Acquisition marketing strategies to grow your customer base

By Zach Links|5 min read|Updated Oct 24, 2024

An illustration symbolizing various channels for acquisition marketing.

Acquisition marketing is all about meeting your business customers where they are.

The channels that work wonders for a tech startup might fall flat for a manufacturing firm. And what drives results for an established enterprise could drain the budget of a fledgling small business.

As you build your customer acquisition strategy, here are some effective ways to attract and convert new customers.

Acquisition marketing focuses on converting new customers to grow your business. Typically, this means targeting customers who are already in the early stages of the customer acquisition funnel:

Awareness: Folks discover your brand. They might see a display ad or hear about you from a colleague.
Interest: Now they're curious. They poke around your website, check out your social media accounts, or read some online reviews.
Consideration: Things are getting serious. They might sign up for emails or book a demo to learn more.
Decision: They're ready to choose an option. They might be taking one last look at the competition before completing checkout.
Purchase: Done deal. The prospect has been converted into a paying customer.

Studies show that acquiring a new customer costs 4-5x more than retaining an existing one. However, new customer acquisition remains essential for business growth and longevity. The key is finding cost-effective acquisition channels and strategies to maximize your return-on-investment (ROI).

Content marketing

Valuable, relevant content can help you attract and engage your target audience. For B2B companies, this often includes blog posts, videos, white papers, eBooks, case studies, and webinars to position the brand as a thought leader and trusted resource.

Content marketing can be highly effective for lead generation and nurture. By providing helpful information that addresses your prospects' pain points and challenges, you build trust and credibility. This sets the stage for converting leads into customers down the line.

Strategies vary across industries, but you should always aim to:

Focus on quality over quantity with in-depth, authoritative content that provides real value to your target audience.
Align content with different stages of the buyer's journey. Develop awareness, consideration, and decision-stage content.
Optimize web content for search engines to increase organic discoverability.
Promote content across multiple channels, including email, social media, and paid advertising.
Track engagement and conversion metrics to continuously refine your content strategy.

SEO helps your website and content rank higher in search engine results for relevant keywords. This helps increase organic traffic from users actively searching for solutions you provide.

Tools like Semrush or Ahrefs can help you identify relevant, high-volume keywords for your business, but quality SEO requires much more than just keyword stuffing. Impactful SEO requires:

Thorough keyword research to identify high-intent search terms
Well-crafted title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags
In-depth, authoritative content around target keywords
High-quality backlinks from reputable industry websites
Technical optimization, including site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability

SEO can deliver a strong ROI over time by providing a steady stream of targeted organic traffic. While it requires ongoing effort, SEO can pay major dividends in the long run.

Paid advertising allows you to get your message in front of a targeted audience quickly. Common B2B paid advertising channels include:

Search ads (such as Google and Bing ads)
Social media ads (on LinkedIn, Meta, and Twitter)
Display ads (through broad networks or specific sites)
Retargeting
Sponsored content placements on third-party sites

Paid advertising offers precise targeting options to reach decision-makers in your target industries and companies. You can also control your budget and quickly test different messaging and offers.

To maximize ROI on paid advertising:

Define clear campaign goals (leads, demos, sales, etc.)
Use audience targeting and exclusions to focus on your ideal customers
Create compelling ad creative and offers aligned with your buyers' interests and needs
Optimize campaign landing pages for conversions
Continuously test and refine campaigns based on performance data

While more expensive than organic channels, paid advertising can deliver quick wins when executed strategically. It's often used in combination with other channels as part of an integrated customer acquisition strategy.

Email remains one of the most effective B2B marketing channels, with an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. Inbox access allows you to nurture leads over time and move prospects through your sales funnel.

Effective B2B email marketing calls for:

Building targeted email lists through lead generation and subscriber forms
Segmenting your list based on industry, role, buyer's journey stage, or company size
Creating automated email sequences to nurture leads
Personalizing content based on subscriber demographics and behavior
Testing different subject lines, send times, and email formats
Integrating emails with your customer relationship management platform (CRM) to align marketing and sales efforts

The key is providing real value in your emails, not just promotional content. Share helpful resources, industry insights, and targeted offers to keep subscribers engaged.

While often associated with B2C marketing, social media can be equally powerful for B2B companies when used strategically.

If your B2B company sells physical products, visual channels like Instagram and Tiktok can be highly effective. If you provide software or services, channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, or X can provide a space to regularly connect with your target audience and share thought leadership, company news, and customer stories.

The goal is to build relationships and showcase your expertise, not just broadcast promotional messages. Consistently providing value is key to growing an engaged following.

