16 Steps of Customer Acquisition Process for Digital Marketers
Welcome to have a better understanding of the customer acquisition process in digital marketing. Following article provides you information about what customer acquisition means. You will see if there is a difference between customer acquisition and customer engagement. And lastly, you will find the exact answer to the question of what are the steps to follow for experiencing a successful customer acquisition process! Table of contents: What is Customer Acquisition? Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention 16 Steps for Customer Acquisition Process 1. Define Your Business Strategy 2. Pre-estimate Customer Acquisition Cost 3. Create Your Target Market 4. Decide on Right Acquisition Channel 5. Hire Trained and Talented Staff 6. Build Optimizable Web Pages 7. Use Content Marketing to Acquire Customers 8. Manage Social Media Marketing 9. Practice Search Engine Optimization 10. Attain Customers with Email Marketing 11. Create Your Product Demand 12. Acquire New Customers with Popups 13. Build a Sustainable Relationship With Customers 14. Ask for Customer Stories 15. Run a Referral Program 16. Show Testimonials Customer Acquisition Process Infographic What is Customer Acquisition? Customer acquisition is a process to induce visitors to become one of your customers. You need to figure out which inbound strategies (content marketing, webinars, social media marketing, etc.) fit best for your target audience, then constitute an implementation plan accordingly. Customer acquisition process depends on the strategies containing methodologies to execute customer inquiries. Example strategies may be given as email list building, customer referrals, and so on. Customer acquisition is a process to induce visitors to become one of your customers. Acquisition techniques change in accordance with technological developments. There must always be a room for optimization and upgrading the ways of marketing practices to stay in the competition and get a high acquisition rate. Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention The difference is basically that customer retention aims at nurturing the relationship with current customers, whereas customer acquisition has the goal of gaining new customers.Obviously, you cannot run a business without having new customers; this is why customer acquisition process is a very monumental challenge to handle with in the first place. As the number of customers begins to increase, raising your brand awareness, producing dedicated help, and managing loyalty programs become very vital for substantial growth and maintaining a competitive edge. The difference is basically that customer retention aims at nurturing the relationship with current customers, whereas customer acquisition has the goal of gaining new customers. There is no reason to claim that one of them is more important than the other one. The vitality of each depends on the timing! When you first established your business, customer acquisition is necessary to build a customer base. Once enough number of customers are obtained, customer retention becomes incredibly fundamental to keep increasing revenue. Hence, on average, 80% of a company’s income comes from 20% of its existing customers. 16 Steps for Customer Acquisition Process You need to answer a few questions before managing the acquisition process; Are my products ready for all target market? Would customers acquire a pleasant experience from my online store? Is my server for online store ready to get high traffic? Is my support team qualified enough to respond to customer inquiries? If you can answer all questions above as ‘yes,’ let’s begin our profound journey of obtaining and keeping new customers! I know, customer acquisition process is not an easy job, but you can follow the below steps and build up an effective acquisition plan to attract your prospective customers; 1. Define Your Business Strategy Start with defining a business strategy after making a SWOT analysis for your customer acquisition process. Those strategies can be maximizing sales, increasing brand awareness, obtaining loyal customers, and so on. Then, stick to your strategy while focusing on strengths and improving weaknesses to increase the efficiency of your efforts during the process. 2. Pre-estimate Customer Acquisition Cost Estimate the total cost that you are willing to bear to implement the process before initiating your efforts. Then, set expectations for return on investment according to your customer acquisition budget. Usually, cost of customer acquisition (CAC) determines how much value a customer will bring to your business. Thus, do not forget that this cost is vital to define customer value, and the ultimate aim is to gain a high ROI. What is customer acquisition cost (CAC)? Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) calculation is as; (Marketing Costs + Sales Costs + Salary Expense) / (Number of New Customers) 3. Create Your Target Market Define potential or targeted customers. Figure out who they are, how to gain them, how you can communicate with them, and how you will market your products to them. Predefining those customers will help you in getting the competition. 4. Decide on Right Acquisition Channel Find ways to contact your target customers. Do researches, conduct surveys, collect email addresses, and use analytical tools to find the right customers for your products. After that, segment them according to their wants, needs, and behaviors. Then, reach through various channels according to the characteristics of each segment. 5. Hire Trained and Talented Staff Hire dedicated and hardworking staff. Make sure they can manage the process, understand the customer needs, and take significant responsibilities. Also, ensure your support team can tackle any unforeseen circumstance and to remain calm against customer complaints. 6. Build Optimizable Web Pages Have landing pages directing users to buy your product or service, when it comes to customer acquisition. Create pages that are well-designed and contain calls-to-action. Regularly A/B test to your pages to improve them. Increase page speed if necessary. Make sure your pages are mobile-responsive and user-friendly. Lastly, customize your pages according to audience expectations. 7. Use Content Marketing to Acquire Customers Content marketing is an adequate method for all types of businesses aiming at customer acquisition. Therefore, generate relevant, unique, and easily sharable content which has the power to grab the attention of your audience and send them to your website. Here are some of the most popular types of content that are really effective in taking interest; blog posts, ebooks, guides,










