Customer Acquisition — First Principles for Product Managers

How to execute your Customer Acquisition plan

This post appeared in my weekly newsletter on Product Management. Sign up here to get new posts straight to your inbox.

I’ve been a non-competitive runner for over a decade now, but I’ve never really had any formal training in improving my speedwork, or efficiency. As I hit my late thirties, I began to realize the need for a training program to increase my running efficiency and speed without getting injured. A few google searches later — articles and blogs from Runner’s World started to pop up in my feed. I ended subscribing to their newsletter. I must say Runner’s World is a great resource for people who want to get stronger with their running.

Another interesting thing happened as soon as I subscribed to these blog posts — I became a Lead in Runner’s World’s Customer Acquisition Funnel. I was somebody that was obviously interested in running, and Runner’s world has plenty of paid products to sell me (after all its a business).

I started receiving my fair share of free articles and blog posts in my mailbox, each one ever so subtly pushing me to purchase their premium/paid content and merchandise. This is a classic example of Customer Acquisition Machines in perpetual motion. If you look at your “Promotions” tab in your Gmail inbox — you’ll find plenty of such acquisition machines in action.

Now just like Runner’s World — If you have a product and want to grow your customers — you’ll need a Customer Acquisition Plan. A plan that is well thought out and validated. A plan that is scalable, repeatable & measurable.

To execute this plan, you’ll need a customer acquisition machine — one that is capable of creating customized experiences based on your target market’s interests — but one that also generalizes well.

Customer Acquisition Plan- The Basics

A good customer acquisition strategy or plan should provide answers to the following questions:

1. How do you find people that have a problem your product solves and how do you get them interested in your product? This is called Lead Generation.