Focus: New Customer Acquisition

Consider the following 5 actions in new customer acquisition:

1.     Determine the Lifetime Value of your customers and use this as a basis for determining how much to spend to acquire a new customer.  Consider that inactive customers may be activated resulting in meeting the same objective: active customers ordering from your business with profitable transactions.

2.     Determine the most effective marketing programs to acquire new customers. Set measurable return on investment objectives.  Remember to Plan, Implement, Track, Measure, Analyze and Make informed decisions on how to spend your new customer acquisition budget.

3.     New customer acquisition programs may include:

           Email Marketing Campaigns- through CRM systems
Direct Mail- standalone pieces, postcards, catalogs, Valpak, newsletters

     Social Media- online communities
Direct Sales- “door knocking” & calling

     Telemarketing  (B to B) for sales & lead generation

     Advertising- Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, TV, Internet, yellow pages

     Digital media- CDs, DVDs, flash movies

            Public Relations- almost free but you need a disciplined approach

     Loyalty programs- offer incentives to become part of a program

     Trade Shows- expensive, big exposure

     Community/Charitable Initiatives- giving back may get customers

4.     Consider this: Customers are Assets to your business, revenue-producing assets. Some businesses actually lose money on the initial acquisition because once the customer becomes active, the Lifetime Value is very profitable and the downstream revenue opportunity makes it worthwhile to lose money on the first sale.

5.     Costs of customer acquisition must be measured by selling channel and the costs may be dramatically different. For example, if a direct sales representative brings in a new customer, the acquisition cost could be higher than if a new customer was acquired through a direct mail piece. Of course, the customer lifetime value could be different as well. This knowledge may cause your business to segment new customer acquisition programs by potential customer size/opportunity.