The 7 Growth?Levers

Which Should Your Startup Pull?First?

Congrats on that bright new business idea!?

As you plan market domination and startup launch legends,?

it’s tempting to attempt every customer acquisition strategy at once from social media ads to tradeshow networking campaigns. With limited time and resources,?

however,?

early-stage companies risk stunting momentum from trying to do too much.

Rather than playing startup jack-of-all-trades, identify the one repeatable growth machine actually fueling successes similar to your envisioned venture?—?then double down relentlessly. As other motions develop later, prime that core engine first.

We outline the 7 strategic plays for acquiring and converting customers, highlighting ideal users and tradeoffs of each lever to inform startup founders’ focus…

1. Inbound Marketing

What It Is: Creating helpful content like blogs, guides and videos designed to attract and nurture customer interest over time through topics they find valuable. Return visitors transition into leads through eventual conversion points like gated offers.

Best for companies with complex products requiring lengthy research and trust-building. Works for both B2B and B2C although more patient investment.?

Compounding effects over time.

Tradeoffs: Slow momentum initially. Significant content production without immediate payoff.?

Pulling visitors takes savvy SEO and promotion.?

It still requires conversion optimization finesse once attracted.

Famous Examples:?

HubSpot grew entirely inbound before adding outbound sales.?

Moz built a 9-figure business through quality SEO education content. Both solved market confusion through teaching.

Try This If: Lengthy sales cycles around considered purchases suit “pull” demand generation attracting audiences already seeking help. Can integrate well later with other strategies below once authority is established.

2. Paid Digital Marketing

What It Is: Purchasing ads through platforms like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok to promote offerings to targeted audiences filtered by behaviours, interests and location.?

Appearing alongside content they consume helps capture attention amid distraction.

Best For: Direct response consumer products or transactional business services bought on impulse or requiring quick turnarounds. Can accelerate brand familiarity fast through testing messages at scale.

Tradeoffs: Ongoing ad spending without lasting assets. Risk of rising cost per click/views over time. Detailed targeting research/optimization is a must to avoid waste. It needs supreme creative and conversion performance to sustain.

Famous Examples: Wayfair became an e-commerce giant thanks to experimental paid search. Multimillion-dollar startups like Bombas ethically sourced socks fund rapid growth on Facebook/Instagram solely.

?But requires sophistication few emulate out the gates.

Try This If: Immediate revenue imperative and potential to mass produce. Ad creative testing frameworks in place. Clear customer acquisition cost (CAC) target thresholds are known based on the market.?

Just ensure excellent site, product and margin fundamentals first.

3. Outbound Prospecting

What It Is: Proactively initiating contact via personalized emails, social media outreach, cold calls, direct mail or field sales visits to curated prospects matching target audience attributes like seniority profiles at specific company types.

Best For: Considered high-ticket B2B products around complex organizational decisions requiring heavy sales nurturing to influence teams with budgets.

Tradeoffs: Slow and labor-intensive process proving ROI. Requires CRM and conversation automation systems to scale effectively. Big talent recruitment and optimization challenges until formulas repeat. But shortcuts backfire through a lack of authentic rapport.

Famous Examples: Salesforce famously deployed aggressive outbound reps since its founding. Oracle made big-game hunting enterprise sales integral to trillion-dollar success even amidst digital age complaints it feels hassling for customers.?

Done right, however, it works.

Try This If: Long onboarding sales cycles but lucrative expansion potential post-implementation makes ACV math attractive. Just know that this lever ONLY works through remarkable SAAS excellence and surgical nurturing skills. Brute force fails.

4. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

What It Is: Flip outbound prospecting methodology upside down via hyper-targeted multi-channel campaigns focused on high-value niche accounts rather than mass engagement. Use coordinated personalized promotion, events and sales nurturing tailored specifically to influential decision-makers guiding lucrative account expansion possibilities.

Best For: Mid-market and enterprise-level B2B looking to land coveted big fish anchoring stable lucrative recurring revenue that offsets significant early acquisition investments through expansion over time.

Tradeoffs: The most expensive, operationally complex growth play requires extensive sales and marketing alignment. Long runways to first clients with no guarantee of conversions. Significant account profiling and campaign personalization craftsmanship are needed across channels to stand out amidst the noise.

Famous Examples: Everyone from IBM to boutique IT services firms focuses growth resources around orchestrating account-specific nurture streams aiming to land and then grow key logos into lasting partnerships.?

The business world revolves around elephant hunting.

Try This If: You possess adequate funding, credibility and operational maturity to merit serious ABM undertakings. This lever NEEDS built authority and remarkability first since outreach starts at the top targeting senior roles managing hefty budgets. Discipline to pick ideal contender accounts, not vanity names, is essential too.?

Sophisticated stuff.

