For any business hoping to grow, customer acquisition is a must. It’s hard to significantly grow any business without expanding your customer base. Identifying potential customers is one part of that, but convincing those customers to give your business a chance is what matters. Every business needs clear methods and strategies for how it plans to acquire new customers. While not all of these will be realistic, here are customer acquisition ideas that every business should at least consider.
Referral Program
Word of mouth is one of the oldest forms of customer acquisition, and it remains a viable method. Businesses just have to find a modern way to encourage word of mouth. A referral program would seem to fit the bill. It’s as simple as giving current customers an incentive for sharing your products or services with their friends. By offering discounts, free products, or other rewards to customers once their referrals sign up with your service or make a purchase, it’s simple to attract new customers. After all, it’s not unusual for people to share the businesses they like, but sometimes they need a little incentive or motivation to do it, which is what makes referral programs work.
Make Customers Influencers
One of the modern methods of marketing and customer acquisition is working with social media influencers. This is akin to hiring celebrities to appear in commercials, albeit with a slightly different approach. However, companies that are savvy won’t need to pay influencers; instead, they can encourage current customers to serve as influencers. Many companies have succeeded at encouraging customers to create social media posts that highlight their products. This encouragement has to be subtle or come with some incentive for them, perhaps a promise that your business will repost what they share. This is another form of modern word-of-mouth marketing that shares your company’s products with potential customers and portrays your business as reliable. Equally important, turning customers into influencers costs less than hiring a celebrity or influencer to sell your products.
Trial Period
For companies that are confident in their product offering, offering a free trial of their products and services can sometimes do the trick. If you believe customers will stick around and become loyal if they just give you a chance, this can be the perfect acquisition tool. This is often found with businesses that rely on subscription services for their revenue. Even for other businesses, the same principle can be applied. Find a way to showcase the value and convince customers that once they start using your products and services, they won’t be able to imagine not having them ever again.
Introductory Deal
Along those same lines, a great introductory deal can be any company’s pathway to new customers. Everybody likes getting something for nothing, or close to nothing, and if it turns out they like it, they won’t mind paying more the next time. This can mean giving something away for free, offering a deep discount, or even a BOGO with certain products. Just make the new customer feel like they’re getting a great deal and allow your product offering to do the rest. In recent years, online casinos have become a prime example of this. For example, low-deposit casinos allow new customers to start playing games after a deposit of just $1. Once those new customers start to enjoy themselves, they’ll keep coming back. Countless industries can take the same approach.
Loyalty Program
While loyalty programs benefit long-term customers, the promise of one can be enough to add new customers. The right loyalty program makes customers think that they are working toward future discounts and other rewards. By advertising that every purchase or referral gets a customer closer to a special reward that isn’t available to everyone else, you can give yourself an edge over competing companies that don’t have a loyalty program. It may not work with every customer segment, but loyalty programs can be effective if you make new customers think they’ll be treated like a VIP.
Build a Community
Attracting new customers sometimes requires more than offering good products and services. It means building a community of like-minded people who can trust and rely on your business. This means hosting events that provide value to people outside of your product offering. For brick-and-mortar businesses, this can mean hosting classes, events, or informational sessions that are useful to people and relevant to your industry. For online businesses, webinars and online conferences can be effective. These types of events can make potential customers more aware of your business or learn more about it, helping you make a positive impression without being “too salesy,” which can improve customer acquisition if you are patient and genuine in your desire to help people and build a community.