Why most of the Startups fail with Customer Acquisition

In the early days for most startups, acquiring new customers is one of the most important priorities for the founding team. You’ve spent months or years developing a great product that solves a big problem for millions of potential customers and all you need to do is get your product in front of them, right?

Instead, you find out your product isn’t that solid, your potential customers tell you the problem you’re solving actually isn’t a large focus of theirs, those people you targeted probably aren’t the best suited to evaluate your product and no one is buying. According to a Harvard Business School study, approximately 75 percent of startups with venture funding will eventually fail.

The primary reason for most business failures is an inability to profitably attract and retain customers. While there are many different types of business models out there, from software as a service, to marketplaces, to eCommerce businesses (and many others), there are a few common mistakes that business leaders make when trying to attract customers.

Here are one of the most common, but often overlooked, reasons why your startup isn’t able to attract enough customers to become successful.

Not knowing your target audience

It’s just a fact that most early stage startups go after the wrong customer segment at first.

A failure to know the demographic and psychographic makeup of ideal customers may simply lead to a failure of your startup. So, it’s mandatory to know your ideal customer profile (ICP) and also to have a proper alignment of the same with the entire organization. Fulfilling customer needs and helping people achieve their goals should be your top priority. Share your product with as many people as possible. Ask them about their challenges, what value they would potentially see in your product, and if they’d be willing to test it. Keep track of everyone’s feedback, find the similarities in feedback and see what those individuals have in common. That might be your target market.

You may be making assumptions about the audiences that are most important to your success. When you speak directly to the people you want to target, you are more likely to attract the right people. Your marketing will more effectively reach the people most likely to want to do business with you. When you connect with the right people, you are then more likely to get high-quality, qualified leads that will turn into paying customers.

The right customer acquisition strategy should set your customers up for long-term success with your product and or services. However, companies often make decisions against their better judgements and wind up on the wrong path. If executed correctly, customer acquisition will enable you to reach your revenue goals in the near- and long-term.

An accumulation of bad customer experiences can ruin your company’s reputation. Bad impressions range from not having inventory to keep up with demand or a negative customer service experience. You can prioritize the needs of your customers by:

• Creating a buyer persona to understand prospects and customers’ needs
• Investing in strong customer service or customer success teams
• Ensuring in-field sales reps have a grasp on customer needs
• Implementing a strong customer on boarding or training program
• Including a FAQ section on your website 
• Collecting customer surveys and feedback

At Global Vision Technology we’ll help you get a better understanding of what your customers are looking for. We’ll utilize marketing tools that can help convert more online leads for our clients. We research your customers to pinpoint how, why, where, and when they’re most willing to listen. Our target audience marketing experts help you develop a laser-like focus on the most appropriate and profitable groups within your broader audience. This enables your brand to develop meaningful connections with consumers.

Neglecting customer engagement

It’s a lack of engagement that may render all your customer acquisition efforts futile.

Neglecting customer engagement means you miss out on providing customers with what they really want: a positive, emotive experience. That’s why 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. In a world full of distractions, engaging customers beyond the typical purchasing routine is vital for SaaS success and B2B consumers crave unparalleled engagement. They want personalized advice, solution-oriented features, and revenue-generating products.

Startups cause the customers to perceive the company as a pushy advertiser trying just to sell their goods. Also, once they generate customer interest, they mostly don’t get back to their queries and cultivate delay. In other words, they are simply focused on selling and educating their customers is of least importance for them. As a result, the customers are left frowning as they do not feel valued.

Offering value means addressing your customers’ desires. And it’s all about how they perceive what’s important. The best solution to this problem is to reach out to the customers wherever they are and let them know what they are interested in. Further, it’s advisable to be consistent with the engagement.

In order for customer engagement to work effectively, your team must know your buyer. And that goes beyond the usual demographics, like annual revenue, company size, and location.

At Global Vision Technology, we bridge the gap between business and technology. We drive business results through innovation, creativity and technology, by identifying your challenges and providing meaningful insights to meet your business objectives. Global Vision Technology has become progressively more complex as technologies and processes advance. We bridge the gap between marketing & technology, and manage your digital transformation.

Poor marketing strategies

This is yet another mistake that most startups make. They tend to jump on a bandwagon owing to the mentality- if it worked for our competitors, it’ll surely work for us!

