5 customer acquisition strategies for small business owners
If you are a small business owner, customer acquisition can be one of the most challenging parts of your job. There are many customer acquisition strategies that you could employ to get more customers, but if you want to know what they are then read on!
In this blog post we will discuss 5 customer acquisition strategies for small businesses that will increase customer retention rates and help grow your customer base.
But first, let's quickly explain what customer acquisition is
What is customer acquisition?
Customer acquisition is the process of getting new customers to your business. This can be done via customer referrals, customer word-of-mouth marketing, paid advertising or just good old fashioned cold calling and door knocking!
So now that you know what customer acquisition is let's get onto customer retention strategies for small businesses. As we mentioned earlier in this post there are many ways to acquire new customers but here are some of the best customer retention strategies for small business owners:
- define your target market
- Figure out which channels to use
- Optimized landing pages
- Improve your website
- Referral programs
Define your target market
The customer acquisition strategies that work best for you will depend on your target market. You must spend time getting to know your customer and understanding what kind of customers they are, where they shop and how much money they have available to them at any given moment in time!
Once you know who their ideal customer is then it becomes a lot easier to create specific marketing campaigns and content that appeals directly to this group of people.
Figure out which channels to use
There are many customer acquisition strategies that can be used and the most popular customer retention strategies for small business owners include: social media marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing and paid advertising.
Which ones you should focus on will depend entirely upon your target market but think about where they hangout online? That's usually a good place to start!
Optimized landing pages
Once you have a customer acquisition strategy in place then the next thing to do is create an optimized customer retention page. This should be simple and easy for your customer to understand, avoid using jargon or buzzwords that they wouldn't understand!
The content of this webpage needs to reflect exactly what they will get from their customer referral, if it's a free trial then tell them that and let them know what they will get once their customer referral has been successful.
Improve your website
You should also focus on improving the customer experience for those who have already bought from you. You can do this by:
- having a fast website
- easy navigation
- great content
- having a live chat customer service option
- Referral programs
Referral programs
If people enjoy doing business with you then there is no reason why they wouldn't refer new potential customers over to you right? A great way of encouraging this behaviour is through customer referrals which work especially well in BtoC industries but also still work extremely effectively within smaller companies too!
Small business customer acquisition strategies with customer referrals can be a great way of getting new customers, just think about it...
customers who have already done business with you and loved your product or service will want to share the word with their friends and family. It's free advertising! So if one customer referral turns into two then before you know it you will have a customer base that is larger than you could ever imagine!
Improving your customer retention rate and growing your customer base should be one of the main goals for every small business owner.
Use these customer acquisition strategies today!
Now you know what customer acquisition strategies you can use to get more customers, implement them today!
Be sure to do some competitor research, A/B testing and making adjustments accordingly. What works for one industry, may not work for the other.
What customer acquisition strategies can you think of?