The Ultimate Guide to Customer Acquisition.

What is customer acquisition?

Customer acquisition is the process of onboarding new customers or clients to your business. Customer acquisition professionals use specific techniques to get potential customers to take action. The goal of this process is to create a systematic, sustainable strategy to acquire new customers and grow revenue for the business.

In many respects, this process sounds like marketing — you’re looking for ways to showcase your brand and connect with customers. But there’s a difference: While marketing aims to build awareness, acquisition looks to drive action. For example, let’s say you run a Facebook ad aimed at your target market. Metrics will help determine if your effort is working — you can track how many people have shared your ad, commented on it, etc. That’s marketing.

Acquisition, meanwhile, speaks to what happens after potential customers click through to your page or receive your emails. If they’re willing to take action by purchasing your products or services, that’s acquisition. Put simply? Marketing drives recognition — acquisition drives revenue.

Customer acquisition is important for businesses of any age and size. It allows your business to:

• Make money to meet costs, pay employees, and reinvest in growth, and
• Show evidence of traction for outside parties such as investors, partners, and influencers

Being able to systematically attract and convert new customers keeps companies healthy and growing — and investors happy.

At this point, you may be asking, “What’s the difference between lead generation and customer acquisition?”

The Customer Acquisition Funnel

In the business world, we typically visualize the customer journey with a funnel or a similar graphic that highlights the stages in the buying process and the mindset of the prospect.

As consumers move through the funnel to become buyers, they:

• Gain awareness about your brand
• Add your product or service to their consideration pool
• Decide to become a paying customer of your business

To simplify the process, lead generation typically happens at the top of the funnel, lead acquisition happens in the middle, and lead conversion happens at the bottom.

And customer acquisition typically refers to the funnel as a whole.

For the sake of this guide, customer acquisition refers to the top and middle of the marketing funnel with both lead generation and acquisition combined.

This is because the bottom of the funnel (conversion) typically requires more dedicated, customized strategies to convert customers, such as lead scoring and closing tactics.

Here’s another way to visualize it, in a less funnel-like fashion:

In the example above, customer acquisition lives in the attract and convert phases, where consumers become readers, visitors, and leads.

Acquisition Marketing

Acquisition marketing is implementing certain strategies to market your products and services to new customers. It typically requires collaboration and alignment between marketing and customer service teams.

Acquisition marketing is different from other marketing because it specifically targets those consumers who have become aware of your brand and are considering making a purchase. It’s also unique in that it actively involves your customer service and success teams.

And however, the key thing to remember here is that your customer service team has the same ability to bring on and keep new customers as your marketing team does. That’s why acquisition marketing is broader than just your marketing team.

Sure, your marketing team is responsible for developing and releasing new promotional materials that may spark interest in new customers. But it’s your customer service team that has a direct line to your current customers — and your current customers can be some of your best marketers.

Before we discuss retention through your customer service team, however, let’s talk about some customer acquisition strategies that your marketing team can implement.

Acquisition Channels

Customer acquisition channels are methods, platforms, and strategies through which companies attract new fans, readers, and leads. The best channels for your business will depend on your audience, resources, and overall strategy.

Customer acquisition methods can be broken up into a variety of different types: paid and free, inbound and outbound, etc.

Below, we’re going to review some commonly used methods of acquiring new customers along with some helpful tools, some at smaller scales, and some at much larger scales.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an effective customer acquisition method for all types of businesses. Creating new, exciting, and relevant content is a highly effective way to snag your audience’s attention and send them to your website.

Also, in a world full of false advertising and dwindling consumer trust, content marketing extends an olive branch by saying, “Here. We love what we do, and we want to share our expertise with you — for free.”

When it comes to content marketing, there’s no wrong type of content you can create.

Blogging

Blogging is a highly recommended acquisition method for businesses of all sizes, industries, and audience types. Running a blog allows you to explore different topics, flex your knowledge in your industry, and build authority among your readers. Blogging also continually gives you new opportunities to engage with your audience, whether through a graphic they can bookmark for later, a question they can answer in the comments, or an enticing call-to-action they can click.

