How do I Choose the Best Customer Acquisition Strategy?

Choosing the best customer acquisition strategy for your business needs typically involves understanding the habits, likes, and dislikes of the types of clients you wish to target. As most sales and marketing people understand, reaching specific groups of consumers requires adapting approaches so the company and its products stand out from all the other businesses offering similar goods and services. Typically, a business will use more than one approach as part of the overall strategy, making it possible to increase the chances of reaching the desired core audience on more than one level.

The customer acquisition strategy for a small business that primarily operates on a local level will of necessity be different than the method used by large corporations that want to reach a national or global pool of prospective clients. For a local retailer, grocer, or similar business, focusing on local media options is often a good choice. This means utilizing traditional outlets like television and radio ads that run at strategic times during the day and evening. Use of local print media in the form of area magazines and newspapers is often effective.

Small businesses can also include the use of the Internet in their overall customer acquisition strategy. Even local businesses may find that creating pages or groups on social networking sites makes it possible to connect with established customers who in turn create a potential connection with all the individuals in their networks. At the same time, setting up a simple web site and structuring the site so that local residents can visit, bookmark, and share the site with others can also be an effective means of reaching new customers.

Larger businesses can also make use of these same basic approaches as part of customer acquisition strategies. Using various customer analytics to create an effective e-marketing plan will provide the company with some idea of what the use of online ads will have on attracting new customers. At the same time, the analysis will also aid in creating the general content for the company web site, making in possible to add text that includes keywords and key phrases that consumers are likely to use when searching for the type of products the company offers. Print and electronic ads on television and radio may also be part of a large corporation’s overall plan to reach new customers, possibly structuring the ads to focus in on specific demographics in various nations or regions within a given nation.

Any effective customer acquisition strategy will also allow for the maintenance of a sales team that proactively contacts prospective customers. This may be accomplished by hiring full-time sales people who receive a salary plus a commission, or establishing an affiliate program that allows members of the sales force to receive compensation based on the sales revenue they generate for the company. It is not unusual for a large company to utilize a full time sales team along with some sort of affiliate program, effectively creating a larger sales force while still keeping costs within reason.

Choosing the best customer acquisition strategy involves understanding what you have to offer and where to find customers that are likely to want those products, do well as identifying the most effective ways to reach them. For the most part, a viable strategy will not be static; the ability to modify the acquisition approach when and as necessary helps to keep the plan current and effective. Take the time to identify all possible approaches to include in the overall strategy and find out how each is effective with different demographics of consumers. Soon, you will have a good idea of what elements to include and can begin the task of creating a campaign that makes good use of all those elements.