Making your brand known to people is only the first step. You also need people to buy your products to keep them running. That's where acquisition marketing comes in. 

What Is Customer Acquisition?

Customer acquisition is the process of acquiring new clients or persuading people to buy your product. It's the process of moving customers from brand awareness to considering purchases through the marketing funnel.

This process seeks to create a structured strategy to boost customer and revenue generation for your company. A successful customer acquisition strategy should: 

1. Draw in leads 
2. Develop those leads until they are ready for you to sell them your product or service
3. Turn leads into customers.
4. Delight said customers to turn them into promoters for your product. 

What is Acquisition Marketing?

Promoting products to prospects in the "consideration" stage of the marketing pipeline is known as acquisition marketing. 

Thus acquisition marketing focuses on developing techniques and strategies to attract customers to research products rather than raising brand awareness.

Acquisition marketing tactics answer "Why should I choose you" and persuade prospects to choose your product.     

Acquisition Marketing vs. Brand Awareness

Making your brand known to people is only the first step. You also need people to buy your products to keep them running. That's where acquisition marketing comes in. 

Acquisition Marketing Examples

H&M's Influencer Marketing

Fast-fashion retailer H&M paired up with The Weeknd in 2017 and showcased their products on the pop music icon. This brought on a fantastic response (50k+ likes per post).

Prospects and customers trust influencers, so large-scale influencer marketing campaigns such as these are sure to bring in new business.

Tile's Referral Marketing

Location-service app Tile uses an easy referral system to convince customers to bring in new customers. 

Customers share referrals with friends and family using referral links or social media buttons.

Each time a new Tile is bought from a referral, the customer who shared said referral gets points. Earning enough points gets users free tiles.

ASOS's Live Website Chat

British fashion retailer ASOS uses its website's live chat feature to take customer service queries, answer queries about matches, fitting, and sizes, and give visitors all sorts of fashion advice.

These close interactions with prospects can develop appreciation and loyalty to your brand and bring in new business.

Key Channels for Acquisition Marketing

Acquisition channels are where you encounter your customers, and you need to find the best channels to leverage for your customer acquisition strategies. Some key channels for acquisition marketing are.

Blogging

A blog section on your brand website helps cover many topics and areas of interest. You can reach top-of-the-funnel prospects at a low cost by having a well-organized blog section with well-written content.

Also, it increases your search engine visibility and helps you gain credibility with your target market.

Premium Content

Besides blogs, you can also add premium content that adds value to your brand. You can offer unique, downloadable content, ebooks, webinars, online courses, etc.

You become a resource for potential customers when you publish premium material on subjects related to your industry. 

Video and Visual Media

Potential buyers can quickly access a lot of information with the help of videos, photos, GIFs, infographics, and other visual media.

They are also more engaging as we live in an era of short attention spans. High-quality videos and visual media can establish trust for your brand in prospects.

Social Media

More than half of the earth's population is on social media today. As it's free to create accounts on the most popular social media sites, it is another low-cost high-gain channel for acquisition marketing. 

Social media marketing lets you connect with target audiences and customize messages for various groups. 

It also lets you answer questions and converse with users via instant messaging. There are also options for paid marketing in social media. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most successful and affordable ways to maintain audience engagement. 

In the middle stages of the customer journey, building email lists and sending emails with discounts, deals, and other content are frequently employed strategies.

The email's subject should be short and engaging, and the body should be simple, to the point, and not too wordy. 

SEO

Search engine optimization refers to the techniques used to rank higher up in SERPs (search engine result pages).

SEO helps your product or content get to leads and prospects before others. SEO is employed as an acquisition strategy by marketers worldwide.

How to Measure Acquisition Marketing

1. Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

Customer acquisition costs are the expenses associated with bringing on a new client for your company for a particular campaign or time frame. These expenses include marketing, advertising, and campaign expenses. 

How to calculate CAC

To determine CAC, we divide the marketing expenses of a specific campaign by the number of customers acquired from said campaign. 

The CAC Formula

CAC = marketing cost/customers acquired (for a campaign/time frame)

How to reduce CAC?

Listed below are some methods for lowering customer acquisition costs:

• Retargeting
• Running A/B tests and optimizing copies and landing pages
• Improving CTA buttons
• Implementing affiliate programs
• Using marketing automation tools (E.g., Markopolo.ai)

2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV or LTV)

The total predictable revenue your company can gain from a customer throughout their time as a paying customer is known as customer lifetime value, or CLV. 

