Viral marketing is free. As least that’s what many entrepreneurs think. Their business plans do not consider the acquisition of clients because -owing to this viral marketing- they get them free. This is not true and it can cause a lot of headaches. Online marketing, as much viral effect as it has, has a cost that is, almost always, higher than what is estimated in an initial business plan.
From the investment in Google to the contracting of experts on social networks to promote your project, the costs of marketing make the cost of client acquisition in any situation close to 5 Euros per registered client. To say it another way, if I need 200,000 clients to reach my point of equilibrium, best calculate that I need a million Euros to capture them. If, then, I get them with half a million, it is because I have been very efficient or that, instead of investing, I have used the typical alternative online…time.
With a lot of time you can achieve great results at a low cost, but this is not enough for companies with investors who want to see how the company grows month to month. If it involves my personal company, I am confident in what I am doing, and I follow my own rhythm, I can get my clients, little by little, at a much lower cost, but it will take me years.
There are exceptions, few. They occur in those environments that, simply with good SEO can get a lot of traffic quickly because of the type of massive products they offer -a good example is software downloading or mobile payments- in which, simply the traffic received allows them to quickly reach significant volumes at a much more reasonable cost.
Translated by Babelic.com
