You know what they say about business? Every day, several new products, apps, and services are released. This automatically increases customer acquisition costs, which is why businesses need efficient growth marketing tactics. However, good customer acquisition isn’t easy as it demands a systematic, dynamic, and comprehensive approach. When you have all these three approaches at hand, you won’t just increase your profits but also shape your business’s authority in the market.
The method of acquiring new consumers for any particular business can be identified as customer acquisition. While various brands might relate to the term in various ways, it more or less comes down to three factors:
- Get– This first step involves acquiring new clients. By marketing themselves in numerous channels, brands can get their targeted consumers.
- Keep– The number of customers retained by a business will be based on the value it provides to them. Though customer churn changes with the industry, as a business, it is important for you to give your best to retain everyone who makes a purchase from you.
- Grow– Word-of-mouth is a thing as people trust people. So, when you get your old customers to suggest your product or service, it will help you onboard more users, thus keeping the company growing.
The three factors mentioned above happen to be the core of a customer acquisition concept.
So how does one acquire a user? The simple answer is employing multiple growth marketing strategies with the help of different types of acquisition channels. However, before diving into the strategies, let us first understand an acquisition channel and its different types.
What are Acquisition Channels and their Different Types?
An acquisition channel is a medium where a business finds its potential users for the very first time. In simple words, it is a space where businesses get the scope to expand by marketing their services or products. Having said that, an acquisition channel that resonates with the workings of one brand might not fit well with the workings of another. Therefore, it is always a good idea to explore different channels. It will help businesses determine which channels gain them maximum profit.
Here are some of the most commonly used user acquisition channels used by businesses:
- Content Marketing
The ultimate key to a successful content-oriented user acquisition is creating content that relates to the buyer’s story of a journey. Once a customer encounters any specific issue, they will surely go through multiple stages, from looking for a solution to finding or purchasing.
However, in the process of looking for a solution, they not just consider the brand with a nice marketing slogan but also look for brands they can trust. According to research, as many as 81% of the users have cited brand trust as a crucial factor that dictates their purchasing decision.
So, where do the users go for trust? Your content, obviously! Here, we are talking about creating and publishing top-notch and consistent content. With that in hand, you can easily establish brand authority and credibility, thereby offering value to the customers. Today, though literally, everyone knows the credibility digital content carries, very few of them are focused on making content that will derive performance and growth.
- Video
It is a well-established fact that videos are the key to grasping consumers’ attention and are the finest customer retention strategies. However, what you might not know is that it establishes a positive communication medium in such a way that it will encourage customers to make a purchase. In fact, studies suggest that video content has persuaded 84% of users to purchase a service or product of a brand.
So, if you want to achieve successful results, you can incorporate videos at each stage of the buyer’s buying journey. It means that you must have a video marketing plan ready for every channel and platform of your business. For example, if you are a service-based company, you can guide your visitors with the help of a video of what you do. These efforts will surely translate into increased sales. A great instance can be Myntra’s product-oriented videos.
It is always a good idea to add user-generated content in the video section as it will boost the number of active visitors and motivate them to post and engage with your video content.
You can also feature user-generated content in your videos. This method will increase the number of active users and encourage them to share, post, and engage with your content.
- Blogging
One of the few organic marketing channels is blogging. It allows businesses to get in touch with potential customers in concerts with techniques like SEO, link-building, email marketing, and many more. Even if your product is something as mundane as a computer software, it is important to write a blog to convert the readers into a buyer. The right people will want to know more about the software and will land on your blogging page. This in turn will help you discover users.
Always remember that when you blog, its content should be intuitive enough to deliver value to prospective consumers, thus building trust and persuading visitors to opt for your product or service.
- Social Media Platforms
Who doesn’t know the power social media possesses? Today, there is hardly anyone who doesn’t own a social media account. When your business maintains a social media presence, you can get in touch with new users and engage with them like never before.
However, the catch with social media is that it is important to opt for a suitable platform for running your marketing campaigns. For example, if you are a B2C marketer, Facebook or Instagram is an effective platform, but if you are a B2B marketer, Linkedin is a great place to market your product or services.
When you want to build a community and meet more prospective users, complying with all the rules and algorithms of the platform will do the trick for you. It means you have come up with posts that will gain engagement and keep people talking. Thus, this is also one of the best customer retention strategies.
