As soon as you start your own business, either it’s selling a product or a service, you and the rest of the team that’s handling it will set the business’ growth goals. Basically, you want the sales to increase over time – and, naturally, you can’t rely on the same old customers to buy more of the same product/ service.
Of course, old and reliable customers are good for your business, but for a business to thrive, the number of customers has to increase as well. This is where the Customer Acquisition metric comes in.
This metric shows you the number of new customers, or profiles, that have been successfully added to your customer base. By analyzing the Customer Acquisition data, you are provided with, you can determine whether you have to change your marketing/ advertising strategy or not.
The Basics of Customer Acquisition
The metric should be usually shown on your KPI dashboard, but if you want to come up with it on your own, you just have to divide the number of customers that have been added to your customer base in a certain time period by the total customers for the same time period and then multiply the result with 100.
We have mentioned that the marketing and advertising strategies are important when it comes to gaining new customers – however, this is not everything you have to do within your business if you want to keep your current customer base and increase it, as well.
You will also have to come up with strategies that strengthen the relationship between what your business offers and the customers. Basically, Customer Acquisition can be seen as the part that links the management of the relationship your business has with its customers and advertising/ marketing.
Both of the aforementioned must be taken care of accordingly if you want to increase your profits and make your business even more successful.
Increasing the Customer Acquisition Percentage
The Customer Acquisition metric is shown to you in the form of a percentage – which will show if you have gained or lost customers. As the name implies, everything that matters is gaining new customers.
Naturally, there are multiple ways through which you can get new customers added to your customer base.
However, there are some basics you have to rely on if you want this type of strategy to work.
For example, the process of gaining new customers usually starts with the identification of potential customers – this is done mostly via mailing lists and call centers. Basically, you kind of ask people if they would be interested in what you have to offer – and if they are, they will be forwarded to a salesperson or to your online shop.
Moreover, after finding potential customers, those in charge of customer acquisition won’t stop feeding them information and reasons for which they should buy your product/ service. This process ends only when a potential customer becomes a customer.
The Bottom Line
While you may want to do anything to get your hands on some new customers, you have to take into consideration the costs that the Customer Acquisition implies, as well. You wouldn’t want to spend more money on trying to get customers than your current customers actually spend.
Therefore, several strategies have to be employed – sales and marketing campaigns, customer loyalty programs, customer referrals, and some more. But, in the end, you don’t want to focus on just selling the product – focus on your customer base and on what any potential and current customers would like your business to offer.