57% of B2C brands say that customer acquisition is their number one marketing initiative. They rely on tried-and-true customer acquisition strategies, but just like fashion, they can go out of style. Marketing must put a new spin on an iconic approach.
Here are three ways to redesign your customer acquisition strategy for 2022 and beyond:
Put your customer data to work to identify and segment your audience.
Balance your budget, determine your ROI, and understand the value of your customers.
It’s not necessarily about being everywhere (but if it is, don’t forget your omnichannel strategy!). Be where your audience wants to see you.
Create engaging content to attract customers and stand out from the competition
Reward customers for spreading the word. Customers referred by a friend are four times more likely to buy than those who come in cold.
These classic tactics work and will continue to work if deployed effectively. But consumer trends and behavior continue to change.
Today, consumers rely on word of mouth before making a purchase. Third-party review websites such as G2Crowd, Glassdoor, Yelp, etc. give customers easy access toboth good and bad reviews. As a result, 81% of customers trust reviews from friends and family over the brand messaging.
Lack of trust goes hand in hand with consumers’ growing hesitation to share personal data. It's now harder and more expensive to get the data you need to improve your customer acquisition strategy. Over two-thirds of retailers say that recent changes made by Apple and Google are making things more difficult. Specifically, there’s a huge impact on customer targeting and acquisition scaling.
Every marketer understands the need for better customer experiences. But they aren't just competing with rivals in their market, but in every market.
Once customers have a great brand experience — even in a potentially different industry — they come to expect the best from every brand interaction, every time. After all, wouldn’t we all like the McDonald’s Speedee Service at the DMV?
As you can see, these challenges create a vicious cycle. No trust means no data, which means subpar experiences, which further erodes trust.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to respond to the ever-changing whims of consumers. You just need to put a new spin on an old look. Think of your customer acquisition strategy as Gucci. It’s time to give it the Tom Ford treatment.
Using third-party data for customer acquisition is more regulated and more expensive. GDPR and CCPA prohibit brands from using a consumer’s data to market to them without consent, which restricts cookie-based advertising. This limits the effectiveness of paid acquisition channels and makes third-party advertising more expensive.
Fortunately, third-party data isn’t the only option. It’s never been easier to engage and exchange personal data to use in customer acquisition and retention.
Contests and promotions create attractive opportunities for consumers to engage with your brand and share data. Contest emails, for example, have an average open rate of 8.8%, which creates an effective channel for gathering zero-party data in exchange for a reward.
The goal should be to take your understanding of your customer further than what you buy and why. You need to understand the emotional, moral, and spiritual drivers that sit behind those actions. In doing so, you’ll find new opportunities for meaningful customer experiences.
At first glance, Virgin Red’s understanding of its customers seems surface-level. It’s got a brand identity that targets the young and affluent and boasts: “From caffeine kicks to free cinema flicks, VIP hols and premium tix, we know how to reward you. Earn points every day and spend on the special stuff.”
However, they also understand that younger generations see family, the environment, and societal change as good things. And that brands have an obligation to take a stand on environmental issues.
So, as well as a caffeine kick, Virgin Red members can spend their points donating to charitable causes and investing in their children’s education. Virgin understands that beneath the disposable income and the lust for life, younger people also need to feel like they’re making positive change.
Customer experience has three components: perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.
The best customer experiences personalize each component. But personalization isn’t enough anymore. Customers want brands to build a relationship with them before they make a purchase.
Individualization takes personalization one step further. It uses data to deliver a tailor-made experience in real-time to perfectly match a customer’s immediate need.
This innovation relies on the right mix of technology and infrastructure, including omnichannel solutions that manage customer information across all online and offline channels. So, customers get a seamless experience regardless of which touchpoint they use.
Netflix’s investment in algorithms and audience analytics allows them to offer a unique, on-demand serviceto every viewer. They cite that there are now “33 million different versions of Netflix.”
A personalized experience would draw on the viewer’s history, compare it to what others watch, and make recommendations – like your average eCommerce recommendation.
But Netflix takes it further.
Everything from the recommendations, the order of search results, and even the title cards you see are specifically presented based on your Netflix experience.
How do they do this? Because they measure everything. And they use that data to create individualized experiences.
New customer acquisition costs have increased by almost 50% in the past five years. And the longer brands rely on acquisition alone, growth will cost more and more every year. At the same time, engaged and loyal customers are proven to spend regularly and spend more when they do.
If you want to steer the oil tanker that is your marketing away from acquisition, it’s time to move your budget from performance marketing to brand investment.
Yes, it’s very hard to quantify ROI on brand investment and any model you use will result in a crude estimate. But investing in your brand is key to improving customer experience, which allows you to turn happy customers into advocates.
Customers who refer cellular carrier T-Mobile to their friends can earn up to $50 per friend who purchases a T-Mobile plan and up to $500 per year. Friends, meanwhile, enjoy discounts on their new plans to help encourage the referral process. The multi-referral structure lets current customers earn substantive rewards — this often drives better results than a single, large-payout referral.
T-Mobile’s referral program only works if their customer experience is good enough for customers to stake their reputations on recommending them.
Shirts, skirts, jeans, heels – the fundamentals never really go out of style. And every ten years we get a new spin on a classic look. Today, it’s all about customer data and retention. But tomorrow, who knows?
For brands that want to stay ahead, they need to look around as well as forward. Brands like Starbucks and Apple push the envelope for everyone, whether they’re in your market or not. That’s why it’s important to look beyond your direct competitors when developing your customer acquisition strategy.
And since traditional third-party data capture methods are falling by the wayside, brands need to pivot towards zero- and first-party data collection. To attract and retain customers in 2022 and beyond, you need to go further than short-term campaigns. You must take a long-term view that attracts loyal customers willing to share their data because they see value in the relationship.
Methods, platforms, and strategies companies use to attract new fans, readers, and leads. The best channels for your business depend on your audience, resources, and overall strategy.
The implementation of strategies to market your products and services to new customers. It typically requires collaboration and alignment between marketing, and customer service teams.
The process of onboarding new customers. The goal of this process is to create a systematic, sustainable strategy to encourage action, acquire new customers and grow business revenue.
The percentage of customers that peel away from your business and opt out of your products or services.
The estimated net profit that an individual or business will provide over their lifetime as a paying customer.
A phenomenon that shows that brands of different sizes have greatly varied customer numbers, yet similar relative loyalty. It emphasises that loyalty is a function of brand size and that it’s normal for smaller brands to have fewer brand buyers who're slightly less loyal than customers of larger competitors.
Data from your audience. You passively collect first-party data via your brand's properties – social media, point-of-sale, website/app visitors, and data that aggregates into your CRM. Customers implicitly provide consent to first-party data collection when they engage with a brand.
Data your customer proactively shares. Zero-party data is anything a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. It can include delivery preferences, purchase intentions, personal context, or how the customer wants the brand to recognize them.