The right customer acquisition strategy can take your business to the top. It will help you attract and retain the right customer leads for better benefits. This comprehensive guide on customer acquisition channels will help you learn the basics of an acquisition strategy and how you can improve it.
What is Marketing Acquisition?
Marketing acquisition is when brands try to promote or market their products to a new audience to acquire new customers. This strategy is exclusively for audiences who are not yet paying customers but are interested or in need of the product or services you offer.
Marketing acquisition differs from brand awareness and focuses on developing strategies that appeal to an audience who are already considering purchasing the product. It is different from other acquisitions; here, marketers come up with advertisements and other promotional campaigns that can push individuals to buy whatever they offer.
What is Customer Acquisition?
Customer Acquisition is the concept of creating a strategy that will help brands attract leads or other potential customers, so they are prompted to buy the product and services they offer. All businesses have a singular goal of expanding their business and acquiring new customers. The customer acquisition process allows businesses to use different strategies and tactics to expand their customer base and attract new customers so that the company can keep up with its operations and grow.
A customer acquisition strategy is designed first to attract leads; then, it nurtures the leads to be ready for sale. Lastly, these leads are converted to customers. Brands and companies can use different online and offline channels to acquire customers. Let’s learn what offline and online customer acquisition channels are.
What are The Online Acquisition Channels?
Online acquisition channels use the internet to help brands acquire customers. Here are some online acquisition channels you can use:
Websites
Websites are a great way for brands to acquire new customers as it is a platform for your leads to get the information they need. Moreover, websites are a platform where your customers can sign up for subscriptions such as loyalty programs.
You can also use SEO strategies for your website to rank high and get better leads.
Emails
Emails are a great marketing channel. They are most commonly used to nurture leads, so they turn into customers. Moreover, emails keep your brand highlighted in the mind of the customers. Building an email list can help brands connect with all potential customers and create customers.
Related article: Best Email Marketing Automation Tools
Blog
A blog can do wonders for your brand. It allows you to upload content with regard to your business and gives you an edge over your competition. Other than that, your blogs can be a great way for you to nurture leads, show them why they need your product, and stay relevant in their eyes. Writing blogs in the interest of your market will give you a chance to address any concerns your audience has and give them the solution they need, which is your brand.
Social Media
Many of us spend hours on end scrolling through social media pages. For brands, meeting their audience where they are is a smart practice. Using the popularity of social media platforms, brands can create awareness and engage their customers in the best ways possible. In the age of social media, brands can smartly use these platforms to acquire new customers and nurture existing audiences so they can take the right steps and become customers.
Offline Channels In Acquisition
Customer acquisition is not just limited to online channels, but brands can also use offline channels to acquire customers as they used to do a few years back. Here are some online customer acquisition channels brands can use:
Print Advertisement
Print advertisements are pretty common and can include different mediums such as newspapers, brochures, and magazines. Print advertisements can be distributed to a large audience with different filters, such as location and interest. For instance, if you are a cosmetics company, you can print an ad for your latest cosmetic product in a fashion magazine as the readers of the fashion magazine are your target audience.
TV
If you have a higher budget, TV and radio are two great channels to acquire customers. These channels are the best choice for companies targeting the local customer base and want to appeal to the general masses.
Events
Many brands and companies arrange different social events where they can connect with customers. These events can help brands portray a brand image and use the events to represent what the company and its employees believe in. Customers or potential customers need to have a face they can associate with a brand. Events can also give your brand added publicity for all the people who weren’t present at the events.
Cold Calls
Cold calls are an age-old way to reach out to potential customers. It may seem like an invasive and outdated channel, but it gets the work done. If approached correctly, cold calls can help you get in touch with all prospective customers and connect with them directly so you can directly exchange information.
Community Work
A successful company has good relations with the community, and community work helps these brands get good business. Customers give good reviews of them and promote them to other potential customers.
What is a Customer Acquisition Channel?
B2B customer Acquisition channels can be described as platforms companies may use to market their product and services. These channels can help brands reach out to new audiences using different tools. There are many options for customer acquisition channels that different businesses can use as per their needs.
Customer acquisition channels can be of various types, such as outbound and inbound or free and paid. Here is some customer acquisition channels brands may use:
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a customer acquisition channel where you create and use different pieces of content for marketing your business. Content can be for various platforms. It can either be shared on your own website in the form of blogs, or the content can also feature on other websites in the form of guest posts that can link back to your website.
When using content marketing, you need to be very careful about the type of content you produce. The content should be relevant to your business and your customers’ interest. Some of the most popular tools of content marketing include blogs, guides, e-books, and even videos.
Online Marketplaces
You can try online marketplaces if you want to venture into new customer acquisition channels. E-commerce platforms such as Amazon can help brands capitalize on the opportunity, advertise their products, and give customers the information they need to better understand the product and the company.
