What's the last acquisition channel that failed for you?

Question

I'll start first:

Facebook Ads. We've realized it's simply too early to advertise there (most SaaS companies were optimizing for 12-20 months return on investment, so they could allow to spend much more to acquire a customer).

What about you?

Darko Williams · Accepted Answer

Another one:

Google Ads (for the same reason as Facebook Ads). We've noticed the more "scalable" a channel is, the more it fails for early-stage projects.

Sumit Datta [dwata] 👋 · Answer

I do not want to invest in ads, it goes against every piece of advice that I know of. What is failing for me at the moment is the outreach I do on LinkedIn. I know that the cold outreach mechanism actually works. What is failing is the volume.

Many successful founders say they had to reach out (Email/LinkedIn/etc) to 1000 people to get 20 real users. So 1 out of 50. This is tough ratio from a sheer effort/time needed point of view. So right now this is still not working for me, I just need to do more of it.

Sumit Datta [dwata] 👋 · Answer

@gilad_uziely Thanks Gilad, I will check it out.

David Oh · Answer

There is no bad acquisition channel unless fraud. Just fit and timing.

Melissa Kwan · Answer

Resale partners, tried this a few times, never worked. Only caused pain when I tried to get out of contracts that locked us into giving referral commission to customers we had to close ourselves but were "friends" of resale partners

Darko Williams · Answer

@dervieux_benoit There isn't a rule, but there are a few guidelines. And it really depends on the competition, I've seen some founders that succeded with AdWords on the first try because very little people were bidding for that keyword.

Sumit Datta [dwata] 👋 · Answer

@eddieaich I never use ads on social media. I think unless your brand is well known or you product problem is super acute, decision makers will not give much weight to an ad on LinkedIn. I simply make connections and have a chat. The response rate is super low but at least I know the model can work if I invest more hours. The connection is much more organic.

Sumit Datta [dwata] 👋 · Answer

@eddieaich Hello Eddie, I just checked Crucial Human. Nice landing page. Is the product as ready as in the video? Best of luck on that!

Sumit Datta [dwata] 👋 · Answer

@eddieaich Yeah that makes sense in a way. I am always unsure if companies want to use multiple tools, but I guess we already do that, so it works. The Stickies looks great and is one of those simple tools that people should immediately find helpful. Best of luck!

Darko Marko · Answer

Same thing. AdWords. Simply too competitive.

Vaibhav Namburi · Answer

@sumitdatta Been there wrt to time. Check MeetAlfred, using these guys for now to reach out for https://remoteworkly.co . They're not bad

Eddie H. · Answer

@sumitdatta Sumit, thank you and yes it is as ready as you see in the video. However, we are splitting the platform up into separate apps and selling them independently. We found through a few months of being in the market that users only use 1 or 2 of the 8 major components in the platform. Also, asking customers to completely drop their current productivity platform as a whole in favor of ours was too big of an ask. We're launching the first of those aforementioned 8 components next month - https://crucialhuman.com/products/stickies/.  Thanks again.

Chan Koh · Answer

@veebuv @sumitdatta Thank you! Just sent a request.

Eddie H. · Answer

LinkedIn was a nightmare. $0.30 CPC one day then $4.00 the next. They are overpriced and their algorithm does not pace your ads properly.

Quinn Osha · Answer

I also quickly found that Google/FB ads were much too expensive and not going to work (I ignored all the advice, yes, for about a week). My next failed channel was B2B trying to get organizers to sign on and host their car show - https://www.topmarq.com/events/ -  and promote their events. I also had a success rate with cold outreach of about 1/50. Lots of time and energy there. I eventually moved on but would be interested in knowing what other people's breaking point was. Eg. how many emails/linkedin messages did you send before moving on?
Now I'm on to direct to consumers with outreach at local shows. Will let you know how that goes!

What's the last acquisition channel that failed for you?

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