Welcome back to our Give me 5! series, where we share 5 useful eCommerce tips that will help improve your strategies and get you on the road to success.
Acquiring new customers is vital for an eCommerce business. However, actually doing it well can get difficult at times. Acquiring many of the wrong kind of customers quickly will not benefit your business. We’re here to make things easier by proposing five effective ways to keep the right kind of new customers coming in.
1. Create Ideal Buyer Personas
In the initial stages of your customer acquisition process, you want to reach as many people as possible who have a legitimate interest in what you’re selling. In other words, you want to acquire quality customers, and creating detailed buyer personas is a great way to achieve that.
You can start by finding out the big pain points and goals of your ideal customers and why they want to buy from you. Then, categorize them by motivations, what they’re doing and company profile (size, location are the obvious ones to start with). Once you understand your ideal customers completely, targeting them becomes so much easier!
2. Find the best acquisition channels for your business
This one depends a lot on what you’re selling because there are channels that work better for specific online businesses.
However, you should consider trying out multiple channels, until you find the best ones for you. To find the right acquisition channels, you have to set a goal first. It will help you understand whether something is working or not. Then, test out a few different channels and compare effort vs results for each.
Once you’ve figured out the right acquisition channels, you’re one step closer to success.
And remember, it’s better to do one channel well than to do several poorly – especially when you’re first starting out.
3. Fuel your content creation game
Maybe you’ve heard this one in other contexts as well, but content creation is too important to be overlooked when we’re talking about customer acquisition. When I hear digital content, I’m thinking videos, blog posts, stories, infographics, webinars and so much more! There are so many choices out there when it comes to creating digital content and it’s great because you get to experiment and give your audience exactly what it wants.
As a golden rule, don’t promote yourself in an obvious way in the content you’re putting out there, but try to give something valuable back. Always know how your content strategy is going to contribute to the overall customer acquisition – what type of content is relevant to each stage in the customer lifecycle. Also consider the right pieces of content to gate and the ones to leave open. Ungated content will contribute to overall awareness – but also point to other gated content that will land you coveted leads.
Also, encourage user-generated content. Pictures, reviews, recommendations – it doesn’t matter what customers are providing, as long as they are engaging in a positive way with your brand.
4. Take full advantage of customer analytics
I know we’re getting a little bit technical over here, but there’s no way we’re skipping analytics. As a marketer, you have extensive access to data. You get to see how your marketing strategy is impacting everything – from customer acquisition, retention, to shopper behavior. So why not leverage that data to make sure you’re addressing customers’ needs and preferences accurately?
Look at the ways customers are using your website to shop and make changes according to A/B testing results. Tracking user intent gets you closer to offering a great shopping experience, and isn’t this the main conversion driver?
5. Ask your existing customers for some help
You might be wondering, how on earth am I supposed to use existing customers to acquire new ones? As it turns out, client retention is your best acquisition strategy, both from a referral or word of mouth perspective as well as from a budget perspective – the longer you keep a client, the higher the CLTV and the more you can spend on acquiring new customers.
Regarding referrals and word of mouth – it’s not rocket science, all you have to do is first keep customers happy and successful – that’s a given – and then engage with them over time. Developing a strategy that keeps customers engaged from first contact through their entire lifecycle is what you need.
This paves the way to turning those customers into advocates. Sparking meaningful conversations with your customers and having a referral program in place are some great ways to get them telling others about you. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth!
Well, that’s about it. These were our 5 eCommerce tips that will help you accelerate customer acquisition. The only way for an online business to survive and thrive is to acquire new customers, so it’s time to get to work!
Don’t forget to leave us any questions you might have. Until next time, we wish you lots of new customers!
Want some extra 5 Customer Success Tips that will improve your strategy and the way you look at customer success? You can watch our previous “Give me 5!” episode here!
