If you sell products or services from your WordPress site, attracting new customers will be a number-one priority. There are so many techniques you can use, however, that it can be easy to get lost among all the options. Plus, it can be hard to decide whether to focus on one customer acquisition strategy or pursue more of them at the same time.
While it’s usually smart to attract customers using multiple channels, you’ll also want to choose those channels carefully. Fortunately, there are plenty of strategies you can pick from, and many can be easily integrated with or managed from your website. Knowing which techniques are likely to bring the best returns will help you develop a stronger marketing and content plan.
In this guide, we’re going to introduce five of the best ways to get new eyes on your site’s products or services. For each customer acquisition strategy, we’ll discuss why it’s valuable, explain how it works, and offer a few tips for getting started. Let’s take a look!
1. Give away free content
It’s no secret that people like things that are free. In fact, when something is free, it has a uniquely powerful motivating effect – which you can leverage to build goodwill for your business and offerings.
Although it may sound counter intuitive, giving your potential customers a free gift really can increase the chance that they’ll make a purchase. Besides the allure of ‘free’, it offers them a taste of what you can provide, without any commitment required.
In addition, this customer acquisition strategy benefits from a psychological effect known as ‘reciprocity’. In simple terms, when you give people something for free, they’ll feel more obligated to do something for you in return. This means they’re more likely to give your products or services a closer look, and feel inclined to purchase from you rather than your competitors.
Of course, if you run your business primarily online, giving away free physical items can be inconvenient. However, there are plenty of other things you can offer your website’s visitors. Just a few options include:
- Running a blog with regular free articles, providing information on topics of interest to your audience, then sharing those articles via email with your customers.
- PDF downloads or ebooks.
- Interviews with industry experts.
- Short video classes or courses.
- Podcasts or webinars.
- Free consultations or trials.
If you really want to make the most of your free content, you can also prompt visitors to provide their email addresses. Not only will that let you send them the content directly (if relevant), but it will also provide you with a direct line of contact. Targeting these leads with follow-up messaging a few days after they receive free content is an excellent way to stay on their radar, and to capitalize on their feelings of reciprocity.
2. Ask current customers for referrals
When considering your marketing approach, it’s important to remember that your current customers are a lot more than a source of revenue. They’re also a valuable resource, which can be tapped into in order to grow your business. This next customer acquisition strategy does just that, by using the customers you already have to bring in new leads.
It’s a well-documented fact that people are more likely to purchase something that’s been recommended to them by a friend or other connection. This means that if you can get your current customers to suggest your business to their contacts, you have a better chance of hooking new prospects than if they first encounter you through your website or traditional advertising. There are a number of ways to provide this ‘social proof’. For instance, you can ask for testimonials, and then feature them on your site. An even better approach is to encourage existing customers to refer their friends and contacts directly to you.
Depending on the kind of products or services that you offer, it might make sense to set up a complete referral program for this purpose. But that’s not always required. Sometimes just a friendly email asking your clients for referrals is going to be enough.
If you do want to set up a referral program, though, it doesn’t have to be complex, but you’ll want to offer something in exchange for each referred person who becomes a new customer. Some examples include:
- Offering a small reward
- Providing a discount or coupon
- Combining this with the previous strategy, and giving away free content in exchange for referrals
Be sure to only reward customers for referrals that result in some kind of sale or sign-up, and make that part of the agreement clear. That way, you prevent people from simply spamming referrals. Instead, you’ll encourage them to suggest your business to connections who might actually be interested.
Then, you simply have to get the word out about your referral program. If you have an email list, you can send out a message to existing customers. At that point, you can direct them towards a dedicated section or page on your website, outlining all the necessary details.
3. Create content that targets beginners
One of the most important concepts when it comes to marketing is the ‘customer journey’.
Although this is a complex topic, the general idea is that you need to meet potential customers wherever they’re currently at. What’s more, you need to provide content or messaging to match their evolving needs and knowledge.
Acquiring new customers involves finding those at the very beginning of their customer journeys. That’s the point when they know little to nothing about your company and the products or services you offer. In fact, they may not know much about your niche or industry in general at this point.
For example, consider someone looking to set up a website for the first time who needs to purchase a hosting plan. There’s a good chance they have only a vague idea about what website hosting is, much less how it works and all the different options and factors involved.
This means that instead of immediately looking for a particular plan or provider, they’re likely to start by doing some more general research. They’ll begin searching for information about the basics of web hosting, and the various types of plans that are available.
