New Customer Acquisition
Using Marketing to Attract Customers
Endless calls, waiting on hold, unopened newsletters: The topic of “customer acquisition“ sends a shiver down many an entrepreneur’s spine. Those who are still at the very beginning of their entrepreneurial career rarely possess a permanent customer base, let alone regular customers. Even those who have already established themselves on the market and have reliable customers are dependent on quickly and cleverly winning over new ones. Hence the question—how can I best approach customer acquisition?
One thing is clear: The acquisition of new customers requires perseverance and the application of the right strategy. In times of competitive pressure and globalization, it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to be seen in the marketplace. After all, not every company can rank first in Google search results. That’s why we explain in this article how you can successfully use marketing and sales to attract new customers.
Table of Contents
A Quick Guide to Customer Acquisition
The goal is to continuously increase customer numbers. This makes customer acquisition in marketing, not a project which you can complete, but an ongoing process in constant change. Keeping an eye on your own market is therefore essential for successful customer acquisition to be able to target the correct customer groups.
To be successful, it is important to proceed step by step. The first task is to define the target group. What applies to marketing, in general, applies to customer acquisition in particular: The acquisition must be tailored to the target group and the offerings of your company. Therefore, it is advisable to ask yourself the following questions in advance to ensure that customer acquisition is successful:
- Which consumers should we address?
- What is the age structure and gender of my clients? What are their hobbies and interests?
- What are my customers’ needs?
- Where are these customers?
- What customer acquisition measures should we use?
- Which types of contact make the most sense?
- Why should the customer buy from my company?
This is followed by the distinction between B2B, where other companies are the chosen customers, or B2C, where everything revolves around end-users, i.e., private individuals. On the basis of this classification, it is possible to discreetly plan your concepts as it allows you to get to know both your target group and their needs precisely, to collect specific information, and to successfully establish a network. If you want to make it even more detailed, you do not define the target group, but actually the target person. With a Buyer Persona, you create a representative, fictitious customer and give it a CV, face, and all the other important factors to provide the anonymous target group with a clear identity. This includes important behaviors that influence a purchase, such as problems, desires, motives, and the like.
Once buyers are defined, you can consider measures to appeal to them. Since many technologies in the digital age are based on the internet and the networking of digital offerings, the topic of online marketing is a good place to start.
Customer acquisition in sales and marketing means nothing more than using individualized strategies to win customers for your own company, brand, or product. Therefore any measures which are used to find customers and motivate them to buy are part of customer acquisition.
Online Marketing Means …
The term is in itself self-explanatory, but many sections raise new questions. That’s why we’re trying to start from scratch. Online marketing describes any and all marketing measures carried out online. In terms of content, this results in a clear separation from offline marketing. Typical measures in online marketing are well known and established, such as ads in Google search, banners or pop-ups, email marketing, or activities related to search engine optimization. Another interesting area in online marketing is affiliate marketing. The term derives from “to affiliate”. Here, third-party advertising links are placed on a website. The operator of the website receives a commission if the link is used within a specified period for a pre-defined action (e.g., a purchase). How this payment is made depends on the agreement between the two parties. Cost-per-click, cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale are common.
Why Online Marketing?
Many customers surf the World Wide Web to get and compare relevant information before purchasing a product or service. This has a big advantage for companies, as they can make use of their customers’ need for research and cast their digital customer-catching net.
Customer Acquisition in Online Marketing
Examples and tips for using online marketing to acquire customers:
Spreading customer recommendations
Personal recommendations are worth their weight in gold and put any alternate marketing strategy into the shade. So why not use the reviews of satisfied customers and publish them on your company homepage or online shop? These positive reports from satisfied consumers are perfect for new customer acquisition. We reveal in detail how recommendation marketing can contribute to customer acquisition in our article about referral marketing.
Kunden mit Geschenken locken
If you want to sell something, you first need contacts, so-called leads. Free samples and free gifts are ideal for establishing direct contact with the prospective buyer. In order to receive the company’s free offer, the customer leaves his contact details, such as an email address, on the company’s website.
Kunden gewinnen mit Native Advertising
Native advertising are advertisements that are very similar in terms of content and visual terms to editorial contributions on the internet. Through their editorial design, they attract the attention of online users and are rarely identified as advertising. Thanks to its camouflage, native advertising is an excellent platform for product placement. It allows companies to advertise their products or services “hidden in plain sight”.
As detailed above, online marketing methods include such steps as email, social media, content marketing, SEO, display advertising, or search engine marketing. Depending on where your potential customers are on the web, you can try one, several, or all methods to reach them. When trying to drive up sales, online reach is a decisive factor in attracting as many interested parties as possible. Reach indicates how many people can come into contact with a particular method or medium. Therefore, when planning customer acquisition in marketing, reach must be taken into account as an important factor. What individual measures look like in practice will be described in the next section.
Four Channels for New Customer Acquisition
Online marketing uses various web channels, with which one can experiment seemingly without end. These four channels can be used individually or as bundles to pursue their own marketing strategy. This allows the topic of customer acquisition in marketing to be promoted online on various platforms. A look at the following list helps to understand which channels you should use specifically for your business:
Your own website
A website is the online flagship for every company and therefore fundamental to every web campaign. It must be stylishly designed and clearly arranged, offer fast loading times, and offer added value for the customer. The home page must provide space for the most important information about the operation. Headers and footers should also be used well. The subpages in the menu must be clearly structured. There are countless websites on the web, and no buyer will spend time on one whose usability or design is unappealing or which is completely outdated. Therefore, it makes sense to regularly update the website and publish new content.
