Best Customer Acquisition Channels

Customer acquisition refers to the actions and activities that help you and your organization to gain new customers and retain existing ones. A successful customer acquisition channel helps you win a better, new, and a profitable business.

Customer acquisition channels cover each aspect of the consumer journey, customer loyalty, lead generation, customer activation, and optimization of conversion rate. They help you fill the gaps and keep your business moving forward.

How to create a customer acquisition strategy

You must consider the following to create a strategy and finalize the best customer acquisition channel:

• Identify your ideal customers and define your end-objectives.
• Choose the best customer acquisition channel.
• Develop a unique strategy for each channel and communicate effectively with your users.
• Measure, monitor, and improve your strategy.

Tips for choosing the right customer acquisition channels

As rightly quoted by Bruno Estrella, who leads user acquisition at Webflow, “The best acquisition channel is the one that fits your business model. There’s no silver bullet here. For example, if the average revenue you collect per customer is $1, you will need to leverage a channel with very low friction to get one customer. On the other hand, if your average revenue per customer is $100,000, you can afford to high friction and low sales cycles.”

Let us understand the tips and techniques to opt for the best customer acquisition channel.

1. Assess what your competitors are doing

It is helpful to see what others in your industry are doing well and how you can imbibe, emulate or improve upon that. You can scrutinize your competitors’ social channels, analyze the content that gets the most engagement, and go through popular ads that people respond to.

2. Assess the discrepancies

If you’ve identified a channel where you see a lag from your competitor’s end and where your ideal customers live, you can maximize the opportunity by focusing your efforts in that area.

3. Consider your budget

You can experiment with traditional marketing techniques like television, radio, and print media if you are good on your budget. If you are tight on your budget, it’s better to go for less expensive and flexible counterparts like social media advertising, organic content marketing, community events, and cold calling.

4. Identify your goals

It depends on your need and frequency if you want to market passively or aggressively. You can diversify your acquisition channels, or you can simply foster deep relationships with clients rather than casting a wide net.

5. Classify your target audience

Your audience is key. You could spend a whole lot of money on one channel, which may have fewer customers; on the other hand, some free channels may have a plethora of users hanging out and looking out for content daily.

6. Give each channel time and go step by step.

Don’t rush! Instead, be patient and introduce new customer acquisition channels one at a time and compare them to what’s already working.

Give them time and respond to your adjustments. It could take several weeks of adjustments but remember, quality is far more substantial than quantity.

7. Consider paid acquisition channels.

The paid acquisition can be very lucrative, so you must allocate part of your investment to experiment to find which ones have the highest ROI.

The best customer acquisition channels

As you start to build out your strategy, you consider the following offline and online customer acquisition channels that will help get your products in front of more prospective customers:

1. Content marketing

Content marketing is a compelling, efficient, and persuasive channel for capturing website traffic through infographics, videos, website, search and play, blog posts, podcasts, guides, and generates several leads. This helps you in

• Improving your ROI by prioritizing content in your marketing strategy.
• Has lower costs and long-term benefits.
• Promotes lead generation, customer acquisition, and retention.
• Creates videos, builds marketing assets, builds trust with prospects, and assists your SEO efforts.

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of modifying your website content to improve rankings on Google or other search engines.

With SEO, you can:

• Drive quality traffic to your website.
• Produce content that ranks high in Google search, which is an investment.
• Get more clicks than pay-per-click advertising.
• Convert more leads.

3. Mobile marketing

Mobile marketing refers to reaching customers on their smartphones through mobile apps, Facebook Messenger, SMS, or push notifications.

With mobile marketing, you can:

• Create automated omnichannel campaigns.
• Align with consumer market demand.

4. Social media

To promote your business, it is imperative to have an inevitable presence on social channels like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter.

Benefits of getting on social media include:

• Increases brand awareness.
• Shows a more creative side of your business.
• Engages with your audience better
• Promotes your products to followers.

5. Email marketing

This is a great business outcome for organizations wherein people subscribe to receive updates from you through email. You can send product and service features, sales or discounts, exclusive content, and other promotional campaigns directly to your customers.

Some other reasons to use email marketing are:

• It’s easy to start and simple to use.
• It’s an automated marketing task.
• It increases brand awareness.
• It’s easy to measure performance.

6. Referral program

Referral programs are an easy way to improve client acquisition through professional or online services. These are straightforward programs that help customers refer more people so that they can save more.

Reasons to start a referral program are:

• People make a purchase when referred by a friend.
• Referred customers’ lifetime value is higher as compared to non-referred customers.
• Customers acquired through referrals have a higher retention rate.
• More consumers engage with brands that have reward programs.
• Referred customers have a lower churn.
• Referred customers bring in more profits.

7. Affiliate and Influencer Marketing

They help in creating partnerships with other people to spread the word about your brand. These techniques help in sharing information with leads about your product or service. They promote your business using content that you create and provide for them. Influencers are people who drive sales for your business by sharing their experience and are popular with your target market.

8. Paid advertising

This is specifically for new businesses; they should invest more in paid advertising to acquire new customers. Paid ads can support SEO efforts and produce immediate results, generating leads, audience traffic, and sales right after the launch of the product.

Offline Customer Acquisition Channels

1. Print Ads

Print ads include direct-mail advertising and newspaper plus magazine ads. Print ads are ideal for businesses who want to target local customers. These can be expensive, but with these ads, you don’t have much control over targeting.

2. TV and Radio

TV and Radio are forms of paid acquisition channels that come with higher price tags. Still, they are excellent channels for attracting new customers, especially the local markets, franchises, and larger organizations.

3. Events

Events require a lot of planning, but the payoff is worth it. You come in direct contact with your potential clients, and you can give a face to your brand or the name of your business. In the existing digital world, you can stand out from your competitors by demonstrating your products and services, in person, to a crowd of eager viewers.

4. Trade shows

Trade shows can be expensive but are beneficial to get your message seen and heard by your perfect customer. If you must sell a product that isn’t available or applicable to the mass market, a trade show may be the perfect option for your business to find your people.

5. Cold calling

It is better to hand-pick your leads and contact them using public contact information. You can also send direct messages to your leads through social media platforms.

Conclusion

Different frameworks help you identify the right channel to pursue, but ultimately it comes down to trial and error. You must not rely on a single channel but delve into a variety of customer acquisition channels that have the potential to deliver the most value. Setting goals, experimenting, and testing multiple channels will get you what you’re looking for – large volumes of high-quality new customers.