Time to Get A Job?
For anyone out there who enjoys a non-traditional work set up, this author included, the threat of a typical job sounds worse than a week long marathon of Ishtar and Waterworld. Were we the prototypical affiliate, who should start calling themselves customer acquisition hacker, we suspect the feeling would mirror ours but be even worse. That is, of course, if any of the customer acquisition hackers exist. As we’ve been discussing in the past weeks, one of the unexpected consequences of this new world, one that offers enough money to get started and potential prestige to startup founders, is a seemingly smaller and smaller pool of marketers building and hacking their way to profit from the CPA space. Besides having fewer marketers, it has meant that we have fewer offers as well. The good news is that for current marketers and current networks, this brain drain could actually be a good thing. Just as with the education space, our space is still needed, but the model might need some iterating.
Customer Acquisition. If we were to distill the cpa space, its expertise and strength at the end of the day is customer acquisition. When touting certain subscription based services, though, it’s easy to think just about the metrics. Both sides have been guilty of that, thinking only in terms of how many and how much instead of what the person gets for their money. What they really have been doing, since almost day one, is connecting businesses with their potential customers in a fashion that both helps the business scale and reduces risk. If we start with that mindset and not one of just arbitrage or continuity, we have a bright future.
Turning the Model on Its Head. Media is not cheap and for the most part, the major platforms have removed the obvious and easy forms of arbitrage. That leaves generally two options. Option one – stick with what you have and tweak for the better (or in this case worse).That means a combination of a) ever increasingly misleading funnels to bump conversion rates b) a higher priced end product to nudge lifetime value, and/or c) alternative traffic channels. When you do this for products that have government regulations and implications, the result is not only bad for the user but the marketer.
Option two is mining in uncharted territories. As a result of all the marketers going out to build their own product instead of market someone else’s, we have a huge number of startups that desperately need customer acquisition assistance. Here’s the problem. Many don’t have money, and many don’t have a working system.
This is easier said than done, but here’s what we’d do and it applies to the networks as well as individual marketers.
A. Become really close with the incubators, accelerators, and startup funds.
(i) Almost every incubator and accelerator has a mentor network. There are lots of superstars, but never enough who can help the companies navigate free and paid channel. Become a mentor.
(ii) Go to the demo days that the incubators put on and look for those that have promise. Reach out to them.
(iii) Join Angel List. It’s an unbelievable platform that has become part kickstarter part Facebook pages for startups. Those who want to raise money don’t direct potential investors to their website. They send them to their Angel List profile. There are probably more than 1000 companies, with more being added all the time.
B. Think outside the box. What we really mean is be patient. This strategy is not for those who need or want to make the quick buck. It’s for those who have time, resources, and ideally some money. As most startups can’t pay with cash, you won’t make initial money that way. What they do have is equity. A network or an individual could work with one of these companies, help them develop their funnel, the metrics, and then become, in the case of the network, the exclusive provider of that offer, or if an individual marketer, their head of user acquisition. As they help the companies grow, they also help their stake in the company become worthwhile. If they decide to help invest in that company, then they have doubled down on that effort.
Perhaps it is wishful thinking that any in our space can make a concerted effort to farm instead of just harvest the already ripe crops. For years, though, we’ve been wanting to find slightly new ways to fill the performance marketing funnel. Those in the space will continue to come up with products for the space, but to get truly big, either we have to hope people come to us or we have to find a way to get to them.
