10 Proven Customer Acquisition Strategies For Ecommerce Businesses
10 Proven Customer Acquisition Strategies For Ecommerce Businesses
10 Proven Customer Acquisition Strategies For Ecommerce Businesses
The process of bringing new customers or clients to your business is called customer acquisition. A sustainable acquisition strategy is important for the growth of any business. You know your company is progressing and your investors are happy if you are able to attract new customers. A sign that your products and businesses are working is to get new customers. It is important to get and retain your customers regardless of whether only a few users pay a huge amount or lots of users are visiting your platform for free. If you are ready for more customers and your team can manage an influx of users then below are the ten steps that you can consider to create a comprehensive customer acquisition plan.
Know Your 5 Ps
Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People are the five Ps that are absolutely important. Make your product unique, understand the market, your margins, and your customers to create a promotion that will bring value to the customers. Be sure to fully understand the 5 Ps before you launch any type of plan. You will be able to create your customer acquisition plan provided you know your five Ps.
The Hook
Present something that makes you stand out. Be it that you deliver products faster, provide a lifetime warranty or offer cheap rates than your competitors. You need to have a decent hook that differentiates you from others. Value is that one word on which the success of your business depends. If you know what your customer values and you can provide more value than your competitors then you have found the key to success.
Promote Your Hook
Our lives are filled with the content that is provided by the internet and the content is more than we could ever process. Therefore it is imperative to create valuable, relevant and large amounts of content. You can start with press releases but it is wiser to have your own blog having content and not just promotions. Try not to get the attention of your customers rather go where the attention of your customer is. Reach to your customer on the kind of social media they are on, which means if your customer is on Instagram, you have to contact them on Instagram and not on LinkedIn. It is economical to just find out where the attention of your customer is rather than creating attention. Make a content plan and test it on a regular basis.
Give Free Stuff
Free stuff is something that everybody loves. One of the best methods of customer acquisition is and will always be the word of mouth. You are instantly giving value if you are giving away free products, advice, or services. It will cost you less than what the ads will cost you. If it is possible for you to give a product away then you can promote it by giving it to potential customers. If the product you are giving away is expensive then you can give away promotional items and that will be just as effective. And what is more effective than even ads is offering free advice or consultation for the service industry.
SEO
Majority of the customers look for a business, product, or service online which makes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) very essential. Your customers should be able to find you and they should also find your website updated. To achieve this goal you have to use strategic keywords and phrases.
Email Marketing
The design of your content should be such that it captures emails and your email campaign should such that it offers value in every single email. There is a tendency that the potential leads will unsubscribe if the aim of your email campaign is just to sell. You have to promote involvement by giving value, offering discounts and free trials. You have the option to pay to send guest emails on other email lists. One thing you need to be careful of is you are sending emails to the right audience. You can measure open rates and continue what works.
Paid Ads
You know when you should use paid ads? Once you have everything else set up and when you absolutely know who your audience is. Social media is comparatively inexpensive and is beneficial for your other methods as well. You can begin with a test budget and keep making changes until you get a return on investment (ROI) that you want. You can go with text ads which will increase your overall SEO but visual ads have a better ROI than text ads.
Be There
The heavy work will be done by your marketing and your salesmen will just have to do the closings. Provide your customers a number that they can call to reach you and a chat window that they can use when they visit your website. The customers will reach out to your competitors if they can’t reach out to you at the moment of research. Build a relationship with your customers with your level of support and professional ability.
Answer Questions
The average search is a question, not a statement or fact. You need to provide this statement or fact. This will also build trust and once again provide upfront value. You need to have answers ready for all the queries that your customers put forth. In fact, the answers should be available to them on your website, and also through the chat support on your website. You can also increase your rank and benefit your SEO by using websites like Quora. You can even answer questions using your promotions. The average search is not a statement or fact but a question and you have to provide this statement or fact. Besides providing upfront value, it will also build trust.
Have a Loyalty/Rewards Program
Customer retention plans include loyalty and rewards programs. Even though it is cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one but when it comes to customer acquisition, loyalty programs also hold the highest ROI. Companies with a good rewards/loyalty program are preferred by the majority of customers. This is a key factor that the customers usually see while choosing a company. What you can do here is have an all-in-one program that in addition to benefiting your customers, benefits you as well.
Conclusion:
Getting the right customers, retaining them and getting new ones is what customer acquisition is all about. Bring new customers on-board and remember them once they’ve joined. The customer acquisition and retention methods should be considered as a flywheel, not a one-way funnel.