What are they, and why optimize your company's acquisition channels?
The correct management of acquisition channels can generate excellent results. That's why understanding their importance is the key to success, taking advantage of these resources will surely lead your company to success. What are you waiting for to see your business grow?
In a society as competitive as today's, where only the companies that make the most strategic decisions manage to stand out in the market, it is important to take advantage of every resource available to generate added value to the brand and thus win over customers.
What is customer acquisition?
It is the process by which companies can generate new customers. In the case of acquisition channels, it will be in the hands of your company not only to select the most appropriate ones and those used by your target audience, but also to diversify them, either to have greater opportunities to acquire new customers or to retain existing ones. If these channels are chosen correctly, the different strategies to attract customers will not only be effective, but also successful.
There are several marketing channels you can use to acquire new leads. The most common ones are: sending emails, social networks such as LinkedIn, paid ads, etc. In fact, the more diversified your channels are, the more likely you are to acquire new customers or retain old ones in the long run.
It is important to maintain constant communication with your leads and customers, so that they do not forget about your products and can be informed of new promotions or features that are coming soon. Therefore, your company has to review its channels according to the marketing strategy you want to adopt for the growth of your business.
It must be taken into consideration that this is not an instantaneous one-step process; in many cases the process through which a potential customer becomes a customer can be quite complex. This means that leads or future customers follow a sort of "customer journey":
Awareness: your target customer becomes aware that he/she has a need or problem, this is the stage in which the lead begins to investigate his/her options.
Consideration: This is a stage in which the user searches for different options that could offer him a solution to his problem or need. It is a moment of comparison of what is offered.
Decision: It is here, where the customer acquires a solution to his problem or need. In this way, he decides the option that best convinced him and becomes a customer.
Do you know the level you'd like to be at with your company this year? Have you thought about how many clients you need to have to get to that point? Let me tell you that if you don't have it yet, you are not alone. We know that there are many companies that don't have organized sales goals. The lack of goals is very risky for the planning and financial health of a business, which ends up being left without profit predictability and at the mercy of a budget made every month. The consequences of this lack of planning may even imply a negative financial balance in some months.
What is an acquisition campaign?
Never underestimate the influence that can be generated by the correct management of acquisition channels, as it can be the difference between success and failure of a business. Although at the beginning you will probably have to experiment with different alternatives before finding the channels and techniques that work best, this does not have to be a reason to get discouraged, since, with these experiments, you have the option of getting to know your target audience better.
Keep in mind that nowadays, it is impossible to say no to the use of customer acquisition channels. This is because, in order to achieve the goals established in a company's development plan, it is necessary to generate a sustained growth of users and customers. Although a basic system of customer acquisition channels may be working well, over time it is normal to innovate in order to improve, incorporating different methods and resources. This is where the other types of customer acquisition channels come into play.
The first thing that should be done before starting any other move is to develop a customer acquisition strategy. This represents the roadmap to follow to achieve the objectives. After that, the tactics that will lead to the desired objectives can be defined.
Figuratively speaking, the strategy is the plan that will allow you to take your ship to a good port. But the routes through which you will reach your destination in the best way will be the tactics to be applied. Let's take a closer look at the steps your company can follow.
How to carry out an acquisition campaign for your gas company?
Identify the target audience.
This step seems basic in the extreme, but certainly many good companies do not have successful endings because they have not been able to identify the target audience. That is why the first step in customer acquisition is to know the details of who are those people who represent your ideal customer.
In this way, you will be able to know what are the main motivations and desires of your target audience. You will be able to better present the solution to their problems and needs. Also, with a better knowledge of your target audience you will be able to know which are the right channels to reach them.
Set goals.
The best way for strategies to work is to know where they are targeted. At this point, a good idea is for each stage of the customer journey to have its own objectives to bring you closer to converting them into customers.
You can focus on the part of the customer journey that has the greatest weaknesses. For example, if traffic has increased to your site, but conversions have not, then you will need to address the stage that is not delivering the expected results.
