Q&A - Customer Acquisition:

Q: Why does it seem to get harder and harder to acquire new customers?

A: The explosion of customer segments, products, media vehicles, and distribution channels coupled with intense competition bent on growth has made the acquisition of new customers more complex, more costly, and less effective than ever.

Today's demanding customers and savvy competitors are causing many companies to rethink and restructure their new customer acquisition marketing efforts significantly.

Q: What does it take to build an efficient & effective Customer Acquisition process for new customers?

Building an effective & efficient Customer Acquisition Machine requires a combination of customer and competitive insight, strategic marketing planning, creative communications, data, technology, and statistical analysis techniques. All are critical for the success of any Customer Acquisition program. The key is for this whole process to hang together from top to bottom and also in reverse:

Customer Acquisition Planning:

To successfully target new customers, you need to find out who your current and past customers are. This requires several types of analysis on the customers database including customer segmentation, RFM analysis (recency, frequency and monetary), demographic and psychographics analysis.

Customer Acquisition Program Implementation:

The most effective way to proceed is to look at the organization's needs on a monthly basis. The reason is that it's much easier to reach and exceed goals in a smaller, more targeted program then one that is too broad.

Customer Acquisition Program Post-Analysis

In post-analysis you will be able to see which creative, lists/media proved to be the most successful and then continually tweak which names and which outlet you use to target future prospects so that you are always getting the best possible return on investment.

Read Q&A's Approach to Customer Experience >