Top 10 Problems I Observe In My Projects: #3

Problem #10 = New Items Are Too Expensive
Problem #9 = Discounts Drive Down Price Of Existing Winners
Problem #8 = Relying On 1-2 Customer Acquisition Channels
Problem #7 = Has To Be Right
Problem #6 = Seasonal Misalignment
Problem #5 = Email Clicks And Online Clicks Not Linked To Purchase Database
Problem #4 = Not Killing Existing Products
Problem #3 = Too Few New Customers

You've heard me talk about this topic a thousand times, haven't you?

And yet, I run across this problem over and over and over again.

Remember my customer acquisition presentation from last year? Two-hundred slides with actionable ideas. You know what happened when I shared the presentation with many of you?

We're gonna keep battling this problem ... too few new customers and the ones we find are too expensive (though Google / Facebook / Co-Ops sure get paid, don't they?) so we keep cutting back to "optimize our ad budget" and by "optimizing our ad budget" we shrink our business and then we get yelled at.

We desperately need the low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition programs that startups and early-season online brands employ. As channels dry up and as Amazon consumes our businesses we'll need low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition programs more than ever.

When I tell you that I have clients who have significant success on this front, many in the audience shut down ... each slide is presented, each slide is criticized, each slide is rejected ... next ... next ... won't work for us ... you don't understand, we're unique and different.

If you are unique and different, then you have a low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition program that capitalizes on your unique differences, right?

If you aren't unique / different, you rent names from catalog co-ops, from Google, from Facebook.

We need to get away from the latter, don't we?

It's too bad too few of us want to get away from catalog co-ops / Google / Facebook.