Teaming up with complementary businesses or industry influencers can be a cost-effective way to acquire new customers.

For example, a project management software company could partner with a time-tracking app to refer new customers. While both serve similar buyers, they don't directly compete. The project management tool could offer seamless integration with the time-tracking app, creating value for shared users.

An industry expert, like a productivity consultant, could create content showcasing how the project management software streamlines workflows. This might include blog posts, webinars, or social media content demonstrating the software's features.

Let’s say the referral sales incentive is 20% of each new customer’s first-year subscription. For a $100/month plan, that's $240 per referral — a worthwhile investment for a potentially long-term customer.

Referral partnerships are similar to affiliate partnerships — both are meant to drive sales in exchange for commissions. However, affiliate partners are usually content creators that don't have personal relationships with their audience. With referral partnerships, both parties have a vested interest in maintaining their reputation, so they're more likely to recommend your product thoughtfully. This can result in better-fit customers who are more likely to stick around long-term.

Your acquisition marketing plan will vary, depending on your sector, product pricepoint, and company’s development stage. Here are some core principles you can use to build your plan and fine-tune it over time.

The foundation of any successful acquisition strategy is a deep understanding of your target audience.

Create detailed buyer personas that go beyond basic demographics to include:

Pain points and challenges
Goals and motivations
Preferred information sources
Decision-making process
Buying committees (for enterprise sales)
Objections and concerns

Use a mix of quantitative data such as analytics and surveys, and qualitative insights from customer interviews and sales team feedback, to build comprehensive personas. This will inform your messaging, channel selection, and overall acquisition strategy.

Regularly revisit and refine your personas as you gather new customer data and insights. Your target audience may evolve over time, so staying current is crucial.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures how much you spend to acquire a new customer. Calculating and tracking your CAC is essential for evaluating the efficiency of your acquisition efforts.

The basic CAC formula is:

CAC = Total cost of sales and marketing / Number of new customers acquired

For a more comprehensive view, you’ll want to include all associated costs, including:

Marketing expenses (advertising, content creation, tools)
Sales and marketing team salaries and commissions
Overhead costs (proportional to acquisition efforts)

For example, if you spent $100,000 on sales and marketing in a month and acquired 1,000 new customers, your CAC would be $100.

Compare your CAC to your customer lifetime value (CLV) to ensure profitability. As a general rule, most businesses aim for at least a 3:1 CLV to CAC ratio. This means a customer should generate at least three times the cost it took to acquire them over their lifetime.

Calculate CAC for different channels and customer segments to identify your most cost-effective acquisition methods. Use this data to optimize your marketing budget allocation.

Assess the performance of your acquisition channels to understand what's working and where to invest your resources by tracking your:

Cost per lead (CPL)
Conversion rates at each funnel stage
CLV by channel
Return on ad spend (ROAS)
Engagement metrics (email open rates, social media interactions, etc.)

Use tracking codes to accurately track the customer journey across channels. This will help you understand how different touchpoints contribute to conversions. Then, dig deeper to assess lead quality from each channel. A channel with a higher CAC may still be worthwhile if it brings in higher-value customers.

Set up dashboards to visualize channel performance data and spot trends over time. Share insights with internal stakeholders and partners to inform strategic decisions.

Once you've identified your top-performing channels, double down on optimizing those campaigns. This may involve:

Reallocating budget to high-ROI channels
Refining targeting to focus on your most valuable customer segments
A/B testing different creative elements, offers, and messaging
Improving your post-click experiences (landing pages, email nurture sequences, etc.)
Exploring new tactics within successful channels (e.g., testing new ad formats)

While focusing on your best channels, experimentation is still important. Set aside a portion of your budget to test new channels and tactics that could unlock future growth.

Continuously gather customer feedback to understand why certain channels resonate. Use these insights to improve your overall acquisition strategy.

Acquisition marketing is the key to sustainable business growth. You can position your company for success by:

Understanding your target customers
Analyzing performance across channels regularly
Tracking your CAC to evaluate the efficiency of your efforts
Aiming for a CLV-to-CAC ratio of at least 3:1
Optimizing campaigns in top-performing channels
Allocating some budget for testing new approaches

Traditional acquisition marketing can be expensive, but cost-effective strategies like referral programs can keep your CAC within range.

Similar to referral partnerships, referral programs turn your existing customers into brand advocates. Customer referrals typically require smaller marketing incentives than formal partners, and they often carry more weight.

People are 90% more likely to buy from brands recommended by friends than from paid ads. Plus, referred customers are 200% more likely to spend than non-referred customers.