- Email Marketing
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Contrary to what people think, email marketing is not dead. Ir is still considered one of the efficient customer retention growth strategies. But, of course, getting new users to join your emailers does not mean that you have acquired new customers; keeping them posted about the latest happenings of your brand will surely keep them engaged. This, in turn, might work in your favour.
You can also employ a mass email provider to reach the target audience. Having said this, it is important to understand how to use email efficiently to offer value to users.
- Search Marketing
Isn’t it a great feeling when someone searches something on Google, and your content shows up on the first SERP? Usually, when people look for something, it implies that they are ready to make a purchase, so it is the ideal chance for you to get new users.
Primarily, there are two types ways of appearing in SERPs:
- Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC)– This form of marketing allows businesses to create a search result where they have to pay for their page to show up along with the organic results. It increases your chances of being seen by people.
- Search Engine Optimization(SEO)– It is all about targeting individuals who expressed their interest in your company based on some keywords they used while searching on Google media. Send them some good offers and help yourself get discovered among your target audience.
There you have it! The above-mentioned are some user acquisition channels of marketing. However, if you still can’t figure out where the most engaged users for your type of business are, you can use live events and print media just like the old times.
Affiliate and Influencer Marketing
Affiliate and influencer marketing are two separate marketing technologies but they both encompass creating a partnership with other people to market your business. The affiliate acts as an extension of your sales team as they share information with leads about your product or service. In addition, they often promote business with the help of content that you create. Influencers are basically individuals who are hugely famous among your audience and drive sales for a business as they share the experience of using a service or product.
One common factor about Influencers and potential affiliates is that they both are connected to people who are most likely to become your customers. You can try finding interview visuals who are well connected in your industry by searching them on social
Now that you know about the primary user acquisition channels, it is time to know how to choose the right acquisition channel.
How to Choose the Right Acquisition Channels for Your Business?
- Keep a Close Look at What your Competition is doing
Though your competitors might not have all the marketing answers, it is always good to see what others in your industry are doing. Your competitor’s social media channels are the easiest place, to begin with. Check which of their content is getting more traction, monitor which ads their people are responding to, and similar things. It will help you get a clue of what might also work for you.
- See Their Shortcomings
When you have identified a channel where your ideal customers and contemporaries are not present, it is a good chance to maximize your marketing efforts there.
- Consider Your Budget
Traditional acquisition tactics like print media, television, and radio are as powerful as ever, but they’re far more expensive and rigid than their digital counterparts. So if you’re on a tight budget, experiment with affordable tactics like organic content marketing, social media advertising, cold calling, and community events.
- Consider Your Business Goals
If you feel the need to scale at a big level, you must diversify your acquisition channels. Apart from this, if you want to attract a particular type of user, you can also foster deep relationships with clients instead of aiming for a wide audience.
- Begin with three channels at Max
The more complicated your customer acquisition strategy becomes, the tougher it will be to stay focused and make suitable adjustments. Always remember quality is more important than quantity.
Let’s cut to the chase now and talk about the six steps of Growth Marketing strategies that will help you acquire new customers.
What are the 6 Steps to Achieve High-Value User Acquisition?
Since traditional consumer acquisition techniques like discounting and advertising have become a costly affair, having a long-term plan for new user acquisition is the key to optimising the process.
Here are six main strategies for attracting users to try your product or service:
Focus on Lifetime Value of Customer Relevant to your Business
To offer the finest customer experience to the users, marketers devote a significant amount of effort, time, and resources. However, most marketers focus on short-lived results like upselling or single sales. If your business’s vision is long-term oriented, it is best to see the bigger picture, which means incorporating customer lifetime value into the plan.
Customer lifetime value(CLV) is a primary parameter to have an idea about the customers’ needs. It can be defined as a prediction of how much value your relationship with a high value customer brings to your business. This strategy allows companies to demonstrate the future value they can generate from their current marketing initiatives. When you target customer lifetime value, you can efficiently design a strategy with accurate budget allocation. Having said that, many customers bring more value to the business than others, which is why it is important to know which one you should focus on and invest in.
As you cannot be too sure how long the relationship will work, estimating it and stating CLV as a periodic value is advisable. You can set it for different time frames based on the kind of business. The most commonly followed time frame is 12 or 24 months.
