How to create a customer acquisition channel

Customer acquisition, no doubt, is the goal of every business owner, and this does not happen automatically but with intentional effort. Except your business does not need customers to generate profit – which is not true – there might be no need for you or your business to be bothered about customer acquisition.

As easy as it looks in black and white, customer acquisition can be one of the hardest tasks to execute as a business owner because, truth be told, your business’s chance of survival without the right amount of customers is close to zero.

Despite being one of the hardest tasks, it is just as important as making profits because customers bring profits, not you. Regardless, customer acquisition is not impossible if the right steps are taken, which is just what you are about to learn in this article.

Before anything…

Who are your customers?

When you set up a business, whether as a service provider or as a product seller, the audience your business is meant to attract is your customers; as a seller, your customer is the person who buys your products. As a service provider, your customer is the person who pays you for your service.

However, your customers vary and are not limited to the present ones but the potential ones. In short, anyone who is interested in your product or services and is capable of buying from you is your customer.

Simply put, your customer is that person or group purchasing your products or services.

The question now is… Read: How Business Growth Can Help Create more Value, Gain New Customers and Achieve your Goals.

How do you attract customers?

Finding or attracting customers to your business is an acquisition, and you cannot afford not to know how customer acquisition works.

Customer acquisition may take time, but the process can be sped up if you follow the right steps. However, it is important to note that customer acquisition is not a one-time process but a continuous one which remains a relevant part of the tasks you execute as a business owner. Read: How To Generate Leads Online the right way!

How customer acquisition works

Here is how customer acquisition works:

• Recognize your Marketplace

The first step to customer acquisition is to know where your particular type of audience is located. Setting up your business in the wrong place or reaching out to the wrong kind of audience only makes frustration closer to you as a business owner.

When launching your business, identify what you want to sell, what kind of people are interested in what you sell, how willing they are to buy what you sell and where you can find these kinds of people. Once all these have been done, you are one step closer to finding your marketplace.

The result of your research, as outlined here, brings you closer to knowing who your audience is, and it is no brainer that the outcome of your result is what you should focus on as your marketplace. In doing so, you have just taken the very first step to customer acquisition.

In making the customer acquisition process easy and achievable for you as a business owner, it is very important that recognizing and setting up your business in the right marketplace is very consequential.

• Build a customer list

Even when you have identified and settled in your marketplace, customer acquisition does not just happen automatically; you have to plan for it and here is how. Settling in the ideal marketplace just made the process easy for you, and the next thing to do is to identify individuals or groups of people that are likely to be your customer.

Those in need of your business’ product or service, those who have signified interest in what you sell and those who have already bought what you sell are your target when creating a customer list. To build your customer list, starting with people you already know that require your service or product is ideal. You can ask these people to let you know if any of their contacts also might need what you sell. Social media, too, is a very powerful tool to use.

Go online and talk about your product, create contact forms or any other means of people reaching out to you, and leads from these sources also work towards building your customer list. Finally, as a business owner, if you succeed in your customer acquisition process, you must know how to speak and network well. Every opportunity is a chance to speak about your business, meet with new people interested in your business, and collect information from this lead, and there you have it.

Having collected information from all the leads you have, create a list, and that is your customer list. Your customer list can be further split into “existing customers” – the ones who have already bought what you sell – and “potential customers” – every other person on the original list. Having your customer list helps you speed up the long process of customer acquisition.

There is no limit to how long your customer list can be, as long as the leads are generated from good sources within the ideal marketplace for your business. Also, your customer list continues to grow as time goes on because your audience is expected to grow as your business grows. Again, there is no limit because your customer acquisition should have no limit as long as your business will continue to thrive in the marketplace you find yourself.

• Reach out to contacts on your list

After building a customer list, what next? Do customers start rushing at you? No, it does not happen that way. Having your customer list is like having a guest list for a party. If you do not reach out to invite everyone on the list, your party will be full of empty seats.

You must reach out to people on your customer list and talk to them about your business. Of course, you do not bore them with how much you need them to patronize you, nor will you start telling them that you are on a customer acquisition quest. Talk to them about themselves, identify their needs and let them know how you can solve them.

This is where talking about your business comes in. Let them know what your business is all about, which of their problems it solves and why they should patronize your business. Reaching out to your customers can come in several forms, and one of the most efficient is email marketing. Several email service providers out there that you can subscribe to will help you reach out to all your customers at once.

In fact, not only should you reach out to people on your list, but let your message feel personal to them, and this can be achieved by simply beginning your message by addressing them with their names. Email marketing works fine for this approach; however, we have other means of reaching out to your business audience.

You can use bulk SMS services or other broadcasting channels that deliver your message right in your audience’s inbox. Include a call to action in your message to these people. Your business needs customers that will patronize you, which is what your call to action should do. It should generate leads to your business where your product or service can be bought. Not everybody will buy from you instantly, but you must let them know you are in town for them.

• Follow up again and again

When you send out an invitation to guests for your party, not everyone responds immediately, and even those who respond immediately will have to be constantly reminded until the party. The same applies to your business in the process of customer acquisition, except that there is no end to you reaching out to your audience. Your first contact with your audience only lasts for a while, and to keep the impression lasting long, you have to continually reach out to your audience with different messages, which is where you have to be creative.

Will you continue to reach out to your audience with the same message? Of course not. Make offers, create incentives, give rewards, send appreciation, celebrate with them, give them a feel of what is happening and above all, give them a constant reassurance that you care about them.

Never stop reaching out to them because this is one important way of maintaining a good relationship with your customers. Even those who are yet to patronize your business might come to you someday but forget about it if you do not reach out to them regularly. Know your audience’s preference, which helps determine what frequency you follow up on them.

One more thing before we are done

Keeping your customer goes beyond constantly following up on them but in the quality of your product. How satisfied are they with your product/service? What kind of reviews do you get from them? What do you do with the reviews? If you have no idea, here is what you should do.

There are bad reviews; for these, you must be honest with yourself as a business owner and try to do what is needed to address the bad reviews. Also, we have good reviews. You do not just leave this kind of review lying dormant. Of course, you should display them, boast about them and that on its own is capable of attracting more customers since the reviews help them trust you more.

Read more: You Just Lost Another Customer Because You Are Yet to Learn This Customer Service Secret

On a final note

Customer acquisition, as you have discovered now, is a continuous process and will always remain an integral part of your business activities (of course, unknown to the outside world.) Completing the process once does not end there because it is a cycle that you will continue to reiterate and follow through for as long as your business exists in your marketplace. Be constantly reminded that customer acquisition is just as important as profit generation because your customers generate profit for your business. Once you get your customer acquisition process right, the rest becomes possible.