To turn your business idea into a business, you need customers. As a growing business, you will be able to achieve the figures and position in the market you desire by focusing on a few approaches to increase your visibility and appeal.
Here are some of the top customer acquisition strategies that businesses of all sizes can use to boost interest and sales.
Events
In the digital era, face-to-face contact is precious and can go a very long way to showing what your business represents and who it is for.
A business’s online presence may be crafted by multiple design and strategic experts. But when someone meets a representative of your business in person, that contact is unique, individual, and priceless. It demonstrates your ethos, and good interactions can result in increased goodwill, word of mouth, and new business.
Tradeshows and conferences are particularly good for organizations focusing on B2B sales, but they are also opportunities to reach out to the public, such as at design and technology fairs.
Use strong branding, like banners and flags, to attract a crowd. Give away promotional items, especially if you can stray from the usual baseball caps and pens.
Most importantly, however, make sure your team on the ground is happy, helpful, and represents your brand values.
Promotion
For new businesses, offering a taste of what’s to come (“Try it, you’ll like it”) can be an effective way to acquire customers.
For existing businesses, regular promotions, such as giveaways or discounts, can reignite brand interest and grab new customers’ attention.
While giving away a product or service risks a loss in the first instance, it can generate significant rewards further down the line. This is especially the case with products that tend to engender brand loyalty or where refills are required, for example, air freshening systems and printers.
Signage
Too many businesses overlook the importance of a sign above the door of their physical location. Not only does a sign attract attention, but it also conveys information about how your business operates and what people can expect.
While providing an address will lead people to your building, a sign will remove all doubt that customers are in the right place. It also exudes professionalism and confidence, which inspires trust, making it a key way to make a strong first impression and build customer relationships.
A great sign doesn’t need to be expensive. It just needs to be visible, so think carefully about its position and clarity.
Vehicle Wraps
Vehicle decals and wraps provide some of the best value for money of any marketing method around, standing up to fierce competition from digital marketing techniques.
Vehicle wraps are effective for the following main reasons:
∙They are highly visible — if your business is in a busy city, a vehicle wrap on one or more vehicles used to get to and from work can generate a massive number of impressions.
∙They are durable — while creating a design for a car requires working with a designer and then the cost of installing the wrap or decal, it lasts for many months with minimal care.
∙They operate in a local area — signs on cars are like mobile billboards, operating in the vicinity of your business, raising brand awareness for potential customers in the area.
∙They operate 24/7 — whether your car is moving, stuck in traffic, or parked outside a home or business, a vehicle wrap or decal continues to attract pedestrians and drivers.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the crowned king of marketing ROI. It is extremely effective for generating leads and turning them into customers.
You can generate leads by:
∙Making a newsletter genuinely informative and/or entertaining
∙Offering discounts and freebies — increasingly, even disinterested people will open promotional emails in case they contain special offers
∙Using a captivating headline without resorting to gimmicks
∙Offering unique content unavailable elsewhere
∙Using list segmentation to create targeted email campaigns for distinct groups of your customers
∙Publishing consistently
Leadar is an excellent resource for building marketing lists so that you can find and communicate with the people most likely to be interested in your brand.
Social Media Marketing
Brands continue to market via social media as this provides a way to contact customers quickly and create a dialogue or buzz.
Using video, brands can engage new customers and encourage social shares, potentially spreading branding messages exponentially.
Through social media platforms, businesses can gain visibility, reaching not only their customers but their customers’ networks, making social media particularly powerful for customer acquisition.
Note that even negative feedback can be beneficial to a brand because it offers an opportunity to demonstrate professionalism and customer care with a public response.
Local SEO
Most email opens and web searches take place on mobile. Furthermore, many searches are looking for businesses in a specific geographic location.
Not only this but a high proportion of searches are followed by a call or visit in person to a brick-and-mortar location.
SEO is vital to customer acquisition because it helps searchers find your business online. Local SEO supercharges your SEO by making it work better for potential customers seeking local information.
To supercharge your site for local SEO, implement the following local SEO tactics:
∙Update your Google Business Profile
∙Ensure your website functions on mobile devices
∙Implement strategies to generate reviews from clients
∙Include keywords that include your geographic location
∙Create a page or section explaining how to find your business, including street address, postal code, and phone numbers
∙Upload photos of your storefront and business interior if relevant
∙Join local groups as your business on social media, such as Facebook Groups
∙Use a local search service to ensure your address information is consistent across the internet
∙Manage your reputation by searching for your business and editing or requesting edits to inaccurate local information
∙Create content specific to your location and those within it
Advertising
Advertising your business remains an excellent way to generate leads and acquire new customers.
Creating digital ads using sites like Facebook and Google allows businesses detailed control over how the business is presented and which people are targeted.
It’s possible to fine-tune ads by creating several different versions and running them simultaneously to see which perform the best.
Furthermore, businesses can deliver their ads to specifically targeted people according to their age, gender, location, and interests, among other criteria.
Conclusion
It’s not necessary to use all 8 of these customer acquisition strategies, but every one of them can lead to more clients and, importantly, more of the right clients for your business.
Use a blend of these strategies that is right for your business, focusing on those likely to provide the most impact. Be consistent for the best results.
