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Investing in a customer acquisition strategy is critical for you to attract the right leads to your company and increase your chances of retaining them for the long term.
In this guide, you’ll learn the basics of customer acquisition, how to lower the cost of acquiring new customers, and how to leverage your loyal ones. By the end, you’ll be able to build an acquisition strategy so agile, it’ll withstand the test of time and ever-changing trends.
Keep reading or use the chapter links below to jump ahead.
What is customer acquisition?
Customer acquisition is the process of getting potential customers to buy your products. A strong customer acquisition strategy: 1) attracts leads, 2) nurtures them until they become sales-ready, and 3) converts them into customers. The overall cost of these steps is referred to as your customer acquisition cost (CAC).
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- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Satisfaction Score
- And More!
Why is customer acquisition important?
Customer acquisition is important for businesses of any age and size. It allows your business to:
- Make money to meet costs, pay employees, and reinvest in growth, and
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Show evidence of traction for outside parties such as investors, partners, and influencers
Being able to systematically attract and convert new customers keeps companies healthy and growing — and investors happy.
What is the purpose of customer acquisition?
The purpose of customer acquisition is to find a repeatable, methodical way of attracting customers to your business. While you can wait for customers to naturally come to you, that won’t guarantee that you can increase, or even maintain, profits over time.
Customer acquisition specialists use specific techniques to get potential customers to take action. The goal of this process is to create a systematic, sustainable strategy to acquire new customers and grow revenue for the business.
In many respects, this process sounds like marketing — you’re looking for ways to showcase your brand and connect with customers. But there’s a difference between the two.
Customer Acquisition vs Marketing
While marketing aims to build awareness, customer acquisition looks to drive action. For example, let’s say you run a Facebook ad aimed at your target market. Metrics will help determine if your effort is working — you can track how many people have shared your ad, commented on it, etc. That’s marketing.
Acquisition, meanwhile, speaks to what happens after potential customers click through to your page or receive your emails. If they’re willing to take action by purchasing your products or services, that’s acquisition. Put simply? Marketing drives recognition — acquisition drives revenue.
At this point, you may be asking, “What’s the difference between lead generation and customer acquisition?”
Let’s break it down.
The Customer Acquisition Funnel
In the business world, we typically visualize the customer journey with a funnel or a similar graphic that highlights the stages in the buying process and the mindset of the prospect.
As consumers move through the funnel to become buyers, they:
- Gain awareness about your brand
- Add your product or service to their consideration pool
- Decide to become a paying customer of your business
To simplify the process, lead generation typically happens at the top of the funnel, lead acquisition happens in the middle, and lead conversion happens at the bottom.
And customer acquisition typically refers to the funnel as a whole.
Here’s another way to visualize it, in a less funnel-like fashion:
In the example above, customer acquisition lives in the “attract,” “convert,” and “close” phases, where strangers become visitors, leads, and customers.
Gain a better understanding of conversion strategy in this free HubSpot Academy course.
At some organizations, customer acquisition refers to the top and middle of the marketing funnel, with both lead generation and acquisition combined. This is because the bottom of the funnel (conversion) typically requires more dedicated, customized strategies to convert customers, such as lead scoring and closing tactics.
For the purpose of this post, customer acquisition refers to the entirety of the funnel.
Acquisition Marketing
Acquisition marketing is the process of creating an advertising and promotion strategy that specifically targets consumers who are already considering your products and services. These consumers are aware of your brand, making them prime candidates for conversion.
Acquisition marketing is different from other marketing because it specifically targets those consumers who have become aware of your brand and are considering making a purchase.
Digital Acquisition Marketing
Digital acquisition marketing uses online channels — such as organic search, social media, and display advertisements — to target and attract new customers. A strong digital acquisition strategy typically requires collaboration and alignment between marketing and customer service teams.
Your marketing team is responsible for developing and releasing new promotional materials that may spark interest in new customers. But it's your customer service team that has a direct line to your current customers — and your current customers can be some of your best marketers.
