In this blog, I will be talking about creating a successful online customer acquisition strategy.

Customer acquisition strategy is a mix of media and engagement tools to gain a new customer through targeting them and reaching through online and offline journeys (Insight, 2017). This strategy is never ending circular loop which is aimed at getting a customer, keeping them and growing them simultaneously. Digital technology is changing and evolving at phenomenal speed and with that growing speed, customers taste, interest and preferences are changing at the same speed and so are ways of attracting and retaining them. so, what strategies are good for customer acquisition? let’s find out.

The first measure of success is to drive traffic to your website, which is still the ultimate goal. However, you also need to keep in mind that there are other forms of interactive marketing. Most common mistakes made by everyone is using tons of measure to generate traffic, this leads to a substantial number of data which has very little meaning on its own. Don’t get me wrong, traffic coming to your website is good, it’s the step after that. Let’s say you’ve landed on a webpage, what’s next? The next step is conversion, also known as a marketing method. “conversion marketing refers to tactics that encourage customers to take a specific action, “converting” a person browsing your website into a purchaser of your product or service” (Kirkpatrick, 2012). However, conversion is not just about converting a person into a purchaser, although it is the ultimate conversion, getting a person to open an email is a conversion. Getting a person to register on your landing page is a conversion. In another word, anyone that acts upon a marketing message. So, to ensure this works, your website needs to be more than just an online brochure with lots of information. Rather it needs to understand what your prospects are looking for and help them get it quickly, easily and in a remarkable way (Liberman, 2016 ).

We live in an amazing time where there is data available on virtually anything you can think about. However, these data on its own has very little meaning. So, to form a picture from these data, it needs to be applied into a context. Business and organisation collect a huge amount of data on a daily basis but fail to utilise the data towards their advantage. First thing every business needs to do is get to know themselves, such as their USP, target audience, business value, marketplace, and competitors. Once you have established this, data that you have gathered can be converted to make customer profile. And over time this information will reveal more about your customer i.e. their behaviour, demographics, preferences, traits etc. This allows you to understand your customer and will be able to communicate with them more effectively. Whilst this step may not be the perfect way of acquiring the customers, it certainly speaks volume for your brand. As Steve Jobs once said, don’t advertise your products and compare it with others, instead advertise what your company stands for and its core value. Nike is one of the best examples, they sell shoe! And yet when you think about the company, it’s more than just a shoe company. Hence the reason they don’t advertise the product, they advertise the athletes and the athletic. This is because that’s who they are.

Lastly, we come to social media, the global platform for market influencers. Since more than half of world’s population use social media, it would be foolish to not use it, especially when its free of cost. While businesses and organisation understand the importance of social media, very few know how to combine aspects of social media to get the maximum output. It’s all about right content in right channels. Depending on your target audience, you should create a specific ad campaign that is tailored to your specific audience. Once this is done, you should publish that ad campaign on a specific social media channel where your target audience is active on through paid promotion and general posts. Ontario’s Highlands Tourism Organisation was one of the organisations who were able to use the technique which resulted in 168% increase in their Instagram followers and 18% on their Facebook (Thach, 2016). The huge increase in Instagram was due to their content being targeted towards millennial who are usually active on Instagram more than Facebook.

Depending on your business and target audience, social media channels for you can be completely different. And in those channels, customers use different keywords to describe your product and service. So, it’s essential to be aware of these keywords and train your social media team to look out for these terms. If your business sells a video editing software, customer use question such as “anyone who knows a good video editing software” or “what’s the best video editing software” whilst these questions do not directly use the band name but someone from your social media team needs to be aware of this kind of conversation on social media where lots of people don’t usually mention brand names.

References

Chaffey, D. (2018, February 20). Which is the best online acquisition channel? Retrieved from Smartinsights: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-acquisition-strategy/retail-acquisition-channel/

Insight, S. (2017). Customer acquisition strategy. Retrieved from Smart Insight: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-acquisition-strategy/

Kirkpatrick, D. (2012, Match 15). Marketing 101: What is a conversion? Retrieved from Marketing Sherpa: https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/conversion-defined/

Liberman, M. (2016, October 11). HOW TO INCREASE CONVERSION RATES BY APPLYING INBOUND MARKETING OFFERS ON YOUR WEBSITE. Retrieved from Square2Marketing: https://www.square2marketing.com/blog/how-to-increase-conversion-rates-by-applying-inbound-marketing-offers-on-your-website

Michael G. Allen, A. R. (1990). The Key to Successful Acquisitions. Strategic Management Journal, 14-24.

Quigley, A. (2016). A simple guide to creating a successful online customer acquisition strategy. Retrieved from digitalmarketinginstitue: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/the-insider/2016-08-03-a-simple-guide-to-creating-a-successful-customer-acquisition-str