CLV lets you identify high-value customers and helps in determining how much to spend on acquisition.

The formula for calculating CLV is

CLV = Average purchase value * Average purchase frequency * Average customer lifespan

The Best Tactics to Improve Your Customer Acquisition Marketing Strategy

1. Set Your Goals

Set clear goals, so you can see if your techniques are working or if you need to change tactics.

2. Define Your Target Audiences

It would be best to pinpoint your target audiences on an excellent acquisition marketing strategy. You must clearly understand who they are to drive leads and prospects further down your marketing funnel.

3. Estimate Your Customer Acquisition Cost

Calculating CAC correctly is necessary to optimize your campaigns and pages. Derive the correct CAC value for your campaigns and develop strategies to lower them.

4. Narrow Down Your Channels

With so many channels available for your acquisition marketing strategies, you will need to narrow them down to specific channels that are best for you and cost-effective.

5. Feature customer stories

Featuring customer stories help new leads and prospects establish trust in your brand. Customer testimonials can significantly improve lead conversion in your campaign.

6. Optimize Your Website

Prospects researching products you sell are most likely to check out your website. A user-friendly optimized site helps bring in opportunities and turn them into paying customers. 

Strategically placed pop-ups and offers, engaging CTA buttons- are examples of website optimization tactics.

7. Use Content Marketing to Improve SEO

Content marketing with high-quality content relevant to your field can improve your SEO. 

Your content will rank better on SERPs if you choose themes that intrigue viewers, generate clicks, effectively use keywords, and produce high-quality content.

8. Improve Social Media Marketing Efforts

Knowing how to utilize social platforms fully and implementing those tactics can boost conversion. 

An excellent social media strategy includes the following:

• Posting quality content frequently.
• Adapting your approach for each platform.
• Using engaging videos and visuals in your posts.
• Responding to comments and texts.  

9. Create Demand for Your Products and Services

Exclusive discounts, limited-time offers, and special deals- are techniques you can use to create demand for your products. Creating demand motivates prospects to convert into paying consumers.

10. Build Sustainable Relationships through Customer Service

Acquisition marketing strategies need more than just your marketing team to be successful. Top-of-the-funnel prospects and leads develop trust and loyalty through interaction with customer service teams.   

11. Run Review and Referral Programs

Reviews and referral programs help spread the word about your brand. Making customers feel like they are a part of your team also builds brand loyalty, and reviews and referrals do just that.

12. Make Your Strategy Flexible

Tactics for acquiring new customers are constantly changing. 

As trends change regularly, new channels pop up, and old channels become ineffective with time, your strategy needs to be flexible enough to adopt changes.

13. Leverage Partnerships

Building partnerships with influencers, celebrities, and other brands can help draw the attention of new audiences to your products. Because people trust influencers, celebrities, and brands they are already loyal to, they will automatically trust in you by association.   

14. Consistently monitor key KPIs

ROAS, CPA, and CAC are performance indicators. Keeping an eye on them regularly keeps you aware of your progress.

You can evaluate the effectiveness of your acquisition marketing campaigns and make required adjustments by keeping an eye on these indicators. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is acquisition in marketing with example?

Acquisition in marketing is the process of getting potential customers to buy your products. For example- getting your site shown first in SERPs when customers search for products you sell can result in said customer buying from you.

What is acquisition strategy?

Acquisition strategy is using techniques that-

• Draw in leads, 
• Develop those leads until they are ready to be sold your products or services,
• Turn leads into customers, and
• Impress said customers to turn them into promoters for your product. 

Final Thoughts on Acquisition Marketing

For any business to survive and thrive, the most important aspect is customer acquisition.

With a solid acquisition marketing strategy, you should expect to save money on client acquisition and boost customer lifetime. 

Developing and optimizing your acquisition strategies is a continuous process. So, having an effective and flexible strategy in place will generate loyalty, trust, and advocacy among newly gained clients, who will assist you in making the most of each acquisition.

Thanks for reading up, and hopefully, this article equips you with everything you need to know about acquisition marketing.

‍

Have great product ideas, but don't know if they merit moving forward? Then check out our guide to creating proof of concept.

‍