While “if you build it, they will come” may have worked for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, ask any startup owner and they’ll tell you building an audience for a new product or company is far more difficult.
Building an audience for your product requires more than just putting it out there and waiting for the world to show up. You need a strategic audience acquisition strategy to break through in a world where consumers have a million different things competing for their attention, and attention spans that are shorter than ever.
Of course, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Far better to learn from those that have been there, and done that. A recent Treehouse blog by Eric Siu offers tips on audience acquisition from eight startup founders that have managed to build audiences for their business, and have lessons to share.
Among the common themes? Traditional paid advertising isn’t usually the top strategy. To be successful, you need to understand your customer base and build a strong relationship with them. And understand that it won’t happen overnight; building that relationship takes time and trust.
Unbounce, a developer of web marketing tools, created a blog on day one to share information and tips of interest to its audience.
Click below to read the full article, and to get audience acquisition tips from the founders of startups such as BufferApp, Rafflecopter and Ginzametrics.