Loved

Chapter 15What the iPhone Shows Us About Adoption Life Cycles

I once worked with an online backup company whose initial target customers were “Anyone whose money was green.” They discovered paid radio host endorsements (a more modern equivalent is podcasts) worked particularly well for capturing customers. But as often happens with paid customer acquisition, it was becoming too expensive to rely on to grow.

This made the marketing team do a deeper dive on their customer base. They were shocked to learn it skewed old—senior citizen old—in retrospect, not surprising given their heavy reliance on radio.

These customers were easy to retain but did nothing to help the business grow. There was no word of mouth—people didn't tend to ask their parents for online backup advice—and they weren't the sort that wrote reviews.

The company had to completely overhaul their marketing activities and focus more on channels that brought in customers who talked about products with others. This wasn't just important to make the math of the business work; it was an important signal around true market fit. If they had it, they'd have more organic growth.

They looked again to their customer analysis and found their product's sweet spot was not 20-somethings who spent a lot of time on social media. Rather, it was people in their early 30s who listened to NPR (National Public Radio) and felt they had more to lose—family photos or an archive of work.

Go-to-market shifted from gaining any customer to getting ...