Acquisition strategy generally describes a layered and integrated plan developed with the ultimate objective of supporting a business or eCommerce in gaining new customers. As this definition gets expanded, it also encompasses the process of persuading a consumer to purchase a company’s goods or services through the set up of an effective acquisition funnel that would capture the attention of the end-users, converting it into actual buy-in.
At netamorphosis, it is fundamental within our initial Strategy work that we outline how we plan to ensure user acquisition across a comprehensive marketing communications or MARCOM plan, i.e. the (or system) life cycle, incorporating the best techniques and tools to meet and exceed our clients’ KPIs.
From an analytical perspective, the acquisition cost associated with customer or user acquisition becomes an important measure for determining marketing budgets and tactics, assessing the actual ad-to-sales ratio projections, and ultimately establishing the ‘lifetime value’ a customer typically brings to a business. Then, once a brand platform is positioned—typically signified by its ‘go live’ or its push to production—the business and strategic focus shifts towards driving end-users to the platform’s channels of purchase or engagement, in order to generate traction and conversions. As we would move forward into the neta growth process and as part of or performance management services, neta would often segue into actively implementing processes for our clients as their CMO, or Head of Digital Acquisition, working with both 3rd Party marketing specialists and existing client-side teams that are intimate with specific niche audience acquisition opportunities, to maximize traffic targets in order to hit monthly (traffic) projections and goals (i.e. email registrants, social media captures, multi-channel purchasers, SEO services).
3 ELEMENTS BEHIND EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER ACQUISITION STRATEGIES
1. Build engagement: developing meaningful types of consumer experiences is the most effective way to enrich their consumer journey and nurture their sentiment towards brands, products, services.
2. Don’t overspend: a thought-through consumer acquisition strategy should focus on acquisition costs as well, as it will need to both generate ROI and be financially smart. This would often include focusing not just on user acquisitions, but on their retention as well.
3. Partner-up: partnerships allow to set-up cross cutting types of approaches, blending together different operational and thematic aspects. The work neta did for the ‘Meals as Medicine’ project on behalf of our client Newport Academy—in collaboration with Our Habitas New York and with Culinary Program Director Jeffrey Zurofsky—is a good example of how 1+1 = 3, as we like to say.
In our experience it is quite frequent that, prior to our engagement, companies focus prematurely on customer acquisition and marketing spend. This happens even prior to their product and distribution platform(s) being positioned for optimal conversion and transactional opportunities.
neta is a result-driven company and we always put strategy first, which is why we’ve termed premature customer acquistion ‘money going through the bottom of the wastebasket’: it is in fact quite far from ensuring the best-value-for-money. Even if there are no guarantees in marketing spend, we do have a track record of successful ad cost ratios results, achieved in prioritizing user acquisition as our primary strategic focus within the performance.