Online marketplaces can help you better understand consumer behavior, and keeping that information in mind, you can revamp your marketing strategies elsewhere.
Affiliate Marketing
Businesses that do not have the skills or the knowledge they need to market their products or services can take help from a partner. These partners can generate leads and drive sales for you. Such partners are called affiliate partners and use different tools and platforms to help you acquire customers. You can choose the affiliate marketer depending on the customer base and what consumer behaviors your audience exhibits.
Social Media Marketing
As mentioned earlier, social media marketing is the need of the moment. This is where most of the audience is, and brands can take advantage of this. Social media marketing offers you two routes: either work organically or pay for ad campaigns and get leads through sponsored ads.
The organic route allows brands to establish personalized pages where they have a distinct brand voice and post whatever content they want. Here, the brands do not pay for any advertising and simply let the audience engage with whatever content they publish.
The paid route permits brands to post sponsored advertisements in hopes of reaching their target audience. For example, suppose it is a brand of cosmetics. In that case, they can use paid advertisements that will automatically show up on the feeds of young women as they are the biggest demographic of the targeted audience.
Related article: How Can Social Media Marketing Help Your Business?
Search Marketing
Search marketing is a method where brands can use search engines to target keywords and ensure that their sites pop up each time they are entered into the search bar.
What are The Acquisition Channels to Use Online?
Most brands are now focused on using online acquisition channels to acquire customers. This is because online marketing is much more productive and gives quicker results as compared to offline acquisition channels. Here are to mention some of the acquisition channels you can use online:
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is the best way forward for all the brands that are creating high magnitudes of content in the hopes of acquiring new customers. Content creation is wonderful, but it is of no use if the target audience is unable to view the content you produce; in that case, online acquisition strategies must use SEO. The product or services you provide may already have a lot of demand.
Prospective customers may be looking for relevant keywords online. For instance, they may be typing in the words ‘waterproof eyeliner’. If you are a cosmetics company and produce waterproof eyeliners, then using these words in your content can help you direct the audience to your site. Each time prospective buyers look for this keyword, they will see your company’s name in the search results and then click on it to check it out. Many strategies are involved in ensuring that your site is optimized and in accordance with the search engine’s algorithms.
Related article: SEO Guide to Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile
Google Adwords
Brands need to be familiar with Google Adwords. It is one of the biggest online advertising networks that help you reach out to new customers and increase your sales. There are three categories for you to familiarize yourself with:
Display
This tool pertains to the banner advertisements of different brands that are shown on different websites that are partners with Google.
Search
This refers to PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, where you will have to bid against any relevant keyword for your business, and then your ad will show up every time a user types in the relevant keyword.
Video
Video advertising is when brands can market their products on Youtube marketing platforms associated with Google.
Customer Acquisition Strategies
For brands to systematically approach their target, they need to have a proper strategy. A customer acquisition strategy is not just based on a single channel or a single campaign. Instead, there are multiple customer acquisition channels involved in making the strategy. These strategies involve the integration of multiple channels that can help brands address their potential customers. Other than that, customer acquisition can help brands bridge the gap between their customers and begin a healthy conversation.
Customer acquisition strategies must depend on consumer research to find exactly what customers are looking for and then mold a strategy according to their preferences. To establish a good strategy, brands need to customize it according to their products, services, and target customer demographic.
These strategies can include both paid and organic channels and tools to acquire new customers. A comprehensive customer acquisition strategy uses a mixture of strategies to achieve the desired results. It is advised that marketers use a mix of different tactics and tools to come up with a comprehensive strategy. Moreover, it is best for experts to complete research and gather data that can help them understand factors such as marketing trends, consumer behavior, and more.
This way, you will be able to hit all the marketing touch points with your customer acquisition strategy.
Customer Acquisition Strategy Examples
It is best to understand what customer acquisition strategies look like with the help of examples:
Pricing of Products
The pricing of your product is nothing less than a strategy. Product pricing can be a factor you can use to grab your audience’s attention across platforms. For instance, it can be a great selling point when you are making a TV advertisement.
You can leverage the price of your product, so your target audience chooses you over your competition. If they have extremely high prices, you can talk about how your prices are the lowest of them all and how you are a much better and much more affordable option. Additionally, you can use tactics such as including freebies or paid tools to drive up the revenue and give customers a preview of what your services are like. BOGO offers are also a lucrative option as customers love to get a good end of the bargain. Other pricing strategies can push potential buyers into making a decision and buying the product and services you offer.
Gates Content Creation
You may be creating all sorts of content for your customer acquisition strategies, but a good example of such content is gated content. This type of content is not readily available on different platforms and will bring your customers to you directly if they wish to read or view the gated content.
