If you have founded a startup and you’re struggling to find customers, know that you’re not alone. Most startups have this problem in the beginning. The reason for this is that not many people are familiar with your brand, products, and services.
That’s why you need to deploy the best customer acquisition strategies. To help you out, we have compiled a list of the most effective ones.
#1 Find Potential Customers
The first thing you need to do is find users for your startup. Most likely, there’s a certain demographic that is interested in your product or service. If you don’t determine your target audience, your ability to market your brand effectively will be limited.
Once you’ve determined who your target customers are, the next step is to reach out to them and persuade them to try your product or service. If you already have a certain number of customers, create survey templates to find out what they like about your product or service. If your product or service isn’t available yet, try telling them about the ideas you have so far.
Once you receive feedback, you’ll be able to adjust your product or service to best your customers’ needs.
#2 Write a Great Proposal
Writing a great proposal is an important skill if you want to acquire new customers and achieve business success. In today’s highly competitive marketplace, you want to write proposals that will be timely, relevant, and memorable. You want your proposal to be enthusiastically accepted and win the business.
Luckily, you don’t have to master the art of writing clear and elegant proposals. All you need to do is take advantage of online tools and software. For instance, if you’re a web designer, you can’t afford to spend several hours perfecting every proposal. You need your time to actually build websites – the best way to do that is by using a website design proposal template that can save you time.
#3 Produce High-Quality Content
Establishing yourself as an expert in your industry is a great customer acquisition tool. However, this can be quite difficult for new startups that have little or no reputation. One way to build authority is by creating high-quality content on a regular basis. The content you create needs to be interesting but it should also provide some sort of value to your customers.
On the bright side, there are a number of ways you can publish content: you can build a blog, post to social networks, or even go with email newsletters. If your startup is in a more technical industry, try creating white papers.
Videos are also a great format to promote your brand and aid customer acquisition. Post the video content on your site and post links to the videos on your social media profiles. Target users who are following you on social media so that they find your videos and end up browsing through your website.
#4 Use Email Marketing
Nearly 90% of marketers say that email marketing is their main channel for lead generation. This is why emails are one of the most powerful customer acquisition tools available to startups. If you’re using email marketing to build your customer base, make sure to use the right tool that allows you to build a list, create professional-looking emails, and track their performance. These functionalities aren’t available if you’re using Apple Mail or Outlook to send mass mail. You need a tool specifically dedicated to email marketing, such as GMass.
#5 SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Once you have produced a certain amount of content and established an online presence, it’s time to work on boosting your SERPs rankings. This is not as easy as it sounds, especially for startups and small companies. The best way to improve your rankings is through SEO. Some effective SEO techniques include backlinking, keyword optimization, having your website optimized for mobile, optimizing page speed, using secure HTTP, etc.
#6 Give Away Free Stuff
Today’s consumers need more than just words to convince them to purchase a certain product or service. A large portion of them can’t even be convinced by favorable word-of-mouth referrals.
This category refuses to pay for what you have to offer. So, to turn these people around and acquire them as customers, you’ll have to allow them to try and experience your product or service. The beauty in offering free stuff is that even the most stubborn human being finds it very difficult to say no.
If all goes well, once these people try your product or service, they’ll realize the value your brand has to offer. Make sure the free samples you’re offering are of the highest quality. Giving away poor quality stuff just because it’s free will have a completely opposite effect and reflect negatively on your brand because potential customers will believe that your actual products or services are of the same quality of the free items.
#7 Take Advantage of Referrals
First, spend some time working on getting the word about your brand out. Many business owners underestimate the effectiveness of word-of-mouth referrals. But once you hear the fact that Snapchat and Instagram relied on this type of referrals, you’ll probably change your mind.
Use online tools to track the word-of-mouth referrals you’re receiving. These tools will enable you to track the number of referrals and figure out if the referrals are positive or negative. Collecting and analyzing this data will allow you to make the necessary changes so that most of your future word-of-mouth referrals are positive.
You should also consider developing a referral strategy that encourages your current users to refer to other potential users. For instance, you can offer your users incentives such as extra features or discounts if they refer other users to your products or services.
Final Thoughts
Customer acquisition is all about acquiring the right customers, i.e. those who stick around and help you acquire more customers. Focus on attracting new customers, but don’t forget about those who are already on board.
