How to gain new customers for your business
Whether you are a new online seller trying to win over your first 10 customers or a veteran seller acquiring 10,000th, customer acquisition never stops being relevant. However, for many online sellers, sales can be unpredictable, and gaining new customers can be challenging.
If you want to grow your online business consistently and profitably, you should think of customer acquisition not as a result but as a process. A process that considers how you can systematically gain new customers, the cost to get them to your product page, and how much money one will spend with your online business.
Customer acquisition strategies
Customer acquisition methods can be divided into a variety of different types: Free (organic), paid, inbound, outbound, etc. The best method for your online business, however, will depend on your target audience, resources, and overall strategy.
In this article, we are going to review four commonly used strategies for acquiring new customers.
- Content marketing
Content marketing is a proven customer acquisition technique for all types of businesses. Creating new, relevant, and exciting content is a highly effective way to grab your audience’s attention and send them to your product page.
In the world full of misleading advertising and sinking customer trust today, content marketing extends a branch by saying, “We love what we do, and we want to share our expertise with you for free.”
When we talk about content marketing, there is no wrong type of content you can create. The following are some of the popular types of content you can create for your audience.
Blogging: Blogging is a highly recommended customer acquisition technique for businesses for all industries, sizes, and audience types. Running a blog allows you to explore various topics, enhance your knowledge in the industry, and build authority among your readers. Moreover, blogging allows you to engage with your audience, whether through a question you can answer in the comments, a graphic they can bookmark for later, or an enticing call to action they can click.
Guides, e-hooks, and contents: E-books and guides offer different types of content marketing ass they typically involve more in-depth valuable content. To compare, where a blog might be about five different mail subject lines that increase open rates, a similar guide would take a step back and cover the basics of the same topic. See how the latter offers more in-depth value for readers?
That is why these types of content are also gated, meaning that readers must provide personal information such as names and emails to access the content. Content offers a crucial part of customer acquisition and the conversion funnel and will help you get more leads out of your blog and content marketing strategy.
Video: Video is a more complicated form of content to produce, but with high-quality cameras becoming affordable and plenty of freelancers available, creating a video is easier than you think. Video marketing is a part of a larger content strategy that is more about content than quality, though the latter does help in the long term.
The heart of content marketing is basically connecting with and converting your audience. Ensure that every piece of your content is relevant to your readers and has a clear call to action. Content marketing also includes content creation and partially content promotion. Keep reading to know more about combining customer acquisition strategies with highly effective promotion tactics to achieve better results.
- Social media
Social media marketing consists of two methods: Organic and Paid. Organic social media marketing is most useful for boosting your brand awareness, developing a personality for your brand, and sharing content you have published elsewhere (such as your blog or videos). Consider it the head start for marketing you have already started using other acquisition methods.
Organic social media capitalises on various factors, inspiring your followers and customers to help you advertise. Posting organically on social media may seem like shouting into a void and billions of active users. The key is accessing the right networks – and this again comebacks to a well-defined audience.
For instance, if you target a male audience, Pinterest would have a little value for you as only 15% of the male population uses Pinterest. If your audience is made up of millennials, you should undoubtedly include Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat on your networks.
You can also consider using social media management tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite to help you curate and post content on your social media handles.
On the other hand, using paid social media can prove a better strategy for your online business, depending on your audience type and budget. Paying for social media marketing and exposure is a surefire method to get content in front of your audience without having to build up a strong network of loyal followers.
- Search marketing
Just as social media, there two sides of the search marketing coin: Paid and Organic.
Organic search marketing is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). SEO, just as social media, complements content marketing efforts by optimising your content so that your target audience easily founds it.
SEO is a popular customer acquisition method for various reasons: It is relatively easy; it is cost-effective. Search Engine Optimisation and organic growth have also been reported as the number one inbound marketing priority for companies around the globe. Give some time to learn basic SEO strategies, stay up to date with market trends, and optimise your blog posts. This will help you make your content marketing better than before.
On the other hand, paid search marketing is advertising on the Google search engine itself. Instead of organically optimising your content, pay-per-click allows you to create a search result and pay for it to display alongside organic results, increasing your chances of being found by searchers.
You can learn more about search marketing and customer acquisition strategies and equip your content and advertising to perform best in search engines by using tools such as Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Google Keyword Planner.
- Email marketing
Have you ever wondered what do marketers do with all that customer information they collect vis customer acquisition methods? Well, they build an email list, and they certainly leverage that email list to connect with and convert their customers.
Email marketing might sound an outdated customer acquisition method; however, it is a highly effective way to stay in front of your customers and promote your content, product information, inform them about discounts, and events. Email is also a good way to simply connect with your target audience, whether by sending a simple happy birthday message or a valuable promotional email.
But what you send is not the only important part of email marketing. It is equally helpful to keep an eye on list behaviour. For instance, when you get a new subscriber, it is safe to assume that he/she is interested in your products and wants to learn more. Certain link clicks in your mail can alert you what your subscribers are interested in. Furthermore, people that unsubscribe can offer you insight into how your subscribers view the content you share.
Email marketing is one of the ways to monitor customer behaviour without having to ask too many questions. It also offers a direct way to your customers’ inbox, unlike social media, search, and content marketing.
It is quite clear to see how these customer acquisition techniques work together. For instance, social media marketing can promote SEO optimised content that includes a call to action to subscribe to the email list.
Mixing up and experimenting with a variety of customer acquisition methods can help you grow your audience and introduce new tactics to your current strategy.
Regardless of which customer acquisition strategy you use, always leave room for analysis and improvement. Because you may never know when customers may stop responding to your methods, or leave altogether.