Customer Acquisition: The Complete Guide

Customer Acquisition: The Complete Guide

“If you build it, they will come.”

New business owners often fall into the same trap: they assume that just because they have successfully built their business (be it a restaurant, a hotel or a startup), customers will instantly flock to them.

No matter how good their product or service is, a business still needs a strong customer acquisition strategy to keep afloat.

Here’s the bad news: latest consumer acquisition studies show that it is five times more costly to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.

So, if you have a new business or product, then you have no other choice but to invest in a customer base. In this guide, we’ll discuss the essential things you need to know about customer acquisition.

More specifically, we’ll cover:

• What is customer acquisition?
• What is the cost of customer acquisition
• What are some customer acquisition methods
• How to improve customer acquisition

What is customer acquisition?

Simply put, customer acquisition is the process of attaining more customers – ideally more than you lose!

This process should be systematic and sustainable, taking into account industry trends and new marketing platforms.

Whether you’re a big enterprise or SME, a new company or an established business, customer acquisition is worth the investment. Effective, ongoing customer acquisition will help your company flourish.

The stages of customer acquisition

So how does it happen? Do customers go through stages or steps? It’s a discipline that has been evolving for years, resulting in frameworks that explain how you can attract more customers to your business.

The standard funnel model

The first model we’ll discuss is the simplest one – a linear model of the consumer decision-making process which is shaped like a funnel.

The funnel is widest at the top, as a visualisation of the broad spread of potential customers. This narrows as the sales journey progresses and some customers drop out.

Here are the most basic stages of the funnel:

1. Awareness. This is the biggest part of the funnel. At this stage, consumers first hear of your brand. This could be because they have seen your advertisement, they have heard about you from a friend or they have physically seen your product in a shop.
2. Consideration or Interest. At this stage, those who are aware of your product are now thinking of buying it. This is also when they are comparing your product to your competitors, deciding which one will give them the most benefit or value.
3. Conversion. Also called the Decision stage, this is the moment when a customer decides to purchase your product or service over others.
4. Loyalty. If your customer is satisfied by your product or service, they will return to you, staying loyal to your brand.
5.  Advocacy. Satisfied, loyal customers may give you free marketing (the best kind!) by referring their friends to your business.

This simple funnel is more applicable to low-involvement/low-commitment products and services. Low-involvement products are cheap, low-stakes, short-notice buys. Examples are functional purchases such as hygiene products and impulse buys like snacks. Customers usually make snap decisions in the store itself.

Unsurprisingly, online shopping has created a different kind of funnel…

The Consumer decision journey model

Research firm McKinsey improved on the standard funnel by considering different consumer touch points and key buying factors. This addresses the recent explosion of product choices across various digital channels. The increased availability of information online also gave rise to more discerning, informed consumers.

In this model, customer acquisition is more challenging because consumers are constantly, actively researching and shopping online, resulting in a loop. Unlike the funnel where each purchase journey seems to be a new experience, this model takes into account the fact that people rely on past experiences when they decide to buy the same type of product again.

So it looks like this:

1. Initial consideration. The consumer considers an initial set of businesses, based on brand perception and exposure to recent touch points.
2. Active evaluation. Consumers add or subtract businesses as they evaluate what they want.
3. Moment of purchase. The act of the consumer selecting your product or service.
4. Post-purchase experience. After purchasing and using the product, the customer builds expectations based on their experience that will influence their next consumer decision journey.

If they had a good experience, consumers can get on the “loyalty loop”, becoming repeat customers.

As customer experiences become more sophisticated, so too do the methods for reaching customers…

The flywheel model

Another model that improved on the funnel is the flywheel. You can thank those busy marketers for this one – their thinking was that funnels may not be the best model because they lose their momentum at the bottom.

Many now prefer the flywheel (with the customer at the centre of all our activities) to conceptualise the process of attracting more customers to your business.

Flywheels, handily enough, also preserve momentum. So if you add energy at any given stage, you spin that part faster which adds to the capacity of the whole.

With consumers at the center of the flywheel, three factors affect how it spins:

1. Attract. The brand’s expertise is used to create content and conversations aimed at the target market.
2. Engage. The brand starts to build relationships with people by providing insights and solutions to their problems.
3. Delight. The brand provides an exceptional and consistent experience that adds real value to customers which – hopefully – inspires them to refer their friends or colleagues.

Now that you know the different stages of the consumer’s buying journey, how much does it actually cost to acquire new customers?

