Customer Acquisition
Almost any channel can produce a first cohort of customers. The commercial question is which routes stay viable when the budget behind them triples.
The problem this work solves.
Early results are often produced by a narrow audience that was always going to convert. Spend more and the cost per customer climbs, because the cheap demand has been used up and nothing has replaced it.
This work is about knowing where that ceiling sits before the budget commitment is made, and finding the next route while the current one is still working.
How ProData works on it.
The work moves from question to evidence to volume, and it is worth resisting the urge to skip the middle part.
Define the customer
Not every acquired account is worth acquiring. The target is expressed in terms of the customers who stay, spend again, or reach the value the model depends on.
Map viable routes
Where the audience already is, what it currently costs to reach them there, and which routes are open to a business of this size.
Test at small scale
Each route gets a budget large enough to produce a readable answer and small enough that being wrong is affordable.
Read the economics
Acquisition cost against customer value, with the payback period stated. A higher cost per customer is often the better decision, and sometimes it is not.
Scale deliberately
Volume is added in steps, with efficiency checked at each one. The point of the exercise is to find the level where the route stops paying, before that level is reached with real money.
What the work covers.
Some of this is analysis and some of it is media. The two are not separable here. Scope is agreed per engagement, and not every item applies to every client.
- Audience and segment definition
- Channel and route testing
- Acquisition cost modelling
- Offer and proposition testing
- Conversion path review
- Cohort and retention analysis
- Customer value estimation
- Scaling plans and volume ceilings
- Creative development against segment
- Budget phasing
How measurement is handled.
Acquisition cost read on its own is close to meaningless. It only becomes a decision when it is placed against what the customer returns and how long that takes.
Where customer value data is thin, we work with the best available proxy and label it as one.
- Cost per acquired customer by route and by segment
- Cohort behaviour tracked past the first purchase or first month
- Payback period stated alongside acquisition cost
- Efficiency monitored as volume increases, not only at launch
- Quality of acquired customers compared across channels
Where this service is applied.
Work that usually sits alongside it.
Talk to us about customer acquisition.
If the first channel has stopped scaling and there is no obvious second one, that is the conversation to have.