Like I said above, if you choose to start a blog, be sure to have sustainable resources in place. Your blog writers can be dedicated employees, freelancers, or guest writers. Having a graphic designer and editor on board can help ensure your content is optimized for both search engines and reader experience. Lastly, adding a blog to your website is relatively easy, depending on your hosting platform.

Content Offers

Ebooks, guides, and other types of gated content offers represent a different type of content marketing because they typically involve creating more in-depth, valuable content. To compare, where a blog post might be about five different email subject lines that increase open rates, a similar guide would take a step back and cover the basics of email marketing strategy. See how the latter offers greater, more in-depth value for readers?

That’s why these types of content offers are also gated, meaning that readers must exchange personal information like emails and names to access the content. Content offers are an important part of customer acquisition and the conversion funnel and can help you get more leads out of your blog and content marketing strategy.

The process of creating content offers is similar to that of the blog but might require more specialized resources. Whereas blog posts typically revolve around a repetitive writing and design process, eBooks, guides, templates, white papers, and other downloadable content all carry their own production process. Again, you can create these with in-house or outsourced resources, but be aware that they might require an extra set of eyes and a unique promotional plan.

Video

Video is one of the more complicated forms of content to produce, but with higher-quality cameras becoming cheaper and a plethora of freelancers available, creating videos is easier than you think. Video marketing as part of a broader content strategy is all about quality content.

Video production typically involves script writing, editing, production, and animation — all of which you can outsource through freelancers or production agencies. Video tends to be the most expensive of the content types, so be sure to preserve your very best content for video ideas. If you simply want to visualize an idea for your audience, you can create a Slideshare as an alternative to video.

The heart of content marketing is connecting with and converting your audience. Because of this, each piece of content should be relevant to your readers and include a clear call to action. Content marketing is also partially content creation and partially content promotion. Keep reading to learn more about how to combine customer acquisition methods with highly effective promotion tactics to get better results.

Social Media

Social media marketing consists of two methods: organic and paid. Organic social media is most useful for boosting brand awareness, developing a company personality, and sharing content you’ve published elsewhere (like from your blog or videos). Consider it the gasoline for a fire you’ve already started using other acquisition methods.

Organic social media also capitalizes on the virality factor, inspiring your customers and followers to help you advertise.

While 74% of companies invested resources into more than eight social media platforms in 2020, Facebook was cited as the platform providing the most ROI. This tells us that social media can require a lot of effort for little reward if you don’t develop a solid game plan for its use.

• What networks are you going to leverage and which ones are you going to avoid?
• What’s your social brand voice and who on your marketing team will be tasked with developing and managing content?
• Do you have a crisis plan in place?

If these questions seem intimidating, don’t fret. Posting organically on social media may seem like shouting into a void, and with 3.8 billion active users, it can sure feel that way. The key is accessing the right networks — and this all comes back to a well-defined audience.

For example, if you’re targeting an audience mostly composed of men, Pinterest would have little value for you as only 14% of men use Pinterest. If your audience is made up of millennials, you should include Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat in your playbook.

Consider using social media management tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to help you curate and post content on your networks.

On the other hand, leveraging paid social media may be a better tactic for your business, depending on your budget and audience type. Paying for social media advertisements and exposure is a surefire way to get content in front of your audience, without having to build up a network of loyal followers. (But don’t get me wrong — that’s important, too!)

Whereas sponsored posts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram simply get your content in front of the right eyes, Facebook Lead Ads allow you to advertise on social media and gather customer information such as email addresses and names. This information can make the difference between a follower and a lead, so if your business is looking to build its list, this might be the acquisition method for you.

Search Marketing

Just like social media, there are also two sides to the search marketing coin: organic and paid.

Organic search marketing is also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO, like social media, complements content marketing efforts by optimizing your content so it’s more easily found by your target audience.

