Customer Acquisition - Meaning and its Process

Customer acquisition is the process of acquiring new customers for business or converting existing prospect into new customers. The importance of customer acquisition varies according to the specific business situation of an organization. This process is specifically concerned with issues like acquiring customers at less cost, acquiring as many customers as possible, acquiring customers who are indigenous and business oriented, acquiring customers who utilize newer business channels etc. The whole process should concentrate on following considerations:

1. Primarily it is important to determine and focus on psychology of customers, like how the customers feel and think and then selecting the product segment to be presented to them.
2. Concentrating on how the customers are influenced by the surrounding environment like the business culture, technology, media etc.
3. Analysis of customer behavior and tendency while buying specific range of product.
4. Studying the customer’s limitation of knowledge processing power which influence the decision making power.
5. Finally it’s very important to engage best strategies for effectively convincing new customers and improving marketing campaigns.

Customer acquisition techniques change with technological changes. There is always a need to optimize and upgrade the traditional ways of marketing channels available. Exploring new methods to entertain customers is important to remain in competition and have high acquisition rate.

Acquiring a customer depends on how effectively the organization is able to build a comprehensive relationship with that customer. When suppliers have healthy relationship with customers, the revenue of the organization always increases as customers tend to buy more and more. There is possibility that a satisfied customer seek to buy special category of related products apart from the regular ones from that particular supplier. For instance if a satisfied and loyal customer has a home insurance policy from an insurance company then there are positive chances that he could also insure his property and car if he is fully satisfied with the services of that insurance company. This will definitely result in growth of business.

While acquiring, the nature of response provided to acquisition is the key aspect to create an impressive opinion in customer’s mindset. Hence, the suppliers should always have prompt, responsive and experienced executives to serve customers. For example, if a customer calls and asks about some critical features of any product and the executive fails to explain it or being non-responsive to most of his questions then the customer could probably divert his way to some other organization for better response which could definitely result in end of the deal and relationship with that customer.

Improving customer acquisition is the primary challenge which an organization faces. Hence it is important to identify critical approaches to enhance customer acquisition power. This includes acquiring more number of customers or more number of attractive customers at low cost. One of the best strategies to acquire new customers is performing promotional campaigns. These campaigns should be efficient and well targeted to customers. Encouragement of customer referrals can also attract new customers. It is always a cost-free advocacy by customers to provide referrals to supplier when they feel satisfied and encouraged and when they have a healthy relationship with customers. These referrals or customer’s reference of other customers act like a piece of cake for suppliers as there is no cost and struggle involved in this.

For enhancing the revenue, the organization should always balance the number of customers acquired with number of customers who divert to different organizations. Failing to which will definitely effect the economic growth of the organization.