There are multiple benefits of using gated content. For instance, when you produce gated content, you can ask your audience to give their contact details in exchange for the information. For instance, you can ask your audience to sign up for your newsletter by adding their email addresses so you can email monthly newsletters to them. Gated content can be shared through different channels and is a great option for a customer acquisition strategy. With it, you can get more leads and turn those leads into customers as they are already interested in the type of product or services you deliver.
There are lots of different forms of gated content, such as eBooks, that one cannot find elsewhere.
Customer Referral
Customer loyalty is very important and can help brands grow their business. If brands play it smartly, they can use their customers for marketing their business across different platforms. For instance, you can ask your customers for their stories. For instance, you can set up a marketing campaign where you can ask your loyal customers to creatively tell how they use and associate with your business. This can include details of how the customer came across your business and how the exchange has been for them.
Singing your own praises will not work as well as customers talking about you. Then you can take the leverage to share customer stories across platforms and get higher sales. Customers whose stories you share will also enthusiastically share their own stories, and that will help you get more publicity.
Related article: How to Ask for Referrals from Your Clients
How to Choose Your Customer Acquisition Channels?
It is critical to choose the right customer acquisition channels so that you can get the best possible results. Here are some steps you can follow to ensure that you make the right selection:
Understand The Intent of Your Customer Acquisition
Having clear goals is important to choose the right customer acquisition channels. You may have different goals when it comes to customer acquisition, and you need to make sure that these goals are realistically attainable.
If you set up goals that are too difficult to reach, then you may end up missing your goals entirely. Other than that, you need to give your goals a deadline to keep up with the time. You will be able to choose the better customer acquisition channels while keeping the goals in mind.
When understanding the intent of your customer acquisition, it is also vital to understand your consumer demographic. You will not be able to achieve much with your customer acquisition if you end up choosing a channel that does not appeal to your demographic. For instance, if you choose print media for your customer acquisition channel, your consumer demographic is teenagers. It is very likely for your strategy to bear no fruit as the channel and consumer demographic do not match.
What Barriers Can Hinder Your Customer Acquisition
Customer acquisition does not come easy. If you want to choose the right channel, then it is important to understand all the barriers that may hinder your customer acquisition. Understanding these barriers can help you better select all the channels that hindrances will not deter.
The barriers to your customer acquisition may depend on different things, such as the stage of marketing you are at. For instance, if you are at the stage of nurturing your leads, then a channel that works on a mass audience may not be the best fit for you. You need a targeted approach, and you need the right channel.
Understanding The Pros and Cons Of Each Channel
Before you can go on to establish a strategy, it is essential to learn about all the viable channels you can use. This is why you need to make a list of all the channels you want to consider. Once you do that, you can read up on all their pros and cons so that you make a selection that is in the best interest of your brand and the goals you set for yourself.
What is Your Budget?
Customer acquisition strategies can be of different price ranges. Different channels can have different prices that you must keep in consideration when establishing a customer acquisition strategy. If you have a high budget, you can go for channels that are on the expensive side. For instance, if you are in the cosmetics industry, you can use paid customer acquisition channels such as sponsored advertisements on social media.
If you do not have a big budget, you can depend on organic social media or other options such as email marketing and blogging. The channels and strategy you choose are highly dependent on the kind of budget you have.
What Routes Are Your Competitors Taking
If your competitors are doing well with their customer acquisition strategies, then there is no harm in taking a deep look into what they are doing. There is a lot that you may be able to learn from them. You can learn what strategies work for your customers and which don’t. If you spot a brilliant strategy, you can channel all your efforts into the same strategy and get better returns.
You can also learn from their weaknesses and ensure you don’t fall victim to the same weaknesses your competitors have.
Keep Your Strategy Flexible And Sustainable
While it is important to map everything out, it is also very important for you to be flexible in your strategies. Things do not remain the same in the consumer market, and your company must be able to prepare for any changes. This is why you must be very flexible with your customer acquisition strategies. The flexibility will allow you to adapt to the changes and get the returns you want.
Furthermore, it is not a feasible idea for you to plan your customer acquisition strategies for a short time. To be sustainable, you must plan for the long run so that you can continue acquiring customers.
How to Calculate The Cost Per Channel of Acquisition?
The Customer acquisition cost is the expense brands have to pay in order to acquire new customers. This cost includes different factors, such as marketing and advertising costs, along with any events the brand may arrange to connect with the customers.
It is very important to calculate the CAC as it gives your marketing efforts the right value and allows you to choose your returns on investments.
To calculate the CAC, you need to add all the costs that are associated with all the acquisition activities. Take the sum of all the expenses, and you can divide it by the number of new customers you make as a result of all the acquisition efforts.
To calculate the CAC, you can remember the simple formula of CAC = MC / CA.
CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
MC – Marketing Cost
CA- Customers Acquired
What is The Average Customer Acquisition Cost?
