Attracting new customers has always been much harder and more expensive than retaining the old ones. In today’s economy shattered by COVID-19, investing money and energy in customer acquisition may seem pointless.
But that’s far from the truth. During the pandemic, the existing customer base is decreasing more rapidly than ever, and without attracting new ones most businesses won’t be able to survive.
That said, customer acquisition in 2021 can’t be achieved with some quick fix in a form of a single activity. The key is in preparing the ground through a well-structured plan, and we’re about to break it down.
Pinpoint
The struggle for survival may urge you to desperately reach across the entire population of potential clients, but that would be the wrong way to go. You must pinpoint the specific target market to get valuable leads. And the first step in accomplishing that is to clearly define who your target audience is.
The next step is diving deeper into the unique characteristics of your audience and crafting out a buyer persona. That’s how you’ll get a profile of your ideal customer. Only when you get to know your specific audiences you’ll be able to come up with the right marketing activities that will attract and engage them, and create the Value Proposition that will align with their unique traits.
Communicate
Social distancing has greatly decreased our possibilities to mingle, but that doesn’t mean you should let your network of contacts lie dormant. Communication is more important than ever, as you need to remind them you’re still here and at their disposal.
Effective communication comes down to a constant reminder of your expertise. The ultimate goal is to be able to ask your existing customer base to put in a good word in a form of referrals or testimonials. All prospects have suspicions and doubts when it comes to the quality of services or products, and this type of social proof is the best way to dispel them.
There are many ways to communicate in these distanced times – double up on quality and relevant content that will show your level of expertise and boost your activity across social media platforms your audience is on.
Stay With Them
With corona measures still pretty tight, there are not many opportunities such as trade shows where you’re able to meet your potential customers face to face. That’s why you need to make the most of them, and the best way to do it is to give them something tangible that will stay with them. People love receiving something for free, and it’s always a powerful psychological motivator – in return, they’ll come back to make purchases and turn into paying customers.
Handing out branded merch is one of the easiest ways to make sure they’ll always have your business in their view. And all you have to do is to fill gift bags with some designed trinkets, as long as you make a careful pick.
Even if you don’t have any opportunities to meet your prospects face to face, you can still make use of this reciprocity principle. You can’t offer free trinkets online, but you can make special first-time offers such as discounts on first purchases or free trials. If you ask them in return to simply sign up for your email list, they’ll do it gladly.
Spruce Up
All the above-mentioned techniques to attract new customers won’t go through if everything is not exactly as it should be ʽat homeʼ. The first thing you need to do is to thoroughly inspect your website since that’s where all of the driven traffic ends up. You don’t want all those hard-earned leads landing on a visually unappealing, poorly design home page. They’re not going to dig deeper than the first impression, so make sure the complete navigation is spruced up, all the way from the landing page to checkout. Nobody wants to leave their sensitive data on a crummy-looking website.
Your website is at the core of your business, but that doesn’t mean it should be your only focus. Inspect and spruce up every aspect of your online presence – from tools you’re using for online meetings to proposition templates.
As we’ve said at the beginning, preparing the ground to attract new customers is all about combining different activities into a well-structured plan. You need to know your prospects, communicate constantly and effectively, introduce free merch or special offers, and make sure everything’s ready for their arrival.
