So you started a business

You had a great idea and now you want to get the word out so you can acquire new customers. Did you think customer acquisition was going to be this hard? After all your idea is great, you just can’t seem to get the enquiries you deserve.

You are not alone

Customer acquisition can be a time consuming and expensive exercise. Twenty years go you’d place an advert in a paper, sit back and the leads would come rolling in. Today, the marketing landscape has become fragmented and difficult to navigate and even the way people make buying decisions has changed thanks to Google.

The customer journey

There are as many opinions as there are infographics, but it boils down to this; people rarely make buying decisions without doing research, that’s why your customer acquisition strategy needs to include digital marketing.

You put that same advert in the paper today and, those few people left reading, won’t just call or drop in they’ll reach for their phone and Google you, your products and your website.

Your digital salesman

You have probably heard the phrase “your website is your shop window to the world”, however, that’s not true. A traditional shopfront has a physical location and passing traffic, websites have neither.

A more accurate description is that your website is like your digital salesperson, it has to go out and find leads and convert them into customers. How good your website is, depends entirely on how good it is at those two functions.

To find leads your website needs to be ranked by search engines, otherwise, you’ll have to use other marketing tools, such as social media, to help people to find it.

Leave it to the professionals

So having a good website and making sure it can be found by search engines is important but it’s one part of a number of things successful businesses need to do to acquire new customers. Knowing which thing to do when is why you use a marketing agency such as 4th Revolution. Just like an accountant is invaluable for your tax returns, a marketing company is essential to your customer acquisition strategy.

A place and time

For almost every product or service, there is a time when customer demand is already there, there is a reason the ice-cream van doesn’t turn up in the winter. It is now possible to capitalise on existing demand because of the research phase I’ve spoken about, if you are near the top of Google you’ll get extra traffic and enquiries. If not it is possible to buy your way to the top using Google Ads.

Conversely, there are times when existing demand is low, during these times you’ll need to make more effort stimulating market demand using other marketing tools. Beware though, if you do engage in activity to get noticed and you aren’t ranked well on search engines you risk spending money driving customers to your competitors when they start researching.

Help required

I know some of you are now thinking you don’t have the knowledge or time to navigate your way through all this, even in the oversimplified form I have presented here. You may also be thinking you can’t afford to use the professional services of an agency, hopefully we can show you that you can.

Marketing is an investment that should produce a return, it is not a cost. We also know that to get a return on investment you need to invest first so we’ve put together a special small business package which is both affordable and powerful and start to solve your customer acquisition problem.

Take a look then give us a call.

Andy