The biggest problem of customer acquisition

Channels?

Budget?

Copy?

Nah…

It’s a mix of mindset combined with strategy (wait 1 minute and you’ll get everything).

A while back I read a paper from McKinsey, dated from June 1988. What caught my attention was the following:

“A business is a value delivery system.”.

How right this can be.

Every business’s “job” is to deliver value to people, and then collect value in return (money).

So… how can a business collect more value (a.k.a. money)?

By delivering more value to people.

And this is how we reach the biggest problem of customer acquisition:

Businesses aren’t doing their jobs!

They think “the way” is to go into a market and start looking for people willing to buy.

They never create value → they struggle to collect it.

To hit the nail on the head, I’ll combine the concept of “value” with “demand”, to make everything clearer:

When you give value, you create demand.

When you create demand, you have what to capture.

When you have what to capture, you collect value.

When you collect value, your business grows.

Makes more sense now, huh?

But let’s not stop here and destroy another “idea” that holds businesses back:

“You can use several tactics to capture the existing demand in a market without having to create it.”.

In basic language, this would mean “you can try doing Google Ads and reach people looking for the solution you provide”.

Yes, you can, but there’s a but:

Because you did not give any value before, you didn’t create demand for your solution.

This means you’ll end up in a spreadsheet in an obscure Google Drive where the only differentiator between you and “your competitors” will be what?

The price?

This is how you want potential customers to pick your company?