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.