To support your business growth in a sustainable
way, finding new customers is a central and priority issue. It is not an
objective in itself, but a process: customer acquisition is designed for the
long term.
That is why it should not be a game of chance.
Customer acquisition must be based on a rigorously developed strategy to
structure your marketing campaigns and measure their profitability (ROI). A
strong customer acquisition strategy ensures that you not only increase your
sales but also sustain them.
Our experts advise you on how to create an
effective acquisition strategy and thus find new customers more easily.
Acquisition
strategy: definition
An acquisition strategy includes marketing
tactics and levers designed to attract prospects and then encourage them to
buy. It's a real priority: finding new customers is essential to growing your
business. It affects your reputation as much as your turnover: the more
customers your brand attracts, the more interest it arouses among other
potential buyers. Hence it is a virtuous circle that helps in implementing an
effective acquisition strategy.
Customer acquisition is based on successive
levels, visualized in the form of a funnel. It represents the six steps your
customers go through from first contact with your business to making a
purchase.
How to
calculate customer acquisition costs?
To verify the effectiveness of your acquisition
strategy, you can consider Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). This allows you to
determine whether the marketing campaigns deployed to find new customers are
profitable.
To calculate customer acquisition costs, you add
up your marketing expenses and divide them by the number of customers acquired.
It is recommended to do this calculation for each contact lever you have for a
specific period of time (a month, a quarter, a semester, etc.). So you can
determine which are the best performers and optimize your acquisition strategy
accordingly.
If you have a Shopify online store, or if you use
Google Analytics, customer acquisition costs will appear on your dashboard.
6
acquisition levers to find new customers
1. Create a Google Ads campaign
Google Ads is Google's advertising network and
one of the most powerful channels for finding new customers. It allows, for
example, the distribution of ads on search engines (Search Campaigns, Google
Shopping) or on Google partner sites (Display Network).
By running a Google Ads campaign on the Search
Network, you can target specific search queries and profiles. The platform
allows fine-tuning to maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns. Once your
Google Ads campaign is set up, your sponsored links appear strategically on
search results pages. They're placed either at the top of the page, before the
organic results, or at the bottom of the page. This is an effective solution to
quickly position yourself on strategic keywords, and thus increase your
notoriety and your sales
As for display campaigns, they are useful for
bringing internet users to your website. In fact, it is possible to set up a
remarketing (or retargeting) campaign: all Internet users who visited your
website without taking any action (for example, a purchase), will see your ad
on Google partner sites. This acquisition strategy is effective if your content
is of high quality, as it affects click-through rates. Hence it is recommended
to use a web agency to ensure the performance of your Google Ads campaign.
2. Create a Social Ads campaign
Another powerful advertising lever, creating a
social advertising campaign is relevant to finding new customers. Today, social
networks have a powerful strike force that collects countless data about their
users. They all have an ad network to allow companies to take advantage of
them.
This way, you can share highly personalized
sponsored posts with your target audience. Social media platforms allow precise
targeting according to areas of interest, online behavior, or even socio-demographic
data. Therefore, it is an asset to maximize the performance of your acquisition
strategy.
However, if creating a social ad campaign seems
within everyone's reach, it requires a learning curve. Each social media has
its own characteristics and nuances. Therefore, it is advisable to surround
yourself with a social advertising expert to fully exploit the potential of
this acquisition channel. It will help you implement the right strategy and
define the format, content, and audience that will yield the best results.
3. Use e-mailing
E-mailing is one of the most effective marketing
levers for interacting with audiences and ultimately converting them.
This assumes that, in advance, you have set up
the necessary devices to collect emails from your prospects. Betting on lead
generation is a profitable investment if you want to use email to find new
customers.
You can, for example, create a landing page with
a conversion form linked to an online advertising campaign (Google Ads or
Social Ads). To encourage Internet users to provide their contact information,
you can offer premium quality content in exchange (called lead magnets). It is
an effective tool for collecting emails and thus feeding your acquisition
strategy.
You can then use marketing automation to improve
the profitability of these acquisition campaigns. This tool allows you to
trigger fully automated marketing scenarios, adapted to target audience
profiles and customer journeys. In an emailing strategy, marketing automation
is a powerful conversion lever.
4. Deploy a sponsorship program
If a client recommends you to his relatives, you
achieve two objectives. The first is loyalty, and strategy for your company:
your customer is so trusted by your brand that he positions himself as an
ambassador. The second is the possibility of easily finding new customers for
these recommendations.
In marketing, word of mouth (even digital) is a
persuasive lever. So, if you want to support this virtuous circle, you can set
up a sponsorship program. You reward your existing customers (by offering them,
for example, coupons or benefits) while attracting prospects.
This is a generally cheap and profitable
acquisition strategy. If you offer discounts to your sponsors, you encourage
their purchases (and, by extension, repeat purchases). These benefits, thus,
influence their loyalty: they will naturally be more inclined to buy your
products and services to regularly benefit from these rewards.
5. Use influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the most popular marketing
levers today. For good reason, it gives very satisfactory results both in terms
of images and sales.
Influencer marketing uses a content creator to
promote your brand or your offering to their community. You thus leverage this
prescriber's expertise, popularity, or personality to find new customers.
Such an acquisition strategy allows you to reach
a qualified audience, more likely to hear a speech from someone they
"know" than a brand. Already have a relationship of trust that you
use to achieve your business goals.
This means choosing the content creator you
collaborate with. You can categorize them according to their community size.
For example, an influencer with less than 1,000 subscribers is called a
"nano-influencer", while a "mega-influencer" with more than
500,000 Internet users is called a "nano-influencer". Even the most
popular social network has a million users!
So the choice depends on the audience you want to
reach (niche or broad audience), but also on the budget you are ready to
dedicate to it. Using influencer marketing isn't free: the more influential a
content creator is, the higher their rate. Your acquisition strategy should
therefore take these parameters into consideration.
6. Optimize natural referencing
Advertising isn't your only way to find new
customers. You can take care of the optimization of natural referencing (SEO).
This includes all "organic" tactics aimed at getting your site to
appear first on Google
In fact, if they are looking for a product or
service, internet users will start using this search engine first. So, to
generate qualified traffic to your site, the challenge is to strategically
appear on result pages and relevant queries.
To optimize natural referencing, you must thus
work on your keyword strategy and your content strategy accordingly. You must
ensure the technical optimization of your website so that it meets Google's
requirements (responsive design, page structure, navigation quality, user
experience, etc.). There are many parameters to consider, but SEO is a
profitable investment with lasting results.