Often, I’m struck by how little strategy businesses have when it comes to customer acquisition. Many take a scattergun approach, and if a prospect has the price of entry they get to play. Little or no filter goes into the customer acquisition process (C.A.P), which is usually due to low frequency of sales and thin margin.

At the moment the economy is “difficult”, customers are savvy, looking for deals, saving what little cash they have. But, it’s precisely why you should have a defined customer acquisition strategy for your business. It makes finding the best customers easier.

Fishermen know that location and timing are critical to a good catch, but you need to know the nature of the fish to determine where and when you go to look for them. This determines the specification of your equipment required, it’s exactly the same in business, 

Know your customers’ needs, you then show up wherever and
whenever you can with a well-oiled machine to meet their needs.

You then look for opportunity rich environments, these are the times and places where your customer has the need, and you can meet it in the moment. For some businesses you need a high footfall area, with passing trade. For others you need to show up in the right magazine, or media to highlight your offering. Whatever you do it has to be driven by your C.A.P, defining the best customers for your business, the ones that are a pleasure to work with. The ones that appreciate your specialisms and strengths.

Dive into your reviews, see what customers value, receive reviews saying “speedy service”? How you can improve further or feature in your ads. “Attention to detail” a common comment? Then highlight additional guarantees on quality and customer service.

A lot of what you need to improve in your business is in the reviews, so start to collect them, and use them to steer your C.A.P. Filtering your customers improves “signal to noise” in your business. You find out what is really important to your best customers and by highlighting those qualities of your business you attract more of them.

The overall strategy should be defined by the customer needs, sometimes you have to even anticipate those needs. Moving ahead of the direction of travel and guiding your customers towards the improvements you can offer.

When you know your customer it makes everything in your business easier. Marketing becomes easier, because you know the conversation to have with your customer. You can tell when a brand or a business hasn’t got a clue about their actual customer’s needs, their ads are full of generalities like “Are you one of those people who dislike bad smells?” or “Quick you need our stuff”… You get the point, wide, sweeping and often pseudoscience magic-isms are rife. “Our ceramide peptides reduce fatigued looking skin*”. Big brands can often be the most egregious offenders of trawling for sprats with a mackerel net.

If you have a small local business then you can simply talk to your best customers about what they love most, and ask them this important question;

“Is there a reason that you have nearly not bought from us?”

Because if someone bought from you despite that one last niggling doubt, you would get a load more who didn’t buy from you. So removing that one barrier to entry would net positive upswing in sales.

Opportunity rich environments are your hunting ground. Where does your ideal customer gather? Linger? Dwell and otherwise congregate? That might be specific locations, or it may be somewhere online. Figure out where they are and open a dialogue before they have the need. Patagonia, the clothing and outdoors brand, have famously run ads telling their customers not to buy from them, which is such a masterstroke. Occupying some fantastic mindspace, with positive messages about the brand and its ethos.

Then spend as much time as you can in those opportunity rich environments, show up often and your sales will rise, they just will. Showing up frequently in front of your customers, without being an annoying pest is a key part of any business success.

This means that whenever their ideal customers are thinking it is time to genuinely replace a piece then they will probably only go to Patagonia. Patagonia knows their customer, they know that they use their gear how it was designed and intended to be used, not just on the mean streets of Croydon.

So ask yourself, when was the last time you took a good long hard look at your C.A.P? Have you got defined customer profiles? Have you refreshed them recently? Have you missed a customer profile that may be easier to serve and sell to?

If you need someone to talk to about this, then obv. I am going to say that I am the chap to talk to but maybe not? I only work with specific business owners, and quite often the vision or the room for growth is going to be limited. So let’s chat and see if there’s an opportunity and where it lies and if that works for us both, then let’s do something interesting…

Get in touch below.

* Say 87% of the 427 study participants said good things about our product. That’s stats and mathsing, which is indisputable evidence that you need our stuff. (Despite it being less than 0.00634% of the population. )

END