The cost of customer acquisition

Ever heard the saying “you have to spend money to earn money”? Customer acquisition is an investment, and like all investments, it’s not free!

These overheads include customer onboarding programmes, promotions and awareness campaigns. Going deeper, here’s what you’ll be spending your money on:

What should you include in your customer acquisition costs?

When listing customer acquisition costs, you should divide them according to the channels used. These costs can be categorized into measurable and non-measurable items.

Measurable items are those that can be easily tracked to the campaign because there is a link, a promo code, or a sales order directly tied to the purchase. Another good example is an online marketing campaign where there is a set budget for each channel – Facebook, Google, etc. Marketing and sales software would also fall under this category. The cost of upscaling your training and development for employees fits under this bucket, too.

Non-measurable channels are those that do not easily provide a trackable path for a specific sale but contribute to overall sales. Offline brand awareness campaigns and networking events fall into this category.

Other costs that may be overlooked are operational in nature. This includes the overhead costs and outsourced services, as well as the budget for the marketing department, including salaries. Likewise, if you have employed an agency to do your advertising work, or if you regularly conduct marketing research, these overheads would have to be taken into account as well.

By dividing these costs by channel, you’ll be better equipped to find out which one is giving a better return on investment. Here’s how to do it…

How to calculate customer acquisition cost

Now that you have listed your costs, how do you account for the acquisition of each customer?

The most basic customer acquisition cost is calculated by dividing marketing costs of a specific campaign by the number of customers acquired from said campaign:

Customer Acquisition Cost = Marketing Costs / Customers Acquired

This simple formula is only applicable for a single campaign or marketing effort where costs are easily segmented. To work out the customer acquisition cost of a time period where multiple campaigns have run, a more complex formula can be used.

Remember that you divided the costs per channel before? This is also where it comes handy. The more complex formula is as follows:

Customer Acquisition Cost = (Marketing Costs + Wages for Marketing and Sales Team + Software Used for Marketing and Sales + Outsourced Services + Overhead Expenses) / Customers Acquired

These costs are malleable and can vary from industry to industry.

A look at customer acquisition costs by industry

While working out your customer acquisition cost, be careful when comparing costs with other businesses. Why does your friend who owns a gym have a higher CAC than your friend who owns a travel business?

Benchmark costs of customer acquisition differs per industry because the cost of their products and services also differ. These costs are affected by the consumer decision process.

Low-involvement products like FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) have a lower CAC simply because the consumer decision journey is shorter. Consumers don’t take a lot of time and effort to choose their can of tuna or bar of soap.

On the other hand, high involvement products like a new house would demand a lot of research and effort from customers. The journey is longer with more touch points. They also need more time convincing that they should buy your product.

Curious to know how your CAC stacks up against others in your industry? Here are some industry benchmarks for CAC.

• Travel: $7
• Retail: $10
• Consumer Goods: $22
• Manufacturing: $83
• Transportation: $98
• Marketing Agency: $141
• Financial: $175
• Technology (Hardware): $182
• Real Estate: $213
• Banking/Insurance: $303
• Telecom: $315
• Technology (Software): $395

Now that we have a better idea of our industry benchmarks, let’s do an exercise. Here’s an example for restaurants:

Say for example a restaurant owner spends $1,000 on Facebook ads targeting first-time online ordering customers with a 10% promotion. Looking at the sales data, they discover that the average value for online ordering is $20 and that she acquired 20 new customers.

Here are their variables:

• Facebook ads: $500
• Discounts on online ordering: 10% off of 20 orders of $20 (10% off of $400, or $40).
• Total new customers: 20

To calculate their CAC, they need to start adding together the total expenses from running the ads and the spend on discounts.

Marketing expenses = $500 + $40 = $540

Now, since CAC = Marketing Expenses / Total New Customers then CAC = $540 / 20 New Customers.

This means that the total CAC is $27 per customer.

That looks like a lot of spending on just one customer! But do remember that this is just the start of your relationship with the customer and they may bring in more revenue in the future.

In this example, we used discount codes and Facebook advertisements, but you can actually use other promotional methods. If you own a restaurant, a cafe, a salon or a business where your employees interact with customers a lot, it’s best to ask them for suggestions. Using employee communication tools, you can discuss and keep track of promo ideas.

