START HERE You outgrow the competition by acquiring more customers

Why is it that some marketing teams crush their goals every quarter while most of us have almost no room for error?

Is it their product? Are they doing ads better? Do they have a better market? Is it the messaging?

There’s one key difference—they have a system for repeatable customer acquisition.

But we feel pressured to scale, right?

So we answer the call by continually doing more. We add more paid channels, we create more content, we shift our strategy from lead generation to demand generation, we send one more webinar reminder email.

With each new tactic, campaign, and channel our acquisition costs rise and our marketing effectiveness drops.

That’s because…

B2B marketing has changed in a big way

In the late 90’s and early 20’s it was all about generating leads through gated assets and passing them to sales. Sales would reach out, shift buyers beliefs, help buyers understand the value of the product, craft an offer, and close the sale.

From 2015 to 2020 there was a surge in affordable customer acquisition channels (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc). During this phase it was all about demand generation. Marketing would build awareness, educate on buyer pains, and then focus on capturing intent with demos and trial offers.

2000-2015 Lead Generation

Marketing would capture and score leads and pass them over to sales for marketing influenced revenue.

2015-2020 Demand Generation

Marketing would build awareness and capture demand driving marketing sourced revenue.

Both of these approaches center around building a B2B marketing funnel. You build awareness, educate the market on a POV and pain points, offer up a solution, and they convert.

It’s time to stop viewing your marketing as a funnel.

The funnel is a problem because of the friction it adds. And when times get tougher- friction is your marketing’s worst enemy.

It’s no longer about a funnel that adds friction—winning B2B marketing teams are creating a frictionless customer acquisition formula that creates repeatable and compounding results.

Reduces friction & compounds

The formula focuses on building repeatable and compounding results with a more defensible form of customer acquisition.

Vs.

Increases friction & acquisition cost

Funnels are putting more in at the top to get more at the bottom more channels, more spend, more people, more tactics, more awareness.

Time for a reality check

The promote and pray strategies driven from funnel building waste more budget than anything in B2B marketing. It doesn’t matter if it’s lead generation or deamnd

Funnels Increase Acquisition Cost

The cost to build a funnel is rising exponentially. With total acquisition cost up 50% & cost per lead up 91% in just 5 years.

Funnels Drive Linear Growth

Funnels don’t represent how B2B companies actually grow. Funnels require you put more in at the top to try and get more at the bottom.

Funnels Are Not Defensible

Marketing funnels are built off a collection of tactics that are copied creating diminishing returns—ensuring that your acquisition strategy is never defensible.

The winning formula for repeatable customer acquisition

Assuming, of course, there is product/market fit, the rest of the organization is set up to deliver, etc. You know, the stuff outside marketing’s control.

There’s three ingredients winning marketing teams are leveraging to win and outgrow the competition with customer acquisition:

Distribution

A primary way you get in front of your target customer that builds habits of consumption and compounds on itself.

‘Aha’ Moments

A brand narrative target customers consume (similar to this page) about a monumental shift in their world that makes them want to change.

Core Value

Ways for target customers to taste the value of what you’re offering before they buy, continually reducing friction over time.

The Low Friction Acquisition Formula

This is why it’s about understanding your formula for acquiring new customers, not just “how do I spend more efficiently in paid acquisition”.

The Benefits of Low Friction Acquisition

Compounding Results

Low Friction Acquisition focuses on metrics that drive compounding and repeatable results, not linear funnel-like results.

Defensible Acquisition

Distribution is the only defensible part of customer acquisition and Low Friction Acquisition puts distribution as the focus.

Lower Acquisition Cost

When you have less friction than the funnel you acquire more customers at a lower cost, then you can reinvest it into more acquisition.

Faster Growth

When you acquire more customers you have more customers to learn from which means better messaging, ads, landing pages, and marketing plays.

“More than an agency – a true extension of your team!”

– Dana Dohse, VP of Marketing, Cleartrace

“Elevate Demand is the real deal! Having hired MANY digital agencies who push the usual guidance of more ads, better landing pages, etc., I have finally found an agency that can deliver on business growth.”

The B2B Customer Acquisition Agency

Now what you do next depends on you.

Stuck with customer acquisition? Book a 1-on-1 call with our founder and let’s start building your Low Friction Formula and determine next steps.

Want to know more? Check out how we can help you and more about our approach.

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