Given that a business pays as much as six to seven times more to acquire customers than to keep them, a strong acquisition strategy is crucial. It’s likely you’re now spending significant budget to land each customer relationship, so we want to share our 10 best ways to acquire more customers while spending less.
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1. The Strategic Alliance to Acquire Customers
You can control your marketing spend by building your own reputation alongside content creators who appeal to the audience that you target. The more traditional method of strategic alliance is to work with other companies that are in your supply chain. For instance, primary physicians and cosmetic specialists often work with each other to provide a more complete service and at the same time gain referrals for each other.
2. Advertising
This may seem like a no-brainer, but the real advantage to advertising is the more precise engagement with your target market that certain types of online marketing can give you. One of the most effective ways to reduce your marketing spend is to indirectly advertise with social influencers. According to Nielsen, 92% of people now place more trust in social influencers as a source of authority than they do in direct brand messaging.
3. Direct Mail
As taboo as it may seem to some, direct mail continues to be one of the most reliable forms of customer acquisition available to all businesses. No matter how large or small your scale, you can usually depend on a 2% rate of return with any form of direct mail. This kind of reliability makes tracking simple and reduces wasteful marketing spend for the SMB market.
4. Referral Systems
The referral system is the host/beneficiary agreement or strategic alliance agreement implemented on a larger scale. Instead of one person or brand referring business to you, you are part of a network that refers to its members. The advantage is that the businesses included in the agreement usually comprise a huge portion of the supply chain for a particular industry. The goal is to hold significant market share along the entire vertical chain so that customers don’t have to go outside the network for anything.
5. Becoming an Authority
One of the most effective and low-cost ways to acquire new customers is to become known as an authority within your field. This is easier than ever with the advent of social media. Many companies are using their Facebook and Twitter pages, among other social networks, to build a two-way communications structure for potential clients to easily ask questions. Writing eBooks and other informational pieces, presenting seminars or speaking as an expert all help to build your reputation–and your company’s with it–as an established authority in your field.
6. PR
There are very few brands that can claim widespread success without the judicious use of a public relations partner. When properly used, PR can garner you more new customers than even the best advertising, because PR makes your brand a natural part of the community. However, you don’t have to employ a third party professional firm in order to generate publicity. Smaller businesses often participate in community events and local volunteer work, or donate “in kind” with products and services to charities to build rapport with a target audience.
7. Engagement
Seven out of ten people base their initial purchase with a company on their customer experience (McKinsey). It is highly unlikely that you’ll achieve the customer acquisition rates that you want from a first-time visitor to your website, or from a new potential customer that you are just introducing to your brand. There is simply too much competition in today’s digital business landscape. The businesses that last are the ones that build relationships over time, opening up channels of communication and offering valuable information to a targeted audience while constantly improving engagement.
8. Targeted Marketing
The single most important step to successfully acquire customers is properly targeting your niche market. This approach will drastically reduce your marketing spend compared with a so-called “wide-net” strategy, especially since the wide net tends to have a much lower ROI. People appreciate more personalized service, even if the digital world doesn’t seem to lend itself to personal connection. As a matter of fact, the truth is exactly the opposite. Once you understand that the modern customer defines personalization differently from past generations, you grasp how easy it is to target an audience with digital content–just as long as you figure out what today’s audience is searching for online.
9. Great Copy
Although 2017 marks the year in which video overtakes text as the number one form of communication online, there is no shortage of companies benefiting from great copy about their brand and products. Many older people are finding their way online and responding with much more vigor to copy than to video, which tends to skew toward younger engagement. If your products are not targeted directly at Millennials, then you owe it to yourself to invest in marketing professionals who can give you engaging and exciting copy. You’ll achieve better visibility in the major search engines, which in turn improves your customer acquisition strategy exponentially.
10. Special Events
Special events are a prime source of engagement for local targeting. A local event helps to target the people most likely to purchase your brands and products–those who see you on a daily basis. Believe it or not, focusing on a local audience is the quickest way to globalize. The major search engines, especially Google, look for sustained engagement and consistency in sales when it comes to choosing which brands to prioritize in search listings. Keep sales up in your local area and you could soon find people across the world ready to give your products a chance.
There are many more strategies that can help you increase customer acquisitions, but we’re sure these 10 tips will get you started on the right foot. Always keep one ear open for new strategies and technologies, because your competition will, and you don’t want them grabbing any of your future customers if you drop the ball.
BONUS TIP
Here’s one more free tip–boost your customer acquisition with help from the experts at National Positions. Get more advice on acquisitions strategies and expand your knowledge base to stay competitive.
