Customer acquisition is the process you go through to gain new customers. It’s how you persuade people to purchase your products or services.

Are you doing enough to increase your customer acquisition rates? In this article, we provide your definitive guide to customer acquisition.

You’ll learn some advanced strategies for acquiring, and keeping, new customers.

First, let’s look at the cost of customer acquisition.

The Cost

An often neglected part of the customer acquisition process is the cost to do so.

For small businesses and even established ones, this cost can quickly get out of control if it isn’t watched and monitored.

The most successful businesses can rattle off their customer acquisition cost numbers. To help you know your customer acquisition costs (CAC), follow this formula:

• Take the entire cost of your sales and marketing over a specific time period and divide it by the number of customers you acquired in that same period.

For example, if you spent $1000 on marketing in one year, and you acquired 1000 new customers that year, your CAC is $1.00.

Another helpful number to know is the Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV). To find this number, you look at the gross margin you expect to make from that customer over the lifetime of your relationship.

In a well-balanced business model, your CAC shouldn’t exceed the LTV of your customer. It should be significantly less.

Now, it’s time for the advanced tips on customer acquisition.

Content Marketing

You’ve probably heard that in this century, content is king. This phrase was coined in 1996 by Bill Gates who saw the future of the Internet as a marketplace for content.

It turns out that content is an allover great tactic for acquiring new customers.

Why? The content you publish on your website allows you to meet new and potential customers head on with the content they need.

By providing your website visitors with the content they want and need, you’ll not only meet their goals, but yours as well. Intrigue your site visitors with practical, useful, educational, important and sometimes humorous content, and you’ll encourage them to sign on as your customer.

Search Engine Optimization

You’ve got the great content to attract new customers, but have you properly optimized it?

Customer acquisition can’t happen if people can’t find your content.

Share your content through email marketing and social media. The more shares and links back to your website, the better. These work together to increase your natural, organic rank in the search engines.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Once your visitors land on your website, you have to do something with them. If they simply land on a page with content, but they don’t see any further actions to take, they’ll just bounce off.

When it comes to customer acquisition, your conversion rate optimization matters. Improve your landing pages to increase your leads and your sales.

Consider A/B testing your copy, calls to action buttons, colors and images to see what works best.

Copy Writing

A piece of your conversion rate depends on your copy – the body copy and your headlines.

Your copy is important. Give great thought to your headlines. Are they catchy? Do they match the content? Are they spot on or misleading?

Then look at your body copy. It should be specific and succinct. Choosing the right words here can make the difference between a sale and a bounce.

If you aren’t sure what works, test your landing pages. This is the best way to find out what copy converts the best.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is another terrific tactic for customer acquisition.

Use your social media platforms to get people back to your website where you can intrigue them with your quality content and then encourage them to take your desired action.

Email Marketing

Have you started building your email list? It’s an essential step to customer acquisition.

For example, a website visitor lands on your optimized landing page, reads your optimized content and then clicks on your call to action – signing up for your email list.

Once on your email list, you can continue to market to them in the privacy of their own inbox.

All of your inbound marketing and SEO worked to encourage them to join your email list. Through your future email marketing, you can direct them to your products and services.

Analytics

Don’t forget your analytics.

The only way to know if your customer acquisition tactics are working is by analyzing your data. Your analytics shows you which of your tactics are most successful and which pages your customers are visiting or leaving.

Use your Google Analytics to see what’s happening on your website. Set up funnels, view your traffic sources and rules and set up your goal tracking.

Then, take a look at who is visiting your website. Find out what they do before and after they sign up on your website or take another action.

A good way to analyze your metrics is to start by making goals and working backwards. Since we’re discussing customer acquisition, that is your goal here.

Then build the funnel. Perhaps it starts with an email sign up, and then you send them an email inviting them to a free trial of your product or service. Ultimately, you hope they’ll convert to full paying, lifetime customers.

Identify your metrics in your funnels. You want to know things like who signed up for your email list or white paper and then who converted into a paying customer.

Final Thoughts

You see that in your definitive guide to customer acquisition, you have many advanced tactics at your disposal.

You’ll find that there are many different ways that lead to the same end goal of customer acquisition.

How do you choose the right strategy? First, you have to know you target audience. Next, you have to know how they’ll make their way through your sales funnel. Do some research on both your audience and your customer acquisition funnel before you create your acquisition strategies.

And, remember, you don’t have to choose just one tactic. Use a few and integrate them for the best success. Your ultimate goal is to increase your website conversion rate through the acquisition of new customers.

Test your strategies, and then test them again. Use what works and refine the rest.

You’ll soon be on your way to growing your company through targeted customer acquisition strategies.

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Image: Alvaro Serrano