Customers are the lifeblood of a business whose strategic objectives are to maximize profits and minimize costs.
And for companies to achieve the goal above, they should have a reliable and flexible customer acquisition strategy in their digital marketing campaign strategies, such as pay-per-click (PPC).
There’re a million and one strategies out there. The tested and proven strategy is the one that relies fully on data insights.
However, there’s a way you boost your customer acquisition strategy.
It would be best if you had a tested and proven tool to crunch data to optimize your PPC campaigns for profitable customer acquisition metrics.
There’s an AI-driven application that’s inexpensive and can help you optimize your marketing campaigns for more profitable customers.
In this blog post, you’ll discover:
- How to implement a solid customer acquisition strategy?
- What is customer acquisition?
- Why is customer acquisition so important?
- How to create a successful customer acquisition strategy for your business?
- The expert-recommended application for crunching data for insights that can improve your customer acquisition metrics drastically.
How to Implement a Solid Customer Acquisition Strategy for your Business?
Before jumping right into the how-to guide, we’ll address the following question:
What is Customer Acquisition Strategy?
Customer acquisition refers to your business’s activities and actions to gain new customers.
A successful customer acquisition strategy helps you win new business, retain loyal customers, and improve profits. Remember, acquisition starts at first contact with a new customer and rolls into your strategy for retention. Customer acquisition covers the following:
- Customer journey
- Lead generation and activation
- Customer loyalty
- Conversion rate optimization
Customers won’t always stick around no matter your retention strategy. And this means you need a way to fill the gaps and keep your business moving forward.
For every business, ‘customer acquisition’ meaning is different. But it’s related to the following three factors of growth, namely:
Get
‘Get’ is the first part of the customer acquisition strategy process. You market your product or service through multiple channels to attract customers.
Keep
How many of these customers can you retain for your business?
The aforementioned question depends on the value you provide to the customer. The churn rate of customers varies from industry to industry. But on average, it’s between 2% to 8%.
To keep your customers, provide them with new offers. For instance, tech giants, such as Facebook, offer new ways of engagement to their users from time to time. A huge chunk of it is related to user-generated content, but the core business model is to keep users coming for more.
Grow
How many of your customers actually help grow your business?
Or, to how many of the customers can you up-sell or cross-sell your products? Some of your existing clients may refer your brand to their friends and families.
Collectively, the above factors are the building bricks of the ‘customer acquisition’ concept. Keep reading because we’ll address the following question in the coming section: why is acquisition so important?
Why is Acquisition So Important?
The customer acquisition strategy is the backbone of all companies.
Yes, you read that right.
Besides supporting a healthy pipeline of new customers, it contributes to retaining the existing ones. And this is because retaining existing clients is ten-folder cheaper than attracting new ones.
Understanding the online customer acquisition process can help you build healthy financial projections and prepare accordingly for market needs.
For example, suppose you understand the customer acquisition cost in-depth. In that case, you can easily project that if $100,000 is injected into advertising costs, an X amount of new clients will be acquired.
And this can help secure funding, allot inventory, and run healthy operations with minimal waste.
What is Customer Acquisition Strategy Funnel?
In today’s business world, we visualize the customer journey with a funnel that highlights the stages in the buying process and the prospect’s mindset.
As consumers move through the funnel to become buyers, they:
- Gain awareness about your brand.
- Add your product or service to their consideration pool.
- Decide to become a paying customer of your business.
Lead generation typically happens at the top of the funnel, acquisition in the middle, and conversion at the bottom.
So, customer acquisition typically refers to the funnel as a whole. The customer acquisition strategy is made up of the top and middle of the marketing funnel with both lead generation and acquisition combined.
The bottom of the funnel (conversion) typically requires more dedicated, customized strategies to convert customers, such as lead scoring and closing tactics.
In the example above, the customer acquisition strategy is implemented mainly in the attract and convert phases, where consumers become readers, visitors, and leads.
How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost?
High-level customer acquisition cost is calculated by dividing marketing costs associated with a specific campaign or effort by the number of customers acquired.
So, customer acquisition costs (CAC) = sales and marketing costs (MC) / Customer acquired (CA).
Keeping reading because, in the coming section, we’ll address the following: how to create a successful customer acquisition strategy
How to Create a Successful Customer Acquisition Strategy?
Check out the tips on how to create a successful customer acquisition strategy for your brand below:
Identify your ideal customers
The first step toward customer acquisition is understanding your customer base (current and target audiences).
And this includes studying competitors and analyzing market research data for insights. Learning your product-market fit can help you identify ideal customers and set marketing goals.
- What do customers accomplish with your product or service?
- What are your customers’ struggles?
- What are your customers’ demographics?
- What benefits do customers look for in buying your product(s)?
- Where do your ideal customers find information?
- Why wouldn’t they buy your product(s)?
- When does your ideal customer buy your product or service?
As you grow, keeping track of your customer profiles can help you analyze, understand, and expand your customer base. More so, you can identify your highest-value customers’ unique traits and behaviors.
Define your goals
You can define your goals and objectives with your ideal customers in mind.
Setting a result can help you think through a customer acquisition plan and guide your efforts. To meet your revenue expectations, set goals for your customer acquisition strategy. Besides, consider customer churn and current customer growth as you design the strategic plan.
For example, you could earn $20 million in new business over the next year, but you may not reach total revenue goals for the year if your industry has a high turnover.
It’s not challenging to prove your marketing efforts are working. Measure customer acquisition metrics, such as:
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
- Customer acquisition costs (CAC)
- Churn rate
Create a customer acquisition strategy that aligns with overall business goals.
Choose your customer acquisition channels
Identifying your ideal customers and customer acquisition strategy goals is a great start.
But that’s only the beginning.
Think about the channels based on your research and best-performing content.
A customer acquisition channel is where your customers meet your brand for the first time. It can be through social media, organic search, or a paid ad. Customer acquisition channels are how you bring in new customers.
- Instagram: Visually attractive posts and short videos.
- Facebook: Live video streaming, one-to-one messaging, and advertising.
- YouTube: Longer, more informative, and entertaining video content.
- SEO: Written, long-form content optimized for search engines.
- Paid social: Short, snappy ads with compelling visuals.
- Referrals: Discounts and loyalty rewards.
You have to develop a unique strategy for each channel
You may want to get on every channel possible to start.
But the aforementioned can hinder your customer acquisition strategy. For example, if you’re trying to reach customers in their early 20s, you may find your audience is on Instagram or TikTok.
It wouldn’t be worth putting all your resources into Facebook or Google Shopping Ads. When creating a marketing strategy for each channel, focus on:
- The best performing content
- Competitors’ posts
- Metrics and KPIs
Depending on your customer acquisition strategy, you may realize that you don’t have to use TikTok if your customers are mostly on Facebook.
If saying more in a video than words is engaging and profitable, go for YouTube or Instagram. Essentially, research the best strategies for each channel to get the most out of your customer acquisition strategy.
Measure and optimize your customer acquisition strategy
Building an online business without analytics is like driving with your eyes closed.
You’re headed towards disaster if you don’t know what’s working (or what’s not), where online users are visiting, or how your pages are performing.