“The key ingredient to a better content experience is relevance.” – Jason Miller
How does a company acquire new customers and retain the existing ones? The answer would be – communication and this happens through content. Companies and marketing personnel are turning to content for customer acquisition since customers are now smarter and need to read and gather information before making any buying decision. Customers are willing to read any content that keeps them informed, is inspirational and so useful that they cannot help sharing it with their friends and associates. Content must be exciting, helpful and serve a particular purpose for customers in order for them to be attracted to your company. Content for customer acquisition leads to engaged customers who over time, will learn to trust and depend on your company. This trust and dependability will ultimately gain more customers and encourage your existing ones to speak well of your company.
Email continues to be one of most popular forms of connecting with customers. While it is an easily accessible and flexible means of communication, there is a possibility of severely overusing or using it badly. In order to aim the content for customer acquisition, ensure that the content is precise, crisp and relevant and clearly defines the purpose of the email. While customers can read their email at any time and from anywhere, it is the job of the company to send the useful content when they can use and need it. Conveying the right message, clearly defined and with alacrity is what content for customer acquisition is about.
When a company advertises, the aim is to use the content for customer acquisition. Advertisements should be as impactful and engaging as a salesperson would be in person in order for them to be effective. The content in these advertisements should be able to convey committed focus of the company on the interests and needs of the customers / target audience. Through the content in advertisements, the company must also be able to educate and inform the target audience about what the company stands for and what value their brand holds for the customer. Attracting the attention and gaining more customers through advertisements happens when a company offers something that is not only relevant to the audience but is also appealing and exciting – content conveys all this and more.
The most potent kind of content is one that fuels the desire in existing customers to refer your company and its products to others. Customers do this either by word of mouth, sharing information via social media or other links, sending forward emails and communication sent by your company. What better way to use content for customer acquisition than encouraging your existing customers to acquire more customers for your business. This mode of acquiring more customers enhances a company’s reputation, increases sales and profits and has power to influence even those potential customers that are not easily convinced. Great content makes expanding business easier and less costly but with huge profits and enhanced levels of customer loyalty.
Using content for customer acquisition has a lot more possibilities and companies must leverage it accordingly. Well-articulated content for communicating with businesses and players in the market that are not competitors – reaching out to such companies is beneficial as they too would have a customer base that may need the offerings of your company. Piggybacking on these companies for more customers is not only good for acquiring more customers, but also forming relationships and bonds with other players in the market. Anyone in business understands the importance of networking and relationships in the current fierce business environment. The content of the communiqués you send out to these companies must serve to influence them and show them how such association would be useful to them too.
Social media is another highly visible and successful way to use content for customer acquisition. Regular updates, exciting news from the industry and beyond, information of products and services and other such content allows your company to stay in the forefront and occupy virtual and mind space with customers and other readers. Social media networking allows even the ‘laziest networkers’ to reach out to thousands of people, many of whom would be prospective customers by a single well written piece of content. However, badly written content would have the opposite effect and hence it is crucial that companies focus on it and use the help of a professional if they do not have in-house capability.
Using content for customer acquisition is essential but gaining new contacts and associating with leaders of other companies is achievable through well-written and presented content. Using the power of content, leaders of one company can strengthen their position by communicating with influencers and other people who command respect and admiration in business circles across the globe. It is a way to gain access and find solutions to harassing problems. Building such influence in turn attracts more customers, the best talent, investors and other stakeholders to the company – which are the pillars of success for any company.
Companies that want to increase their influence and gain a strong foothold even the virtual world turn to content. It is through content that they can position themselves as subject matter experts and a company that has extensive knowledge about subjects not directly connected with their line of business. Consistently churning out well-articulated blogs, articles and other forms of content gets people attracted to and talking well about a company. This content must be robust from a SEO perspective – making it easy to find through the deft use of keywords and repeatedly ‘searched’ words is critical to gaining new customers and sustaining the interest of existing ones. Not only will this content be useful for customer acquisition but also will help to establish your company as an ‘authority’ on certain subjects and everyone likes to be associated with people who are recognized and appreciated. Content written by or under the name of company leaders, helps to establish their credibility and over time affords them ‘subject matter expert’ status. It would not be surprising that prospective customers flock to your company and existing ones proudly display their association with your company, leaving the competition perplexed and fuming.
Putting together events and promotional campaigns is a lot of hard work. However, they are great for customer acquisition – the company must ensure that the information and communication about these events is alluring and fascinating. Even before the event, customers and prospective ones get excited and energized to attend it because the description, value and usefulness conveyed through the content arouses interest. The likelihood of a huge number of visitors, increases and with that increases the chances of gaining many more customers.
Website and brochure content are the two methods that are almost, always responsible for customer acquisition or driving them away. Badly done content in any of these two mediums can have detrimental effects on the success, profits and reputation of the company. The ‘face’ of the company is the website and in the real world – a company brochure – and both these provide the insights into the company. If the content and images in these two fail to impress, it would be hard to imagine why a prospective customer would want to give business to such a company. Extreme caution is required with the words, tone and style of the content used in these two critical mediums. Customer acquisition is not easy – why make it tougher?
Reaching out to customers is the first step to gaining more business. Customers rarely provide a company more than one opportunity to make that great first impression and companies that judiciously use content will succeed in the tough task of customer acquisition and later, retention.
