A business exists to serve its customers. This is the same for both product and service-based companies, where the main focus is always the end-user. Acquiring customers is essentially the only way a business can survive iHow to Become a Customer Acquisition Expert in the market.
Without acquiring new customers, a company cannot generate enough income to sustain its employees and resources. A company’s position in the market can also get stagnant or compromised if enough customers are not acquired during each financial quarter. Acquiring customers is a continuous process and requires constant effort and monitoring.
Products and services are built to cater to the needs of a target group, and if customers from a particular demographic are not onboarded, the time and money spent for development and production will all go to waste.
Eventually, companies can suffer enough losses to get shut down. This is why acquiring customers is essential for all kinds of businesses. Some businesses look for a larger group of customers who are willing to buy products for smaller amounts of money and some businesses look for a smaller set of customers who will buy extremely expensive devices and products.
Similarly, some companies acquire customers who will use their services and pay a certain amount of fees. Many businesses rely on subscription-based services for customers.
The product is different for each business as well as their target customers. This is why there is no one-stop solution for acquiring customers. Thus, we need to use multiple platforms to expose a service or product we are selling. We also need to experiment and try out marketing products under various conditions. For example, you can use a particular event to target a select group of customers who are likely to like the product more than the average population. This is why advertisements are targeted toward audiences who like things that are related to a product.
We need to learn a variety of skills and methods to truly become an expert in acquiring customers. Many roles need us to be deeply involved with customer acquisition such as marketing, product management and sales. Sales and marketing are the backbones of a business, generating leads and revenue that help a company grow and sustain itself. Even when assuming the role of someone in the position of a CFO, CEO or venture capitalist, we must understand how exactly the business or product will sell and in what quantities.
The Different Stages of Customer Acquisition
Customer acquisition is the use of various strategies and tactics to convert leads into sales. Here are the 4 stages of customer acquisition:
- Awareness: This is the stage where the customer becomes aware of the product or the company.
- Consideration: In this stage, the customer starts researching the company or product and starts considering buying the product or service. At this point, the customer turns into a hot lead from a cold one.
- Conversion: By this stage, the customer has bought the product or service.
- Retention: This stage is where we try to retain the customer to keep using our services or keep buying our products.
Common Platforms/Methods for Customer Acquisition
Customers can be acquired from a variety of places and with the help of a variety of means. Here are some common platforms and methods that are used for acquiring customers:
- Digital Marketing (Excluding Social Media): Digital marketing can be used to market the product on a variety of relevant websites directly or through platforms such as Google Ads. You can also use other tactics such as integrating SEO-friendly keywords inside content or meta descriptions which are related to the product or service. You can also use services such as Youtube and Google Search to promote businesses.
- Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing is one of the most popular means of advertising and marketing your product. This is because platforms such as Facebook and Instagram allow marketers to choose their specific demographic. One can even use extremely specific filters to accurately target only the relevant audience.
- Offline Marketing or Location-based marketing: This is the oldest strategy that has been used throughout our history. In this approach, we directly go to our target audiences ourselves to convert them into potential customers. For B2B models, one has to visit the office or factory of the potential customer while other B2C models depend on public marketing and sales. The small stalls that tell us to try out a product or sign up for a trial are examples of offline marketing.
- Word of mouth: This is a strategy that greatly depends on how big of a network one has. It also depends on how dependable the network is and how much information can get altered while being passed on from person to person. Even though this is not a reliable strategy, it needs to be used for certain types of products that are extremely niche or expensive. However, word-of-mouth tactics have also been used for traditional products and these strategies have been proved to be successful.
How to Become a Customer Acquisition Expert?
Here are some ways you can become a customer acquisition expert:
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- Learn from successful companies: Once you are involved in the process of customer acquisition for a product, you must find other examples of successful products that are similar to your product.
- Learn marketing fundamentals: Learning marketing will help you learn how to market your product and how to identify the target demographic for the product or service.
- Learn digital marketing on various platforms: Social Media is the best way to expose a product to millions of people. Learning how to use Facebook and Instagram for marketing can prove to be helpful for any kind of product. Alternatively, you can use other websites and services to market your products.
- Learn analytics and Microsoft excel: Learning analytics is essential for understanding the result of marketing campaigns or how various factors can influence the results of a marketing strategy. Meanwhile, Microsoft Excel can help you keep tabs on the results so that you can compare a campaign with other campaigns or for further presentation to stakeholders.
- Learn customer profiling and customer framework: It is essential to learn how to profile customers and the steps that are needed to effectively approach them. It also helps to know a bit of behavioural psychology as it helps in identifying potential customers more effectively.
- Learn positioning and branding: If you are not able to brand your product well, you will not be able to sell the product in high numbers, no matter how good it is. Learning a bit of copywriting and branding can help you select and prepare the best marketing campaigns. Positioning your product also has a huge part to play in acquiring new customers.
- Learn User Experience (UX): You can be even better at making sales by learning how to provide a great user experience before and after purchasing a product. The first impression of the product is as important as how the customer feels after using the product for some time. A good UX also helps in retaining your old and current customers.
Conclusion
Businesses will soon decline if they are not generating new leads and acquiring new customers. Once a business becomes stagnant, it will become even more undesirable to potential customers. Thus, it is essential to learn customer acquisition to help businesses improve and scale themselves.
Also Read: Five Ways Tech can Improve Your Customer Service