The Ultimate Guide To Customer Acquisition In eCommerce

Prep Your eCommerce Store

Identify Your Customer Persona

If you want to create an effective customer acquisition strategy, then you need to study your customers.

This includes knowing their pain points, demographics, lifestyle, and any information that will help you find out how you can make them your actual customers.

Here's what a usual customer persona looks like:

As you can see, there's a name, age, gender, profession, personality, interests, challenges, and problems.

These are important to help you determine where should you focus on your strategy.

It will be easier to create content, write your copy, and talk to them if you know who they are.

Ask yourself...

• Are they aware they have a problem?
• Are they already aware that my products could be the solution to their problem?
• Are they aware of my brand?
• Are they trying to purchase, but having second thoughts?
• Have they interacted with my brand before? If yes, what stopped them from purchasing?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you'll be able to craft a customer acquisition strategy that suits their current buying stages!

And surely, your customer acquisition strategy will be effective.

But before that, it's also important to...

Evaluate Your Current Strategies

You probably have a customer acquisition strategy right now, but hey...

You can still improve it!

And one way to improve customer acquisition strategy is by evaluating your current one.

Here are some things you might want to consider when assessing your current customer acquisition strategy:

• What are the platforms or channels you're currently using?
• What are your current content marketing efforts?
• What are your current customer acquisition efforts? What needs to stop and what should you still use?

These are important to determine if you want to create a new and improved customer acquisition strategy for your eCommerce business.

And of course, before we hop on creating the plan, you also need to...

Evaluate Your Resources Before Choosing Your Strategy

This is one way to prep your eCommerce business for enhancing your customer acquisition strategies.

You can't just choose a strategy because you like it.

You also need to evaluate your current resources and tools.

Here are some questions you can answer for a great start:

Set Your Goals

I know your goal is to convert them into paying customers, but you can still set other goals that will help you achieve that.

It means we're going to break a big goal into smaller ones.

And let's take a look at the customer acquisition funnel.

So, you're going to set goals based on this funnel and where your customers are at.

Are they at the awareness phase? Your goals could be:

• Increase website visits from first-time users.
• Generate more leads.
• Gain more followers on your social media platforms.

But if they've already interacted with your brand, they might be considering purchasing from your eCommerce store.

Your goals could be:

• Get more inquiries about your products to address their concerns.
• Have more prospects answer your forms (if you have).
• Have more prospects add products to their carts because it means they have an intent to purchase.

It's important to understand your customers when setting your goals.

Once you achieve these smaller goals, you can now create a customer acquisition strategy that will convert them into paying customers.

After setting your goals, let's get to the juicy part of this customer acquisition guide!

Plan Your Campaigns

After choosing the digital marketing tactic you think will work for your customer acquisition strategy, it's time to plan what campaigns or content you'll be publishing.

Whatever strategy you're going for, you need to plan ahead your campaigns.

Here are some ideas:

1. Referral Programs

Referral programs can help you keep your customers and acquire new ones.

How? Because think of it this way...

You're rewarding your existing customers with discounts or exclusive deals in exchange of bringing in a new customer.

So, it's like hitting two birds with one stone!

Because you can also boost your customer retention while acquiring more customers!

But of course, you also need to...

2. Offer Deals For New Customers

To encourage more new customers to buy from your eCommerce store...

Why not offer great deals for new customers on their first purchase?

Having promotional offers can help you expand your customer base because who doesn't love a good deal, right?

So, if you want to have more customers, make sure to offer good deals on their first purchase!

Another thing is...

3. Discounts On Email Signups

As I mentioned above, email marketing is an effective way for you to gain and retain customers.

And to capture their emails, you can offer discounts upon email signups, which they can use on their first purchase.

Just imagine expanding your customer AND subscribers list.

Sounds amazing, right?

Now, another way to acquire new customers is...

4. Social Media Ads

We've talked about paid advertising above.

But here, we're focusing on social media ads as a vehicle for your customer acquisition strategy.

Social media ads can help you target the right people. And because of this, you can create an ad based on your objectives.

There are also different types of ad formats to choose from.

For example, Facebook.

Facebook has a lot of different ad formats to choose from. But here are some:

1. Image ads. Image ads are just simple. It's an image that consists of your products or offers.
2. Video ads. Since a lot of Facebook users consume videos, this is your chance to take advantage of it. You can this format to tell your brand story or show how your products can help your target market.
3. Carousel ads. These are ads that consist of 10 images or videos in one ad. And for each, there are different links included. These are great if you want to promote specific product sets and drive your audience to your website.
4. Slideshow ads. These are similar to video ads, except it's lighter, easier to make, and more affordable.
5. Collection ads. Collection ads allow your customers to browse your products within the platform, then you can redirect them to your website.

So, that's only for Facebook! There are different ad formats and techniques for each social media platform, too.

That's why if you want to acquire a lot of customers using social media ads, you need to understand how each platform works and how to tailor your ads based on your target audience.

But that's not all...

5. Affiliate Marketing

Did you know that more than 80% of businesses have their own affiliate programs?

