Customer acquisition is the process of attracting new customers or market share. This can be done in various ways, including promoting your product with marketing campaigns, enhancing sales through sales promotion, undertaking research to develop new market strategies, etc.
The art and science behind customer acquisition include all aspects of customer engagement, from initial contact to signing on the bottom line with an X. It demands teaching prospects how to solve their most critical business challenges, so they come back for more when they need you again. And it’s about gaining insights to shape your product mix upfront based on what people are telling you are the most relevant issues that have them stakeholders that have them invested long term in becoming loyal champions for you.
Importance of Customer Acquisition
Customer acquisition is essential to a business because it’s how companies grow. Without any customers, there would be no need for a company even to create products or services. And without consumers that are interested in buying from them, the company will stagnate and ultimately go out of business.
To grow and increase their profits, they must have new customers coming through the door every day. Ideally, focused on a particular high-margin product category so upselling can occur, which increases profit margins even further. Companies typically have regional territories where they focus their customer acquisition efforts. They use things like cost-effective promotions (such as coupons), social media ads (such as Instagram posts), and SEO (search engine optimization) efforts.
Best Acquisition Strategies
In contrast to creative acquisition, which depends on innovative new products or services, legal acquirers usually buy brands and companies with a similar customer base.
Buying another company for cash is also called a merger & acquisition. Mergers are a form of financial exchange that converts the stock in one company into the store in the acquiring company. Acquisitions can be made by purchasing a minority stake of the target firm and then taking over management, thus seeking representation on the board of directors before going ahead with an outright takeover, not including any minority interest purchases. Acquisition strategies are how you achieve turning your money into more money through investments.
Example of an Acquisition
A great example of an acquisition is the 2012 stock for Facebook for $300 million. According to Bloomberg, Yahoo made several offers to buy the social network before walking away from talks in 2007 because it was too expensive according to their valuation “(see a 409a valuation report example).
The acquisitions highlighted by Bloomberg as being notably higher than previous purchases are Jan Koum’s WhatsApp at $19 billion and Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies at reportedly more than $20 billion.
Qualities of a Good Customer Acquisition
Good customer acquisition examples include
- Utilizing discounts to attract customers as Charter Spectrum does
- Building relationships with influencers who will refer people to your company on social media
- Frequently mentioned on websites.
- They visit different communities of interest where your potential customers hang out (various publications or online forums that they see) and post about yourself or their product/service there.
The goal is to find the sources where the decision-maker lives, locate them and share valuable information about what you can offer their business; this marketing strategy effectively targets prospective buyers who are most likely interested in your company.
Let us look at the examples below of companies with excellent customer acquisition strategies:
Lululemon
Lululemon is not an acquirer of customers but recruits runners and athletes to be part of their community. They already have the customer; they need the salesforce. The company’s future looks very bright!
Parts of our training programs are different from other companies; for instance, our customer service representatives are all still “athletes” who can speak to any athlete about everything from pronation control to how-to articles on the Lululemons website.
H&M
H&M offers affordable, contemporary clothing in a variety of styles for the whole family. They use social media heavily to reach younger audiences with their targeted messaging.
H&M’s customer acquisition strategy involves finding high-potential markets where they have yet to establish themselves and investing heavily to reach those markets via social media. For the first time, shopping at H&M could be as quick as tapping on an app – you can even shop it forward by gifting items that are based on style choices other people make.
Sephora
According to the company, Sephora’s customer acquisition strategy is to grow through international markets with their retail outlets.
Sephora aims for a better customer acquisition strategy by expanding in China, Taipei, Singapore, South Korea, and Paris and opening in Mexico City, where they have increased store locations from one store in 2007 to six stores.
The more international markets they enter, the more customers travel; they are more likely to come across the brand, which may be new or otherwise unheard of. They also seem committed to creating demand within these same countries rather than just pumping money into advertising back home in America.
ASOS
We increase customers by actually making their buying experience better.
Collectively, ASOS relies on two pillars to enable the growth of its stores. One pillar is acquisition marketing, which includes all forms of advertising campaigns. This pillar complements our second pillar-improving the customer experience through store design, product assortment and availability, personal service, value for money, and e-merchandising tools and expertise. When these are done well together over time, they have a powerful effect on reaching the goal: to-to be the right place for the fashion world!
Multiple components come into play to do shopping at any store as great as possible: excellent customer service, accessibility, launching new trends and cultivating an atmosphere.
Eloqua
Eloqua is a marketing automation software company that provides targeted, personalized content to sales and marketers. The platform includes email communications with personalized, segmented messaging from the customer’s most engaged customers and ongoing personalization through rules-based engagement instruments, which can consist of triggers from every stage of the consumer journey.
According to their website, “Eloqua’s technology is a set of tools that lets marketers achieve their goals at scale – goals like increased revenue per customer lifetime value and decreased cost per lead.”
Their acquisition strategy consists of increasing your active touch points on all devices.
MailChimp
MailChimp has found success with a variety of acquisition strategies; we often employ many methods concurrently. We use one system liberally to search for and enlist the help of partners like you, who spread the word about MailChimp and point potential customers in our direction.
Each partner tells their audiences about why they need or want to switch from email marketing providers; helps them make an educated choice; introduces the ease and power of MailChimp; guides them through switching over any RSS feeds, tracking codes, templates, or design assets for emails—in most cases making it as if your audience were doing this for themselves with your assistance.
Amazon
The strategy of Amazon is to focus on increasing the likelihood that their products will display to customers by assessing the selling potential (potential for early higher purchase rates) and then enhancing visibility in select product categories.
Visual merchandising is one of the essential parts of any business, including brick-and-mortar retailers who use mannequins and window dressing techniques. Focusing location to different sections like “Wednesday Top Sellers” or “January Best Sellers” will increase visibility for highly desirable products because they are easily seen when people look around at specific sections in stores.
That’s it! I hope you like this post and learn about customer acquisition. Feel free to comment below your insights on this topic.