When visitors land on your website, they will passively read the material your marketers have written and maybe decide to buy your product. But if they use your website’s live chat feature, they’ll be speaking directly to a member of your service team.
Or if a potential customer reaches out via social media, they’ll likely speak to one of your customer support representatives.
In other words, your customer service team has the same ability to bring on and keep new customers as your marketing team does. That's why acquisition marketing is broader than just your marketing team.
Before we discuss retention through your customer service team, however, let's talk about some customer acquisition channels that your marketing team can use to capture potential customers’ interest and convert them.
Acquisition Channels
Customer acquisition channels are the platforms companies use to promote their products and services to new audiences — including organic search, organic social media, and email. The best acquisition channels for your business will depend on your audience, resources, and overall strategy.
Customer acquisition methods can be broken up into a variety of different types: paid and free, inbound and outbound, etc.
Below, we’re going to review some commonly used methods of acquiring new customers. At HubSpot, we employ all of these methods — some at smaller scales, and some at much larger scales.
Free Customer Service Metrics Calculator
Calculate your business's key metrics and KPIs for customer support, service, and success with this free template.
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Satisfaction Score
- And More!
1. Organic Search
Organic search refers to the search engine results pages (SERPs), such as Google’s or Bing’s search results. Organic search marketing, by extension, refers to any efforts you make to rank highly in these results.
To leverage organic search as a customer acquisition channel, you must invest in search engine optimization (SEO). SEO, like social media, complements content marketing efforts by optimizing your content so it’s more easily found by your target audience.
Think about it: When you Google something, you typically click on one of the first results, right? The idea behind SEO is to create content that shows up high on the SERPs and makes searchers want to click on your content.
Thankfully, you don’t have to guess how exactly to use organic search for your customer acquisition plans. You can use tools such as SEMRush, Open Site Explorer, and Ahrefs to find the best keywords for your business and create powerful content that attracts potential new customers.
2. Paid Search
Paid search marketing (pay-per-click, or PPC) is advertising on search engines themselves. In addition, some PPC platforms, such as Google Ads, allow you to place display advertisements on partner websites and publishers.
Instead of organically optimizing your content, PPC allows you to create a search result and pay for it to show up alongside organic results, theoretically increasing your chances of being found by searchers.
To equip your content and ads to perform best in search engines, you can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Microsoft Advertising.
3. Organic Social Media
Social media marketing consists of two methods: organic and paid. Organic social media is most useful for boosting brand awareness, developing a company personality, and sharing content you’ve published elsewhere (like from your blog or videos). Consider it the gasoline for a fire where you’ve already started using other acquisition methods.
Organic social media also capitalizes on the “virality” factor, inspiring your customers and followers to help you advertise.
4. Paid Social Media
Leveraging paid social media may be a better tactic for your business, depending on your budget and audience type. Paying for social media advertisements and exposure is a surefire way to get content in front of your audience, without having to build up a network of loyal followers. (But don’t get me wrong — that’s important, too!)
Manage and plan your social media content with this free calendar guide and template.
Whereas sponsored posts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram simply get your content in front of the right eyes, Facebook Lead Ads allow you to advertise on social media and gather customer information such as email addresses and names. This information can make the difference between a follower and a lead, so if your business is looking to build its list, this might be the acquisition method for you.
5. Email
What do marketers do with all that customer information they collect through other customer acquisition channels? They build an email list, and they leverage that email list to connect with and convert their customers.
Email marketing might seem like an outdated acquisition method, but it’s a highly effective way to stay in front of your customers and promote quality content, product information, and discounts and events. Email is also a great way to simply connect with your audience, whether by sending a happy birthday email or a valuable promotional email.
Email marketing provides a direct line into your consumer’s inbox, unlike social media, search, or content marketing. Outside of direct sales, there’s no better acquisition tactic than email marketing that gets to the heart of the individual customer.
