As you’re probably aware, it costs far more to acquire new customers than it does to retain existing ones. However, without customer acquisition, you’d have no customers to retain.
If you’re a small business on a budget, customer acquisition can be tough. You’re likely to be in search of some low-cost customer acquisition strategies to help grow your business so in this post, we’re going to share 3 strategies for you to try.
1. Create a Valuable Piece of Content as a Lead Magnet
Estimated cost: £12- 40.
You’re an expert in your industry, right? Therefore, you have a wealth of knowledge you can share, so why not put it all into a piece of content to offer your prospects in exchange for their email address?
Types of Content
Your lead magnet could be an e-Book, a step by step guide, a checklist, a worksheet or an infographic for example.
You know what your prospect’s pain points are and so focus on one of those pain points and ensure your piece of content helps them solve it.
An enticing lead magnet is something that can provide instant value so ensure your piece of content is something that does just that.
Cost
The cost of creating a piece of content does not have to be expensive. The advice, knowledge and expertise can come from you and your team, which only costs you time. And the design can either be done in house or you can find a freelance designer on Fiverr, for example for a small cost, dependant on the piece of content you decide to create. This is a one-off cost that will really pay off in the long run.
2. Retarget Old Customers
Estimated cost: Free
If a customer has been inactive for a long period of time and you have permission to contact them, do so with an exclusive offer. For example, a discount code to use on your latest product. This will re-spark their interest in your brand and bring them back to you. It may be that this doesn’t work for every past customer you reach out to, however it’s worth a shot, even if it brings a handful of customers back to your brand.
3. Be More Active on Social Media
Estimated cost: Free
Too many small businesses set up social media accounts on all channels with great intentions to stay active, however other priorities get in the way and their pages end up being inactive for months.
Nowadays, you cannot afford to not be present on social media. According to statistics, 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter and 77% of B2C companies have acquired customers from Facebook. That’s a lot of wasted opportunities if you’re not already making good use of social media.
So, choose 2 or 3 channels and start posting regularly. Post links to your blog articles, share images, infographics, statistics, videos and other people’s content you think your followers will find useful.
A rule of thumb on social media is that 80% of your posts should be to engage with your community and 20% should be selling. So, don’t continually try and promote yourself and your services, but instead share relevant content that your followers can engage with.
Start conversations and contribute to discussions and eventually you’ll start to see a return. The more you interact on social media, the more engagement and recognition you’ll get, leading to more prospective customers.
If you think you don’t have the time to manage 2 or 3 social media channels, you can use a tool like Hootsuite to schedule posts in bulk, saving you a huge amount of time. Hootsuite offer a free plan which is limited to 3 social media channels and 30 messages at a time. This is more than enough to get you going. Or, there’s other paid packages to choose from.
