Customer Acquisition Archives

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How To Improve Your B2B Customer Acquisition Strategy

June 14, 2023 No Comments

By Samuel Thimothy,

Acquiring new customers is the cornerstone of business growth, and crafting the right acquisition strategy plays an important role in achieving that goal. However, there are several reasons why these strategies may fail, from poor communication between sales and marketing teams to poor positioning and messaging.

With the right approach, you can win more customers and drive sustainable growth for your business. Below are the most common mistakes businesses make when developing their acquisition strategy and steps you can take to improve your organization’s approach.

Siloed Sales And Marketing Teams

One of the most common reasons why customer acquisition initiatives fail is because there’s a disconnect between sales and marketing. If they aren’t sharing data, it’s difficult to create an effective strategy. I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say your marketing team spends months creating targeted content for a specific persona. They invest time and money in ads, promote content on social media and drive lots of traffic to the company’s website. But when those leads convert, your sales team immediately disqualifies them.

It can be a huge problem, but the solution is very simple. Make sure these departments communicate and agree on what a “qualified” lead means so there are no unmet expectations. Also, implement a system where leads are automatically sent from marketing to sales so that nothing falls through the cracks.

Sales’ Focus On Existing Clients

Another reason why customer acquisition strategies fail is that sales teams are too focused on existing clients. It makes sense because existing clients are low-hanging fruit. They already know who you are, they already trust you, and they’re more likely to buy from you again. So why bother trying to acquire new customers?

The problem with this line of thinking is that it ignores the fact that many clients will eventually leave. It’s just a matter of time. That’s why it’s important to have a constant stream of new customers coming in the door: so that you’re never left high and dry.

How can you fix this problem? Set quotas for your sales team and create incentives for bringing in new business. Be sure to give them all the resources they need to succeed, such as access to a customer relationship management (CRM) tool or lead generation software.

Poor Positioning And Mixed Messages

If your company has expanded its products or services over time, it’s possible that your positioning and messaging are now confusing. This can make it hard for potential customers to understand what you do and why they should buy from you.

Imagine you’re a digital marketing agency that started out by offering SEO. You’ve since expanded into content marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, social media management, web design and video production—essentially, anything that fits into the “digital marketing” category.

Now when potential customers come to your website, they have no idea what you specialize in. Unclear positioning makes a company look like a jack-of-all-trades. Someone looking for SEO services will now go and hire another SEO agency that has one specific offer.

Fixing this problem is all about getting back to basics and making sure your positioning and messaging are clear and concise. Define who your ideal customer is and what problem you’re solving for them. Everything else should fall into place around that core message.

How To Improve Your Customer Acquisition Strategy

Not feeling particularly optimistic about your company’s acquisition strategy? You’re not alone. Most businesses struggle to keep up with customers’ ever-changing needs. Fortunately, there are some simple ways to improve your approach. Take the following steps:

Step 1: Make It Flexible

Your customer acquisition strategy has to be flexible, especially if you are accounting for future growth. Without the ability to adapt and change with your business, acquisition strategies just won’t cut it. Make sure that there’s enough flexibility built into your plan so that you can adapt as needed—whether it’s due to big successes or major industry disruption.

Step 2: Make It Sustainable

Good acquisition strategy can be sustained in the long term—and all too often this isn’t taken into account when businesses are making decisions. Before picking any particular path forward, ask yourself if you’ll be able to do it in five or even 10 years. Lasting success boils down to finding something that works now and keeps working in the future.

Step 3: Make It Targeted

A lot of businesses make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone with their acquisition strategy, but this is rarely effective. Instead, it’s much better to focus on a specific target audience and tailor your plans accordingly. When you know who you’re trying to reach, you can create an acquisition strategy that’s much more likely to be successful.

Step 4: Make It Diversified

Another common mistake businesses make is putting all their eggs in one basket. This can be very risky because if something happens to that one channel, your entire acquisition strategy could come crashing down. To protect yourself against this, make sure your efforts are diversified and include multiple channels.

Improving your customer acquisition strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right amount of research and effort, you can build effective strategies that will help you reach your goals and grow your business into something bigger.

