How to Boost Your Customer Acquisition Strategies in 2022
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a man sitting at a table with a laptop and a woman sitting at a table with a computer
As the year comes to a close, many marketers are already planning for 2022. This time around, many are focusing on how to acquire new customers in an ever-changing business landscape. For many organizations, 2021 was a year of bouncing back and reopening their doors, while navigating new ways of doing business. In 2022, it’s time to ramp up customer acquisition initiatives and try out new creative strategies to reach ideal customers. Whether you are a new business launching for the first time, a household name looking to grow your audience, or a company with a new product offering and expanded addressable market, there are many ways to approach customer acquisition.
Since measuring the success of customer acquisition initiatives is so important, let’s first define some key customer acquisition terms:
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):
This is defined as the amount of budget needed to acquire a single customer. This is calculated by looking at the total amount spent on customer acquisition. This can include paid advertising, marketing initiatives, gifting, and even headcount in some cases. We then look at how many leads came into the funnel from these initiatives, how many turned into opportunities, and finally how many became customers. When we divide the total amount spent by the number of customers acquired, we find out what our Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is. If marketers are successful, they are able to minimize the amount spent to acquire customers, while also maximizing deal size and lifetime value.
Customer Acquisition Rate:
This is the rate at which you are acquiring customers. This is determined by how quickly a site visitor becomes a customer. For example, a popular eCommerce site might be able to move someone from site visitor to customer in a matter of minutes. However, when bigger purchases are made or B2B purchases involving multiple stakeholders, the rate at which someone becomes a customer can take several months or even years. By comparing customer acquisition rate to CAC, you can ultimately determine how much budget and how much time will need to be spent acquiring a new customer.
Lifetime Value (LTV):
As the name suggests, this term is defined as how much monetary value a customer provides a business over the entire time they are a customer. For example, if a customer signs an annual contract with your business, and customers typically work with your business for 10 years, their lifetime value would be the initial amount they spent x10. This could also increase if customers typically increase their spend or buy additional products over time. It is important to keep this in mind because while an initial sale might seem like a small contribution to overall revenue, the LTV of that customer could be exponentially higher.
Trying to acquire new customers, keeping customer acquisition cost under control, understanding customer acquisition rates, and maximizing lifetime values can all be daunting tasks. However, there are a few key techniques that can be helpful in boosting customer acquisition and achieving all of these important KPIs.
Here are some customer acquisition techniques that can be useful:
Work with partners and existing customers:
Interestingly enough, sometimes the best way to reach new audiences is through audiences you already have. Consider running referral programs or rewards programs, have existing satisfied customers write reviews or give testimonials. Work with partnerships to see how each of your audiences might benefit the other. Sometimes the best way to grow is to find out who your advocates are and amplify them.
Take time to define your target audience:
If you are reaching a new audience, or have a new product that expands your addressable market, it’s important to carefully consider who that audience is, what their needs are, and how they want to be reached. While previous strategies may have been successful for other audiences you’ve worked with, that doesn’t mean they can just be duplicated. One great place to start is by defining personas and then creating collateral geared toward each of them, and launching campaigns to get the right content in front of the right people.
Consider using Customer Acquisition Security:
Today, about 40% of the internet is made up of invalid users like click farms, botnets, and other automated tools. This can poison marketing funnels, and get in the way of achieving company goals. Customer Acquisition Security (CAS) is a cybersecurity strategy and technologies that help with this exact problem. It is made with marketers in mind and considers the metrics that marketers already care about while keeping bots and fake users under control. As organizations scale, and understand the importance of a clean funnel, CAS adoption has been on the rise.
Overall, there are many ways to boost customer acquisition efforts in 2022. By following the most up-to-date techniques as you are planning for the year ahead, you can maintain control of your funnel while expanding your audience and reaching new customers online. To learn more about customer acquisition and how cybersecurity can help unlock new business opportunities, schedule a demo with our team.