If you’re a hosting company, this is the perfect place to grab a new customer’s attention. By creating content that explores these basic questions, you can accomplish a number of things:
- You fulfill the potential customer’s current needs.
- You’re helping them kickstart their customer journey, and avoid getting discouraged or confused right away.
- You’ll be demonstrating your knowledge and expertise, which can build trust.
- Once you’ve answered the potential customer’s immediate questions, you can direct them to your website, products or services, knowledge base, or wherever else you’d like them to go next.
In other words, while it’s important to provide information and resources for existing and knowledgeable customers, it’s equally vital to offer beginner-friendly content. To pursue this customer acquisition strategy, you just need to put yourself in a beginner’s shoes (or better yet, ask them directly). Consider the most pressing questions they’ll have, along with the basic information they need to make a purchasing decision.
Then, develop resources to answer those questions. For this, you can use knowledge base articles or blog posts right on your website. Just remember to keep each one concise and to-the-point, and to write in a way that’s accessible and assumes no pre-existing knowledge without being patronizing. Focus on helping the reader rather than on promotion. At the same time, include links to point them towards more of your content to keep them ‘on the hook’.
4. Target potential customers’ pain points
The previous customer acquisition strategy was all about providing the kind of information a prospect is looking for at the beginning of their journey. While that’s important, it’s not all you’ll want to consider. It also matters what the potential customer needs and how that matches up to what you’re offering.
You may have run across the term ‘pain points’ before. In a nutshell, it refers to a need or problem a person has. This is a useful marketing concept, since a big part of understanding your audience involves figuring out what pain points they have, and how they can be solved by your products or services.
Understandably, research is key to pulling off this customer acquisition strategy. If you haven’t already, this is a perfect time to conduct some audience research and develop a target customer profile. Aim to understand everything you can about your potential customers. Who are they, what do they do, and why are they looking for products or services like yours?
If you can, you’ll want to try and conduct some first-hand research as well. Reach out to existing customers, and ask what needs your offerings solve for them in their work or daily lives. If you have a library of testimonials, those can also provide crucial hints.
The important thing is to not focus on what you think the benefits of your products or services are. All that matters is what real customers find valuable about them. Once you know which pain points your offerings solve, all you need to do is to incorporate them into your messaging at every opportunity. This is particularly important on your website – any list of services, benefits, or features should focus in on the pain points that are bringing leads your way in the first place.
5. Leverage social media
Last but certainly not least, you’ll have a hard time attracting a wide range of potential customers if you only do so through your website.
It’s vital to spread your message as far as possible – and social media is the perfect way to do that.
However, we mention this customer acquisition strategy here because it’s also important not to conduct your social media marketing as a separate endeavor. Instead, you’ll want to use your website as the central ‘hub’, and funnel all interested parties its way. In other words, you’ll need to integrate your site and social media platforms as completely as possible.
There are plenty of ways to do this. To get you started, here are a few of the best methods:
- Research your audience on each platform. Every social media site is unique, and the potential customers on each are likely to have different interests and needs. Therefore, they’ll benefit from specially-designed content.
- Create unique landing pages for visitors from each social media platform you target. Then, include links in your content that send visitors to the right pages. This is an excellent way to personalize their experience and attract their attention.
- Share your WordPress site’s content via social media. This lets you get double-duty out of your blog posts or news articles. Plus, it leads anyone who sees your social media posts right back to your site. You can do this easily using a plugin such as Revive Old Post and even Jetpack to have the most recent posts tweeted out automatically.
Of course, you can also combine social media with a customer acquisition strategy mentioned earlier. For instance, you can share posts that encourage people to visit your site in order to get freebies. Alternately, you can post your beginner-focused content on platforms where potential customers are unlikely to know much about your business. When it comes to social media, the possibilities are just about endless.
So, what is the best marketing technique?
Nearly every thriving business relies on bringing in new customers consistently. However, leads aren’t going to appear out of thin air. You’ll need to work hard to attract their attention and get them interested in what you offer.
To improve your chances, each customer acquisition strategy we’ve introduced is well worth considering:
- Giving away free content
- Asking current customers for referrals
- Creating content that targets beginners
- Targeting potential customers’ pain points
- Leveraging social media
Do you have any questions about how to develop an effective customer acquisition strategy for your business? Ask away in the comments section below!
