Top eight customer acquisition strategies in 2024

For many SMEs, one of the biggest challenges of operating in today’s digital marketplace is the rising cost of effective marketing to increase sales and build brand awareness. The key to managing the high price of marketing for any business in today’s marketplace is to have an effective customer acquisition strategy in place. 

What is customer acquisition?

Customer acquisition refers to the processes companies have to attract potential leads and then convert those leads into paying customers. If your business struggles to build an effective customer acquisition strategy, we’ve put together a few suggestions to help you get started.  

Customer acquisition strategies to gain more audience

1. Engaging social media

When it comes to leveraging social media as one channel within a broader customer acquisition strategy, there are two ways to go about it: with paid social media content or organic social media content. You’ll want to use organic content for the long haul. You can’t beat organic content for building loyalty and inspiring customers over time. 

However, paid ads and other paid social media content are the best way to quickly get your product in front of potential customers. 

2. Relevant blog posts 

When you write and disseminate compelling blog posts, it shows your customers that you’re on top of what’s happening in your industry. The most persuasive argument for deploying blog posts as part of a broader customer acquisition strategy comes down to their low customer acquisition cost. 

While the days of simply putting up a blog post whenever an idea pops into your head are long gone, a strategically deployed blog post can build long-term brand loyalty for minimal cost.  A good example of curated websites with relevant blog posts is Cloudstaff, a cloud staffing pioneer based in Clark, Philippines.

3. Relevant web content

An essential step you can take in building an effective customer acquisition strategy over the long term is to continually write and deploy relevant web content to tell the story of your business and advertise your products. Keep in mind that people are much more suspicious of advertisements than they used to be.

Always make sure that your web content demonstrates a commitment to honesty and a willingness to tell your company’s story. Your content should also demonstrate a love for your product and a commitment to your customers. 

4. Informative gated content

An underappreciated customer acquisition strategy is using gated content such as e-books to build brand loyalty. Using gated content for customer acquisition fosters a deeper engagement with your customer base. Using gated content requires your customers to submit personal information, such as their email address.

Gated content offers are an effective method for converting web and blog traffic to paying customers.

5. Professional video content

Video used to be the red-headed stepchild of customer acquisition because it was expensive and difficult to monetize. In the last couple of years, however, things have changed. New technologies in editing, scripting, wireframing, and animation mean that video is cheaper to produce than ever before. 

Video is still somewhat more expensive than other media channels, but it’s never been easier to produce compelling video content to grow your brand and engage with your customer base. 

6. Email marketing

Email marketing is the workhorse of customer acquisition. Using e-mail to advertise sales, discounts, and other special offers is the single most effective avenue for you to maintain customer engagement over the long term and keep your brand relevant as the marketplace continues to change and evolve.

Effective email marketing is the most basic and consistent way to monitor your customer base on a day-to-day basis.  

7. Search engine marketing 

Search engine marketing also breaks down into two channels, paid and organic. Organic search engine marketing is just another name for SEO. Paid search engine marketing allows you to create a search result, which you then pay a fee for when it shows up in search results next to the top-ranking organic traffic. 

The same logic applies here as with social media: organic traffic is best for long-term growth, while paid traffic gets your name in front of people right away. 

8. Search engine optimization

SEO is another surefire customer acquisition strategy that we felt deserved its spot on our list. Having a coherent SEO strategy that has your web content optimized across all media channels is another way to engage with your customer base over the long term. An effective SEO strategy drives potential leads to your website. 

Search engine optimization for your brand requires a daily commitment but promises consistent returns. 

As the price of effective marketing and customer acquisition for SMEs continues to climb, it’s more important than ever for these companies to have an effective customer acquisition strategy in place. Mastering customer acquisition comes down to being able to navigate and multiple customer acquisition channels.

While customer acquisition strategies are going to work differently depending on the media channel involved, with an effective customer acquisition strategy, you’ll be able to pursue leads in a systematic and targeted fashion that guarantees ROI as you work to grow your brand and your business.