Set objectives that you can follow up on. That is, an objective should indicate the results you want to achieve, as well as whether it was achieved. Among the qualities of the objective, is that it must be realistic, as well as aligned with the general business objectives. Likewise, it must have an adequate time for its realization and to see its results.
Select channels.
You already know your target audience, you have your overall strategy and you have defined your main objectives for customer acquisition. Now it's time to define the channels that will be most effective in acquiring your customers.
Once defined, you will be able to choose two of them to start working on and reinforce them.
What are the channels for customer acquisition?
It is true that each business may have some channels through which it will be better to reach the target audience. But generally speaking, there are some channels that tend to be used more frequently for the purpose of customer acquisition. Let's look at some of them:
SEO optimization.
Working on SEO optimization will always be a good strategy to increase the quantity and quality of traffic, but from the organic results of search engines. Among its advantages is that a good content well positioned can continue to attract traffic even if it is from a long time ago. In addition, SEO content has the ability to influence the entire marketing funnel. Keep in mind, however, that achieving high organic search engine rankings is a time-consuming task.
Content marketing.
Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing content specifically designed to attract and retain customers. This practice generates loyalty to your brand, builds credibility and reputation for your company.
Your company can create meaningful and valuable relationships through the generation of quality content, attracting new customers according to the products and services offered by the company, positioning the brand as a reference in its area, interacting with the target audience, etc.
With the implementation and execution of this type of techniques, not only does an organization increase its capacity to compete in the current market, but it also has the options to continue growing, open up to new customers and build loyalty among current users.
You must bear in mind that it is a process that takes time and for it to be really effective it must have differentials that allow you to stand out from other similar contents.
Digital advertising.
In this case, you will be able to develop campaigns through which you will reach your target audience, but through a platform or a website. For example, through advertising on Google Ads.
This has the great advantage of being a quick way to get traffic to your company's website. Without a doubt, you have to make an investment in advertising to find out exactly what works for your company, to discover what is the best strategy to follow.
Mailing.
Through mailing or email marketing you can directly contact your potential and loyal customers in a direct way. In this way, you can send them messages with calls to action or to make them more loyal to your company. However, keep in mind that a quality mailing list can take some time to build.
Tips on how to make the most of procurement channels.
However, in order for the acquisition channels to work the way you want them to, some aspects must be taken into account, such as: the type of channel, the target audience, the duration of the strategy, among others.
In order to get the best out of the acquisition channels, we have the following recommendations:
- Identify which channel works best with your company's target audience: keep in mind that many of the decisions made as entrepreneurs revolve around our customer. This is why, during the definition of the acquisition strategy, you must take into account the customer's needs, tastes, consumption patterns and behavior, etc. In this way, you can ensure that the channels you have chosen really have the potential to meet your growth goals.
- Measure progress by specific metrics and analyze what works: although we mentioned earlier that it is not serious if the ideal channels for customer acquisition are not clear from the beginning, it is essential that by means of metrics and indicators a continuous analysis of the techniques and strategies being implemented is carried out. Without this, it will be very difficult for your company to determine whether what you are doing is working for your target audience or not. In addition, this action can also help to identify why the channels are not performing as well as they should.
- Enjoy every step of the process: don't just think about results, like everything else, acquisition channels and strategies must go through a process full of failures and successes before they start to show desired returns.
Most common acquisition channels:
- Drive traffic to your company's website or service.
- Paid search on search engines.
- Affiliation or ambassador programs.
- Appearing in organic searches on the web.
- Social media marketing campaigns.
- Sponsorship or paid digital advertising.
- Events, meetings and greetings.
- E-mail marketing campaigns.
- Direct e-mail campaigns
- Word-of-mouth marketing.
Now that you know more about customer acquisition channels and their potential to make your company grow, you can apply them to achieve your company's goals. Remember that it never hurts to ask for support, Waddi is your best solution to move forward and evolve.