Strategies to attract new customers and increase profits

Attracting new customers is a crucial task for any company looking to make a name for itself. On one hand, it's necessary to reach out to new customers to expand the brand's fan base. On the other hand, attracting new customers is essential to achieving profits.

While retaining existing customers is significantly less costly than attracting new ones, however in order to retain customers, they must have been acquired in the first place. To achieve this goal, companies must use appropriate channels and methods to build strong relationships between the brand and its customers, which can later be relied upon.

This article will cover the concept of attracting new customers, highlight the most effective strategies used to attract customers and the most prominent tools to do so.

The Concept of Attracting Customers

Building brand awareness is the first step in a customer's journey. It begins with introducing the brand and the products or services it offers to potential customers. These products or services may capture their attention if they address a particular problem or need they have, thus introducing them to the Interest Stage.

Once a customer is interested in the brand, they may provide valuable information that the company's marketing team can use to target them with advertising campaigns and offers that may turn them into a potential customer. As a result, this potential customer will be taking the brand’s products and offers into account while making a purchase decision.

The process of customer acquisition involves all the actions that lead to obtaining information about potential customers who are interested in the brand and its services. This information can be used to reach out to them and turn them into real customers of the brand.

It's important to note that customer acquisition comes with costs that must be taken into account before beginning this process. In the last five years, the cost of acquiring new customers has increased?by 50%.

Types of Potential Customers

According to the stage they have reached in the customer journey, there are three main types of potential customers for a brand:

Inquiring potential customer?

A potential customer who is in the brand awareness stage and is looking for information is often referred to as a qualified lead. This type of customer has just entered the customer journey and is interested in learning more about the brand and its products or services. They are often willing to provide their email address in exchange for more information.

Interested Potential Customer

A Marketing Qualified Lead is a potential customer who has moved beyond the brand awareness stage and has gathered enough information about the brand and its offerings. This type of lead is now actively seeking ways to benefit from the services provided by the brand to solve the problems they are experiencing. They may also compare the brand's offerings with those of competitors to determine the best solution for their needs.

A ready-to-buy Potential Customer?

A Sales Qualified Lead is a type of customer who has demonstrated a willingness to purchase the brand's products or services, but may be hindered by factors such as price. For example, they may add items to their online shopping cart but abandon it before completing the purchase. These customers can be reached and converted into real customers by persuading them to complete the purchase.

The importance of distinguishing between the three types of potential customers lies in the fact that each type is searching for something distinct from the others. Therefore, while targeting them with marketing campaigns, they must be presented with exactly what they are searching for in order to attract potential customers and convert them into actual customers. It would be pointless to offer information about your brand to someone who has just abandoned their shopping cart. Instead, it is better to offer them a discount coupon that can motivate them to complete the purchase.

The importance of attracting customers

The marketing team's pursuit of new customers is always one of their main objectives, as success in this task not only leads to increased profits but also brings many other positive outcomes. Here are some of the most important benefits of acquiring new customers:

Broadening the fan base

The marketing team often begins its marketing campaigns by conceptualizing the customer persona to formulate their marketing campaigns around it. However, the segment of real customers interested in your brand may be larger than the segment of potential customers in your marketing plans. Acquiring new customers can be useful in identifying the segment of real customers more accurately.

Identifying the correct customer segment interested in a brand's product or service is crucial in refining marketing campaigns to ensure more accurate targeting, resulting in increased success of these campaigns. This holds true whether the goal of the campaign is to introduce a new product or to sell existing products.

Increasing Customer Reviews

Positive customer reviews and ratings lend significant credibility to a brand, enhancing its reputation and increasing the likelihood of outperforming competitors in the eyes of customers. Such reviews play a crucial role in shaping a brand's relationship with its competitors.

It is important to acknowledge that customers are less likely to leave reviews after a positive experience with a brand. However, research shows that?70% of ?customers are willing to leave a review if asked. Therefore, after attracting and acquiring new customers, it can be beneficial to request that they leave a review on the brand's website, Facebook account, or other relevant platforms.

Boosting Revenue?

Attracting customers at different stages of the purchasing process can increase the likelihood of successful purchases and result in higher profits. However, this requires the ability to differentiate between the three types of potential customers and target them with appropriate marketing campaigns for each type.

For example, if a potential customer enters your online store, adds items to their cart, but ultimately abandons the cart upon seeing the invoice, they can be targeted with an email offering a discount code for their next purchase. This increases the chance of the customer returning to their abandoned cart and completing the purchase.