Naturally, different channels (Facebook ads, paid search ads, etc.) have different costs. So let’s take a look at that…

Customer acquisition costs by channel

Aside from the differences in the industry, attracting more customers to your business may also vary depending on where you want your advertisement to appear. For example, renting a billboard will definitely cost you more than sponsoring a post on Instagram.

Another layer of difference is the vendor. If you are running your advertisement online, even if it’s the same type of paid search, Google may cost more than Bing. These costs are dependent on the number of monthly users per search engine and the number of people searching for the keywords related to each industry.

Take a look at how each of these marketing platforms differ:

Of course, acquiring a customer is one thing, but there are also metrics to measure their long-term value. Read on for more on that.

Other metrics to measure customer acquisition

Customer churn

Customer churn rate is the percentage of customers that “drop out” of your business. Remember our funnel? These customers may have reached the purchase stage but unfortunately did not make it to the loyalty stage. Customer churn rate is also known as customer attrition or turnover.

The basic equation for customer churn rate is:

Number of churned customers / Total number of customers

Why is knowing churn rate so important? Well, when you lose customers, you want to replace them. So, if you know your churn rate, you can prepare and adequately budget your acquisition (or replacement) costs.

Of course, as much as possible, you also want to keep your existing customers happy. And you can do that by measuring customer satisfaction so you can make improvements, extending their relationship or “lifetime” with you…

Customer lifetime value

If your company spends more money acquiring customers than it makes from those customers, it’s in trouble. This is when a customer’s lifetime value comes into play. Essentially, it is used to determine a company’s profitability.

Customer lifetime value predicts how much you’ll earn from your entire relationship with a customer. Ideally, you want your acquisition cost to be lower than your average customer’s lifetime value. If you don’t measure your customer lifetime value, your business may be spending too much to acquire customers who won’t stick with you in the long run.

Identifying the group of customers who have a higher value enables you to focus your retention strategy towards them. Now, how do you estimate a customer’s lifetime value?

Here are two ways:

A simple formula for fixed profit

There are certain products where the annual revenue per customer may be the same every year. Maybe your business has regular clients that pays a fixed amount every month. If you belong in this category, you can use this simple formula:

(Annual revenue per customer * Customer relationship in years) – Customer acquisition cost

For example, a hotel has a fixed contract with Company A for hosting their annual events. The hotel earns $5,000 each year from Company A and let’s say the contract length is 10 years. The CAC of that specific client may be something like $4,000 because that hotel had to run a long and expensive marketing campaign to get clients like Company A.

The company could calculate CLV like this:

$5,000 * 5 – $4,000 = $21,000

Now you know that even though you spent a fair amount of money acquiring this customer at the beginning, you earned over five times that amount over the duration of your relationship with them.

Formula for fluctuating sales

On the other hand, if your annual sales per customer are not constant, you need to apply a more detailed CLV equation. This is for businesses whose customers do not yield the same amount of profit per month or year such as grocery stores, salons or restaurants. Another time when this is more applicable is when your products are bound to change prices every year.

This version of the formula takes rate of discount into consideration. It also provides a more detailed understanding of how CLV can change over the years. Here are the different factors in the equation and how you can calculate it:

If you think that’s too onerous to work out on your own, luckily, there’s no shortage of customer lifetime value templates or calculators online.

As a rule, investors will often look for a CAC to CLV ratio of three as a healthy number for a business – acquiring a customer shouldn’t cost you more than a third of the revenue that customer generates. If you have a number higher than three, there’s probably room to grow, by investing in more marketing channels.

When you are able to identify customers with bigger lifetime values, you can also make use of staff scheduling to properly allocate resources to them, such as scheduling your best wait staff to serve them, or getting them into referral programmes.

Customer acquisition methods and strategies

Before we give you a couple of pointers on how to attract more customers to your business, we should first explain how it differs between industries, how it is different from customer retention, and give you the definitions of inbound and outbound marketing.

B2C customer acquisition vs. B2B customer acquisition

Business-to-business customers can be expensive to acquire, depending on your product and industry. B2B products are usually a high-involvement type of product and also high investment.

If a company is serving a niche market, there may not be many potential clients out there to begin with. This makes the customer acquisition process more difficult and time consuming. And this is why B2B companies can spend a lot on customer retention.

On the other hand, B2C sales may be less focused on customer retention as B2B. There are more customers to reach but, at the same time, there are more competitors seeking them out. Average transaction prices are also smaller, which makes individual buyers less valuable than the overall number of customers.