This proves that affiliate marketing is a big deal to a lot of brands.

But what is it?

Affiliate Marketing means you're rewarding your affiliates each time they bring customers who purchase from you.

It's kind of similar to giving rewards to your existing customers when they refer their family or friends.

But in affiliate marketing, the affiliates need their own marketing efforts because you will give commissions.

You can collaborate with bloggers or any internet personality of your choice, and give them personalized codes to share with their followers.

And you're probably thinking... how to start with this?

Well, you can launch your own affiliate program! ?

Another way to gain customers is...

6. Run Giveaways

Before you acquire new customers, you need them to be aware of your brand first.

And running giveaways can help you with that!

If you run a giveaway, you can require those who want to join to share your post. This way, you can reach more people who might want to join your giveaway.

That already makes them aware of your brand!

But how to acquire new customers?

Listen...

Running giveaways has a lot of benefits for your eCommerce brand.

You can capture emails, gain more followers on social media, and receive a lot of likes and comments on your giveaway post.

So, you're going to take advantage of these to gain new customers.

Why? Because more people are now aware and engaged with your brand.

Even if they didn't win, your brand is on their minds. And they might make a purchase as long as you continue pushing your products out there.

And lastly...

7. Video Marketing

If you're not yet using videos in your marketing efforts, you need to start now!

Because this year, online videos are expected to make up more than 80% of internet traffic!

This means that more and more internet users are consuming videos during their screen time.

And you need to take advantage of this to acquire new customers!

So, what can you do to smash your video marketing campaigns?

You can film an unboxing video, tutorial, or use your products.

Then you can post it on your brand's social media platforms. Some giant video platforms are TikTok and Youtube.

Do you now have any idea which campaigns or content you'll be doing?

Because before you can implement any of these, you need to...

Set Your Budget

Acquiring customers would require you to spend some money to get the best results.

And before launching your campaigns, you need to set your budget.

But first, you need to know how to calculate your Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC.

Here’s how:

So, you need to add all your sales and marketing expenses that you used to acquire customers. Then divide it by the actual customers you acquired.

Easy, right? But what are these "expenses" anyway?

Here are some expenses you can include when computing your CAC and setting your budget:

1. Staff salaries. If you have employees working with you in running your eCommerce brand, then you should include their salaries in your expense.
2. Ad budget. Once you run ads on social media, you also have to include this in your calculation.
3. Influencer fees. If you want to partner with influencers to promote your brand, you also need to set a budget for this.
4. Production and professional fees. These include photographers, videographers, designers, or editors for your campaign.
5. Tools. These are the software or platforms you use to acquire customers.

These are some of the things you need to invest in if you want to acquire new customers. You need to include them in calculating the costs, too.

And once you've already set your budget, you can now launch your campaigns and get new customers!

Then after launching, you have to...

Analyze And Optimize

Now, after planning your campaigns and setting your budget... you need to analyze the results of your campaigns.

This will help you optimize or tweak your strategies based on what worked and what didn't.

Here are some things you need to ask yourself when analyzing your campaigns:

1. How much did you spend?

Knowing how much you spent in a timeframe to acquire customers? You need to analyze the cost per acquisition because it will help you adjust the budget for your next campaigns.

You can also figure out if there are irrelevant expenses that you need to withdraw.

2. Which customer acquisition channel is bringing the most customers?

If you diversify your channels, you need to identify the channel that's driving the most number of customers.

Then you can create a more laser-focused strategy for your next campaign.

3. Who are the newly acquired customers?

This is where you interpret your customer data and demographics.

Where are they from? Where did they find you? Anything that you think would help you tweak your customer acquisition strategy.

4. What are the products they bought?

You can also see which products they're buying the most.

For example, if you're selling food, some customers might go for the best sellers first instead of other menus.

So, you need to identify this because you will need to optimize your product or home page to entice your new customers to try various products.

5. Where did they hear about you?

One of the best ways to identify where your customers came from is by asking them.

You can ask your acquired customers where did they hear about you. And if an existing customer referred them, maybe it's time to tweak your referral programs.

Lucky for you, here's one way to put this feature on your website.

Debutify has an Order Feedback Add-On that you can use to ask your customers how they heard about you.

If you think this is everything... you're wrong! Because I still have something for you! ?

Choose Your Strategy

Now, you need to choose which strategy you should focus on.

And that includes choosing your customer acquisition channels or platforms.

There are different types of digital marketing strategies to choose from.

But don't forget to ALWAYS go back to Step 1 when planning... you need your customer persona because this will help you identify which is the best strategy.

And remember, choosing a strategy is not like playing the game eenie meenie.

You need to conduct research to find out which one you think would work well and help you achieve your goals.

So, what are the things you need to consider when choosing a strategy?

1. Your audience. Where are they? What platforms are they using?
2. Your budget. Is the platform free? How does it work? Do you need to invest in ads to reach more people?
3. Your business model. Are you targeting consumers or businesses?

If you answer these questions, you can start looking into different types of digital marketing tactics and see what would work for you!

Let's start with...