What is acquisition marketing and how to get started

No business can exist without new customers. This is a given, but for e-commerce businesses, acquisition marketing is even more vital than in any other industry. Acquiring new customers every single month is vital in order to build a sustainable customer base.

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However, this can be quite a challenge. Because you are competing against many other companies trying to do the exact same thing as you to bring in those new customers.

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There are ways to do it better than others. So let us have a look at some of the best customer acquisition strategies for your e-commerce in 2022.

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What is acquisition marketing?

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Acquisition marketing is the process of attracting new customers. It’s the foundation for all other forms of marketing, and it’s important to know how to do it well before you try anything else. Typically, you measure the cost of attracting new customers with Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

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This metric is important to keep an eye on if you want to have profitable way of attracting new customers. It is basically the price you pay for bringing them in as customers in your e-commerce store. To know whether or not they are profitable, you need to understand their Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) but we will get into that later.

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Acquisition marketing is the very foundation of e-commerce. Because if you can’t attract customers, then there won’t be anyone to sell your products to! So we need to make sure the acquisition marketing is top-notch, as it is all about convincing customers to become purchasers at your webshop.

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Let’s start with the basics. Acquiring new customers can be done in many ways: through paid ads on Google or Facebook, direct mail campaigns, email marketing, and more. However, there are two main channels for acquiring new customers: search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC).

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The first method involves improving the visibility of your website by optimizing its content to rank higher in search results from major search engines such as Google and Bing. PPC refers to purchasing ad space on search engines when users are looking for products or services like yours.

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Different stages of customer acquisition marketing

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Online shopping has become a more complex thing than it was just 5 years ago. Today, the customer journey takes place across multiple platforms, devices, and engagements. So in order to understand your customers, you need to look at what stage in the funnel they are with you.

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Here are the different stages of the eCommerce customer acquisition funnel:

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Awareness:

At the first stage, the customers don’t know anything about you or products you sell. They are not aware of your brand or website. So the goal is to promote your online shop and educate the customers about your products. Content marketing and Public Relations plays a crucial role at this stage. People trust their organic Google search results and especially articles shared by prominent authors in your niche area. So use this to create awareness for your potential customers!

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Interest:

At this stage, people are already aware of your brand. Now it is your job to persuade them to start buying your products. To do this, you need to attract the attention of your potential customers. One of the best tactics to do is the Grabber technique.

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This tactic requires that you stay in touch with the customers and let them control the conversation. An example could be to start a contest on social media and ask the customers to share a selfie with your product. When you do that, you enable your customers to take control while promoting your business and products. This creates more interest in your product and brings them closer to the next stage in the buyer journey.

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Consideration:

At this phase, your customers know your brand, and they are now considering to buy your products. They have already signed up for your eCommerce store, but they haven’t purchased any products yet. Here you need to look at different ways to interact with them. One way could be through one-to-one marketing and personalized experiences.

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Intent:

Now, when users sign up for your e-commerce store, some of their actions can represent a strong intent to buy your products. For example, if they add some products to their cart, it’s an action that sends a strong signal that they intend to buy your products. Such prospects are included in the intent stage.

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Perhaps they do not finish the purchase yet, but abandon their cart at the end. One way to win them is buy enabling email-marketing offering them personalized discounts based on what you can afford to pay for them. To know the exact value you should give them, you need proper segmentation to understand their customer lifetime value and CAC. Save the best discounts for your most valuable customers

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Evaluation:

At this stage, the prospects evaluate whether it is a good deal to buy your product, like comparing the price, features, delivery options, etc. Once again, if you are able to deliver a personalized experience, you will have a higher chance of enabling them to buy with you.

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In a world today where any customer can buy any product with just a few clicks, they want more. They want experiences. And the good experiences are seperated by the great ones with personalization. So use personalization to create those great experiences your customers desire.

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Purchase:

Once the prospects evaluate the pros and cons of the product, they decide to purchase it. However, the funnel does not end here because customer retention is the next stage. The goal for you as a marketer should be to focus on increasing the lifetime value of your customers and turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.

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Retention:

Customer retention is the ability of the eCommerce store to retain their customers for a longer period. Once prospects become your customers, you must continue to nurture them so that they regularly buy products from your store.

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Retaining existing customers is easier and much more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. In fact, retaining customers can cost seven times less than acquiring new ones. Customers have already used your product or service and may have interacted with your customer support or shopped with you before. This means, that convincing them to stay can be easier than trying to reel in new customers.

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How has the definition of acquisition marketing changed with omnichannel marketing?

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Since omnichannel marketing is an approach to marketing and sales that integrates across channels, it’s not just about making sure your marketing and sales are aligned with each other. It’s also about how customers interact with your brand.

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Omnichannel marketing professionals understand that the customer journey has changed significantly in recent years and they’re changing strategies accordingly. As a result, we’re seeing a shift towards more integrated approaches to acquisition.

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Today acquisition marketing revolves around many different channels. Here are the top channels for e-commerce customer acquisition marketing:

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• Organic Search
• Banner Ads
• Video Ads
• Email Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Social Media Ads
• Blog Content Marketing

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How to use data to become more effective

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Now that you have a better understanding of what acquisition marketing is and how it works, here are some tips to help you make the most of your efforts by using data.

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Use customer data to understand your customers. Acquisition campaigns should be personalized, which means that every customer should receive content that is relevant based on their needs and preferences. That’s where data comes into play. It gives you an accurate picture of who your customers are and what they want from your brand.

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You can use this information to create targeted content, which will help increase engagement rates and ultimately drive more effective acquisition marketing campaigns. If you have access to a single customer view it becomes much easier to deliver those personalized experiences based on data.

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Use data to target your market and customers. E-commerce businesses need to know who their customers are. They also need to have insight into who their potential customers are so they can target those individuals with their messaging. They need to tailor products based on what people want rather than just guessing at what might be popular (and thus wasting money and time). Focusing on look-alike audiences based on only your best customers is one way of making sure you only target good customers.

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In order for any company, especially smaller businesses on tight budgets you need to make sure you are effective with your time, money, and resources. And data plays a key role to target the right audiences. No need to waste valuable resources on guessing and gut feelings when data can paint an accurate picture of what is going on.

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How CDPs are essential for growing profits and revenue

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CDPs are essential for growing profits and revenue in acquisition marketing in e-commerce. They help you to understand your customers, personalize, automate, and optimize your marketing, and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

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By using Machine learning and predictive analytics to understand your customers, you will have a better picture of how much they are actually worth to your business. This ties back to the beginning of this blog, if you know how much their customer lifetime value is. You know how much you can afford to pay to acquire them. A Customer Data Platform can help you solve exactly that problem, among many more things.

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The reason why a CDP is so vital to e-commerce acquisition marketing is its ability to connect, collect, analyze all your customer data across all platforms, devices, and channels in one place. From here you will have a full overview of your customer, product, and marketing data. Use this to create better segments, and focus on customers who share traits with your most valuable ones. This help you grow and increase profits at the same time.

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Use a acquisition to drive growth with a CDP

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Customer acquisition is all about how customers discover your brand and buy your products. It is vital to know the top channels of customer acquisition and apply the best strategies to generate the maximum ROI. Last but not least, customer retention should always be a vital part of the customer acquisition strategy. Use it to reduce churn rate and improve the lifetime value of your e-commerce customers.

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