Customer Acquisition Is Not Just Ads
Five kinds of acquisition, only one of which has a billing account — and how to measure any of them the same way.
What this module is for
Leave with three specific non-ad channels you could genuinely run this month, and one measurement standard that applies to all of them.
Work through the sections in order. Each one ends with something to write, and everything you write collects into the worksheet at the foot of the page. Use your own real numbers — an approximate figure you can defend beats a precise one you invented.
Where Aurygine already records a figure, the module points at it rather than asking you to retype it. Where it does not, write it down and close the gap.
Educational content only. Nothing in this track is tax, accounting, legal or investment advice. Use a qualified professional for formal reporting, filings and compliance.
Five kinds of acquisition
Ads are one channel with a fast feedback loop and a rising price. They are not the category.
- Paid — Meta, Google, LinkedIn, sponsorships, paid placements. Fast to start, immediately measurable, priced by competition rather than by your margin.
- Owned — your email list, your content, your site, your launches, search. Slow to build, cheap to repeat, and it keeps working after you stop pushing.
- Earned — referrals, word of mouth, press, community mentions. Cannot be bought directly; it is produced by delivery quality and by asking.
- Partner — accountants, banks, payroll providers, universities, coworking spaces, small business support programmes, newsletters, complementary tools. Slow to arrange, high trust, hard for a competitor to copy.
- Direct — one-to-one outreach, your personal network, early sales conversations. Unscalable and irreplaceable in the first hundred customers.
Most early businesses win with a small number of strong non-paid channels and add ads later, once they know what a customer is worth and how long the money takes to come back. Running ads before you know those two numbers is buying data at retail price.
Non-ad moves that are available to almost anyone
- Direct outreach to a named list of people who have the problem, with a specific offer rather than an introduction.
- A partnership with a service provider who already advises your buyer and has no product of their own.
- Being listed in the resource centres, member benefits and directories your buyer already trusts.
- A small, genuinely useful artefact — a template, a calculator, a checklist — that circulates without you.
- Showing your work publicly, consistently, in the one place your buyer already reads.
- Asking satisfied customers for a specific introduction rather than a general referral.
Not every channel fits every business
A local service business, a marketplace and a software product do not share the same distribution physics. Treat each idea as a hypothesis to test in your own market.
One standard for every channel
A channel you cannot compare is a channel you cannot manage. Measure all five the same way.
Effort is a cost even when no invoice exists. A partnership that takes twelve founder hours is not free; it is priced in the scarcest thing you have. Record hours next to money and the comparison becomes honest.
Track these, per channel, in one window
- Leads or signups — people who raised a hand.
- Accepted customers — those who matched your buyer definition and bought or started.
- Activated customers — those who reached your first real value moment.
- Time to first value — measured, not estimated.
- Seven or thirty-day return — who came back on their own initiative.
- Revenue, and then gross profit from that revenue.
- Cost and effort — money spent, and hours spent.
- Cost per activated customer, ROI, and payback period.
The strongest channel is rarely the largest. A small channel producing customers who activate, stay and refer is usually worth more than a large channel producing signups who never reach value.
No benchmarks
Aurygine will not tell you what a good cost per activated customer is. It depends on your price, your margin, your repeat rate and your payback period. Compare a channel against your other channels, and against last month.
Your numbers
- Cost per leadChannel cost ÷ leads, same window.unknown
- Cost per activated customerThe figure worth comparing across channels.unknown
- Hours per activated customerFounder time is a real acquisition cost, invoice or not.unknown
- Lead → activatedQuality, not volume.unknown
- Channel ROI(Gross profit − cost) ÷ cost for this channel.unknown
Every figure above is calculated only from what you entered, in your own currency. Nothing is inferred, modelled or benchmarked. Educational worksheet, not financial advice.
Start with: “We believe that…”
What you concluded
One page you can keep. It saves on this device, and into your company memory when you are signed in.
Take it further
With a company in Aurygine, this worksheet becomes evidence in your Control Tower ledger, tasks on the Workboard, and context Aury reads in CFO mode.
Start your companyEducational content only. Nothing in this track is tax, accounting, legal or investment advice. Use a qualified professional for formal reporting, filings and compliance.
The rest of the track
Four modules that build on each other. Take them in any order; they were written to be read in this one.
- 16 minReading Your Business: Revenue, Profit, and EBITDAThe hierarchy of business numbers, from money invoiced to money kept — and why good revenue can still be a bad business.
- 12 minROI and Payback: Is This Worth It?Two calculations that decide whether a spend was an investment or a donation — and why payback matters more when nobody is funding you.
- 13 minHow to Read Your Own NumbersTrends, concentration, quality versus quantity, and the habit of looking early enough to still have options.