Feature Image Credit: Hinterhaus Productions 2016

By Samuel Thimothy,

VP at OneIMS.com, an inbound marketing agency, and co-founder of Clickx.io, the digital marketing intelligence platform.

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs 45 and younger. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co. Questions about an article? Email [email protected].

Sourced from Forbes

In News

3 Proven Strategies for Rapid Customer Acquisition on Social

August 26, 2020 No Comments

By Carol Sankar.

Although social media is a powerful way to get your products or services to stand out from the competition, all campaigns are not the same.

Social media can be a powerful tool for getting your products or services to stand out from the competition. But not all campaigns are created equal. While some do a great job of acquiring customers, others seem to fly entirely under the radar.

So what makes the difference? A major factor simply comes from the way account managers set up their social media campaigns. As important as witty copy and engaging images can be, they will only be as effective as your strategy allows them to be.

1. Build up your organic engagement.

Paid campaigns have become increasingly important in light of declining organic reach across Facebook and other social media platforms. But this doesn’t mean you should ignore ways to expand your reach with organic posts. While paid campaigns may help your target audience discover your brand, your organic posts are essential for keeping them engaged in the long run.

Case in point: Instagram Stories have become one of the most popular types of social media posts, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z-ers. In fact, studies have found that one-fourth of these users use Instagram Stories to discover new products and services. This organic posting method could be key in helping your brand gain new customers.

Research from Buffer indicates that brands can post twice per day on Facebook, and up to three times a day on Twitter before audience engagement starts to decrease. Rather than overwhelming your audience with a large number of posts, the key is to create highly engaging content and post it at the right times.

For best results, use your audience insights to get a clear idea of which types of posts most resonate with your customers. Digging into profile data specific to your audience will help you identify which content to prioritize for the future.

2. Reduce the number of campaigns you are actively running.

More campaigns aren’t necessarily a good thing on social media — especially if you are operating on a tight budget. Some campaigns end up targeting the same individuals over and over again, resulting in ad fatigue that reduces their effectiveness.

Research from KlientBoost has determined that most brands should run a maximum of three or four campaigns, with each campaign focused on groups in different parts of the sales funnel. In its case study, the single action of taking a client from six campaigns with 24 ad sets to four campaigns with nine ad sets led to a 40 percent increase in revenue and 20 percent more ad clicks.

Too many ad sets will spread your social media spending too thin to have a meaningful impact. Reducing your campaigns and ad sets allocates more of your budget to each campaign so they can achieve a wider reach with the intended audience.

Fewer campaigns will require less time to track, making it easier to identify whether they are performing as expected.

3. Increase the power of retargeting campaigns with Automatic Advanced Matching and Dynamic Ads.

A Little Data study of more than 1,100 e-commerce stores found that the average conversion rate sat at a mere 1.4 percent. This low conversion rate relates to a fundamental marketing truth: Customers will rarely make a purchase the first time they engage with your brand.

Because of this, your ability to successful retarget customers through your social media campaigns can serve as a powerful reminding tool that guides them through the rest of the sales funnel.

Facebook’s Automatic Advanced Matching links with its pixel tool to collect additional information from form fields on your website — even email signups or landing page forms. It leverages this information to create bigger and more accurate custom audiences, while also helping you improve campaign conversion rates.

When paired with Dynamic Ads, this tool can be even more powerful. Perfect for e-commerce sellers, these ads deliver personalized content based on the products a customer was looking at while browsing your site. This serves as a helpful reminder of the products they’ve looked at, or it can highlight similar products that they are likely to be interested in.

As just one example, a 2019 Aeropostale campaign using dynamic ads helped the company double its conversion rate and achieve 3.7 times as much revenue as the prior holiday season.

While these tactics can streamline your social media efforts, this doesn’t mean you can let social become a “set it and forget it” part of your marketing. By continuing to analyze your outcomes, introduce new campaigns, and make adjustments based on your audience’s engagement levels, you can continue fine-tuning your social media marketing to grow even more.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Carol Sankar

Carol Sankar is a high-level business consultant and the founder of The Confidence Factor for Women in Leadership–a global executive leadership firm focused on diversity and inclusion initiatives for high-achieving women. Sankar has been featured in TEDx, the Steve Harvey show, the Inc. Women’s Summit, the Society for Human Resource Management, and more.