5. Community Building

What It Is: Creating engaged user/customer communities through forum discussions, review sections, meet-up events and exclusive membership perks. Facilitate sharing solutions, insider access and bonding between true fans. Adds multiplier power through word-of-mouth referrals and insights to guide development.

Best For: Audience-supported products like creator tools, gaming apps or connecting users with niche common interests music, and healthcare conditions requiring ongoing trust/dialogue between company and specialist users collaborating alongside business-building.

Tradeoffs: The “field of dreams” approach without certainty. Attempting communities too early risks ghost towns with tumbleweeds before adequate base adoption. Also takes dedicated resources to produce events, and content and facilitates conversations before seeing a return.?

Hard to justify focus when still seeking product-market fit.

Famous Examples: Gaming brands like Nintendo and Xbox catalyze mega growth through diehard community cultivation. Developer platforms like GitHub and Slack embedded power user feedback driving viral adoption long before paid marketing emphasis. LinkedIn’s early dominance came through hyper-engaged professionals seeking career edge.

Try This If: Credibility established with a beachhead niche audience large enough to convene and engage. Willingness to nurture open dialogue and transparency with power users. Combining this with separate leverage points will accelerate reach. But risky as a standalone early pillar overinvesting limited time against impact potential.

6. Partnership Programs

What It Is: Forming formal mutually beneficial affiliation with compatible businesses reaching the same audiences but without direct competition. Jointly co-promote through creator collaborations, channel sales agreements, integration app marketplaces, affiliates programs and stacked vendor solutions building on another’s core offerings under one umbrella.

Best For: Companies establishing authority in a niche but seeking catapult distribution reach through plugging into partners’ existing networks and users amplified through collaboration.

Tradeoffs: Splitting revenue and effort two ways. Complex to negotiate desirable deals, then manage external business relationships at early chaotic stages. Partners might better focus by directing energy towards their own organic engine first before entering revenue share arrangements unless accretive reach is proven and significant enough.

Famous Examples: Amazon Marketplace and app stores like Shopify drove exponential growth matching developed audiences to emerging tools. Stripe’s stack collaborations accelerate payment innovation backed by its reliable API.?

But even partnerships need maturity around priorities, processes and trust on both sides.

Try This If: Core offering provides scalable layer complementing established platforms possibly underserved by current solutions. Seek win-win integrations before diversions. The most leveraged companies first gained footing through primary engines before pursuing partnerships multiplying market scope.?

Don’t let allure distract from proving independently viable first.

7. Product-Led Growth (PLG)

What It Is: Designing the sign-up and onboarding journey for (usually) SaaS products to be so intuitively engaging, that users can self-serve full value?—?seeing amazing features solving their needs before needing sales assistance maximizing accounts.?

Creates built-in virality and upgrades when delighted.

Best For: Tools seeking swift organic adoption more than enterprise budgets upfront. Creates flowing top-funnel lead velocity surpassing outbound while delighting users.

Tradeoffs: Requires supremely elegant, almost addictive product experience and self-evident usefulness out of the gates. Neglecting onboarding intuitiveness fails the PLG premise. It also needs in-app touchpoints nudging sharing and expansion built-in to perpetuate adoption cycles.

Famous Examples: So many contemporary B2B titans like Slack, Calendly, Loom and Hopin built early explosions going product-led with sensational utilities people naturally shared. Viral waitlists and social word-of-mouth allow scaling without imposing sales friction.?

But the excellence assumption here can’t be overstated?—?bad products won’t earn invites.

Try This If: Solving an urgent problem so effectively that simplicity, aha moments and ease of collaborating impel referrals. Avoid otherwise since poor usability means lukewarm reception. Hard to sustain off product-led motion alone later as expansion and enterprise versions still need human translation. So know when to add additional levers.

Picking Your Priority Engine

Early days demand to focus on choosing a growth linchpin before diluting efforts across every avenue imaginable all at once. Resist temptation by launching every play simultaneously despite the surface appeal and glamour of so-called “growth hacking”. Establish a secure engine patients can rely on as a solid pipeline source sustaining the business through ebbs, flows and pivots in strategy to come.

No universal blueprint guarantees outcomes due to variables like market type, business model and funding constraints. But once identified, feed resources disproportionately to the channel demonstrating repeatable results meeting revenue benchmarks and scalability prospects given team size.

As hockey great Wayne Gretzky famously put it?

— “Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been.”?

Through the chaos, track underlying mechanics driving sustainable expansion rather than reacting to superficial trends. Anchor there before layering on additional motions later.

So choose your strategic base carefully through wisdom?—?then double down on perfecting THAT system first.?

The rest builds over time.

and remember…

BrandPublic is here to make sure you get a taste of success.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. Let’s make a fantastic one!

Good Vibes, stay inspired… and remember, you are awesome!

Radu Florin ??????