{"id":56469,"date":"2023-01-06T17:08:38","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T17:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/xi-terms\/what-is-customer-acquisition\/"},"modified":"2023-11-13T15:43:13","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T22:43:13","slug":"what-is-customer-acquisition","status":"publish","type":"glossary-terms","link":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/en-au\/xi-terms\/what-is-customer-acquisition\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Acquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Attracting the right target audience for your business has never been an easy feat \u2014 customer acquisition holds a lot of challenges for companies in all kinds of industries. Even if you have the best product in the world, it doesn\u2019t matter if you don\u2019t have customers to whom you can sell the product or service. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is, even the most experienced entrepreneurs face uncertainty and inconsistency when it comes to successful sales and marketing techniques. There\u2019s always some level of risk, but that makes customer acquisition all the more important. Customer acquisition isn\u2019t a result that your business will experience; it is a process<\/em> that balances risk, strategy, cost, and other factors as you bring on new customers. These acquisition tactics are an essential part of your overall business strategy as you seek out people who need and will use your services, which is why companies are putting more of their own resources towards effective customer acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article will discuss customer acquisition in detail and explain the most critical stages and best acquisition practices for your company to implement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customer acquisition is the process of discovering, attracting, and onboarding new and prospective customers that will benefit from and enjoy your business offering. This process is strategic, measurable, and repeatable\u2014or in other words, it doesn\u2019t leave bringing in new customers to chance. Some businesses sell B2B or B2C, but whomever your primary consumer is, they must be persuasively, systematically, and intentionally encouraged to interact with your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having a consistent and reliable customer acquisition strategy is how your company can develop consistent and reliable revenue. The customer experience is largely influenced by the acquisition strategy and should be woven throughout your marketing plan, helping solidify a trustworthy and impactful connection between your advertising and the right customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we understand the purpose behind customer acquisition, it\u2019s time to delve into the benefits of having a strategy in place. Without intentional customer acquisition, it\u2019s far more difficult to reach the people who need your services and continue to grow your business. The most notable benefits include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customer acquisition ultimately ensures that the right people are looking at your business and engaging with your services, which helps establish a solid customer base and drives sales. This is especially important for newer businesses or businesses that want to go after specific or different audiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As you build that customer base, you can place greater focus on a customer retention strategy, which helps fortify your business long-term by satisfying loyal customers<\/a>. If your company keeps acquiring new customers but doesn\u2019t retain current customers, the job isn\u2019t being done quite right. The best way to have a successful retention strategy is to invest in a successful acquisition strategy so that you can attract the best consumers from the beginning and then find the most effective ways to satisfy those customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customer acquisition has specific stages that create a natural flow from attracting leads to converting them into loyal customers. There are essentially 3 stages your customers will move through as they interact with your company: awareness, consideration, and decision. These phases each have different purposes and strategies, as well as subsections that break down the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One way you can visualise and better understand this process is to imagine a funnel. Your customers start with a broad or vague interest and are moved through the funnel until they become more serious about deciding on your product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The awareness stage is largely about generating leads within your target audience and making them \u201caware\u201d of a potential problem or opportunity they have that can be helped using your business. These consumers don\u2019t necessarily have the intent to buy yet, but by seeing your ads on their social media channels or reading an article from your website, your business is generating awareness, interest, and potential leads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, let\u2019s say a fitness and wellness company wants to bring more awareness to its new line of workout equipment. If they want to target people who may work from home (who also exercise at home and likely need workout equipment), they could use a hashtag like #workfromhomefitness and then create relevant content to post on social media. This generates more awareness and interest in both the topic and your company for people with this search intent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This phase of customer acquisition includes potential customers who have shown interest in your product by taking an action that indicates their intent to make a purchase. If someone subscribes to your email chain or clicks on an ad, they are putting your company in their consideration pool. They now know they want or need something and are considering your product or service and likely comparing it to competitors\u2019 options. The ball is back in your court during this phase: how can you persuade them to become a customer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s continue using our fitness company example. Say the hashtag your social media team used has earned you some followers and the articles you post about at-home workouts are being clicked on. Even better, some people have hopped over to your online store after reading through your article to find workout equipment they can use at home. These online consumers are moving into the consideration phase by actually engaging with your content, visiting your website, and considering what you have to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, there is the decision stage, which includes the last steps to becoming a customer. Most often, this is indicated by prospective customers taking some kind of action that shows their serious interest to purchase, such as signing up for a free trial or adding something from your store to their cart. Your customer acquisition strategy shouldn\u2019t drop the ball here, either; some companies offer discounts or send follow-up emails to those who are close to making a decision and need a final push in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the fitness company brings people to its website using ads and articles but doesn\u2019t actually see any purchases, it would be losing customers in the decision stage. This company could create automated emails that are sent to customers with items in their cart to encourage them to finalise their purchases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Measuring your CAC (customer acquisition costs) is extremely important because it helps you know how far your dollar is reaching and if there need to be adjustments to your acquisition strategy to better use monetary resources and increase ROI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CAC includes the expenses it takes to bring on new customers or clients like marketing efforts, events, and advertising. To calculate CAC, divide any marketing costs from a specific campaign by the number of customers acquired from that campaign. Say that you spend $10,000 in Q1 on the year and gain 200 new customers. You would have a CAC of $50.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Acquiring a customer can be done using all kinds of mediums and channels; wherever there may be potential leads, you can incorporate those channels into your customer acquisition strategy. In fact, you need to use a variety of marketing tactics and channels to cover all of your bases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You may even have some cross-channel marketing campaigns that use several channels in tandem to cast a wider net. Depending on your target audience, the lead generation data you have, what you sell, and the resources you have, you can identify the most effective channels for your business that have the greatest impact on your revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the best channels that you can try (or optimise) include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n How your business acquires customers can be completely different from others, but there are a couple of standard practices that will make the most of your acquisition resources. As you design your strategy, follow these pro tips to protect and optimize your efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customer acquisition comes in many forms, but you can start by leveraging multimedia feedback from current customers to improve the overall experience with your company. When customers have a positive experience with your company, their feedback is invaluable and can have a huge impact on future customers. Pearl-Plaza offers multimedia feedback, which allows customers to engage in whatever feedback medium that works best for them, such as video, image, or voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This also encourages them to engage with your brand on social media! One Pearl-Plaza client<\/a> in the global sports retail industry used multimedia feedback surveys for their customers and encouraged them to post their feedback on social media. This helped them spread positive feedback online in a personal and trustworthy way and<\/em> boosted the company’s reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The online business world is constantly changing and so are the ways to acquire new customers, and remember: at the heart of a good strategy is retention<\/em> because retention is what keeps lifelong customers. As you perfect your customer acquisition strategy, you can also perfect the customer experience using Pearl-Plaza CX tools<\/a> and feedback. Use the following checklist to ensure your customer acquisition strategy is foolproof.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat Is Customer Acquisition?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Why Is Customer Acquisition Important?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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What Are the Stages of the Customer Acquisition Process?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Awareness (Top of the Funnel)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Consideration (Middle of the Funnel)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Decision (Bottom of the Funnel)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How Is Customer Acquisition Measured?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What Are Customer Acquisition Channels?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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What Are the Best Customer Acquisition Practices?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Customer Acquisition Real-life Example<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Optimise Your Customer Acquisition Strategy with Pearl-Plaza <\/h2>\n\n\n\n