[Still Deep-Rooted] 5 Common Mistakes in Online Customer Acquisition That Small Business Owners Believe [Urban Legends]

From ACIDHOUSE, INC., this is Tetsuya Ashida.

This time, I want to take up five common mistakes in online customer acquisition that I noticed through questions from small business owners who have websites.

I have worked with the web for more than 15 years, and it's not unusual to meet people who believe these mistakes as if they were urban legends.

I hope this article helps you rethink your web strategy.

1. Products and services sell just because you built a website

This wasn't wrong in the period when "there were few websites and website users were growing steadily."

But now we live in an era when not only companies but also many individuals make money using the web, and these days nothing happens just because you open a website.

You need to go through these steps, but just building a website means you haven't even cleared "1. Get customers to find you".

In other words, nothing starts until you first run ads or draw in real-world customers.

2. Websites sell products and services for free

As I explained in 1., the first thing to do with a website is "bring customers to the website," but this can't be done for free.

That's because to draw in customers, advertising is essential for new customers, and for existing customers you need a benefit (an offer) even to get them to sign up for your newsletter, for example.

SEO and social media are often cited as free ways to attract customers.

Certainly, depending on how you do it, you can attract customers for free with SEO and social media. But using them to attract customers takes an enormous amount of time and effort now, unlike a while ago.

Even if it's free in monetary terms, considering the fact that "time is money" and the labor costs paid to the people running it, the cost-effectiveness is very poor.

Also, the providers of SEO and social media (Google and Facebook) suddenly change their rules, and "you suddenly stop being shown to customers" happens quite often. You must not rely on SEO and social media as your only lifeline.

Business is investment, and in the end, spending money and using paid advertising well is ultimately the most efficient approach.

3. Products and services sell if you list them on portal sites

A portal site is a collection of links that groups all kinds of websites by specific category or theme.

Yahoo! Japan, goo, Excite and others collect websites, while others such as Ekiten, Tabelog, Hot Pepper, and Rakuten let you be listed even without your own website.

Portal sites, too, were effective back when they had few registrations and SEO hadn't intensified.

But now the number of listed websites has become far too large, and the cost-effectiveness is getting worse even when you pay.

Of course, if you can secure a prominent spot on a portal site, it becomes easier to attract customers, but it requires more investment than before, and you must further clarify why customers should choose you over competitors inside and outside the portal site.

The reality is that portal sites must be approached even more strategically than running a website.

Also, relying too heavily on these portal sites for customers is a no-go. That's because they will only keep squeezing your profits.

4. Updating a free blog such as Ameba Blog

Many people write content on Ameba Blog equivalent to a website's "news" or "updates."

Plenty of people are doing the same thing, and you can hardly expect Ameba Blog or free blogs to bring SEO or business benefits.

Also, "news" and "updates" usually end with readers thinking "Huh, okay." Customers don't get as far as taking action.

In the first place, people who update Ameba Blog or free blogs tend to make "updating itself the goal". It is rare for them to go as far as tracking traffic and user actions and making improvements.

And while there has been a change in that Ameba Blog is opening up to commercial use, above all, what still hasn't changed is that the content copyright, the terms, and the CMS (freedom of editing) are all held by the operator (CyberAgent).

This means that even if you find a good improvement, in the worst case you may not be able to do anything.

5. Products and services sell if you send announcements in a newsletter

Unless you have a large list made up entirely of customers who respond well to your products and services, customers will drift away even if you keep sending announcements in a newsletter.

The reason is that the world is overflowing with an enormous amount of information and sales pitches, and an equally enormous number of choices.

Unless you have built a relationship like the one between Apple and Apple devotees, customers have no reason why it has to be your product or service, and being pitched every time is just annoying.

If you send a newsletter now, a powerful solution would be to make full use of copywriting that appeals to the benefits customers want, and to prepare an offer (a bonus, a big advantage) worth acting on.

With the market full of competitors, strategy is essential

The "five common mistakes in online customer acquisition" I have introduced so far have something in common.

This is a slightly vulgar example, but imagine picking someone up on the street.

If there are far too many men approaching and few women, the women's response will certainly get worse.

And the more competition there is, the higher the bar for the women to accept the men, and it won't succeed unless you can make a woman think, "With this man, maybe..."

You could say it is exactly the same situation.

In this case, there are two approaches.

I explain this using a "fishing pond" analogy in the following article, so please refer to it as well.

[Common Question] Should You Focus Web Ads on Google? Should You Also Run Them on Yahoo!? [Media Potential and Intensifying Competition] February 21, 2019

"Move to a less crowded place and compete there" is a pretty sound strategy

This applies not just to business but to everything: cutting into a crowded place isn't a smart move.

In a company's growth cycle, there are "infancy," "growth," "maturity," and "decline," and the same goes for markets.

And "crowded" means "maturity," and what comes after is "decline".

That said, many people may feel uneasy about entering during infancy or growth, so I'd like to quote the following.

Whatever path you choose, if you can't find a successful example to model, look at what the people around you are doing and simply do the opposite. Because the majority of people are always wrong.

Earl Nightingale