Lead generation vs. customer acquisition

Remember our customer acquisition stages? The earlier stages constitute lead generation, which is the process by which you find and qualify potential customers.

Think of a bookstore in the mall. Everyone in the mall is a lead because they’re very near your place of business and obviously, they’re there to shop. However, not everyone is a qualified lead. Some people are just looking around and may not be interested in making a purchase that day.

The people inside the bookstore are more qualified. They have chosen, even if just out of curiosity, to step inside the store. So even if they leave the store without making a purchase, they are still considered a lead. To transform these leads into clients, you need your customer acquisition strategy.

Digital marketing tactics for customer acquisition

Though traditional marketing tactics still work, it’s just easier to measure your efforts if it’s done online. Here are some digital marketing tactics that improves how you acquire more customers to your business.

Organic customer acquisition vs. paid customer acquisition

There are a lot of things you can do online to get more customers but first, you have to understand the difference between inbound and outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is a type of customer acquisition where prospect customers are already looking for your product and service and you just have to reel them in. It is also called organic customer acquisition. The best example of this is SEO and content marketing.

How exactly does this work? You have to imagine that there are already these prospect customers who are interested in your business but may not be aware of your brand. For example, you own a Japanese restaurant selling ramen.

To let people know that you include this item in your menu, your website should mention the different types of ramen available in your restaurant. If your website has a blog, you can even create posts related to ramen such as the origin of ramen and popular types of ramen in Japan.

So, when this prospect customer searches for ramen, your website should come up in the search engine results page. That person can click to your page and learn about your offerings and be enticed to visit your restaurant! Congratulations! You have successfully reeled them in using inbound marketing.

Another example in the B2B industry is LinkedIn. If you’re an agency selling your services, then creating author articles in LinkedIn can build your reputation as an expert in the field. Prospect clients, who are already looking for an agency partner, can discover your articles through this social media channel and send you a message.

Organic customer acquisition methods you might want to try include:

• Content marketing. Blog posts, eBooks, infographics, videos and podcasts, which introduce prospective customers to your business.
• Search engine optimisation (SEO). Things on your website that you can change or improve, such as including relevant keywords in your pages and fixing your site structure, which can positively affect your rankings in search engines.
• Email marketing. Sending emails with offers and other news to potential or previous customers.
• Social media marketing. Posting and engaging with people on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more to drive awareness, as well as an avenue to build a community of loyal customers.

For outbound marketing, it’s the other way around. There may or may not be customers who are already interested in your product but as the name suggests, you’re putting the word about your brand out there so you could be discovered.

It’s also called paid customer acquisition because unlike organic customer acquisition where you don’t have to spend anything to get your customers in your website, this time, you have to pay to get the word about your brand out there.

Examples of these are Facebook ads and Google search ads. The important thing to remember about these ads is that they should link back to a relevant page or your website or have a proper call to action such as “Call Now” or “Book Now”.

Here are some paid channels you may want to consider:

• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Text-based advertisements on search engines to drive direct response or brand awareness. You pay every time someone clicks your ad. The ads automatically rank above organic searches so visibility is guaranteed.
• Display ads. Visual ads that run on websites that are used for brand awareness. You pay every time someone either sees or clicks on your ad.
• Affiliate marketing. The practice of paying other website owners (your “affiliates” or partners) to recommend your product or service.
• Referrals. Schemes where you pay existing customers to recommend your products or services to their friends and colleagues.
• Promoted or sponsored social media posts. These appear on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feeds for target audiences in your niche. Some social media platforms charge you only if they help you acquire a customer, while others may charge you based on the number of views or clicks your ads get.

How to lower your customer acquisition costs

As previously mentioned, the ultimate goal of learning about your customer acquisition is to improve it and lower your costs, which will result in better profits. Outlined here are some strategic and tactical approaches that you may consider for your business.

Strategic steps to reach more customers

Don’t roll out your advertisements yet! You have to properly strategise first. Before doing anything tactical, you have to plan your approach to customer acquisition.

Define and segment your target audience

One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make is to target everyone with the same message. When creating your paid search campaigns, do you have a specific persona in mind? Or do you just write for anybody?

Next time you’re coming up with a campaign to reach more customers, consider segmentation. In what stage of the buyer’s journey are they in now? Come up with a different campaign or messaging for those customers who are just in the awareness phase and another campaign for those who are already considering your brand.

Competitive intelligence 

Knowing what your competitors are doing can be very useful at this stage. Visit their website and social media pages to check how they attract more customers to their business.

