Let’s assume you’ve been working on a new cloud-based application for several months, have a few friendly customers, feel like product/market fit is getting close, and think it’s time to start creating the customer acquisition machine. You’ve read online about SEO, SEM, cold calling, trade shows, etc. Where do you begin? The best way to build a marketing plan is through a combination of top-down and bottom-up planning, just like with a bottom-up sales forecast, but in this case you don’t have enough data yet.
Here are seven ideas to start a customer acquisition machine:
- Write two blog posts per week
- Guest write an article or blog for another site two times per month
- Send 1-2 solid tweets per day
- Participate in two or more LinkedIn Groups each week
- Cold call 50 potential prospects per week
- Spend $100/week on Google AdWords
- Talk with at least two beta customers per week about what they like and don’t like and then ask for referrals
A customer acquisition machine is much more complex than this but it’s important to start with something and execute against it. Over time, results will emerge showing what is and isn’t working, so adjust accordingly.
What else? What are some other ideas to start a customer acquisition machine?
David Cummings on Startups 
I like the idea of building a small “freemium” offer as well. Similar to Rigor’s Speed Test and our Job Change Alerts product. We’ve received over 3000 leads this way.
Find blogs that are appropriate to your target customer segments and engage in discussions or offer helpful advice
Another idea would be leveraging Twitter hashtags that are relevant to the market that you are going after and actively engage in the conversations.