The pursuit of free growth is much talked about & lauded. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that every form of growth comes with some cost attached.

In this mini-episode, we explain why that is the case (even if you’re not reliant on paid acquisition). 

The pursuit of free growth is much talked about & lauded – there certainly is the perspective that paying for marketing is not optimal(a couple of perspectives on which I’ve highlighted here in this post).

What is worth noting though is that free growth is rarely ‘free’. If you don’t ‘pay’ for digital ads(and you certainly shouldn’t pay for ads if that isn’t the right fit for you), you still will have to resort to other forms of expenditure to grow.

As Andrew Chen points out in this post, there are only a few forms of customer acquisition – and all have some expense attached, monetary or otherwise.

Paid marketing -> costs you $$$.

Virality -> you have to expend development effort in building & iterating on a product that users love and want to share. costs time & $$$ in developer salaries(assuming you even have a product that can go viral).

SEO -> you have to create unique content that catches the attention of new users. This costs you time for content development & research – and for paying content marketers.

Sales -> You have to pay salesperson salaries and commissions.

Partnerships -> You invest time in pitching & closing a partnership.

All of these have a real cost in time – and as importantly, in opportunity costs. Oftentimes paid marketing isn’t right for many businesses(especially businesses that are capital constrained) – and that is perfectly ok.

Heck, we manage paid marketing for many of our clients(because paid marketing is a good fit for them) – but we don’t do paid marketing for ourselves, simply because we’re very cognizant that that isn’t a fit for us right now(but that could totally be different in the future at a different stage of our business).

There’s a cost to acquiring every customer – be it in dollars, sweat, or hours. This is exactly why even the companies that go ‘viral’ and grow via ‘word of mouth’ raise enormous sums of money – so they can invest in growing. Irrespective of whether they grow via building viral features, selling, building partnerships, writing content – or buying ads, it’s helpful to not be deluded into thinking that this growth costs zero dollars.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!