HOW TO GET MORE CUSTOMERS

Morning!

My nose is just above the water, my arms scrambling to keep me afloat, and my eyes set on that finish line, which feels oh so close. It’s the 1st of December tomorrow - we are nearly there! The end of the year is coming.

And at this point in the year, I’m guessing you’re in a similar boat to me… closing out this year’s project work, wrapping up the final bits, and sketching out what 2026 needs to look like.

So I figured I’d use this week’s essay to share a few of the smartest customer acquisition plays I’ve heard people planning for 2026.

I’ll even show you a couple we’re planning to use at noticed. too.
(Just don’t steal the ones we’re actually betting on.)

Let’s get into it.

Here are 3 customer acquisition strategies every marketer should be thinking about for 2026 ⤵️

THE ESSAY

I used to think “Lead Gen” was a dirty phrase. Ew. Imagine having to chase down leads and do salesy stuff to get customers.

That opinion came with a good amount of naivety, some arrogance, but most of all, it stemmed from the fact that for the first 2 years of running a business, 100% of our leads came inbound.

It was the dream.

We’d put out content on our personal brands, and people would message us wanting to work with us. All we had to do was ‘Order take’ and get them onboarded. At the time, I was confused why everyone online seemed to think sales & marketing were so tough.

Today, I can happily admit that 100% of our leads don’t come inbound. I’ll also admit that young Niall was pretty stupid laughing at everyone who had scalable marketing and sales systems to generate consistent new business.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time studying how the most successful people around me drive new customers into their business. A lot of the time, people don’t want to talk about these things publicly (for obvious reasons). But today, I’m going to shine a light on 3 of the methods that have caught my eye recently.

These aren’t necessarily revolutionary methods. In fact, some of them are incredibly simple. The key part is, they work.

So here are the 3 most interesting customer acquisition strategies I’ve heard people prepping for 2026:

Method 1: AI Avatars To Generate Content At Scale

I promise I won’t include too many crazy examples of using AI, as I don’t believe many are tried and tested. However, this is a strategy I’m seeing go from really fringe use cases to some major brands leveraging.

Let me explain how it works and how it all came out…

3 years ago, when platforms like TikTok emerged, it gave every business a massive opportunity to get millions of views without many followers.

Before: On apps like Instagram, you’d post something and the post would go to your followers (making it tough to get millions of views on a post without a big following).

Now: With TikTok and Instagram Reels, your content can get shown to millions of people even if you have 0 followers.

When this opportunity opened up, many brands started creating what were known as ‘UGC Factories’. Which would work something like this:

1. You create a document of hooks to use + content ideas that have worked already

2. You pay 100s or 1000s of UGC creators to set up new TikTok or Instagram accounts

3. Then you pay them to post 2-3x per day on each account

This meant every day 1000s of pieces of content would go out and drive a huge amount of traffic to your brand.

But there was 1 issue: it was expensive. So only brands with big marketing budgets could use it. Then AI came about.

Now, you no longer have to pay 1000s of UGC creators. Instead you can create AI avatars and then use them to create the content. I don’t have TikTok or Instagram, but I’m told that there is a massive increase in people using ‘Carousels’ with a first image like this…

Or this…

But while they look like humans sharing relatable stories or lessons, a large % of them are AI accounts ran by brands.

The method works like this:

1. Create AI avatars of aspirational people your ICP would follow (e.g. a good looking man/woman)

2. Create social accounts for each one

3. Post relatable or interesting content that leads to pushing your product/service

Yes, this is a real marketing strategy that’s driving a massive amount of leads for some companies.

I wasn’t sure how easy it was, so I gave it a quick go earlier today on ChatGPT while my partner was shopping…

This took me 90 seconds, and that entire image is completely AI. Looks pretty AI-like to me, but you can imagine how good it could be with a little more time and effort.

Notice how it looks like someone just took a mirror selfie and mentions nothing of the product, yet it alludes to a problem being solved by a “Tool”. This is how brands are getting attention on themselves without having to do hard advertising.

Not a strategy I’ll be using, but I understand how powerful this can be if you have something like a SaaS product.

Method 2: LinkedIn/Meta Ads + Hitting The Phones

Back to something a bit more traditional. This approach has been a staple in the info-product world for years, and I’m now hearing a lot of B2B brands gearing up to run it in 2026.

The process is pretty simple.

Step 1: Create A ‘Free Resource’ Tied To Your Service

If you sell LinkedIn ads, you may create a ‘LinkedIn Ads Playbook’. If you sell SEO services, you may create a guide called ‘How To Approach Local SEO in 2026’.

Step 2: Run Ads Promoting The Resource

Then you run ads on whichever platform you choose to promote the resource. To download it, you have to give your phone number.

Step 3: Call Within 5 Minutes Of Lead Submitting

Every time a lead submits a form, a sales rep calls them (within 5 minutes) and asked them a simple question. “Hi, just saw you downloaded [NAME OF RESOURCE], what were you trying to get out of it?”

From there, they aim to book them in for a discovery call.

This is one of the methods that Alex Hormozi is currently using to drive leads to Acquisition.com, and there are quite a few other B2B firms following in his footsteps into 2026.

This is one I like a lot. It combines giving value up front with great sales tactics.

Method 3: LinkedIn Content Engagement + Sales Follow-Up

I still think LinkedIn is the biggest opportunity in B2B. It’s basically a room full of decision makers, all in one place, and somehow most brands still haven’t taken it seriously.

The few that have are about to drive a lot more leads using this method.

The idea is simple. If you talk about the service or product you sell through your LinkedIn content, the people you want to reach are already engaging with it. Most brands rely on retargeting ads to capitalise on that attention, but there’s another way to do it that most are sleeping on.

It looks something like this…

Step 1: Share content across employee brands

Pick 2-3 key people in the org (CEO, CMO, Head of Marketing, etc). Push them or support them to post content 3x/week. The majority of the content should be educational content around the product or service you sell.

Example: You run an SEO agency → The content should share “How to” content around SEO

Step 2: Scrape data of who engagers

Use a new tool like Gojiberry or Phantom to collect data on everyone engaging with the content.

Step 3: Call/Email engagers

Then have your sales team reach out to these people, mention you saw they were engaging with the content and offer them something valuable - like the free resource we mentioned in the last method (playbook, access to a workshop, etc).

From there, they should look to book a discovery call like you would on any sales call like this.

Again, this method is a nice blend of modern tech (with the tools) with traditional B2B sales. Which for me, is better than going all in on some crazy AI trend that probably doesn’t even work.

I wish I could include another 6 methods I’ve heard in this essay but I’m about to head to the cinema because my Mrs wants to watch Wicked 2. As you can imagine, I’m on the edge of my seat with excitement…

But don’t leave yet, I may have something for you!

If you need marketing help but don’t have the budget to work with an agency (£1000s/month) or hire a full-time marketer in the UK, reply to this email with “MARKETING HELP”.

I have a secret I want to show you :)

Right, that’s all I’ve got for you.

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

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If you’ve read this far, why not see how else I can help you:

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