Customer Acquisition Strategies

There are several strategies that a brand can employ to attract customers at various stages of the customer journey. Some of the most effective strategies include the following:

Social Security

Social Security, also known as Social Proof, refers to the credibility that a product or brand gains from being recognized by its previous customers. It can be displayed as reviews showcased on the product's landing page or on the brand's official website, or customer testimonials featured in a video, etc.?

Social security can play a crucial role in attracting potential customers and guiding them towards making a purchase. It can encourage customers to continue along their journey and ultimately make a purchase decision. It's therefore essential for businesses to prioritize their reputation and actively collect positive reviews, which should be prominently displayed on their website for all visitors to see.

Strong social media presence?

Social media platforms offer businesses an excellent way to reach a broad audience and are increasingly indispensable to marketing plans due to the wide range of marketing tools they provide. To make the most of these platforms, brands need to carefully consider which social media platforms are best suited to their target audience, establish a strong presence on those platforms, and tailor their content to fit both the platform and the target audience.?

Many people turn to social media to learn more about brands, so it's crucial for businesses to ensure that their social media accounts provide visitors with all the information they need. This includes not only basic information about the company but also easy access to the products and services it offers.?

Social listening

Social media provides individuals with a platform to share their opinions and experiences with brands, whether positive or negative. To make the most of these conversations, businesses can use social listening tools to monitor mentions of their brand on social media and analyze the sentiment behind them. By understanding what people are saying about their brand, businesses can develop suitable marketing plans to attract potential customers.

Monitoring what people say about your competitors can provide valuable insights into what customers are looking for in alternative solutions. By analyzing this information, businesses can tailor their products or services to meet these needs and attract new customers to their brand, and thus outperform their competitors.?

Social Media Ads

Social media platforms offer powerful advertising tools that allow businesses to target their desired audience with high accuracy, increasing the chances of success for their ads. To make the most of these tools, it's important to design visually appealing ads that capture users' attention. It's also important to study the behavior of platform users and tailor ads accordingly. For instance, in the case of video ads, the first five seconds must grab viewer’s attention, because they tend to move on after this initial period.

Facebook and Instagram have a large and active user base, making them powerful platforms for advertising. Pinterest, on the other hand, is a source of inspiration for its users and can heavily influence purchasing decisions. TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube are other social media platforms that should also be taken into account when considering their target audience and developing a social media marketing plan.?

Working With Influencers

Working with influencers can be an effective way to attract new customers, as they have a pre-existing following. However, it's important to differentiate between different types of influencers to determine the best fit for your brand and campaign goals. Here are the three main types of influencers:

• General influencers unrelated to the brand: These individuals have a large following but are not necessarily specialized in the brand's field. As a result, endorsements may not be as effective for driving conversions, but they can be useful for brand awareness campaigns.
• Industry influencers who have not tried the product: These individuals are experts in the brand's field and have a following that trusts their opinions. However, if they haven't personally tried the product, endorsements may not be as effective for driving conversions. This type of influencer is best utilized for campaigns targeting individuals interested in the brand.
• Industry influencers who have tried the product: These individuals are experts in the brand's field and have tried the product themselves. Their endorsements carry significant weight with their followers, making them highly effective for driving conversions.

Discount Coupons

Discount coupons can be relied on alone as a strategy to attract new customers, but they can also be used with other strategies to increase their effectiveness significantly, for example, if you rely on influencers, this influencer can be provided with discount coupons for customers who are transferred through him, which increases the effectiveness of the influencer's campaign and achieves better results.

Social media can also be used as a platform to distribute and publish discount coupons, which can positively impact the brand's social media accounts by increasing the number of followers. However, it is important to be mindful that repeating discount coupon campaigns can cause followers to become accustomed to them, potentially leading to postponed purchase decisions until the next campaign is launched.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective method of marketing, but to start, it is important to build a targeted mailing list for marketing campaigns. It's recommended that the mailing list is not random, and there are several methods that can be used to build a list of potential customers who are genuinely interested in your brand. One effective method is to use a pop-up window that appears on the website to invite visitors to register for the newsletter.?

Another effective way to build a mailing list is to use the Lead Magnet marketing method, which involves offering free content to potential customers in exchange for their email address. This content could be an e-book, for instance, providing instructions to solve a problem that they might be facing. Once the mailing list is built, you can target these potential customers with email campaigns promoting your products and special offers.

Conclusion

To acquire new customers, brands need to leverage various marketing methods, but it's important to keep in mind that such activities come at a cost. Therefore, before launching any marketing campaign, brands should carefully evaluate the associated costs to ensure that the return on investment is worth it.

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