Define your unique selling proposition

Based on the 2018 survey of WBR Insights, the greatest B2C customer acquisition challenge for companies is differentiating itself from competitors. This is followed by privacy regulations and increasing costs of marketing channels.

While finding your USP is very difficult, don’t make the mistake of creating tactical campaigns without settling this. If you have to go back to the drawing board then so be it. It will save you more time and money in the future if you have a clear USP.

Figure out where customers are

Really get to know your customers. You may already have acquired some of this data, especially when coming up with your product or services.

Find out their habits and where they get their information. Do they talk to their friends? Or do they research online? Come up with personas and your very own customer buyer journey so you know which touchpoints to use in your marketing.

Omnichannel approach

Omnichannel marketing is using both offline and online methods to reach more customers. Did you know that omnichannel consumer can be very valuable to your brand?

Based on Criteo’s Q3 Global Commerce Review, transactions completed on mobile have continued to grow in the 80 countries surveyed. Despite that growth for online purchases, the study found that omnichannel customers have the highest lifetime value.

On average, they generate 27% of all sales, despite representing only 7% of all customers.

Continuously review the acquisition process

If you’ve got your customer acquisition strategy set, does that mean you’re done? Not quite. As customer habits and marketing channels evolve, there is a need to continuously review the acquisition process.

You can start by tracking key metrics to determine which methods are working best for your business and which ones you might want to adjust or eliminate. By doing this, you will constantly improve on your strategy so it reflects current buyer preferences and changes in the marketplace.

Tactical tips to attract more consumers to your business

If you’ve got your strategy pinned down, the next step is to implement tactical plays that are aligned with your plans. Here are a few practical tips to get you started:

Produce quality content

As mentioned previously, content marketing is an inbound strategy that gets you leads. Compared to outbound marketing tactics, it can be cheaper, but in order for it to work, you have to produce quality content that really answers your target customer’s questions in a helpful, authoritative way.

Do giveaways or offer free trials

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Having promos or giveaways is definitely one way to attract more customers to your business. However, beware that some of them may not be in it for the long haul or may not translate to repeat customers. Holding frequent promos also affect your brand equity. In short, you might not want to be known as a “cheap” brand.

Implement a referral scheme

There are plenty of studies about the effectiveness of referral schemes. For example, when referred by a friend, people are 4 times more likely to make a purchase. Referred customers’ lifetime value is also 16% higher when compared to non-referred customers. Also, customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate.

Those are some compelling statistics, but of course, to make your referral scheme successful, you have to get your existing customers on board. To do this, consider incentivising them when they participate in the scheme.

Retarget potential customers

Retargeting is just another term for convincing customers who dropped out of the funnel to give your product another try. You can do this in a couple of ways. You can do content marketing and write posts that further highlight your value proposition.

Another way is to retarget them using paid ads. You can set up a retargeting campaign that uses the list of people who previously visited your website or interacted with your brand.

Implement a CRM

As mentioned previously, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software enables you to collate and analyse customer information. This includes their purchase behaviour and history.

You might want to try increasing a customer’s long-term value by implementing customer relationship management (CRM) and periodically adjusting or updating your strategy.

Develop partnerships

Another thing you can do to reduce customer acquisition costs is to team up with brands that offer complementary products or services. This allows both companies to divide the marketing costs which in turn lowers your acquisition costs. A strategic alliance also introduces you to the other brand’s audience who will most likely also be interested in your offering as well.

Customer acquisition platforms and software tools

Though there are many ways to reach more customers using offline methods, it can be quite difficult to track its success. For example, if you put up posters around the neighborhood for your local cafe, how can you know how many of your new customers came because they saw the poster?

The good news is that customer acquisition platforms and tools minimises the guesswork involved in this process. Since it can track specific metrics for you customer acquisition campaigns, you can easily calculate your return on investment.

Here are some examples of online tools and software that can help you track how you reach more customers:

Form and email collection tools

These tools are all about collecting emails on your site in order to build your email list, either for future campaigns or to simply build a larger list for content promotion.

Sumo is one of the most popular tools for list building and capturing emails on your site. The tool offers features for popups, slide-in pop-ups and welcome mats where website visitors can input their data.

Email marketing platforms

Using email marketing, you can continue to reach out to your leads and eventually turn them into potential sales.

