Ag Voice | The art of customer acquisition

Marketing and customer acquisition go hand in hand for every business. Both these roles complement each other to achieve individual objectives. The end objective of every marketing technique is to acquire new customers through a search of potential customers. The basis remains the same behind every effort; the acquisition of new customers leading to increased business for the marketer.

What is customer acquisition? Customer acquisition is a systematic approach to manage customer prospects and inquiries generated by a variety of marketing techniques. It is a structured approach for the identification and acquisition of new customers and it is a tool which simplifies your offering to potential customers.

Customer acquisition is practiced in every industry - be it product or service. The difference lies in the ways of acquiring customers. For instance, in a service industry, an IT solution provider company can achieve customer acquisition by a database containing contacts of the existing and potential users of your product/service. This exercise leads to the identification of right prospects for your offering.  In a product industry, the techniques used to acquire new customers are altogether different. Consider the example of Coco Cola, a company that moved its marketing focus from tier 2 and tier 3 cities to rural sector for exploring new markets and increasing sales.

I believe customer acquisition begins with customer analysis. The better the analysis, the simpler strategy drafting and idea execution becomes. Segmentation, targeting, and positioning holds the key to successful accomplishment of customer acquisition. The ways to acquire customers are varied depending on the type of market you are fishing in. If you consider the example of an online market, you can find numerous solutions; with the influx of social availability, marketers are trying to beguile customers through all kinds of social networking sites, bet it Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter. Customers are empowered like never before and are hungry for information, satisfying this kind of target requires use of analytics – a point to be noted by marketing leaders.

The following points should be considered for customer acquisition:

1.  First and foremost, a considerable amount of effort should be spent in understanding customers and their buying behavior to improve the approach of pitching products/services.
2. It is important to understand the factors affecting customer buying decision – these can be psychological or environmental factors.
3. Execute the analysis of customer buying behavior in terms of how customers will react to changing environmental factors.
4. Study the customer’s ability of processing information and the implied influences on the customer’s decision making.
5. To enable a higher level of effectiveness for marketing campaigns, try to innovate new ways for acquiring customers

There is no perfect recipe for acquiring customers. It’s same as the “no size fits all” philosophy. Determining a perfect strategy for customer acquisition involves deep understanding of the customers in terms of their needs and behavior. However, chalking out new strategies for acquiring customers is the need of the hour. A healthy approach to customer acquisition is receptivity to the changing needs of customers and the environment. In most cases, a single strategy will not be the solution; the capability to leverage the acquisition approach as and when required for the business will ensure continued growth in the near future. 

The article is written by Kulwinder Singh, Senior Director - Global Marketing & Communications, Synechron