Before the internet, companies and businesses advertised through newspapers or word of mouth. With a limited amount of marketing strategies and opportunities, businesses couldn’t reach a wider customer base. Today, the world has become a global village due to the internet, and no place or business is too far. Businesses can provide their services to people worldwide and expand at a much faster rate. But the market has also grown denser,which means that companies have to compete against each other to get more and more customers.
By Digital Acquisition, we mean the strategies employed by businesses to gain new customers and retain the old ones. Through an amalgamation of online resources, social media,mainstream media, and various engagement tools, the business raises awareness about itself, promotes its products, and encourages customers to buy them. It also encourages them to make repetitive purchases through various means.
Types of Digital Acquisition strategies:
The primary aim of a Digital acquisition strategy is to maintain a steady flow of customers, both new and old, using different techniques and tactics to promote the business. There are various types of Digital Acquisition Techniques, some of which are given below:
Organic:
The link to the Business’s website popping up in search engine results, and someone visiting it through that. To enhance organic acquisition, implementing effective SEO strategies such as optimizing website content, improving site structure, and building quality backlinks is crucial.
Direct:
Someone using a direct link to your business’s website or typing it in the search bar themselves. This can also refer to the website through a bookmark.
Referral:
When the business website is mentioned on some other website or platform and someone visits the business through that link.
Paid:
When someone visits Official website through a paid search result.
Email:
When someone visits your business website through a link provided in an email that was either sent or received by them.
Social:
When someone visits your business website through a link provided on any social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram..
Developing Digital Acquisition Strategies:
To adopt a certain Digital acquisition strategy or build one by yourself, there are a few things you need to consider beforehand and a few questions that need to be answered. You need to look at a few things before you choose an acquisition strategy.
Target Audience:
The First step to promoting your business and getting more customers is to know who your target audience is. A business cannot succeed or profit if its owners do not have a clear audience they have in mind and intent to target and are just moving forward ambiguously. Different types of audiences must be approached differently, and the first step is to define who is the primary audience of the business. Once that is done, you need to study this target customer base purchasing and shopping behavior to understand how much and to what extent they are willing to spend on such a business as you are running and whether there is enough market space for your business or not.
The next step is to understand your major advantage or what makes you stand out from the rest of the herd. You can do this by asking yourself the following questions:
1. Who is your target audience?
2. What are their behaviors and shopping trends?
3. What is your selling point?
4. What is your place according to the market analysis?
5. What is the value of your business in the eyes of the customer?
Choosing or building a Strategy:
The next step is to choose a pre-existing digital acquisition strategy or build one for your business. To Build your digital acquisition strategy, you need to:
Outline the goals that you intend to achieve through your business. They must be achievable and realistic and help you outline and define your strategy.
Identify Digital Channels
To acquire customers, you need certain channels and for them to work in your favor. Many digital channels can be used for this purpose, such as Email marketing (personalized or drip campaigns), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Advertising (online adverts through Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and Content Marketing (blog articles, FAQs, etc. Considering your goals and your target audience, you will have to decide which of these digital channels is most suitable for your business, is the most practical, and is applicable in this situation.
Control your Costs
Firstly, you need to calculate the Customer acquisition costs or, in other words, the amount of money you are willing to invest in getting more customers. After, you also need to outline and set up the expected return rate for your investment through the acquisition costs. That is why it is necessary to choose digital channels beforehand so that instead of stretching your limited resources among many channels, you can instead focus on three or four and gain more customers through them. You can calculate your Customer Acquisition cost through the use of the following formula:
(Marketing Costs + Sales Costs + Salary Expense) / (Number of New Customers)
If a certain digital channel does not have good results, but the Customer Acquisition cost is low, then it is probably alright to continue along with it. On the other hand, even if a digital channel is yielding medium results, but the Customer Acquisition cost is very high in comparison, then it is better to not continue it and look for alternative digital channels.
Get Long-term Customers
It is way easier and cheaper to make sure to keep your pre-existing customers happy and retain them rather than getting new customers. For this reason, while you are looking to gain more customers, don’t forget to retain your old ones.
To conclude, Digital Acquisition strategies need to be employed by businesses if they hope to succeed in today’s dense market. The business owners can either use pre-existing strategies or formulate a strategy that suits their business model.
