Acquisition channels (also known as marketing channels or traction channels) are the means by which you acquire new prospects and customers.

A core focus of your growth marketing strategy should therefore be identifying the most successful marketing channel(s) for customer acquisition. You need to identify which channels allow you to profitably attract new clients in a way that has a measurable and significant impact on your business.

Being strategic with acquisition channels

Whilst your marketing activity may involve many different marketing channels, your customer acquisition is likely heavily skewed to one core channel.

Customer acquisition channels from the power law of distribution. Also commonly known as the Pareto principle (or 80-20 rule) this states that roughly 80% of your results in terms of customer acquisition likely come from 20% of your efforts.

Don’t diversify yourself in too many channels; it’s like a death sentence. You should be focusing on the single and most efficient one.

Brian Balfour

How to evaluate marketing channels

Clearly, if 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort, choosing the best acquisition channel for your business is high-leverage activity.

Whilst there is no "right acquisition channel" for your business we have included a number of questions below in order to help you narrow down the selection.

• Where is your ideal customer? Do they spend time in this channel?

• Input & output time - the upfront time required to start running experiments versus the time it takes to start getting data

• What is the cost of acquisition in the channel, and how does this compare to customer lifetime value? (known as your LTV:CAC ratio)

• Does the channel provide fast payback (like ads) or slow payback (like SEO)?

• How scalable is the channel, and does this matter at your current stage?

• Are you looking for a pull (capturing demand) or push (generating demand) approach? Are people actively searching for your solution(s)?

• Is this an online or offline channel?

• How mature is the channel? Can you compete, and win, in the channel?

• Control - the ability to turn the channel on or off at will

• Product/channel fit - is your product or service built to take advantage of a particular channel?

Acquisition channel testing

In the popular growth hacking book Traction, Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares describe 19 customer acquisition channels (they call them traction channels) that businesses can use to acquire new customers.

Rather than copying what competitors do, or acquiring customers in the same way you have in the past, the book goes on to describe an approach known as The Bullseye Framework to test these different channels and uncover what works for your specific business. Clearly, this is an excellent use-case for experimentation.

The 20 customer acquisition channels

According to the book, there are a total of 19 marketing channels that every business should consider and test. These are as follows, we delve into each one in-depth below.

• Targeting Blogs

• Public Relations

• Unconventional PR

• Search Engine Marketing

• Social & Display Ads

• Offline Ads

• Search Engine Optimisation

• Content Marketing

• Email Marketing

• Viral Marketing

• Engineering as Marketing

• Business Development

• Sales

• Affiliate Programs

• Existing Platforms

• Trade Shows

• Offline Events

• Speaking Engagements

• Community Building

• Conversion Rate Optimisation

Acquisition channels in Growth Method

Marketing channels are a core part of Growth Method app functionality and are available in Ideas, Experiments, Playbooks and Reporting sections of the product.

Whilst there is no enforced framework or approach within the app, this does allow you to sort and filter by channel, as well as utilise marketing channels in your reports - for example, to see which channels deliver the most successful experiments for your business.

Resources

Recommended additional reading.

Final thoughts

Think of distribution channels as pokemon characters. They each have a set of rules and a list of superpowers. You can't change how that distribution channel behaves, the rules, or its superpowers.

Instead, find the distribution channels you can enslave with your product's attributes, your team's execution, or finding a blue ocean to grow within.

Kieran Flanagan, SVP Marketing, HubSpot

Got questions? Ping me on LinkedIn or on Twitter.