Customer Acquisition Guide: Strategy, Funnel & Channels

Some businesses develop longer-term engagement strategies like personalized content, special offers and regular communication. They also create marketing campaigns that span from social media copy to a branded landing page and targeted email campaigns. An omnichannel approach helps ensure that customers have a seamless and consistent experience across each platform they interact with.

Design landing pages that are specific to your customer acquisition metrics and goals. Contests and giveaways are dynamic marketing strategies designed to create a sense of excitement and engagement around a brand. Through this innovative approach, Dropbox not only expanded its customer base but also solidified its position as a leader in the cloud storage industry. Referral programs are strategic initiatives designed to encourage existing customers to refer others to a particular product or service.

If your user sees results within the first few days or weeks, they’re much more likely to recommend it (if there’s an easy way to do so). This template helps you define the why and how of product development and launch, allowing you to make better decisions for your users, team, and company. These creators often have under 50k followers, but their audiences actually listen, comment, and take action. Done right, SEO and content marketing turn into a silent engine that drives signups long after you hit publish.

Calculating customer acquisition cost (CAC)

But if you want more complex workflows, analytics, or audience insights, you’ll likely need to upgrade. That said, some users report that list management can get messy at scale, and more advanced automation is often gated behind higher-tier plans. You can segment your audience based on behaviors, purchases, or engagement—and track detailed metrics like open rates, click-throughs, and revenue attribution. It comes with pre-built templates, A/B testing, send-time optimization, and automation workflows that are surprisingly easy to set up. On G2, users love the all-in-one ecosystem and intuitive UI. But this strategy works only if the content you create is really useful.

On any of these platforms, you can tailor how you share news about customer acquisition strategies you’re trying. Facebook remains the largest social media network, with more than 3 billion users as of April 2024, according to market research firm Statista. TikTok is home to younger, engaged social media users, but don’t sleep on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, depending on your brand and audience. You can use AI to create email, social media, or website copy that attracts new customers, as well as creative for ads placed in many different mediums. Lyft, for example, provides users with unique invite codes to share with their contacts.

• These automated systems engage with visitors, helping them find products or services and even suggesting additional purchases, thereby streamlining the customer journey.
• This not only lends its brand authority, but it also creates a base of customers Gymshark can reach whenever it wants to increase sales or promote a new item.
• Acquiring users is just the beginning—to maximize value, you must also retain happy customers.
• Acquisition focuses on bringing in new customers (measured by CAC), while retention focuses on keeping existing customers (measured by churn and LTV).

Measure and improve your strategy

Keeping track of these customer profiles helps you analyze, understand, and expand your customer base at each step. That’s why every business should focus on both acquisition and retention, combining efforts to ensure a constant stream of new customers without losing existing ones. Customer acquisition is the process of attracting, engaging, and converting prospective customers into paying ones to expand your business's customer base.

In this phase, your prospective customer is learning about your product or service, often in relation to a problem you could solve for them. Sales prospecting is the key to finding the right target audience. A good persona helps you create ultra-relevant, personalized messages, from CFO to end-user. If your target audience is on TikTok, you should be too!

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Create helpful content marketing materials like blog posts that answer common questions, detailed product guides, or video tutorials that show your solution in action. By providing value and demonstrating your expertise, you make it easy for them to choose you when they’re ready to buy. Partnering with influencers, creators, or publications that your target audience already follows can give your brand an instant credibility Customer acquisition process boost. It starts with understanding the words and phrases your customers use—known as keywords—and incorporating them naturally into your website content.

Use Content Marketing to Acquire Customers

To create a profitable marketing strategy, you want to use the right customer acquisition channels. A customer acquisition strategy is the plan to find, attract, engage, and convert prospects. Whether you’re selling wholesale or direct to consumers, you need a customer acquisition strategy. Customer acquisition is the process of identifying, attracting, and converting potential customers into buyers of a company's products or services. Start your free trial with Shopify today—then use these resources to guide you through every step of the process. It emphasizes measuring incremental revenue, optimizing engagement, and bridging the affordability gap to drive profitable growth.

The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to make your website show up higher in search results when potential customers are looking for what you offer. Instead of directly pitching your product or service, you’re offering expertise and building trust. Your goal is to meet them in those moments with a message that resonates. Think about where your ideal audience spends their time and what kind of information they’re actively looking for. This creates a powerful cycle where your best customers become your most effective marketers.

According to the company's referral program guide, the cash value of the stock users get could be between $5 and $200. A prime example is fee-free stock trading platform Robinhood, which offers current users a free stock for referring new users, who also get a free stock. The beauty of a referral program is that it taps into the resource of existing satisfied customers, setting up a quid pro quo for them to bring in new customers or users. For successful campaigns, you can justify increased spend with real dollar values. The link goes to a LinkedIn Business Solutions landing page for the B2BUILD campaign, where users-turned-leads are walked through the advertising hub. Each platform's ad hub should show you updated data on impressions, clicks, conversions, and engagement so you can fine-tune your messaging at a moment's notice.

Use a heat mapping tool to understand where users focus their attention and Google Analytics to see how they move from one page to another. You should track every little detail of your customer acquisition strategy. If in doubt, spend time split testing CTAs to see which one converts best. It should also focus on your target audience’s pain points. Already have a customer acquisition strategy in place? That’s not to mention the upsells that free users are offered during the acquisition process.

Track and optimize towards the metrics that matter

Paying customers are the lifeblood of any business, no matter which industry, niche, or profession you’re in. Sign up to get career resources from RevOps experts delivered to your inbox. A 10% referral fee is typically far lower than marketing and sales spend to acquire a new customer!