In the long run, whoever can pay the most to acquire a customer, wins.
If you want to be able to pay more than your competitor in the long run, just two things have to be in place:
1. you need an efficient growth process that can reliably get new customers. Not one-hit campaigns, not referrals – those aren’t predictable
2. you need to be retaining customers and have high LTV
Notice, funding and “lots of resources” aren’t on the list. If you can’t make growth work on a small scale, more ammunition won’t help.
The latter means you also have a decent product and can innovate. That’s a must, it’s the baseline, the ticket to play.
If that’s the case, then long-term growth and *repeatable* growth depend mainly on your ability to experiment your way to new avenues of growth and revenue.
In high ACV, Saas-land, here is what virtually all of these avenues of growth have in common:
1. knowing the ideal customer intimately, conducting ongoing qualitative market research
2. having killa’ positioning, a value proposition that really is unique for the appropriate target audiences
3. having go-to-market playbooks – sequences that warm-up, nurture and activate accounts
Thought leadership, SEO, “marketing strategy” and even branding are add-ons after you’ve nailed the fundamentals.
Your favorite guru might disagree with this, but it’s still true
