Customer Acquisition Part 1: Stop chasing strangers and start with who you know

One of the harsh truths of entrepreneurship that I have come to know the hard way is that, if you’re waiting for customers to discover your product or service organically, you’re going to be waiting a very, very long time.

This was something I discovered when we got together and launched our first design consultancy business way back in 2004. We had built what we thought was an elegant website, carefully wrote what we thought were good service descriptions, and even spent money we didn’t have on professional photos. Then we sat back and waited for the emails to arrive. As anyone reading this would know, they didn’t.

The reality is that customer acquisition in 2025 isn’t just harder than it was twenty years ago: it is now a different game altogether. Your potential customers are drowning in options, bombarded by marketing messages, and more skeptical than ever. The old playbook of “post on social media and hope for the best” isn’t cutting it anymore.

One thing I’ve discovered after seeing hundreds of small businesses find their footing and thrive (through the insights we get at Hiveage) is that the businesses that succeed aren’t the ones with the biggest marketing budgets or the flashiest campaigns. They’re the ones that get back to basics: building real relationships, solving actual problems, and showing up consistently where their customers are already spending time.

In this article I’m not going to dump abstract marketing theory or tactics that only work if you have a team of specialists. These are the real-world, battle-tested strategies drawn from the Hiveage community. They work, whether you’re a solo freelancer trying to land your first client or a small business owner looking to scale beyond your current customer base.

Start where you are, not where you think you should be

One of the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make is immediately jumping to cold outreach, paid ads, or complex marketing funnels when they haven’t even tapped into their most valuable resource: the people who already know, like, and trust them.

Here we’re talking about your network, which is something we all have to some degree. Your former colleagues, college friends, neighbors, that person you met at your kid’s soccer game, your accountant, your dentist: they all count. The question is whether we are actually using these relationships in the best way.

There’s a misconception that networking is about asking for business. When done with authenticity, it is actually about having conversations about what you do and who you help. There’s a massive difference between “Hey, I’m starting a business, can you hire me?” and “Hey, I’ve started helping small restaurants with their inventory management. Do you know anyone who might be interested in chatting about this?”

The coffee chat method is still gold for this. You can start by reaching out to 10 people in your network, not to sell them anything, but to get their input on your business idea. Ask them about their challenges, who they know in your target market, and what they think about your approach. You’ll be amazed at how many qualified leads come from these conversations.

I watched one freelance social media manager use this exact approach. Instead of, say, posting her availability for work on LinkedIn, she reached out to 10 former colleagues and asked them about the biggest branding challenges they were seeing in their industries. Three of those conversations turned into immediate projects, and five more led to referrals over the next quarter. She didn’t pitch once: she just had genuine conversations about problems she could solve.

The best part in this little story is that these weren’t cold prospects. These were people who already had a reason to trust her, which made every subsequent conversation infinitely easier. Start there before you start anywhere else.

Master one channel before chasing them all

Being mediocre on five platforms will get you worse results than being excellent on one. The “spray and pray” approach is tempting because it feels productive. You’re posting on Instagram, updating LinkedIn, tweeting, maybe even trying TikTok because someone said that’s where the attention is. But attention without intention is just noise, and in 2025, there’s already way too much noise (made infinitely worse with AI slop).

We learned this lesson with Hiveage too. We had a fairly regular schedule for posting on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter, spending hours creating content for each platform. Our engagement was nothing to write home about. Then we made a decision to optimize for LinkedIn and merely be present on everything else.

The results were interesting. Instead of surface-level engagement across multiple platforms, we started having real conversations with potential clients on LinkedIn. We began to understand the platform’s rhythm, what content worked, when to post, and how to engage authentically.

So how do you choose your one channel? The simplest answer is to go where your customers are already spending their time and having conversations about their problems.

If you’re a B2B consultant, LinkedIn is probably your best bet. Your potential clients are there sharing industry insights, complaining about challenges, and looking for solutions. If you’re a fitness trainer targeting busy parents, Instagram might be your goldmine because that’s where they’re sharing their daily struggles and looking for motivation (or doomscrolling, which isn’t a bad moment to intervene).

Local service businesses often overlook the power of community-specific channels. Facebook groups for your neighborhood, local business associations, or even old-school networking events can be incredibly effective because the competition for attention is lower and the trust factor is higher.

To ease into this process, you can follow the 90-day focus rule: commit to one channel for three months before you even think about expanding. During those 90 days, you won’t just be posting content but also studying the platform, understanding your audience’s behavior, and refining your message based on what actually resonates.

One of the biggest success stories in this regard from the Hiveage community is a business coach who went from ~500 LinkedIn connections to more than 12,000 and a full client roster by focusing exclusively on thoughtful, helpful posts about common business challenges. It didn’t happen overnight: that was progress made over a whole year. However, it is a foundation that is solid and stable, and will bring him results for many years to come. The magic isn’t in the platform but in the depth of your presence there. Stop trying to be everywhere, and start excelling somewhere.

Conclusion

The two foundational strategies discussed here (leveraging your existing network and mastering one channel) form the bedrock of sustainable customer acquisition in 2025. They're not flashy or complicated, but they work because they're built on genuine relationships and focused effort rather than scattered hopes and generic tactics.

In the next parts of this series, we’ll explore how to turn these initial connections into meaningful conversations that convert, the psychology behind pricing that attracts the right clients, and the follow-up strategies that keep you top of mind without feeling pushy. But before we get to those advanced tactics, master these basics. Your future customers are already within reach; you just need to start the right conversations in the right places.