The average customer acquisition cost depends on the industry and your website type. Hubspot has given the average CAC per industry:
The average CAC per industry, according to HubSpot, is:
- Travel: $7
- Manufacturing: $83
- Retail: $10
- Marketing Agency: $141
- Financial: $175
- Technology (Hardware): $182
- Transportation: $98
- Consumer Goods: $22
- Telecom: $315
- Technology (Software): $395
- Real Estate: $213
- Banking/Insurance: $303
What is a Good Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio?
If you want to achieve the ideal customer acquisition cost ratio, it should be around 3:1. The customer value should be threefold the acquisition cost. If the ratio is any lower than that, then you may not be making the right efforts and are spending a lot of money with lesser returns.
Related article: 11 Key Metrics to Grow Your Business
8 Best Customer Acquisition Techniques
If you want to improve your customer acquisition, you can use the following techniques and get the results you want:
1. Identification of Target Audience
Before you go on to design your customer acquisition strategy, you need to identify who your target audience is and what their needs and requirements are. The identification of the target audience will allow you to shape your acquisition strategies, and you will be able to have a targeted marketing strategy.
2. Choosing The Best Acquisition Channel
With so many channels to choose from, you must make the right choice. Understanding your audience and their demands can help you choose the right channel. Choosing the best acquisition channel can help you reach the right audience in the right way. Moreover, you can also choose the platform depending on your budget.
You can maximize your customer acquisition with the right channel for your industry.
3. Video Marketing
Videos are the most preferred form of content. Internet users are no longer fond of reading several paragraphs to get the necessary information. Videos are a more interactive way to convey information, and it is easy to view. To acquire customers, brands can use videos and convey their message effectively to keep viewers engaged and push them to buy their services or products.
4. Free Demos
Providing free demos is a great way for you to give a glimpse of your product or services to your audience. The free trial will help them decide whether or not they are interested in what you are selling and if they think it is useful. Free demos are useful for nurturing your leads so they become full-time customers.
5. Creating High-Quality Content
Creating high quality is essential if you want to impress your audience. Do not let an amateur content creator create your content. Look for an expert who can do it for you, or you can brush up on your skills and create high-quality content on your own. You can look for content inspiration on other platforms and then try to produce high-quality, engaging content.
6. Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization helps your sites to rank high on different search engines, so more and more customers click on them. People looking for relevant products or services will type keywords into the search engine, and if you use them in your content, they will pop up at the top of the search engine.
7. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a common way for marketers to expand their customer acquisition. This way, brands can market their products or services on other websites. They can place their banners, buttons, and other links that would direct the audience to the brand site. It is a win-win situation for the brands as well as the marketers as both get benefits.
8. Website Optimization
Website optimization helps improve the experience of customers. If you want your business to succeed, you need to revamp your website and add features that make it easier for customers to navigate your site. Moreover, optimizing your site will make it easier for your customers to read your content and be engaged enough to go through all the content you post on your website.
LinkedIn as a Marketing Acquisition Channel
LinkedIn is considered a great tool for marketing acquisition. This is because LinkedIn automation and Octopus CRM allow brands to sift and sort through several customers and potential clients so the brands can have a targeted approach and only reach out to customers who are interested in whatever they offer.
Using Octopus CRM LinkedIn automation tool allows users to integrate different marketing acquisition channels in one place. This helps brands easily navigate and contact the right individuals for better results. This way, the efforts are not wasted by targeting a large body of audience but rather a specific group that can help get better returns.
Octopus CRM qualifies leads, allowing brands to put their efforts where it counts without wasting time and money.
Related article: How Octopus CRM for LinkedIn Works?
Customer Acquisition vs. Retention
Customer acquisition and retention are two different concepts. The acquisition is limited to adding new customers to the rooster, and the concept of retention is the maintenance of the added customers. Hence, they remain as customers of the company.
Customer acquisition is focused on marketing, while retention is focused on providing good customer services so your customers do not go to your competitors and stay with you. Customer service and customer retention can depend on other factors, such as the quality of services you provide or the price point you offer compared to the competition. Several factors ensure the loyalty of a customer.
Customer Acquisition vs. Marketing
It is common for people to confuse customer acquisition and marketing. The process of marketing is to attract customers. This can be done by creating awareness. For instance, you can run a social media ad as a marketing campaign. This will help you grab your customers’ attention, but that does not mean they will take the necessary action.
When you have acquired the customer, pushing customers to take the necessary action is called acquisition. Marketing spikes the interest of customers, and acquisition shows them what actions they need to take.
Conclusion
In conclusion, for a brand to succeed, it is essential to be familiar with different customer acquisition channels to come up with effective strategies. A smart customer acquisition strategy can help businesses grow significantly. It is essential for brands to choose the right ones so they make the best efforts without waste.
By using free or paid customer acquisition channels, brands can give their customers just the push they need to decide in their favor of customers.