Written by Brand Practitioners• October 27, 2022• 9:59 pm• Article

The Essential Guide to Customer Acquisition

What is customer acquisition?

Customer acquisition is the process of gaining new customers for a business.

Customer acquisition is not a “one-step” process. Most prospects don’t turn into customers instantly. Instead, they follow a journey:

Awareness – The buyer realizes they have a problem. They want to understand more about it.
Consideration – The buyer is looking for and comparing potential solutions to their problem.
Decision – The buyer purchases a solution

So, in order to acquire new customers, you need to align your marketing with these three stages.

Awareness – You need to appear in the consciousness or awareness of your potential customers. You’ll also need to show them your product or service can help to solve their problem.
Consideration – You need to convince these prospects that they should choose your product or service.
Decision – You need to “tip” these prospects over the finishing line. Common tactics include discounts and free trials.

How to create a customer acquisition strategy

Customer acquisition isn’t about executing a variety of tactics and hoping one sticks. You need a strategy, i.e., your battle plan. This is how you’re going to attract new customers and choose the right acquisition tactics.

Identify your customers and where they hang out

If you don’t know who your customers are, you can’t attract more of them to your business.

That’s why the first step of your customer acquisition strategy is to figure out who your ideal customers are.

If you’ve done your market research and created customer personas, then this should be easy. You’ll already know who you’re trying to reach.

Set your goals

For your strategy to work, you need to know your destination. That is your goal.

Ideally, you should have goals for each stage of the buyer’s journey. But in reality, most companies have limited manpower, time, budget, and resources. So attempting to achieve goals for each stage may prove to be difficult.

In that case, you’ll have to prioritize. I suggest focusing on the area where you’re lacking the most currently.