6. Referrals
Sometimes, you don’t need to look any further than your own customers for a proven customer acquisition method. Earning customer referrals is one of the most powerful ways to acquire new customers. While you can’t force your current clients to refer others to you, you can encourage this behavior in a few ways.
Creating a referral program is a surefire way to bring in new business through your customers. Offering incentives — whether credit, physical gifts, or monetary rewards — is usually the best way to motivate a customer to share about your company (and compensate them in return). If you consider a customer referral valuable for your business, you must provide something equally valuable as a trade.
While a structured, incentive-based program typically works best for B2C companies, B2B companies might have better luck asking for direct referrals from their customers.
Whichever referral strategy you choose, be sure to provide value first and ask questions later. Give your customers a reason to want to refer you — because they’re so delighted by your business, they can’t help but share.
7. Events
Events — like conferences, webinars, and trade shows — are a fantastic way to connect with interested prospects and acquire new customers.
Today, most events are online, which can make customer acquisition easier, as attendees have to register with their email addresses to attend (whether they pay or not). This information isn't always easy or natural to capture when meeting prospects in person.
Plus, virtual events are a fun way to connect with prospects and sponsors from the comfort of your own home. If this customer acquisition channel is new to you, consider holding a small webinar or virtual summit, or renting a booth at a larger event.
8. Traditional Advertising
Traditional advertising channels — such as TV, radio, and print media — are a great fit for local businesses, as well as large businesses that have the budget for launching multi-city campaigns. Traditional advertising can be a powerful customer acquisition method if you properly target your ads and carefully consider the audiences that each publisher caters to.
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- Customer Acquisition Cost
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- And More!
You can typically get audience details from the publisher’s media buying guide. There, they’ll also delineate the accepted dimensions, as well as any other requirements for publishing or running your advertisement.
Now that we’ve gone over a few channels you can use for your customer acquisition plan, let’s cover a few specific strategies that fall under each channel’s umbrella.
Customer Acquisition Strategies
- SEO
- Content Marketing
- Blogging
- Social Media Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Email Retargeting
- Sponsored Content
- Customer Spotlights
- Gated Content
- Product Pricing
When creating a customer acquisition plan, you can mix a wide array of strategies to get your desired result.
1. SEO
Customer Acquisition Channel: Organic Search
SEO is far from an exact science, but there are some proven methods to help your content rank better in organic search. SEO best practices involve creating indexable content — content that search engines can read, decipher, and index within a SERP. You can increase your content’s “indexability” by:
- Putting your main keyword in the post title
- Adding alt text to your images
- Uploading transcripts for video and audio content
- Linking internally within your site
There’s a lot that goes into SEO, but these are a few basics to get you started.
SEO is a popular customer acquisition method for a couple of reasons: It’s relatively easy, and it’s very cost-effective. SEO continues to rise as a priority for marketing teams across the globe as 64% of marketers said they actively invested in SEO in 2020. Put in the time to learn SEO strategies, stay up to date with trends, and optimize your blog posts — and you’ll find your content ranking better than before.
2. Content Marketing
Customer Acquisition Channel: Organic Search
Content marketing is an effective customer acquisition method for all types of businesses. Creating new, exciting, and relevant content is a highly effective way to snag your audience’s attention and send them to your website.
Also, in a world full of false advertising and dwindling consumer trust, content marketing extends an olive branch by saying, “Here. We love what we do, and we want to share our expertise with you — for free.”
When it comes to content marketing, there’s no wrong type of content you can create. The heart of content marketing is connecting with and converting your audience. Because of this, each piece of content should be relevant to your readers and include a clear call to action. Content marketing is also partially content creation and partially content promotion.
3. Blogging
Customer Acquisition Channel: Organic Search
Blogging is a highly recommended acquisition method for businesses of all sizes, industries, and audience types. Running a blog allows you to explore different topics, flex your knowledge in your industry, and build authority among your readers. Blogging also continually gives you new opportunities to engage with your audience, whether through a graphic they can bookmark for later, a question they can answer in the comments, or an enticing call-to-action they can click.