Develop an Effective Customer Retention Strategy
Coming up with an effective strategic plan will bring successful results for the business and must be focused on bringing in high-value customers. In history, businesses have often overlooked the importance of customer retention rather than focusing on customer acquisition to exhibit growth to their stakeholders. According to research, while almost 44% of companies prioritize acquisition, only 18% target retention.
As more and more marketers have started recognizing the importance of customer retention in long-term business success and revenue growth, the above numbers keep shifting. Brands today must understand that customer loyalty is no longer a thing, as users are constantly bombarded with numerous choices. For this reason, you must:
- Build customer trust and long-term relationships: Fostering customer trust demands your focus on every aspect of the customer experience. Delivering value and relevance at each customer journey stage is the key to building lasting relationships.
- Create a robust customer loyalty program- Though brands usually have a loyalty program, it is important to have one that would deliver better ROI. Even if you are a debutant at expanding your retention efforts into an effective loyalty program, it needs to be comprehensive and appealing to the users.
- Leverage your customer data– For successfully retaining customers, you need to understand their preferences without always having to ask. Extracting customer data like loyalty program data, customer service interactions, and transaction histories will help you prevent churn and identify where customers’ needs intersect with your goals.
- Re-engage customers using marketing automation– Today’s marketing automation technologies can simplify workflows for marketing teams. One of these processes is re-engaging customers.
Improve website customer experience
To improve your website’s customer experience, you must always plan some effective ways. Some of them are:
- Identify the personality of your brand
- Make sure the website loads faster
- Focus on the designing aspects
- Make navigation on the website seamless and easy
- Attract customers with long-form of content
- Make sure the website content is of good quality
- Simplify the checking-out process
- Improve your customer service
- Put more emphasis on customer reviews
Wisely allocate budget to each customer retention strategy
Oftentimes, people mistake customer service budgets as customer retention service is a cost of entry to the market while customer retention is the cost involved in various activities to retain the customers. Also, you should know that customer loyalty is not retention; your loyalty program’s budget is on its own. It encompasses both acquisition and retention and should be kept healthy on its own budget; however, a retention budget should focus on churn, reduction, win back, or orientation.
If your spending to results ratio is 6: 1, your budget should be kept the same in the least possible measure. If your marketing budget for the year is 500K, you should be spending at least 75K directly on retention marketing techniques, if not more.
According to some experts, there is no fixed amount of money or standard budget that you should use for client retention. In research by Andres Musalem from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Yogesh Joshi from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, a formula was created to determine the optimum amount of money to be spent for holding on to customers.
At the end of the day, keeping users and fostering loyalty among them is a crucial part of running a business. Without regular customers, it will be too tough to continue.
Execute the strategies and Analyze data using the most resourceful tools
It is costly and a bad marketing strategy when you assume the customer’s needs. Given the digital age where customers leave so much data on your website, social media, and search engines, not using it to make better decisions in your business is not a wise idea.
Do you know that data is called the ‘new oil’? The data facilitates businesses to identify customer actions and modify their marketing strategy for better results. This is exactly where the customer analytics tools and software come in. These software tools help offer businesses about their marketing efforts and customer behaviour. Using such data points, companies provide better value. Some of the strategies are:
- Building an Email List
The key to running a successful business is building an email list. The list will give you a direct link to subscribe to those who are high-quality prospectus interested in your website’s content.
- Attracting the Suitable Audience
The customer acquisition tool works in such a way that it targets a specific kind of audience so you can send them relevant messages, which is a part of your business marketing tactics. When you narrow down your customer base, it will ensure your campaigns are successful by boosting your conversion and growing your business.
- Boost Conversions
You will see an instant boost in your lead generation, sales, and conversions when you attract suitable customers with the help of suitable tools. It is because your services, products, or other elements of your brand resonate well with your target audience’s requirements.
Filter out the most effective plan
Customer acquisition is the most important aspect of any business of any age your size. It will allow your business to.
- Make money in order to meet pay employees, costs, pay, and reinvest in growth, and
- Show proof of traction for outside parties like investors, partners, and influencers
- For systematically attracting and converting new customers, thus keeping companies growing.
To achieve all of these, it is necessary to list a bunch of strategies and ideas. Previously we talked about how different marketing channels can help your business grow. Then, you have to finalize the most effective plan and execute it and Voila!
Concluding words
Be it a small or large company; customer acquisition is its lifeblood. This means that you cannot give up on your marketing efforts; however, according to research, the key to growth lies not just in your marketing or sales team but with your customer service team and your customers themselves.
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