Strong customer acquisition strategies are essential for every business. But customer acquisition is an expense — and if planned poorly, could end up costing more than the returns you receive. Good audience acquisition, on the other hand, drives potential customers to action, thus sustaining your business operations and helping it scale.
What is Customer Acquisition?
Though lead generation and customer acquisition are related, they are two different parts of your business’s marketing funnel. For example, marketing involves all the advertising you do on social media, emails you send out to prospects, or content you post on your website. These parts of your funnel are typically at its top and middle and are about generating leads and moving customers through to the bottom where they become paying customers.
Customer acquisition is each part of your funnel combined and is about how effective your current funnel is in both generating leads and closing sales.
Customer Acquisition Methods
From your presence on social media to your website’s blog section, there are several ways a business can build a customer acquisition funnel. And, more often than not, using more than one strategy is ideal.
Blogs
Blog content helps you establish authority in your industry, helps prospective customers find you online, and provides a way to continuously engage with your audience. A consistent stream of content delivers value to your readers, and when written with a compelling call-to-action, can move your prospects through your acquisition funnel. Paired with Search Engine Optimization strategies, blog content can continuously generate leads long-term.
Social Media
Depending on your industry, certain social platforms may offer a better ROI than others. Either way, social media allows a business to build an online presence with content that’s catered to their ideal audience.
Email Marketing
Email marketing creates the opportunity for your business to speak directly to its leads. You will first need to gain a customer’s email address by enticing visitors to sign up for newsletters or updates. But once you can send emails to prospects, you can then use data like an email’s open rate to hone in on the kind of content and messaging your audience connects with.
Creating a Sustainable Customer Acquisition Funnel
Keeping all of these channels of customer acquisition frequently updated can become a bigger cost to your business than anticipated. Especially if you aren’t seeing the results you had hoped for. Here’s what you can do to maximize your returns.
Identify Customer Needs
One way to improve your customer acquisition is to identify your customers’ needs. A simple way to do this is by creating a small survey for customers after they make a purchase asking them why they decided to buy. This helps optimize your services and even helps increase your customer retention rate.
Find Your Audience
By defining your ideal customers, you can more easily determine what channels of acquisition to use in order to reach them. For example, while certain industries may have more luck with Facebook, others may find they acquire customers better on LinkedIn. Try building out customer personas so you can directly target the people who have problems you can solve.
Repurpose Content
Since a large portion of customer acquisition involves posting content online, try repurposing the content you invest in. One blog post could be highlighted in a social media post, while a video you post could be turned into a blog article. And vice versa!
Let KPI Analytics Connect You with Expert Digital Marketers
For more than a decade, KPI Analytics has helped Fortune 1000 companies enhance their audience acquisition strategies. Subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about the marketing services we offer.
