As a content marketing agency, we know that our efforts pay off. But sometimes it can be difficult to translate this type of marketing success to busy business owners. Content marketing lends itself perfectly to improved customer acquisition goals, but sometimes this connection is not so easy to see.
What is Customer Acquisition and Why Does it Matter?
Customer acquisition is the process of managing potential customers from first contact all the way through to client onboarding. Overall, customer acquisition takes over once a company obtains a lead, but it can also include the lead up to this. This process aims to manage the prospective customer, other inquiries related to these leads, and support the process from turning a potential customer into a thriving one.
Sources suggest that customer acquisition management bridges the gap between advertising and customer relationship management (CRM) to acquire new customers.
The overall process of customer acquisition is important because it gives businesses a chance to nurture potential leads and make them better long-term customers. This strategic period can be used for educational purposes, testing out products, and building brand values with prospective customers.
While this process helps boost conversions, it can also lead to lost spending if a prospect walks. But, being able to nurture this potential relationship could payout in the long run, especially because it creates a great chance that that customer returns.
4 Winning Examples of Customer Acquisition
There are so many ways that customer acquisition can be carried out. I think of British retailer ASOS, who invoked the live chat feature to support customers throughout their actual buyer journey. This live chat provided shoppers with key information about the clothing they were looking to buy as if they had a personal shopper along for the ride.
Other examples of successful customer acquisition strategies come through social media channels. Big brands like lululemon encouraged customers to post their own photos of themselves in gear (a strategy which is now widely adopted), encouraging a form of free, self-supporting advertising and customer acquisition.
Sephora chose to use its massive email marketing list for customer acquisition. Adopting email automation, Sephora routed their email sweepstakes through their Instagram, increasing their email feed and creating more ways of acting out their customer acquisition strategy.
And finally, we get to the blog post from Pardot, who walked buyers through how to win at lead nurturing, ending with a CTA to download their complete guide to lead nurturing, successfully gaining a lead and the opportunity to nurture that lead in one go.
10 Ways Content Marketing Supports Customer Acquisition
Many companies have customer acquisition strategies and they may even have content marketing strategies as well; however, you need to optimize both of these strategies to work together.
Here’s what that looks like:
1. Content Marketing Can Educate On A Brand’s Products
One of the primary ways that content marketing supports customer acquisition is because it gives brands more opportunities for educating on a product.
So much of a salesperson’s time is spent educating and then educating some more. But when a blog or downloadable PDF is readily available, this salesperson can rely on these documents and even support the customer as they learn about the product.
2. Content Marketing Can Educate On Overall Brand Missions And Larger Customer Goals
If your brand wants to be involved in more real-world based issues or cause marketing, then content marketing helps you to develop that.
Posting content that speaks to your worldview not only allows potential customers to see your brand mission but it provides them with an opportunity to align themselves with you.
There will be people out there that love and share your worldview. If they can “see” themselves in your content, they will be more open to your products and services, making the customer acquisition process much easier.
3. There Are So Many Channels That Content Marketing Hits (Including RSS Feeds And Social Media)
Your content marketing efforts should be shared in more places than just your website, including email inboxes and social media accounts. An omnichannel approach gives your business more and more ways to connect with prospects and provide customer acquisition support.
This strategy will also put your content, and your brand name, in front of more people than you would reach by relying on organic search traffic alone.
4. You Can Bring In Influencers And Other Brand Voices To Support This Goal
Always consider other brands, influencers, and guest bloggers to support your customer acquisition goals. This might make it easier to connect with your target audiences and educate them around the main pain points.
It is also a way to further support your brand mission. By aligning yourself with others in your industry or niche that have similar brand values, related expertise, or overlapping audiences, you can boost your own authority and credibility.
5. Bring Up A CTA To Download An eBook That Addresses Your Customers Pain Points
Downloadable content is one of the best ways to bring in more leads. It also gives you a better idea of where the lead is at in their customer journey and potential talking points that can be used by your team.
Create a gated eBook, which can be emailed out once an email address is provided. Tuck these addresses away in your CRM for future lead nurturing campaigns.
6. New Blog Content Or Optimize Blog Content, It Can Reduce The Amount Of Spend You Put Into Customer Acquisition
Content marketing is often more affordable than regular paid advertising spending, and it can reduce the bottom line, even more, when old content is updated or optimized.
Work smarter, not harder.
Keep your eyes on keywords and customer inquiries. This will help you track changing trends. You can update older content using this framework and spin up new content that fits within the newer marketing landscape.
These changes and additions can reduce the energy (and time and money!) spent acquiring customers.
7. It Fully Supports Email Marketing Automation
As mentioned, many customer acquisition strategies could include lead nurturing through email marketing automation.
By running your content marketing campaigns through a downloadable content campaign or on social media, you can easily increase your email marketing lists while automating customer acquisition strategies and lead nurturing within those campaigns.
8. It Provides A Great Avenue For Your Sales Team To Come In
Your content marketing strategy, at any point, allows your sales team to come into the process and connect with your prospects. This is virtually unheard of in other marketing strategies.
9. Always Consider Downloadable Content
As mentioned, downloadable content gives your customers a chance to read more into the problems they are trying to solve. It also gives you talking points when your sales team wants to connect with them. Downloadable content is one of the best things that you can do to support both your content marketing and customer acquisition goals.
10. Content Marketing Works Well With Paid Advertising
You don’t have to shut down your other avenues of marketing; content marketing fits within them. Adopt a multi-pronged approach, giving your business more areas for connecting with potential customers.
Ways to Align Content Marketing Efforts With Customer Acquisition Goals
Once you realize that content marketing and customer acquisition are a match made in heaven, then you’re ready to align your efforts and create more conversions and successes.
Here are some tips for getting started:
- Get serious about your blogging strategy. If you’re not confident with blogging yourself, then outsource the writing to a reputable content marketing agency that can deliver the high-quality content and frequency you need.
- When starting your content marketing journey, you may notice an increase in traffic. More traffic is good, but if your customers are turning away, then you either aren’t giving them a chance to move forward, or the content isn’t hitting the right points. Make note of this.
- That said, optimize your current content so that you don’t waste effort and ensure that the content stays relevant to your brand.
- Look at your best-performing content and optimize that to reflect the desired content goals and customer acquisition strategies.
- You’ll want to leverage high-quality gated content. Put gated content on some of your best-performing blogs and in other strategic areas.
- Create videos and imagery to speak to more than one buy-type.
- And always promote to social media, as this will help you build social proof.
When analyzing your content marketing strategy, always remember that:
- Great content drives customer acquisition by building brand trust, an important motivator of purchase decisions.
- Optimize your content strategy for every stage of the buyer journey by creating great content for each.
- Capitalize on your existing content because you know that it works.
- Optimize best-performing blog posts and web pages to keep your visitors engaged.
- Gated content is smart and will drive high-value leads, driving acquisition and capturing contact information.
- Social proof and social media engagement will support you with your goals.
Ready to get started? Reach out to okwrite today.