An email marketing platform that’s easy to use is MailChimp. It has a drag-and-drop email builder, perfect for those who don’t consider themselves to be tech-savvy. Better yet, the platform can be used for free to store up to 2,000 email contacts and send out 12,000 emails each month.

Landing page builder

If you’re running an online contest or campaign, you’ll need a custom landing page where you can capture information about your customers. You can ask them for details such as their email and you can also ask them to sign up for a newsletter or if they want to talk to a team member.

One of the online tools that does this is Unbounce. The platform features a drag-and-drop landing page builder and pre-built templates. Opt-in popups and A/B testing are also available in the website.

Live chat tool

Live chat tools allow your team to grab the attention of your site’s visitors using a pop-up chat bubble in any page you choose. Instead of emailing you and getting a delayed response, potential customers to quickly get in touch and answer any questions they may have about your product.

Drift is a cloud-based live chat app that allows visitors to your site to click on a chat bubble to get in touch with a member of your team. Drift starts off free for one user and 100 contacts.

Contest tool

Running a contest can be a great way to create brand awareness, especially if you’re a new brand. By doing this, you can get people to sign up to your email list. From there, you can continue to market to them through email campaigns.

Rafflecopter can help you set up a contest quickly, with options for customer contest entry via email, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management software helps you manage contact and customer information, including their purchase history. They also contain a wealth of information about prospective customers, sales activity and marketing campaigns.

All this data is organised in one software that can be used to track progress, enable customer follow up, and much more. An example of this is HubSpot’s free CRM.

Website analysis

A free and reliable resource for understanding your customer is Google Analytics. In your account, you can see which pages your customers are visiting and how they discovered your website. For example, they may have clicked through a link from Google, Facebook or another referring website.

Knowing these referral channels can help you know where your audience is and where to allocate your marketing budget.

Some inspiring sample customer acquisition campaigns

After learning all about how to get more customers for your business, you may think that only big business a lot of marketing budget can do it.

Think again!

Here’s a couple of small businesses that strategically implemented customer acquisition campaigns to great results.

Kettlebell Kings built an online community

For a retailer that sells gym apparel and kettlebells, it would have been very easy for Kettlebell Kings to simply run online ads. However, they decided that they should do content marketing and post instructional materials on Instagram.

Their goal was to provide free educational content to help their followers – and prospective customers – get more out of their workouts. This strategy paid off and with more than 100,000 subscribers, they’ve got an engaged community that trusts their brand.

To push this a bit further, Kettlebell Kings decided that they should mobilise these loyal followers. What they did was encourage them to share their own videos, also known as user generated content, which amplified their brand awareness and engagement.

Because of Kettlebell Kings’s community building efforts, they achieved a 7-figure growth in just a few years!

Floafers held promos in social media

A Dallas-based fashion footwear, Floafers specialises in EVA foam shoes.

To drive their brand awareness and customer growth, they created a viral giveaway contest for a free trip to Hawaii. To promote this contest, they used several platforms including email, influencers and paid ads.

The result? They were able to grow their list size by more than six-fold, which resulted in an increase in their sales.

Ella’s Kitchen used content marketing to reach out to new parents

Ella’s Kitchen is a brand in the UK selling baby food. They didn’t have a big budget so they wanted to try something different in order to spread awareness about their brand.

Targeting new parents, they came up with an online content marketing campaign, which included a Facebook and Instagram recruitment plan that sent their products to parents who have started weaning their babies. They also built a YouTube page that gave tips to parents about nutrition. They fully maximised their social channels and even held live chats with nutritionists.

The result was astounding! 40% of parents who were weaning their babies in the UK were recruited into their eCRM programme. Aside from increased engagements in their social media channels, they also increased their brand’s awareness by five points and consideration by eleven points.

On top of all that, they were also awarded the 2018 Silver Best Customer Acquisition Campaign by the Data & Marketing Association.

Excited to start building your customer base?

We hope you learned a lot of practical tips from our guide which you can apply to your own business! Just to recap, we outlined the stages of consumer acquisition and the different ways to solve for the costs.

We also touched upon customer churn rate and customer lifetime values which are important metrics that you can measure against your customer acquisition cost.

Next, we gave you a few examples of customer acquisition strategies both offline and online, as well as the different platforms you can use.

Knowing your customer acquisition cost is just the first step in driving revenue that grows your business. Your next challenge is consistently delivering a great product or service. And you can do that with effective management and employee communication.

The good news is that you can use a staff management software to help you in this demanding but rewarding journey of developing your customer base!