial, known as user-generated content (UGC), with intentional gifting.
Amy Liu, founder of beauty brand Tower 28, saw an opportunity to provide a valuable service—and earn UGC in the process—during the COVID-19 pandemic, when masking was the norm. Her team noticed an increase in customers recommending Tower 28’s SOS Daily Rescue facial spray. “All these people were wearing masks, especially essential workers, right?” Amy says. “People were getting ‘maskne’ for the first time in their lives. We saw people saying, ‘hey, this spray is really changing my skin.’”
When she realized how helpful the spray was for essential workers, Amy gifted hundreds of bottles to health care workers, who would often post before-and-after photos on social media. Tower 28 then used these images (with permission) on its website as social proof of the spray’s efficacy, building audience trust and helping drive conversion.
5. Pursue brand-building retail partnerships
For many brands, getting their products into retail stores means one thing: scale. Once you have a retailer on board, you have a partner in acquiring new customers—you both win when someone buys.
But there are good reasons to pursue smaller, more niche retailers along with larger ones. For one thing, they can be an accessible starting point for growing brands; a local museum or bookstore will likely be more receptive to your calls than a global company’s head buyer. Additionally, the right retail relationships don’t just introduce you to new customers; they create a halo effect, associating your brand with the retailer in the minds of your customers. If a favorite local retailer has a great reputation, that customer goodwill rubs off on your brand when the store stocks your product.
Original Duckhead sells its sustainable umbrellas where their artful details are sure to be appreciated, such as New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens.
Actually getting this type of retailer to stock your product may require finesse. “It’s really important to not be afraid to just call and email,” says founder Morgan Cros. Typically, her team expects eight to 10 touchpoints before a retailer commits. “That’s what I like to tell my team so that they don’t get discouraged,” she says. “Like, OK, you’ve only reached out five times. You’ve still got to keep going.”
But the benefits for Morgan are undeniable: Pitching products to a specialty store allows for more leeway to negotiate flexible terms. She’s gotten her umbrellas in front of a sizable audience without requiring the retailer to make a major commitment. Her advice for anyone pursuing the same strategy: Make it easy for retailers to say yes and hard to say no.
“I made it so the barrier to entry was very low,” she says. “Very low minimum [order quantities], but still giving them great margins … And then I solved a few problems that they might have: If it didn’t sell, I would do a return, so I made it really risk-free for them.”
6. Think big picture
Most customer acquisition strategies focus on new customers. But as brands grow and evolve, retaining those customers is just as important and potentially more lucrative.
There are many ways for businesses to drive revenue from repeat customers. For example, a strong email strategy and a loyalty program can be some of an acquisition team’s highest return on investment (ROI) activities. But one of the most impactful ways is to listen to your customers and evolve alongside them—tapping them as customers for new products tailored to their interests.
Marc shares how Moment’s product line evolved from iPhone accessories to selling everything a photography enthusiast needs: “We’ve organically evolved based on what the customer’s done. When we started making just phone products, there was a struggle, which is that the repeat purchase rate is once every 18 months,” Marc says. “By expanding into the rest of the things creatives need, it allowed us to grow and keep the business growing.”
This allowed both the business and its customers to grow. “A lot of our customers have gone from, ‘I shot on my phone [to] now I shoot on a camera, now I’m a filmmaker, now I’m a producer and a [director of photography],’” Marc says. “It’s been fascinating seeing the growth of the customer, and we’ve just grown Moment to keep up with it. If we had stayed with the original five or six products, I’m not sure we’d still be here.”
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