Save time creating blog posts with these six free templates.
If you choose to start a blog, be sure to have sustainable resources in place. Your blog writers can be dedicated employees, freelancers, or guest writers. Having a graphic designer and editor on board can help ensure your content is optimized for both search engines and reader experience. Lastly, adding a blog to your website is relatively easy, depending on your hosting platform.
4. Social Media Marketing
Customer Acquisition Channel: Organic Social Media, Paid Social Media
Social media can require a lot of effort for little reward if you don’t develop a solid game plan for its use.
- What networks are you going to leverage and which ones are you going to avoid?
- What’s your social brand voice and who on your marketing team will be tasked with developing and managing content?
- Do you have a crisis plan in place?
If these questions seem intimidating, don’t fret. Posting organically on social media may seem like shouting into a void. The key is accessing the right networks — and this all comes back to a well-defined audience.
For example, if you’re targeting an audience mostly composed of men, Pinterest would have little value for you as only 15% of men use Pinterest. If your audience is made up of millennials, you should include Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat in your playbook.
Consider using social media management tools like HubSpot's to help you curate and post content on your networks.
5. Video Marketing
Customer Acquisition Channel: Paid Search, Organic Social Media, Paid Social Media
Video is one of the more complicated forms of content to produce, but with higher-quality cameras becoming cheaper and a plethora of freelancers available, creating videos is easier than you think. Video marketing as part of a broader content strategy is all about quality content.
Video production typically involves script writing, editing, production, and animation — all of which you can outsource through freelancers or production agencies. Video tends to be the most expensive of the content types, so be sure to preserve your very best content for video ideas.
The good news is that this content type is highly versatile. You can promote through search display ads, organic social media posts, and paid social media posts. You can also add your videos to your blog posts and pages to better engage readers and get multiple chances to convert them into customers.
Don’t have the budget for video marketing? If you simply want to visualize an idea for your audience, you can create a Slideshare as an alternative to video.
Free Customer Service Metrics Calculator
Calculate your business's key metrics and KPIs for customer support, service, and success with this free template.
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Satisfaction Score
- And More!
6. Email Retargeting
Customer Acquisition Channel: Email
What you send isn’t the only important part of email marketing. It’s also helpful to keep an eye on list behavior and retarget your emails accordingly.
For example, when you get a new subscriber, it’s safe to assume that the consumer is interested in your company and wants to learn more. If they don’t respond to the first few emails you send, however, you’ll want to adjust your strategy and A/B test different calls-to-action.
Certain link clicks in your email can alert you to what your subscribers are most interested in. Furthermore, people that unsubscribe altogether can give you insight into how your subscribers view your emails and the content you share.
7. Sponsored Content
Customer Acquisition Channel: Paid Search, Paid Social Media, Traditional Advertising
Sponsored advertising can run the gamut from paid ads on the SERPs to influencer posts on social media. No matter the channel you choose, sponsored ads can help you generate awareness about your products and services and attract new audiences to your brand. You can play with different types of sponsored content, such as sponsored search results, sponsored product mentions, and paid blog posts on related publications.
8. Customer Spotlights
Customer Acquisition Channel: Customer Referrals
One powerful customer acquisition tactic? Turning your satisfied customers into promoters. Here’s how you can empower your customers to promote your business and help you save time and money on other acquisition methods.
- Ask for customer stories. Whether through case studies, interviews, reviews, or user-generated content, ask your customers to tell their own stories of how they came to discover your business and why they love it. Instead of boasting about your own company via paid advertising or social media, pass the microphone and let your customers do it for you.
- Make content easily shareable. While a happy sentiment can get the message across, wouldn’t it be even better if your customers were equipped to directly share content you’ve created, like social posts, blog posts, or graphics?
