A Guide to Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition is the process by which a company attracts new customers to its business. The goal is to create a systematic, sustainable practice that can evolve with new trends in the market. Any growing company can benefit from an effective acquisition strategy. There are a variety of customer acquisition methods — the best one for your business will depend heavily on your audience, resources, and marketing campaign goals. Before diving into any strategy, make sure to carefully define each of these constraints.

⁠

Customer Acquisition Methods

Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about connecting with your audience. This customer acquisition strategy can be executed through various different facets, such as blogging, content offers, and videos.

Blogging encourages engagement with your audience, and is a great opportunity to explore different topics, showcase your industry knowledge, and build authority.

Content offers can take many forms, such as ebooks and guides. These require original, valuable information; however, when executed correctly they can be the perfect opportunity to collect user information. Often times, customers must exchange information such as an email address or name to access these content types.

Video is one of the more complicated and expensive forms of content, but it often has high engagement. Reserve your very best content for videos.

Overall, content marketing is a great way to get your audience’s attention through new and relevant information. 

Social Media

Social media as a method of customer acquisition can be divided into two types: organic and paid posts.

Organic social media posts are a great way to boost brand awareness, develop company personality, and advertise new content. Paid social media posts can help new businesses build a loyal network of followers. Such posts are another opportunity to gather information on your followers.

Targeted social media posts designed around well-defined buyer personas will produce the best results. Research the social media channels on which your customers are most active to ensure your posts will be seen by the right pairs of eyes. 

Search Marketing

Search marketing is a popular form of customer acquisition. Similar to social media, there are two forms of search marketing: search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), also referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.

SEO is all about optimizing your content so it shows up in organic search results. Research the latest search trends among the audiences you are targeting and utilize various strategies to maximize your results. Some common practices are putting your main keyword in your page title, adding alt text to your images, uploading transcripts for video and audio content, and linking internally within your site.

PPC marketing is a foolproof way to get your advertisements seen. All you have to do is create a search result and pay for it to show up.

We can think about the two forms of search marketing as the turtle and the hare: SEO will benefit your marketing strategy most in the long run, as it is more sustainable. However, PPC marketing is a great way to get your company's brand out there if you are just starting out or launching a new advertising campaign.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a useful customer acquisition method, best for connecting with your audience and promoting your brand’s content, products, discounts, and events.

By gathering a few pieces of key information, such as your customer’s name or location, you can tailor your message to each user. You can even use the way in which a user interacts with your site to send personalized trigger emails, such as to let them know if products they previously viewed went on sale, or to remind them of products they may have left in their cart.

When it comes to email marketing, the devil is in the details. A carefully crafted subject line, perfectly timed email, and attractive email design can be the difference between an opened email, and an email that gets lost in an overflowing inbox.

Customer Retention

Customer retention has been adapted into modern frameworks of customer acquisition, and is often one of the cheapest methods. Typically, newer companies need to place a greater focus on the other methods, while more mature companies can consider re-engaging existing customers rather than continuously seeking out new ones.

One way to keep your customers coming back is by making your company’s product readily available and convenient. In today's hectic world, nothing beats ease. Another method is creating a feeling of exclusivity. Customer loyalty programs are a great way to make users feel special. Some companies connect their product to a mission to make buyers feel good about their purchases.

Remember that nothing speaks louder than customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies, and they cost a lot less than paid advertisements. Ask satisfied customers for reviews and referrals, and maybe even consider offering incentives to motivate happy customers to share your company with their personal networks. 

Customer Acquisition Costs

Customer acquisition costs are measured by dividing the costs associated with a specific marketing campaign by the total number of customers acquired. One way to drive these costs down is to improve website conversion efforts. Focus on optimizing your landing pages, enhancing your calls-to-action, and ensure your site is both mobile and tablet responsive like Member.buzz.

Consider diversifying your customer acquisition strategy to see what works best. Remember to record track all relevant metrics and use A/B testing to see which strategies work best for the users you are targeting.

With proper planning and executing, customer acquisition is a great way to grow your company and expand your audience.

Ready to start getting new customers interested? Publish your first Blog today!

Learn More