Customer retention has been the buzzword that marketers have been talking about the most in recent years. 70% of marketers believe that it’s cheaper to retain customers than to attract new ones.
But while that may be true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that in order to retain customers, you must first have an established and effective process for acquiring them.
With most online markets becoming more competitive as consumer shopping online continues to grow, especially because of the pandemic, companies in fields like B2B are also seeing that having a strong online presence is essential for survival and growth.
To help you with your customer acquisition, let’s go over some future-proof strategies that will be just as effective next year as they are today.
Eliminate Friction
Friction is the enemy of client acquisition. Every obstacle your prospects have to overcome reduces the likelihood that they will become customers. So you must do everything in your power to make the transition as easy and comfortable as possible.
And in most cases, that process revolves around simplifying or even removing all the steps that are not absolutely essential.
For one thing, if you start using a contract management software solution, you can streamline a lot of the processes surrounding signing contracts. No one wants a lengthy and complicated process of printing out and signing documents, so having a convenient software platform to streamline the process will certainly make your prospective clients’ decisions easier.
You should also go through every step that the customer needs to take, from the initial contact to the moment they can start enjoying your solution.
Maybe you have too many contact people constantly reaching out to them? Maybe you’re collecting too much information? Or perhaps you are not using the right technology that could eliminate a lot of those issues?
Thinking about solutions like contract signing apps can help you figure out whether some of your current processes are outdated and make the necessary adjustments without disrupting your workflows.
Use Multiple Marketing Strategies
When it comes to customer acquisition, it’s important to utilize as many approaches as possible if you want to keep feeding new leads into your funnel. That will provide your sales team with more people to work with and increase conversions because of the sheer volume of new leads you receive.
The specific strategies that will work best in your situation will depend on the industry that you operate in, but some of them are quite universal and can work in almost any situation.
For instance, paid ads on Google or Facebook can help you reach almost any audience on the planet, as long as you follow the guidelines and best practices, continuing to tweak your campaigns as you get more data.
You could also consider using influencer marketing, which is becoming increasingly popular not only for eCommerce brands but even in the B2B world as well. By partnering up with prominent social media figures in your niche, you can gain an instant influx of new leads that will already be pre-disposed to trust your brand more.
You could even use a LinkedIn automation service to streamline many lead-gen processes on the platform, helping you reach more customers and figure out who to pursue.
These types of tools can be extremely helpful for your team, eliminating a lot of the manual work and enabling them to make the most informed decisions possible in every situation.
Switch to a Comprehensive Platform
Handling customer relationships isn’t easy. Especially if you’re trying to do everything manually. But the good news is that there are platforms that can streamline and simplify the often-complicated task of attracting and converting new customers.
Using a tool like ZoomInfo, you can automate large parts of your client acquisition processes, providing a better experience for your current customers, and making life easier for your team.
You can use various solutions to collect sales intelligence data, streamline workflows, and allow your team to work with more information so that they can make more relevant offers and target the right people.
If you’re unsure whether ZoomInfo is right for you, check out some of the ZoomInfo alternatives that are becoming increasingly popular as well, offering different advantages depending on what type of business and processes you have in place.
In today’s competitive online marketing landscape, any advantage you can get is vital. Automating processes will free up time for more productive tasks, which will result in more targeted leads reaching your funnel and more customers that choose to work with you instead of the competition.
Create High-Quality Content
91% of B2B businesses use content marketing to reach their customers. And that makes sense, considering how sophisticated B2B audiences usually are and how much research they perform before making a purchase.
But even though the majority are already doing content marketing, only a small percentage are actually taking full advantage of what it can offer.
Posting on your blog or social media channels is a good start, but that won’t get you anywhere near the potential that content marketing can have.
For one thing, make sure that you take the time to really understand your audience’s fears, concerns, obstacles, and desires. Only then can you figure out how your audience would react to different topics and think of ideas that would help them move closer to their goals.
When your content provides real value, you are not only educating your audience but are also positioning yourself as an expert in your field, which is no less critical. If you can get your audience to see that you are knowledgeable, they will have a much easier time accepting your claims when you offer a solution.
Finally, make sure that you utilize guest posting opportunities to appear in publications that your audience reads. Having a blog is great, but it just doesn’t have the same reach and built-in authority as a well-respected blog or publication online that’s read by your target audience.
Reach Out Directly
There are countless ways to reach your audience online. Many of which we already looked at above. But most of them will take time to work, as well as a sometimes significant investment.
Meanwhile, if you need to boost customer acquisitions right now, you can go directly to your customers and start talking with them as soon as tomorrow.
By doing direct email outreach, you don’t have to worry about ads or complicated funnels; just write a personalized and relevant email to the person that might need your services, and hope that they respond.
Obviously, you can’t just put together a quick template and send out hundreds of emails. People are too good at spotting cookie-cutter messages and will ignore them.
But if you personalize your outreach campaign and strive to actually help the people you want to reach, you will be shocked to find how many of them were waiting for this type of message and will be happy to discuss your offer further.
In fact, that’s how many startups bootstrap their way to profitability using little more than the proven method of going to their target customers directly with a solution to their problem.
Final Words
Improving client acquisition numbers isn’t always easy, but usually, having a consistent strategy that you work on month after month will end up producing good results.
The strategies outlined in this article work and will continue to work in the future, especially if you take the time to understand your audience and cater to their needs.
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