Think about it: When you Google something, you typically click on one of the first results (if not the very first result), right? The idea behind SEO is to create content that shows up high on the search engine results page (SERP) and makes searchers want to click on your content.

SEO is far from an exact science, but there are some proven methods to help your content rank better. SEO best practices involve creating indexable content – content that search engines can read, decipher, and index within a SERP. You can increase your content’s “indexability” (no, I cannot say for certain if that’s a real word) by:

• Putting your main keyword in the post title
• Adding alt text to your images
• Uploading transcripts for video and audio content
• Linking internally within your site

There’s a lot that goes into SEO, but these are a few basics to get you started.

SEO is a popular customer acquisition method for a couple of reasons: It’s relatively easy, and it’s very cost-effective. SEO continues to rise as a priority for marketing teams across the globe as 64% of marketers said they actively invested in SEO in 2020. Put in the time to learn SEO strategies, stay up to date with trends, and optimize your blog posts — and you’ll find your content ranking better than before.

On the other hand, paid search marketing (pay-per-click, or PPC) is advertising on a Google SERP itself. Instead of (or in addition to) organically optimizing your content, PPC allows you to create a search result and pay for it to show up alongside organic results, theoretically increasing your chances of being found by searchers.

Learn more about search marketing as a customer acquisition method and equip your content and ads to perform best in search engines by using tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, Open Site Explorer, and Ahrefs.

Email Marketing

What do marketers do with all that customer information they collect through other customer acquisition methods? They build an email list, and they leverage that email list to connect with and convert their customers.

Email marketing might seem like an outdated acquisition method, but it’s a highly effective way to stay in front of your customers and promote quality content, product information, and discounts and events. Email is also a great way to simply connect with your audience, whether by sending a happy birthday email or a valuable promotional email.

But what you send isn’t the only important part of email marketing. It’s also helpful to keep an eye on list behavior. For example, when you get a new subscriber, it’s safe to assume that the consumer is interested in your company and wants to learn more. Certain link clicks in your email can alert you to what your subscribers are most interested in. Furthermore, people that unsubscribe altogether can give you insight into how your subscribers view your emails and the content you share.

Email marketing is one of the few ways to monitor consumer behavior without having to ask too many questions. It also provides a direct line into your consumer’s inbox (though it’s not guaranteed they’ll open your emails), unlike social media, search, or content marketing. Outside of direct sales, there’s no better acquisition tactic than email marketing that gets to the heart of the individual customer.

It’s clear to see how well these customer acquisition methods work together. For example, social media marketing can promote SEO-optimized content that includes a call-to-action to join an email list. That’s a little long-winded, but you get the gist.

Mixing up and experimenting with a variety of customer acquisition methods can also help you learn more about your audience and introduce new tactics to your current strategy. Regardless of which strategies you choose, always leave room for analysis, improvement, and change — because you never know when customers may stop responding to your methods, or leave altogether.

How to Measure Customer Acquisition

You’ve heard the buzzword: customer acquisition cost, otherwise known as CAC. Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost associated with bringing a new customer or client to your business, such as marketing costs, events, and advertising. It’s typically calculated for a specific campaign or window of time.

CAC is important because it assigns real value to your marketing efforts and allows you to measure your ROI — a metric inquired about CEOs, managers, and investors alike.

How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost

High-level customer acquisition cost is calculated by dividing marketing costs associated with a specific campaign or effort by the number of customers acquired from that campaign.

To get a more in-depth, accurate look at CAC, you must include all costs associated with marketing spend, including everything from campaign spend to marketing salaries to the cost of the staples used to create those lengthy contracts.

