Customer acquisition is highly significant in growing your business. If you want to stay active and in business, you’ll need new customers. Customer acquisition isn’t a piece of cake, though. According to ProfitWell, customer acquisition costs have gone up to 50% in the last five years, it isn’t cheap and easy.
For small businesses, this is an even tougher challenge that you’ll have to overcome to succeed. “But how do I increase customer acquisition when I’m still just a small business?” Don’t worry, we got you covered. In this article, we’ll be telling you the top tips and best practices for great customer acquisition. Let’s get started.
First, What’s Customer Acquisition?
Customer acquisition is the process of acquiring new customers for your business. What you do to gain new customers, like the marketing and optimization you do, is a customer acquisition strategy, so you bring in new customers regularly.
However, keeping old customers engaged in your business, so they keep coming back, is another thing called “customer retention” which is another topic that is different from customer acquisition.
So, Why’s Customer Acquisition Crucial?
Why is this crucial to your business? Well, basically, to rake in revenue and profits, you need to acquire new customers. New customers = more revenue and profit. Acquiring new customers will help your brand become more recognized and help your business reach another level.
Basically, if you want to build and grow your business, having an amazing customer acquisition strategy is crucial. And now, here are our top tips for customer acquisition for small businesses:
Research and Build a SMART Strategy
First, you want to research things about your already existing customers, such as their spending habits and how they use social media. Then, with the data you got, build a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) strategy.
Always have specific and achievable goals that can be done in a timely manner. Remember to be realistic with your goals, so your strategy and plan will work out well in the way you want to. This way, you can reduce costs and any unexpected stressful matters.
Be sure to also be smart about your taxes, so there aren’t any extra costs. Generate your W2 so you can complete your tax return.
Optimize your Content
Optimizing your content is a great way to reach and acquire new customers. Make sure your website has great SEO, and the content on your social media channels and such has an amazing content that people can engage with.
If you don’t have the best skills in SEO and content production, then you should consider hiring an SEO expert or maybe a website design company to produce the best content. Although if you’re on a tight budget, you could always just learn these skills yourself because of the great free resources out there.
Provide Easy Payment Options
Up to 86% of online shopping carts are left abandoned. Yes, you heard that right! Why did this massive percentage of people abandon their carts? Because of the hassles and unexpected fees that show up.
For example, when people suddenly see huge shipping fees, people will find other cheaper fees. Another example is when the payment process takes too long that frustrates people, causing them to abandon their carts.
Providing easy payment options is a great way to increase customer acquisition. Making it easy for your customers helps you not only acquire, but also keep customers.
Network and Ask for Referrals
Taking part in networking organizations and such is good practice to spread information about your brand and generate word-of-mouth. Always remember to ask what your “target market” wants and needs, so that they know that you’re in service.
Then, we have good old-fashioned referrals that can bring in new customers to your business. With the help of your old customers, asking them for referrals is always a smart move for customer acquisition.
Retain Customers and Reward Loyalty
While acquiring new customers is crucial to your business, retaining old customers is as important as customer acquisition, so that you don’t have to keep on finding new buyers, and just keep your old ones happy and satisfied.
One way to do that is by having a loyalty rewards program or something similar so that your customers stay not only happy with your product/s or service/s but also more motivated to purchase your product/s or service/s. You can even add a referral or affiliate program, so your old customers can refer you to new ones!
Of course, you would want your affiliates to fill-up their 1099 since they technically are independent contractors if they make money with affiliate marketing.
More Useful Tips for Customer Acquisition
We have given you the top tips for customer acquisition for small businesses, but fret not, because we have even more tips that could increase your customer acquisition.
Here’s the list of more useful tips for customer acquisition:
- “Quality over quantity.” Always remember this because while consistent content may be good, if it is not quality content, people will frown on this.
- Use video content as much as possible. Video content is always more engaging to people, so this is a good move to do to reach more people.
- Partner with other brands. Co-branding is clever, so you can reach more people, and potential new customers.
- Be honest and authentic. People always love it when brands are always honest and straightforward.
That’s it for our list of additional tips to gaining new customers! We hope this list was useful to growing your business and helping you increase your customer acquisition.