This is called the viral loop, and it’s when your customers share content that leads their followers back to your business. Create Click to Tweet links so that your customers can easily share social posts, and ensure each piece of published content has options to share via email or social media. The more convenient promotion is for your customers, the more likely they’ll engage.
9. Gated Content
Customer Acquisition Channel: All
Gated content may include ebooks, guides, templates, white papers, and more. Because the content creation process is more involved, these content offers are also gated, meaning that readers must exchange personal information like emails and names to access the content.
Because you can share gated content through any medium, it can be paired with virtually any customer acquisition channel. For instance, you can search engine optimize the content’s landing page, or promote it on a social ad.
Gated content is an important customer acquisition strategy that straddles the line between SEO, content marketing, and conversion rate optimization. It can help you get more leads out of your blog and content marketing strategy. However, it’s essential to ensure that the content is truly gated — that is, that the guide or ebook isn’t actually indexed and findable online. Otherwise, potential customers will simply search for it without giving you their email.
10. Product Pricing
Customer Acquisition Channel: All
Your product’s pricing strategy is another powerful customer acquisition strategy that can be promoted across every channel, down to TV ads and customer referrals. Alternatively, you can let your product pricing attract customers on its own. It’s especially effective if your competitors’ prices are much higher, or they don’t adhere to your pricing model at all.
For instance, selling freemium software can help you naturally acquire customers whom you can upsell later. “Free tools” will pull in just about anyone who’s working with a budget or who wants to get a taste of your product before investing in a subscription.
If you sell consumer products, “Buy One, Get One Free” will have a horde of customers clicking “Add to cart,” expanding your customer base without much work.
You might consider the following specific pricing strategies:
It’s clear that these customer acquisition methods work together. For example, social media can promote SEO-optimized content that includes a call-to-action to join an email list. That’s a little long-winded, but you get the gist.
Mixing up and experimenting with a variety of customer acquisition strategies can also help you learn more about your audience and introduce new tactics to your current strategy. Regardless of which strategies you choose, always leave room for analysis, improvement, and change — because you never know when customers may stop responding to your methods, or leave altogether.
How to Measure Customer Acquisition
You’ve heard the buzzword: customer acquisition cost, otherwise known as CAC. Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost associated with bringing a new customer or client to your business, such as marketing costs, events, and advertising. It’s typically calculated for a specific campaign or window of time.
CAC is important because it assigns real value to your marketing efforts and allows you to measure your ROI — a metric inquired about by CEOs, managers, and investors alike.
How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost
High-level customer acquisition cost is calculated by dividing marketing costs associated with a specific campaign or effort by the number of customers acquired from that campaign.
Featured Resource: Free Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator
CAC Formula
This CAC formula is CAC = MC / CA, where: CAC is customer acquisition cost MC is marketing costs CA is customers acquired
To get a more in-depth, accurate look at CAC, you must include all costs associated with marketing spend, including everything from campaign spend to marketing salaries to the cost of the staples used to create those lengthy contracts.
CAC Formula Example
This CAC formula looks like this: CAC = (MC + W + S + OS + OH) / CA, where: CAC is customer acquisition cost, MC is marketing costs, W is wages for marketing and sales, S is marketing and sales software, OS is outsourced services, OH is overhead for marketing and sales, CA is customers acquired.
Where the simple CAC metric might apply to a single campaign, the more complex CAC formula should be calculated within a given window, such as one month or fiscal year. For example, if Company A spent $10,000 on customer acquisition in Q4 of 2021 and acquired 100 customers, the CAC would be $100.
CAC can be a fickle metric and shouldn’t be the only number used to evaluate marketing efforts. Why? Well, here are a few things that could throw off the value and application of your CAC:
- On average, how often do your customers make purchases? There’s a major difference between the CAC of an Audi dealership and a Starbucks.
- Does/did your company spend money on marketing efforts that are slated to pay off in the far future? Say you invest in a Q3 campaign but pay for it in Q1. You aren’t necessarily going to see new customers right away from that investment, and that might skew your Q1 CAC.
