Self-assessment of corporate customer acquisition capabilities: What level is your company at?

In this article, the author shares several typical customer acquisition methods that he has summarized, and divides corporate customer acquisition capabilities into four levels. Readers can accurately self-assess the market level of their corporate customer acquisition capabilities.

For businesses with high customer unit prices and long decision-making cycles , especially home improvement, dentistry, medical beauty, law firms, and car sales , the number of leads obtained in the customer acquisition stage directly determines the upper limit of the company's transaction scale. In other words, the company's current customer acquisition capabilities are almost equal to the ceiling of the company's development.

To borrow a popular sentence from the Internet: The problem of customer acquisition is equally troubling every business manager.

Although it is generally acknowledged that it is difficult to acquire customers, managers of different companies do not have an accurate and objective understanding of their own company's customer acquisition capabilities.

We believe that if companies want to achieve large-scale growth in customer acquisition and conversion, they need to have a detailed understanding of the current status of their customer acquisition capabilities in order to truly overcome and solve the problem of customer acquisition.

Today, we would like to talk to you about customer acquisition and the customer acquisition level of your company.

To this end, we have summarized several typical customer acquisition methods, hoping to help you accurately identify the market level of your company's customer acquisition capabilities.

1. The primary level of customer acquisition is almost primitive, and it is difficult to survive during the epidemic

• Natural traffic to the store
• Sales promotion and self-development

Although it is hard to believe, there are indeed companies that currently rely solely on sales promotion and self-development to acquire customers, and even pin their hopes of acquiring customers on natural traffic.

However, the leads that companies at this stage of customer acquisition can obtain are very limited and can no longer meet the needs of corporate development. The main reason why natural traffic to stores does not work is that there is almost no natural traffic offline.

After experiencing rapid technological development and three years of the epidemic, consumers have developed the habit of making online plans and visiting at the right time in order to avoid pitfalls and waste time.

Nowadays, there are really few consumers who will walk into an offline store on a whim. Those businesses that are still waiting for consumers to come to the store naturally can easily close down.

However, door-to-door sales promotion and self-sales development are not sustainable and effective ways to acquire customers.

For sales promotion, the offline range that a store can radiate is relatively fixed. For most companies, there will be few new leads after a comprehensive scan. Moreover, many office buildings are no longer open to the public. Even if sales people travel every day, it is difficult to complete effective visits.

As for the self-development sales method, since there are objective differences in the business capabilities of different sales people, not every salesperson can stably obtain leads through self-development. If an enterprise relies solely on self-development sales to acquire customers, it will be difficult to achieve sustained growth.

2. Low efficiency in the progress phase is a problem in itself

• Channel Summit & Cross-Industry Cooperation
• Purchase form
• Low-priced products attract customers

Many companies have begun to realize that the original customer acquisition methods are not sufficient to support business development, and thus have adopted new methods to acquire customers.

For example, on the basis of relying on natural traffic and sales promotion and self-development, participate in channel summit activities or conduct cross-industry cooperation, or purchase forms across industries to acquire customers.

The customer acquisition scale of enterprises at this stage has actually increased significantly compared to the previous stage, but the quality of leads obtained in this way is extremely unstable, because there are few partners who can continuously provide accurate lists that meet the company's business. In many cases, the lead forms received by the company do not match the company's business. When sales call, not only is it difficult to communicate effectively, but many phone numbers are no longer in service, and this does not help the company achieve continuous customer acquisition.

Low-priced products are a unique way of acquiring customers that are used by medical beauty, e-commerce, education, and lifestyle beauty companies:

Promote a cost-effective product at a very low price to attract customers to make their first purchase, then establish connections with customers through operational actions to guide them to purchase the main product again.

This model can help companies quickly acquire a large number of customers in the early stages, but it requires a high level of customer operation capabilities. Not every company can complete the subsequent order guidance well, and a large number of customers will be lost in the middle. Although the customer acquisition is completed, the final transaction is not achieved. Moreover, this model essentially requires publicity and exposure of low-priced products and companies. If you calculate carefully, the cost of acquiring customers is not low.

3. The era of spending a lot of money on product promotion in the middle stage is over

• Brand Promotion
• Advertising

The advantages of using brand promotion to acquire customers are obvious: it helps companies gain a lot of exposure and improves the company's reputation.

But the problem lies here too, the traffic in any field is limited, and the exposure price in a high-exposure field will only be more expensive.

Whether it is a large enterprise that is involved in brand promotion through celebrity endorsements, TV commercials, or outdoor advertising, it is very expensive.

Moreover, brand promotion is not actually a good choice for acquiring customers.

