There’s no shortage of bad advice in business, or in the world as a whole.
Some of the worst advice you’ll hear as a business owner is to find one acquisition channel, stick with it, master it, and ignore everything else. Usually, you hear this stupid shit from someone selling a service related to that specific channel, although you hear it from other people as well.
Before I get into it, I’m obviously not saying that someone starting a business should launch paid ads, create content, do outreach, build partnerships, and attack every other possible channel on day one.
Starting with one acquisition channel makes sense. Remaining completely dependent on that one channel forever does not.
You should add these methods over time as your business gains more knowledge, money, experience, and social proof.
In general, there are four main ways to acquire clients:
Paid ads
Content
Outreach
Partnerships
Almost anything you do to acquire clients will fall into one of these four broad buckets.
Cold email, cold calling, and direct messages fall under outreach.
Organic social media, newsletters, podcasts, and SEO fall under content.
Referrals, affiliates, and strategic relationships fall under partnerships.
Going back to what I said before, someone who is just starting could realistically begin with any of the four. However, a very common progression is:
Outreach
Content
Paid ads
Partnerships
The reason is that when you’re first starting out, you usually have no money or knowledge, but you have a lot of time. Outreach makes sense because it allows you to compensate for your lack of money with effort.
Once you start learning, getting results, and building a real business, you can create content based on your knowledge and experience.
Once outreach and content begin producing significant revenue, you have enough money and enough understanding of your market to start running paid ads effectively.
Once those channels have generated social proof, case studies, customers, attention, and credibility, you become much more attractive to potential partners.
That being said, you eventually want to have all four acquisition channels operating inside your business.
There are at least three major reasons why I believe this is true.
Multiple Acquisition Channels Reduce Risk
The first reason is that having multiple acquisition channels reduces the risk in your business.
If you ever want to sell your company, this can lead to a higher enterprise value. But even if you never plan to sell, it’s simply good business practice.
If you have all your eggs in one basket and something goes wrong, you can effectively be sent back to zero.
You see this happen all the time:
• Ad accounts get banned.
• Social media accounts get banned.
• Algorithms change.
• Cold email and outreach infrastructure gets burned.
• Platforms change their rules.
• Partnerships fall apart.
• Acquisition costs suddenly increase.
If you rely on only one channel and that channel stops working, you no longer have a reliable method of acquiring clients.
It’s also important to diversify within each channel over time.
Having content on Instagram is better than having no content, but you’re still exposed if Instagram is your only distribution platform.
Running Facebook ads is better than running no ads, but you’re still exposed if Meta is your only source of paid traffic.
You want diversification across acquisition channels and, eventually, across the platforms within those channels.
Each Channel Makes the Others More Effective
The second reason is that each acquisition channel makes the others more effective.
What do I mean by that?
Let’s say you’re doing cold email.
If the people you’re emailing have already seen your ads, watched your videos, read your content, or heard about you through someone they trust, they are much more likely to respond favorably than if you were just some anonymous person appearing in their inbox.
Likewise, imagine that someone sees your Facebook ad and clicks on your profile. If they find a large amount of useful and relevant content, they’re much more likely to trust you, click through, book a call, or take whatever action you want them to take.
If the profile is blank, they’re much more likely to leave.
The same thing happens with partnerships.
A potential partner who sees that you have a strong audience, a recognizable brand, successful advertising campaigns, and a proven outreach operation will take you much more seriously.
These channels do not operate independently. It’s not a situation where: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4.
Paid ads, content, outreach, and partnerships are all force multipliers for one another. The combined effect can be dramatically greater than the sum of the individual channels.
Your ads strengthen your outreach.
Your content strengthens your ads.
Your partnerships strengthen your credibility.
Your outreach gives you more customers, knowledge, case studies, and ideas to use in your content.
Everything feeds everything else. You’re expanding your surface area in the mind of your target market, and that is always a good thing.
Different People Can Only Be Reached Through Different Methods
The third and final reason, and one I never used to include when explaining this concept, is that certain people in every niche cannot be reached effectively through certain methods.
Some people simply don’t use Instagram, which means they’ll never see your Instagram content or Meta ads.
Other people never answer their phones, so cold calling will not reach them.
Some people barely use email, which means cold email will not be effective.
Some people don’t consume business content, regardless of how useful it is.
Others will only do business with someone based on a referral or trusted introduction. For those people, partnerships and referrals may be the only methods that work.
Different members of your target market consume information, make decisions, and build trust in different ways.
When you rely on one acquisition channel, you are not only increasing the risk in your business. You are also making yourself invisible to a significant percentage of the market.
One channel may help you get started, but it will rarely allow you to reach everyone you could potentially serve.
If you aren’t eventually using paid ads, content, outreach, and partnerships, you’re leaving a significant amount of money in your target market on the table. You’re also making your business more fragile, weakening the effectiveness of your existing acquisition efforts, and limiting the number of potential clients you can reach.
Focus is important when you’re starting.
Dependence is dangerous once you’ve grown.
A mature business should not rely on a single acquisition channel. It should build an acquisition ecosystem in which every channel reduces risk, expands its reach, and makes every other channel more effective.
Talk later,
Matt
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