User Acquisition Challenges: Discoverability, Fraud and Fragmentation

A business cannot solely depend on organic traffic for customer acquisition. Some small businesses also find the cost of customer acquisition to be enormous. Is there a delicate balance to this tightrope? 

Each day, two people who tackle this challenge are Sahil Deswal, Growth and Marketing Head at Times Internet, and Mohit Gupta, ex-CMO at FabHotels. In discussion with MoEngage, they break down the benefits of paid channels, the role of referrals, and share hidden gems to acquire new customers and scale any idea.

You can find some of the fascinating points of this chat here: 

Selecting The Right Acquisition Channel 

The first thing to learn about customer acquisition is that there is no “one-size-fits-all solution.” A brand could often find itself battling between the product side and the marketing side. They have to pick and choose parameters that provide the right acquisition channel for both. 

The brand also has to understand what the product is and what market it caters to very vividly. The density of its end-users in a channel will help brands know how they must invest in a specific domain.  

This selection also depends on the stage of the company. Even if a company is unfunded, they will push to friends and family for new acquisitions.  After they reach close to one-lakh users, they can go back to the fundamentals and pick and choose the proper channels. 

Most companies should also focus on free traffic channels like search engine optimisation, referral, and a lot of content marketing. 

Acquisition From Referrals at Scale 

Referrals are one of the most used tools for free acquisitions but do they work at scale? And how long can a company use this as a medium? The answer to this lies within the products. 

A brand will need to know if the product can trigger referral. This knowledge will only come from a significant target demographic and many sets of data points on them. The product has to meet the needs of the consumer accurately. 

“Inherent virality is bound to happen to any product or service that meets customer needs,” says Mohit. Not being able to win virality is the first indicator that the product isn’t massy, and it will work for a very fine niche. 

The ideal example for this is Uber. The referral model works for them because they can solve a need, and provide an incentive to the users. The same will not work for a platform that sells content. This difference is because the transactions become a one-way reference. The incentive here is getting the content app. 

Companies in such a situation can use influencers as a medium for a referral. An influencer finds inherent value in a product, and they know a way to make it sound like an excellent product to the followers.    

Measuring the efficacy of paid channels

A venture capitalist in silicon valley once said, “Every dollar a company makes ends up going to Google, Amazon, or Facebook.” This reality occurs because a business cannot dominate without the help of such a platform. 

Mohit takes the example of travel and hospitality. In India alone, this space remains filled with many players. Online Travel Agents like Make My Trip and Cleartrip, Meta Search engines, and independent brands like OYO, FAB, and much more — all make up this ecosystem. All of these players are fighting for the same users. 

A brand thus remains undiscovered if the ignoring paid channels. “In India, eight-to-ten million customers are traveling and looking for accommodations at any time,” says Mohit, “and everyone is trying to enquire about the same places.”

The only way to make the most of your paid channels is to focus on retention and ensure each spend is worth it. 

“There was a time when organic was high; now paid avenues to give more installs. Organic installs have gone down 10%,” says Sahil from Times Group. Brands need to look at operations both from a product lens and marketing lens, then ensure each penny spent is going for the right reasons. 

Growth Hacks For Minimal Spends 

There are three avenues a brand can consider to gain higher accusations at a low cost. 

– App Store Optimisation 

Most companies merely look at ASO as a hygiene step, but they can derive a lot more from this level of optimisations. Companies listed as applications should develop some form of science around this process. 

Performing AB-Testing on the appellations and making small changes can lead to more people reaching your doors. These can be small changes, thumbnails, screenshots, reworking the meta-data, etc. 

Times group notices a 100% rise in installs when they implied a stringent practice of re-working and polishing ASOs. The applications store does not just look at factors like install volumes; they seek quality factors. Parameters like keywords density, app rating, and un-install value will help an app reach the top-three list. 

– Reduce Steps To The Product 

Next step to ensure the acquisition is to rescue the actions from the first engagement to the product. You don’t want people dropping off the funnel because they notice a lot of steps. This hurdle is a definite way to de-motivate users. 

Sahil from Times Group gives the example of vernacular advertising. This advertising should not lead to a general home page; that would confuse a user. You have to ensure tested destinations each time. 

– Study Your Data

“The biggest growth hack remains in the data of your business,” says Mohit. Look at data at all steps of the funnel and ask the hard questions. Ask yourself why there is a change in the user journey.  

If you can determine the exact drop-off points, you will automatically know what changes need to be made at that stage to restart the process. 

Final Thoughts, 

The critical factor in avoiding any acquisition challenges starts with having a defined user journey. Find spots of drop-offs and then find out why people are leaving. This simple step will give most of the answers. 

It will also help companies understand how much focus they need to put into retention and acquisition.