Web 3.0

Entreprenuers spend a heck of a lot of time on two questions:

- Funding: Getting it, using it, making it last, and

- Customers: Getting them, keeping them, ensuring they are profitable

These are really two sides of the same coin – while investment sources (credit cards, credit lines, angel and VC investors) are easier to find, and, through sites like The Funded and various business planning tools, probably easier to work with, at the end of the day, acquiring paying customers IS funding, and is the ultimate goal of any venture funding.

Importantly, customer acquisition is also an important element in building valuation and developing your exit strategy (or just building the value of your business to you and your employees).  There are certainly other ways to build value, but this is undoubtedly the foundation.

So how do you get customers?  It depends.  Specifically, it depends on what type of business you have, what type of customers you hope to attract, etc.

For example, here’s a little post from Entrepreneur.com about how a restaurant in a mall can attract customers.  While some of the themes would apply to a manufacturer, services company, or a software firm, the specifics will certainly change, and specific tactics may be added, subtracted, etc.

That having been said, what are some of the basic strategies and issues to think about?

1. Website…Plus: In this day and age, having a website is “table stakes” – most people turn to the web to get information about companies, people, and to do other kinds of research that may lead them to you.  So having a well-thought out website, and updating it regularly is certainly important.  However, sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and tools like Google Analytics, Salesforce, a blog, etc. have become indispensable extensions of the “hub” which is your website.  Tweets or posts on your blog can economically turn people into website visitors, even into customers.  Whether you are a restaurant, a SaaS company, your web presence can inexpensively help you establish and maintain relationships with customers and your market in general.

2. Advertising, Email Marketing, etc: No matter how much technology is out there, there will probably always be a role for pushing messages to the market, either through an email list, or through advertising in publications targeted to your market.   For that matter, blogs, Twitter and Facebook are, remember, doubly-benefical – not only do they create an extended web presence that can pull customers to you, but they also provide a “micro press release” format.  Google AdWords can be an important investment.  Targeting is an important part of ROI, however, which applies to all the channels you pick.  Know your target customer well before investing in and executing on promotions.  Buying an ad in Forbes for your sandwich shop in the mall is probably a horrible investment – especially if your target market is full of young Twitter addicts.

3. Events & Publicity: All the technology options these days tend to get in the way of some tried and true techniques.  Holding an event, attending networking sessions targeted toward your customer base are tools you have to consider.  For one thing, the real you is still has much more fidelity than the virtual you – when people see a representative of the company live, it has a completely different impact.  Of course, by using electronic and non-electronic marketing tools that don’t require your physical presence, you can be more places at once, and really target your investments in “face time” to get the most ROI from them.

4. Sales Efforts: At the end of the day, advertising, web presence, PR, events, etc., all funnel into your sales efforts, so they should be planned with that end in mind.  A documented strategy for marketing which includes sales is important – and it should say how you think your efforts are going to generate leads, how/if those leads will be tracked, how you’ll convert a lead to an opportunity to a customer, and how you’ll ensure your relationships are profitable over time.  Allowing unprofitable clients to “leave the fold” over time is equally important as retaining profitable clients.

A final point, and maybe the most important.  The marketing “mix” – Product (what you sell), Place (how you sell it – over the internet, in person, through a distributor or retailer), Price (what you sell it for), and Promotion (how you make people aware of it) – is really a dynamic thing.  As you sell more, you learn more about what the price of your product *should* be, for example.  In addition, your efforts will tell you more about the best ways to promote, possible adjustments to your product and service that would lead to higher sales, etc.

The implication of this point is simple – from strategy to tactics, your company’s marketing and sales efforts have to be thought of as a work in progress at all times.  Collecting the right metrics to understand your effectiveness, and then picking the right time and method to make changes should be a constant discussion.