Regardless, CAC is a critical number to calculate (and consistently recalculate) when acquiring new customers and employing new acquisition methods.
Free Customer Service Metrics Calculator
Calculate your business's key metrics and KPIs for customer support, service, and success with this free template.
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Satisfaction Score
- And More!
How to Minimize Customer Acquisition Cost
Here’s a simple truth about marketing: You can always do better. You can always reach new audiences, market with better messages, and minimize associated costs.
Depending on your outlook, this could be good or bad news. There’s always something to learn and always something to improve upon. Better yet, you aren’t stuck with a subpar metric that your executives or investors aren’t quite happy about.
If you’re looking to improve your CAC, here are a few ways to minimize the cost of acquiring new customers:
- Improve your website conversion efforts. Enhance your calls-to-action, ensure your site is mobile and tablet responsive, optimize your landing pages, and clean up your copywriting. Consider A/B testing a landing page or shopping cart to see if a certain design or copywriting angle works best. These will make sure any customer acquisition methods you’re already employing are working as perfectly as possible.
- Boost the value of your current customers. This may involve releasing a new product or upgrade in which your customers can also invest in. User value can also skyrocket when they refer other customers or simply act as promoters for your business.
- Adjust and optimize your customer acquisition strategy. Take some time to structure your acquisition blueprint and see what each method is costing you. Where could you cut back on extra marketing spending or manpower? Costs for specific channels can rise over time, and you can always minimize CAC by finding newer, cheaper channels to invest in. This process also ensures your strategy reflects the most recent marketing trends and remains agile.
How to Improve Your Customer Acquisition Strategy
Every business needs new customers to grow and succeed, so whether you’re a company of five or 5,000, having a roadmap for customer acquisition is a smart move. Below are a few steps you can take to build a strong customer acquisition roadmap.
1. Make your strategy sustainable.
A sustainable customer acquisition strategy is one that works in the long run. This means that the investments you make (whether money, time, or human) can be upheld for the foreseeable future.
For example, if you plan to acquire new customers through a blog, you should have the tools and resources in place to ensure content production lives past one or two posts — effectively bringing in organic traffic for months or years to come. This is why inbound marketing is effective — it creates sustainable traffic and, therefore, a sustainable source of new customers. Consider this in comparison to ads, which can be an effective way to acquire customers … as long as the ads are live.
2. Build in flexibility.
Your customer acquisition strategy should also be flexible because marketing and sales, and the way people respond to them are always changing. While salespeople were once the gatekeepers of information about a product, that’s no longer the case.
Consumers are increasingly skeptical of brand claims and anything said about a product by the company or its reps. In a HubSpot Research study, we found that 81% of consumers trust the advice of family and friends over businesses. Creating a customer acquisition strategy that only relies on salespeople would put your company in a tough spot. Keep your strategy pliable, and you’ll always be ready to respond to market trends.
3. Find your target market.
All consumers aren’t your best consumers, and customer acquisition efforts can result in a waste of resources if they’re not targeting the right people. Before you invest in any customer acquisition methods, you must define who you’re targeting with said methods.
The process alone of defining your buyer persona can help weed out any unnecessary or wasted acquisition efforts, as well as alert you to specific needs or desires that some channels may meet. For example, businesses targeting Gen Z might consider creating videos as part of their content marketing strategy, given that 77% of teens and young adults ages 15-25 use YouTube.
A targeted customer acquisition strategy requires taking a step back and figuring out what’s best for your business, resources, and audience. Then, you can expect to see real responses to your customer acquisition efforts.
4. Diversify your approach.
Ever heard of cross-pollination? It’s when bees spread pollen between a variety of plants, bringing about variations of species that better withstand time and nature. In this case, marketers can be compared to these well-traveled bees.
When you diversify your acquisition strategy and use various acquisition methods, you have a greater chance of reaching new audiences and generating new leads.