Blog
Depending on the industry, operation, and company philosophy, it usually makes sense to expand the website with a blog. A blog is a good platform to publish up-to-date content that adds value to readers and potential customers alike, brings the company closer, demonstrates its expertise as an expert, and smartly integrates call-to-actions on products and services. Blogs are time-consuming media that need to be looked after all around and regularly provided with up-to-date content. Often it is worth starting a website first and then integrating a blog later.
Social Media Accounts
There are many social media channels that are eligible for business use. Basically, this includes all digital media and methods that enable users to network, exchange, and share media content. Among the most well-known are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. WhatsApp, Tumblr, and LinkedIn are also vital. You’re probably spoilt for choice, and it makes no sense to create accounts on platforms indiscriminately and then have them orphaned. When choosing the right channels, it is important to consider the fit with the company or product as well as the target group.
Webinars
In addition to the blog, webinars provide a great opportunity to demonstrate knowledge and expertise. A webinar is a presentation or lecture that is transmitted via video over the internet. The advantage is clear: You only need to create a recording once but can post and play it as often as you like on different channels. In this way, entrepreneurs can demonstrate their knowledge and use expertise to boost the recruitment of new customers.
Three Measures to Attract Customers in Marketing
- Pop-up windows
These small visual elements that pop up in the browser are often perceived as annoying. However, this can be ruled out if they offer added value. Therefore you should ensure that they only appear on certain pages. You should also refer to a special offer, discounts, or interesting information about the product. Often pop-ups are used for the “Before you go…”, i.e., before a user leaves the page, he or she gets a short useful message and a link to click. This is how easy it can be to keep customers on the website. - Email advertising
In marketing theory, it is simplistic to assume that you need seven contacts with a prospect before deciding to buy. Email is suitable for establishing these contacts. Email marketing makes it possible to connect directly with customers and build trust through added value. In addition, customers can be continuously contacted. This helps you to stay in their memory. On top of that, email is a good tool to personalize the customer relationship and give the customer the feeling of being directly addressed. - Couponing
When you use vouchers and discount brands as a marketing tool, it is called couponing. This strategy dates back to the 1960s. Who doesn’t remember the well-known discount brands? These are used online in a targeted manner: A customer bought something online? The perfect time to send an after-sales coupon—this immediately makes a repeat purchase attractive. Pre-sales coupons can be sent by email to perfectly attract prospective customers as new customers and to promote purchase online.
Three Strategies for Winning New Customers
1. Entering into co-operation
Among like-minded people, you can quickly and effectively establish a network and cooperate with each other. This does not have to lead to a collaboration on a project, but can start with a simple but effective link exchange or reference to complementary products and services. This gives a chance to highlight creative, complementary strengths, and benefit from a greater reach to contact potential customers.
2. Focusing on the benefits
If you want to attract new customers without an advertising budget, you should not put the product or service at the center of your marketing activities. Rather, it is about communicating the benefits for the customer. This might sound like this:
• Our product makes your life easier and more vibrant.
• With our offer you will become more successful and attractive.
• With our service you save time and money on the really important things in life.
3. Involve customers in optimization
Hardly anyone can optimize a product better than critical customers. It is wise to listen to these voices and actively incorporate proposals, criticism, and the like into the optimization process. It also flatters customers when they realize that they really value their opinions and even include them in decisions.
Customers can then actively help to improve the service or the product. You can use their evaluation and feedback for this purpose. The question, however, is how to get reviews and whether you can use them elsewhere? The Net Promoter Score® provides the answer to both questions.
New Customer Acquisition with the Net Promoter Score
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience,” said Steve Jobs, an American entrepreneur, co-founder, and longtime CEO of Apple Inc. Customers who have had a positive experience with a company are happy to come back. Customer Experience—the creation of positive customer experiences—is an essential success factor if you want to attract new customers and keep existing ones in the future.
The Net Promoter System® allows you to measure the customer experience, whereby the Net Promoter Score is a metric that makes it possible to make a concrete statement about customer loyalty. This is obtained through targeted micro-surveys based on a question that is answered on a simple scale. In addition, there is the possibility to insert a field for comments.
This field is worth its weight in gold by providing honest customer feedback. Feedback from the so-called promoters, i.e., customers who are extremely satisfied with the company and see themselves as supporters, is especially valuable and offers great potential. These can have a positive impact on existing or potential customers and can also be integrated into internal processes, such as established feedback loops. Feedback from promoters is ideal for publishing as reviews. To make it usable, it is recommended to use software that analyzes the data, processes it further, and, of course, determines the NPS®. This way, you can easily and quickly get suitable appraisals that attract new customers.
Conclusion: How Customer Acquisition Works in Marketing
With this knowledge, you can now really get started in sales, management, and marketing to drive customer acquisition on the internet. No one has to be scared of marketing for themselves and winning customers! Fresh entrepreneurs are often afraid of the unfathomable construct of marketing and either does not know where to start or see no point in it. These thoughts are absolute nonsense! Everyone should tackle the topic of customer acquisition in marketing in their own way and, if necessary, use online marketing to present themselves to their customers.
Understanding new customer acquisition with zenloop