In addition to the high cost issue, the customer acquisition chain through brand promotion is incomplete. Even if customers browse brand advertisements and are prompted to place orders, it is difficult to tell whether today's customers were attracted by the video patch ads from a month ago or were prompted by the outdoor bus stop ads that were heavily promoted last week.

The effect of acquiring customers through brand promotion is not direct, the links are not tight, and the relevant data is very difficult to count. Companies do not have direct customer acquisition effect data, so it is difficult to make effective optimization and adjustments on this basis, not to mention that the cost of brand promotion is really high.

Therefore, even for companies that are already doing brand promotion, it is difficult to achieve continuous and effective customer acquisition.

In addition to the customer acquisition methods mentioned above, after three years of impact from the epidemic, more and more companies have begun to pay attention to online advertising.

Of course, the cost of advertising on platforms such as Baidu, Bytedance, and Tencent is not low, because the logic of advertising is also simple and crude to attract traffic.

Across all platforms, users’ time and attention are limited.

When companies make advertising campaigns, they may have to compete with hundreds or even thousands of companies across industries for the same keywords/target population. The fierce bidding competition has continuously raised the price of advertising. Although the number of customers acquired by companies through advertising has greatly increased, in fact, it is difficult for companies to control the ROI of advertising, and it is also difficult to really guarantee the quality of the leads obtained through advertising.

4. Only by acquiring customers through high-level combination can you win the competition

• New media content marketing customer acquisition
• Private domain operation customer acquisition

At present, many companies have begun to focus on the combined customer acquisition method of new media content marketing + private domain operations based on the above-mentioned customer acquisition methods, helping companies reduce customer acquisition costs and obtain more effective leads.

New media content marketing refers to the use of live broadcasts, graphics, videos, audio and other forms on platforms such as Douyin, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, WeChat official accounts, Zhihu, etc. to reach potential customers with professional or interesting content, guide customers to retain information, and complete lead acquisition.

Compared with the above-mentioned customer acquisition methods, the advantage of advertising and new media customer acquisition is that before the customer establishes a connection with the salesperson, the customer has already gained a preliminary understanding of the individual's needs and the company's products/services through marketing content. Combined with professional marketing tools, it can effectively enhance the customer's willingness to retain the customer, and the sales and customer connection rate will also be significantly improved in subsequent stages .

This places extremely high demands on the company's content operation capabilities, but if the company can run the content production model and content acquisition chain, it can help the company acquire customers at low cost or even for free.

At the same time, on the above-mentioned content platforms, the content produced by the company will continue to play its value over a longer period of time, helping the company to continuously obtain long-tail leads.

In addition to acquiring customers through new media content marketing, more and more companies are paying attention to acquiring customers through private domain operations.

Private domain operation customer acquisition is essentially about companies establishing deep relationships with existing customers, using refined operational actions to guide old customers to introduce new customers to the company, using existing customers to drive new customers, and helping companies achieve effective customer acquisition.

By having old customers introduce new customers, the cost of acquiring customers for a company is relatively low.

Moreover, it is relatively easy to convert customers who are referred by old customers .

Because customers have a preliminary understanding of the company's services and products through recommendations and explanations from their friends , their recognition and trust in the company's brand is higher than that of acquiring customers through the public domain, and their willingness to make transactions and place orders will be higher.

However, it is not easy to acquire customers through private domain operations.

When reaching old customers in the private domain, it is important to have a good sense of proportion in communication roles and content. It is necessary to make old customers feel the attentiveness and professionalism of the service, maintain their recognition of the company and their long-term relationship with the company, and make old customers willing to make referrals . This requires a high level of customer operation skills from the company.

At present, high-level customer acquisition companies not only use all the above-mentioned customer acquisition methods to carry out customer acquisition work, but also empower each customer acquisition method through professional marketing tools, pay attention to corporate lead management and customer management, achieve dual improvement in the efficiency and quality of each customer acquisition method, and continuously improve the company's performance ceiling.

Compared with companies that are still using relatively traditional customer acquisition models, the advantages of such companies in future development are clearly visible.

We sincerely recommend that if your company is still in the intermediate, advanced or even initial stages of customer acquisition, you must start to diversify your customer acquisition methods as soon as possible, while focusing on improving customer acquisition efficiency.

After all, utilizing multiple customer acquisition models is like sprinting forward at full speed using advanced means of transportation, while companies that are still using traditional methods will find it difficult to catch up with the former simply by walking, and the gap between the two will only continue to widen over time.

Companies that do not consider change will most likely not make it to the next stage.

Thank you for reading, I hope this article is helpful to you.

In the next article, we will introduce you to the methods and ideas for high-level enterprises to improve their customer acquisition capabilities . We look forward to your attention.