Also, diversifying your customer acquisition strategy creates a balance between risk and reward, meaning if one channel begins to fail (see: salespeople example above or the declining effectiveness of organic Facebook reach), it’s easier to reallocate funds for a new, better-performing method.
5. Track your customer lifetime value.
Customer acquisition is important, but how long customers continue doing business with you is even more critical. Understanding the types of customers with the longest customer lifetime value can help you refine your customer acquisition efforts and improve your strategy overall.
Customer lifetime value is the estimated net profit that an individual or business will provide over their lifetime as a paying customer. It’s a helpful factor to consider when getting to know your customers and how they interact with your business. It also provides a clear valuation of your marketing and support efforts and helps influence business decisions across the board.
Customers with high LTV are more expensive to acquire, but they provide the greatest value — in terms of revenue, feedback, and referrals — than other customers.
Calculating customer LTV isn’t difficult, but it does require defining a few metrics along the way, such as average purchase value and frequency. Even if you have to estimate these numbers, having a solid customer LTV can help you predict how much revenue you can roughly expect a customer to provide throughout their relationship with your business.
By defining customer LTV alongside CAC, companies can figure out just how long it takes to replace each investment made in acquiring new customers — and how to better spend that acquisition budget.
Free Customer Service Metrics Calculator
Calculate your business's key metrics and KPIs for customer support, service, and success with this free template.
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Satisfaction Score
- And More!
6. Prioritize decreasing customer churn, not making up for it.
Despite working hard and employing various methods to acquire new customers, sometimes they do leave us. That’s the unfortunate motivation behind customer acquisition, though, and it’s important to recognize. On that note, let’s discuss another buzzword: Churn.
Customer churn represents the percentage of customers that peel away from your business and opt-out of your products or services. It’s also referred to as customer attrition or turnover.
Why is churn important? Customer churn is what motivates businesses to find and acquire new customers. When you lose customers, you want to go out and find new ones, right? Historically, as businesses have experienced higher churn rates, they’ve invested in more (and more expensive) acquisition methods.
It’s time to look at customer acquisition and customer churn in a new light. Instead of using acquisition methods to make up for customer churn, it’s imperative to decrease churn altogether. That way, you can avoid the proverbial “band-aid” of customer acquisition to address the source of the wound — unhappy or unsatisfied customers.
Customer retention can become a powerful customer acquisition tool. Instead of looking outward and onward for new customers to replace the old, forgotten ones, I propose that you look inward and work to retain customers using new and improved customer service methods.
7. Switch from an acquisition funnel to an acquisition flywheel.
Remember how I discussed the marketing funnel in the first section? While the funnel is a handy visualization of how customers come to know and buy from your brand, it’s lacking in one thing: how your current (and past) customers fuel future customers. When your business focuses on delighting and retaining customers, your marketing strategy starts to resemble a flywheel, not a funnel.
The “flywheel” is a model adapted by HubSpot to explain the momentum a business gains when the entire organization is aligned around delivering a remarkable customer experience that produces happy customers who drive referrals and repeat sales.
That’s customer retention in action: working to retain your customers (instead of paying to replace lost ones). This is an acquisition method in itself — and a much cheaper one at that.
It’s a well-known fact that retaining customers costs much less than acquiring new ones. 90% of happy consumers are more likely to purchase again, and 93% are more likely to be repeat customers at companies with excellent customer service. These are just a few reasons to establish customer retention strategies — just like customer acquisition ones.
The customer retention strategies you put into action will vary based on your business model, audience, resources, and more.
Now that you know what makes an amazing customer acquisition strategy, let's talk about some companies that are doing it well.
Customer Acquisition Strategy Examples
Customer acquisition is an opportunity for your company to get creative. Wondering how? Take a look at these leading examples of how other companies and organizations have structured their customer acquisition strategy.