@carolsankar

Soured from Inc.

In News

How to Use Direct Sales to Re-Imagine Your Customer Acquisition Strategy

June 15, 2020 No Comments

By Benton Crane.

Four ways to rethink marketing right now.

So you’re an entrepreneur whose dream business was finally taking off, and then an economic shockwave hit. Like the rest of the world, you’re trying to not only survive yourself, but also to preserve your livelihood and that of your employees.

Now, although American is slowly rebounding, businesses are definitely not going back to the “normal” they once knew. In fact, for most industries, it’s unpredictable and about as easy to forecast as the wild swings in the stock market. A large part of that uncertainty lies in the mindset of consumers right now.

A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that 66 percent of Americans are worried about being impacted directly by this crisis, and 75 percent think there is some degree of likelihood that opening the economy will result in more illness. That means even with all the talk of reopening and restrictions being relaxed, your business is nowhere near the same level of sales that you were before the worldwide disaster struck, and you’re wondering if the rebound buzz is the light at the end of the tunnel or just a mirage in the desert.

That’s why a relationship with your customer is so critical at a time like this. I have always been a strong advocate for having a direct sales relationship with your customers built on trust, a solid product and in the case of marketing, humour. Now is the time to double down on that mindset, especially when social media and online platforms are the only ways you’re going to connect with potential new customers. Here are four ways to use a direct sales relationship to grow despite of the challenges.

Act, don’t react

Reacting is jumping at every little shiny object that looks like it might offer a shred of increased sales or a quick fix that keeps you afloat. But the mindset of action is having the focus to not only survive, but thrive, during a time of total upheaval and disruption in your industry. It allows you to make a plan and implement it.

Nail the message

Your message is your sales pitch, your 30-second elevator speech to the target audience that closes the deal and creates a new customer. Don’t confuse this with branding or slogans — those aren’t something you should be focusing on right now. Get sales coming in the door now, and you will have all sorts of opportunities in the future to build brand over time.

Think about how you sell your product face-to-face. What problem are you solving for the customer? How do you get and keep your customer’s attention? What questions do you ask? What stories do you tell? An important part of nailing your message, which many companies overlook, involves making sure your online message is cohesive with your normal sales pitch. That leads to the next step.

Build an effective online sales funnel

This is where your message is translated into an online sales funnel. I’m not talking about a generic website filled with products, slogans and cheesy photos of you and your team. I’m talking about an online experience that mimics real-life interactions. Walk your customer through the sale exactly like you would if you were standing face-to-face with them. Empathize with the problem your customer faces. Introduce a solution (your product) and demonstrate how it will help them overcome or avoid the problem. Build credibility and overcome concerns.

Your online sales funnel can also include a video. If you can’t sell face-to-face, video is the next best thing. Work with what you have. If you can afford a nice cinematic camera and lights, great! But don’t hesitate to shoot video on your phone if that is all you have access to. Sincerity almost always trumps polish, and introducing a little humor or light-heartedness can make a wonderful connection with your customers.

An effective online sales funnel is a crucial pivot that can not only be a lifeline but also take your business to the next level. You should always continue to refine your message and sales funnel through testing and customer feedback.

Develop your brand

Branding is what will set you apart in your niche market and create more customers who not only buy, but are also excited to be a part of your business. At this point I recommend developing your brand character. Donald Miller, author of How to Build a Storybrand, teaches that your brand character needs to show both empathy and authority. These are the attributes that win your customers’ trust.

Once your branding is established, you can make the move to marketing nirvana, branded advertising. This is where your brand and brand characters you’ve developed take on a life of their own, where people are entertained and identify with your brand and become loyal customers. They will even help you market by voluntarily sharing your content with an ever wider audience.

So why do I share all this now in the midst of this unprecedented time of upheaval and disruption? Because although I know we will sadly see businesses go under and fail, I believe that the American entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. Your business might have the next product or service that’s ready to solve a problem, take the market by storm create jobs in your community and ultimately bring more hope — and a little humor — to a world very much in need of both.

Feature Image Credit: Ellagrin | Getty Images

By Benton Crane

CEO of Harmon Brothers