More than a quarter (26%) of marketers reported having no clear strategy at all, or at least none that they could articulate. They reported that while they might enjoy the occasional success, essentially, they’re relying on luck more than anything else. I find this is the case all the time. Clients (and just as many enterprise level ones as small to midsize ones) often don’t want to pay for strategy–they want to pay for tactics, without any kind of a strategy in place.

annoying the customer. Even if they do, they use negative verbatim when communicating. Well, it’s time for a reality check. What works for others may not really work for you. So, instead of just following the flock of sheep, conduct a thorough research and find out where your target audience is spending their time. Dig deeper into their interests and find out how they communicate with each other or what events they attend.

This will not only help you reach out to your target audience in the most effective way, it will also help grow exposure to your business. Tactics alone aren’t enough. You have to have a strategy (or multiple strategies) in place connecting your various marketing initiatives and powering one another if you want them to deliver results.

A marketing plan devised for a business should be organized in a way, such that it complements the goals and resources of the organization. But many businesses become over ambitious and go for extreme marketing campaigns that are not necessary for their business type. This leads to depletion of funds, which can be used for other purposes.

At Global Vision Technology Our actionable insights and creative storytelling inform strategies that deliver results. Global vision Technology leverages our digital experience, analytics expertise, and creative talent to build marketing strategies that deliver exceptional results. In a landscape of disruption, our team blends the art and science of strategy, seizing opportunities through actionable insights and powerful storytelling.

chasing unqualified leads

Businesses that sell to other businesses often employ a lead-scoring system to determine what leads should be sent to the sales team, and what leads should be held for further nurturing. If the lead-scoring system is not working properly, that may mean the sales team is being sent unqualified leads, and its members may lose faith in the marketing team. Another possibility: The sales team is not being sent qualified leads, and therefore the sales team will be unable to hit quota.

The criteria for the lead scoring system should constantly be reviewed to ensure that the right leads are sent, while leads that are not a fit are kept for nurturing.

All types of businesses can and should employ a lead-nurturing system based on email workflows (also called automated emails). E commerce businesses that send out a regular newsletter can engage customers that might otherwise forget about the brand; and B2B businesses that send well-timed automated emails can engage prospects just in the nick of time.

Ensure that your business has a healthy lead-nurturing system in place to generate customers consistently over the long run. At Global Vision Technology, we apply the latest marketing automation tools (for sending/tracking messages, studying customer behavior, checking website activity etc.) to drive traffic to your website, and deliver personalized, targeted messages to customers. Global Vision Technology is a lead nurturing agency that offer Lead Nurturing software to generate a deep understanding of customer needs & deliver powerful results.

Generalizing Individual Customer Outcomes

Creating a formula that fits everyone’s needs can save you time. However, if you apply the same logic to customer success, you’ll end up with dissatisfied customers who receive generic guidance. Since personalization is a crucial element of meeting customer needs, offering generic experiences will defy the purpose of your strategy. Your CSMs need to treat every customer outcome separately, responding according to the needs and wants of each individual.

To avoid this error, make sure that your team has sufficient knowledge of the customer they’re working with. Take into account their goals, and don’t forget to set specific KPIs for every individual contact in your CRM. Doing so will help you respond to your customers faster and offer personalized guidance.

All customers want to be able to quantify outcomes. Your customers most likely believe that small changes in reducing things like unplanned downtime, increasing velocity, or improving capital productivity make a big difference to their bottom line, so the notion of providing service solutions like “productivity” and “wing-to-wing” offerings are not only making software and ecosystem plays valuable, they are truly meeting the needs and goals of your customers.

At Global Vision Technology, we combine data and creativity to produce multi-channel campaigns, and global digital experiences that resonate with your customers on the right platforms, at the right time. Our outcome-based approach enables you to find new customers, engage with them and, ultimately, convert them. And once we’ve got them on-board, we’ll help you to keep your clients engaged and make them brand advocates.

Conclusion

The best solution to this problem is to reach out to the customers wherever they are and let them know what they are interested in. Further, it’s advisable to be consistent with the engagement. Avoiding all these mistakes can surely help the startups survive in this era of harsh competition! Contact us to know more!

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