1. Product Pricing Acquisition: Otter.ai
One of the best ways to get customers interested in your product is by giving them a little taste of it — through a freemium option. Lots of leading brands do this: Dropbox, Slack, and HubSpot.
A personal favorite of mine that employs the freemium product customer acquisition strategy is Otter.ai, an AI transcriber tool I use to capture ideas, stories, and meeting notes. Otter's free plan is pretty generous — 600 minutes of recordings and unlimited .TXT exports, so I don't personally plan on upgrading anytime soon.
However, by getting a taste of the Otter product, I can now better explain it to other people and companies — folks who may upgrade since hearing about it from me. By providing a freemium option, Otter not only encourages me to upgrade but also better equips me to evangelize on their behalf.
2. Email Acquisition: Kaleigh Moore
Email marketing is a valuable way to routinely engage with leads and keep your brand and product top-of-mind. This applies whether you're a Fortune 500 company or individual freelance writer, like Kaleigh Moore.
Kaleigh is a leading freelance writer for SaaS and e-commerce platforms. She's been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. and has written for brands like Kissmetrics, ConversionXL, and Sumo. Kaleigh has also been sending a bi-monthly email newsletter for five years, full of freelancing and writing tips and stories for her audience.
Recently, Kaleigh developed some high-value digital products based on her own experiences, and guess what channel she tapped to get them in front of potential buyers? Email. By converting her website visitors and blog readers to email subscribers, Kaleigh successfully acquired new leads — and, now, customers for her new products.
3. Gated Content Acquisition: HubSpot
We may be a bit biased, but HubSpot is an industry leader in gated-content-based customer acquisition. We produce dozens of new content offers every year, including e-books, templates, worksheets, and more. This type of content is also called "gated content," as leads have to enter their emails in exchange for access to the content.
Another interesting example of this is interactive content acquisition, such as HubSpot's Make My Persona tool. By "gamifying" the persona creation process, HubSpot successfully captures the information of people who are interested in making their own buyer personas.
4. Event Acquisition: WPMRR
In this customer acquisition play, WPMRR didn't charge for its event; they simply asked participants to register with their email and some information about their current roles. In exchange, participants got access to live presentations from a variety of speakers, as well as opportunities to network with other attendees.
I'd say that's well worth an email, and worth the work (for you) to capture valuable, engaged leads.
5. Organic Search Acquisition: Chima Mmeje
SEO is growing in popularity among marketers, and it makes sense. 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing, with 64% following that up by allocating resources toward search engine optimization. The key here is allocating resources. Whether you hire a content team staffed with writers, editors, designers, and SEOs, or you outsource the work, search marketing fueled by search engine optimized content is a smart way to acquire new customers.
Chima Mmeje is a freelance SEO copywriter who leverages search marketing (and a bit of social media) to acquire new SaaS clients. She takes their brands from the depths of the SERP to the top of page one. She works with clients like Skillshare and Wix to create topic clusters, conduct keyword research, and update aging content to drive reliable traffic to their websites. Chima even got creative with her knowledge on a recent Clubhouse call by applying her SEO skills to the social-media-site-turned-search-engine Pinterest and explaining the psychology behind what makes people click.
Smart Customer Acquisition Helps You Grow Better
Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any company, small or large. That means you can’t quite afford — no matter the cost — to give up on marketing to new customers. But research has shown that the key to growth lies not with your marketing or sales team but your customer service team, and your customers themselves.
That’s right — companies that succeed put their customers in the spotlight, for both acquisition and retention. Set up your acquisition strategy correctly, and you can expect to not only lower your customer acquisition cost but also increase your customer lifetime value.
Customer acquisition is all about acquiring the right customers that stick around — and help you acquire more. Instead of visualizing customer acquisition as a one-way funnel, start picturing your customer acquisition and retention methods as a flywheel: Always work to bring new customers on board, but don’t forget about them once they’ve joined the crew. Equip them to succeed, and they’ll go to work on your behalf.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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