CAC Formula Example

This CAC formula looks like this: CAC = (MC + W + S + OS + OH) / CA, where: CAC is customer acquisition cost, MC is marketing costs, W is wages for marketing and sales, S is marketing and sales software, OS is outsourced services, OH is overhead for marketing and sales, CA is customers acquired

Where the simple CAC metric might apply to a single campaign, the more complex CAC formula should be calculated within a given window, such as one month or fiscal year. For example, if Company A spent $10,000 on customer acquisition in Q4 of 2021 and acquired 100 customers, the CAC would be $100.

CAC can be a fickle metric and shouldn’t be the only number used to evaluate marketing efforts. Why? Well, here are a few things that could throw off the value and application of your CAC:

• On average, how often do your customers make purchases? There’s a major difference between the CAC of an Audi dealership and a Starbucks.
• Does/did your company spend money on marketing efforts that are slated to pay off in the far future? Say you invest in a Q3 campaign but pay for it in Q1. You aren’t necessarily going to see new customers right away from that investment, and that might skew your Q1 CAC.

Regardless, CAC is a critical number to calculate (and consistently recalculate) when acquiring new customers and employing new acquisition methods.

How to Minimize Customer Acquisition Cost

Here’s a simple truth about marketing: You can always do better. You can always reach new audiences, market with better messages, and minimize associated costs.

Depending on your outlook, this could be good or bad news. There’s always something to learn and always something to improve upon. Better yet, you aren’t stuck with a subpar metric that your executives or investors aren’t quite happy about.

If you’re looking to improve your CAC, here are a few ways to minimize the cost of acquiring new customers:

• Improve your website conversion efforts. Enhance your calls-to-action, ensure your site is mobile and tablet responsive, optimize your landing pages, and clean up your copywriting. Consider A/B testing a landing page or shopping cart to see if a certain design or copywriting angle works best. These will make sure any customer acquisition methods you’re already employing are working as perfectly as possible.
• Boost the value of your current customers. This may involve releasing a new product or upgrade in which your customers can also invest in. User value can also skyrocket when they refer other customers or simply act as promoters for your business.
• Adjust and optimize your customer acquisition strategy. Take some time to structure your acquisition blueprint and see what each method is costing you. Where could you cut back on extra marketing spending or manpower? Costs for specific channels can rise over time, and you can always minimize CAC by finding newer, cheaper channels to invest in. This process also ensures your strategy reflects the most recent marketing trends and remains agile.

How to Improve Your Customer Acquisition Strategy

Every business needs new customers to grow and succeed, so whether you’re a company of five or 5,000, having a roadmap for customer acquisition is a smart move.

A solid customer acquisition strategy should be four things: sustainable, flexible, targeted, and diversified.

1. Make your strategy sustainable.

A sustainable customer acquisition strategy is one that works in the long run. This means that the investments you make (whether money, time, or human) can be upheld for the foreseeable future.

For example, if you plan to acquire new customers through a blog, you should have the tools and resources in place to ensure content production lives past one or two posts – effectively bringing in organic traffic for months or years to come. This is why inbound marketing is effective — it creates sustainable traffic and, therefore, a sustainable source of new customers. Consider this in comparison to ads, which can be an effective way to acquire customers … as long as the ads are live.

2. Build in flexibility.

Your customer acquisition strategy should also be flexible because marketing and sales, and the way people respond to them are always changing. While salespeople were once the gatekeepers of information about a product, that’s no longer the case.

Consumers are increasingly skeptical of brand claims and anything said about a product by the company or its reps. Creating a customer acquisition strategy that only relies on salespeople would put your company in a tough spot. Keep your strategy pliable, and you’ll always be ready to respond to market trends.

3. Find your target market.

All consumers aren’t your best consumers, and customer acquisition efforts can result in a waste of resources if they’re not targeting the right people. Before you invest in any customer acquisition methods, you must define who you’re targeting with said methods.

The process alone of defining your buyer persona can help weed out any unnecessary or wasted acquisition efforts as well as alert you to specific needs or desires that some channels may meet. For example, businesses targeting Gen Z might consider creating videos as part of their content marketing strategy, given that 77% of teens and young adults ages 15-25 use YouTube.

