If your customers aren’t bringing in new ones this might be a bad sign, but it also might be expected for your offering or industry. Some products and services are much more conducive to a high NPS compared to others, so in many cases, you need to invest in active promotional and sales efforts to see a growing customer base.If you are investing in promotional campaigns, it’s vital to evaluate how much effort and resources it costs you to bring in new customers.
Are the customers you are bringing in staying? If so - this is a great signal, it means they are deriving value from your product. If not - this is one of the strongest signals indicating lack of PMF. If this is the case, make sure to interview your leaving customers in order to gain a deep and detailed understanding of their reasons for leaving. This feedback would be invaluable for making the most crucial changes in order to iterate your offering and move closer to PMF.Of course, you need to find strong signals that people are willing to pay money for your offering. It is possible to give people something they want but to be unable to provide it for a price they are willing to pay.
While you can survive this problem by burning investor funds, this is a situation you need to fix as soon as possible. If your offering isn’t economically viable, then your project wouldn’t be able to turn into a self-sustaining business.We already mentioned the importance of customer feedback related to customer retention, but it is worth keeping it in mind in other contexts as well.