A targeted customer acquisition strategy requires taking a step back and figuring out what’s best for your business, resources, and audience. Then, you can expect to see real responses to your customer acquisition efforts.

4. Diversify your approach.

Ever heard of cross-pollination? It’s when bees spread pollen between a variety of plants, bringing about variations of species that better withstand time and nature. In this case, marketers can be compared to these well-traveled bees.

When you diversify your acquisition strategy and use various acquisition methods, you have a greater chance of reaching new audiences and generating new leads.

Also, diversifying your customer acquisition strategy creates a balance between risk and reward, meaning if one channel begins to fail (see: salespeople example above or the declining effectiveness of organic Facebook reach), it’s easier to reallocate funds for a new, better-performing method.

Now that you know what makes an amazing customer acquisition strategy, let’s talk about some companies that are doing it well.

Customer Retention Is the New Acquisition (Method)

Despite working hard and employing various methods to acquire new customers, sometimes they do leave us. *tear*

That’s the unfortunate motivation behind customer acquisition, though, and it’s important to recognize. On that note, let’s discuss another buzzword: Churn. Yuck … the word itself doesn’t sound too friendly, much less is the definition behind it.

What is customer churn?

Customer Churn represents the percentage of customers that peel away from your business and opt-out of your products or services. It’s also referred to as customer attrition or turnover.

Why is churn important? Customer churn is what motivates businesses to find and acquire new customers. When you lose customers, you want to go out and find new ones, right? Historically, as businesses have experienced higher churn rates, they’ve invested in more (and more expensive) acquisition methods.

Well, my friends, it’s time to look at customer acquisition and customer churn in a new light. Instead of using acquisition methods to make up for customer churn, what if we worked to decrease churn altogether?

What if we avoided the proverbial (and pricey) band-aid of customer acquisition and went to the source of the wound — unhappy or unsatisfied customers? Those are, in fact, the customers that leave, er, churn, aren’t they?

What I’m saying here is that customer retention is the new customer acquisition. Instead of looking outward and onward for new customers to replace the old, forgotten ones, I propose that you look inward and work to retain customers using new and improved customer service methods.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value is the estimated net profit that an individual or business will provide over their lifetime as a paying customer. This is a helpful factor to consider when getting to know your customers and how they interact with your business. It also provides a clear valuation of your marketing and support efforts and helps influence business decisions across the board. In addition to knowing the cost of acquiring a new customer, it’s helpful to know how much value a retained customer provides your business. Both of these are important metrics to calculate and compare when reviewing marketing and sales efforts.

Customers with high LTV are more expensive to acquire, but they provide the greatest value — in terms of revenue, feedback, and referrals — than other customers.

Calculating customer LTV isn’t difficult, but it does require defining a few metrics along the way, such as average purchase value and frequency. Even if you have to estimate these numbers, having a solid customer LTV can help you predict how much revenue you can roughly expect a customer to provide throughout their relationship with your business.

By defining customer LTV alongside CAC, companies can figure out just how long it takes to replace each investment made in acquiring new customers — and how to better spend that acquisition budget.

Smart Customer Acquisition Helps You Grow Better

Surely you’ve heard, “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver, and the other, gold.” The same applies to customers.

Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any company, small or large. That means you can’t quite afford — no matter the cost — to give up on marketing to new customers. But research has shown that the key to growth lies not with your marketing or sales team but your customer service team, and your customers themselves.

That’s right — companies that succeed put their customers in the spotlight, for both acquisition and retention. Set up your acquisition strategy correctly, and you can expect to not only lower your customer acquisition cost but also increase your customer lifetime value.

Customer acquisition is all about acquiring the right customers that stick around — and help you acquire more. Instead of visualizing customer acquisition as a one-way funnel, start picturing your customer acquisition and retention methods as a flywheel: Always work to bring new customers on board, but don’t forget about them once they’ve joined the crew. Equip them to succeed, and they’ll go to work on your behalf.