No buyers = no business.
It’s a simple equation: If ecommerce brands can’t get — and keep — customers, they can’t stay in operation.
The math behind capturing customer interest, however, isn’t so straightforward. While a number of ecommerce brands have great products and superior services, many also struggle to reach their intended audience.
According to Marketing Charts, 53% of businesses say that developing a personalized advertising experience is their biggest challenge in reaching their target audience, and 42% struggle to deliver their message on the right channels.
The key to audience connection? Strong ecommerce customer acquisition strategies. Here’s a deep dive into the basics of effective strategies: What they are and how they work, why experimenting with strategies matters, and which strategies may offer the most impact for brands.
Essential Ecommerce KPIs for the Digital Shelf
Download our guide to explore the most essential ecommerce key performance indicators (KPIs) and ensure your brand is measuring the right metrics to track business performance.
An ecommerce customer acquisition strategy outlines a business’ plans and processes for engaging prospective customers and convincing them to make a purchase.
Companies typically create these strategies after they conduct audience-targeting research to understand their ideal customer profile. An ecommerce brand that sells hiking boots online, for example, might find that younger consumers are more likely than their older peers to make this type of digital purchase. More specifically, their audience research might determine that millennials within a specific income bracket have made similar purchases in the past year.
Using customer data collected from newsletter and email campaign signups, along with publicly available information, the brand can create an acquisition strategy that directly targets this group, increasing the chances of successful conversion.
It’s also worth noting that while acquiring customers is the first step, ecommerce brands can’t afford to rest on their laurels. They also need to consider customer retention. Put simply, if customers purchase once but don’t come back, revenue quickly suffers.
To ensure steady sales, brands must simultaneously reach out to new customers and keep current consumers satisfied.
There’s no one-size-fits-all acquisition strategy for ecommerce brands.
In part, this stems from the changing nature of ecommerce sales: As brands develop new products and adjust prices to account for shifting market conditions, customer acquisition strategies change. Consumer preferences aren’t static either. Buyers want different things at different times and have different preferences depending on their location.
The cost-of-living crisis in the U.K., for example, has prompted consumers to consider their biggest purchases as investments rather than simply spending. According to Raconteur, brands that can demonstrate longevity in their products are set up to win these customers’ business.
In Germany, meanwhile, product quality reigns supreme. As noted by Seeders, 75% of German consumers are willing to pay a premium for products they consider to be of high quality.
In the U.S., it’s all about content. Forbes points out that 84% of customers will watch an ad on their favorite website to access content they want, and 69% said they won’t skip ads for products and services they’re already curious about.
Sticking to a single acquisition strategy isn’t the best approach when customer needs vary so drastically. Instead, brands need to adjust as economic and social conditions change and consumer preferences evolve.
The most impactful strategies for brands are those that deliver the best results. What works for one company may not work for another, and what works for one product or service line may not work for the next iteration.
In general, however, five strategies often deliver reliable results.
SEO is the process of improving your search ranking to get noticed by consumers more quickly and (hopefully) increase website traffic and ecommerce customer acquisition.
There are several common approaches to SEO. You can ensure that the content on your website, for example, aligns with what your target audience wants. For the hiking boot example above, this could mean creating content that references specific search terms such as “durable,” “high-quality,” “water-resistant,” or “reliable.”
Alternatively, you can boost your SEO by creating informative content that lives on your website or other informational sites that are specifically non-promotional. Here, the goal is to create content that offers value to readers. Rather than making a sales pitch, this content provides useful information or actionable insight that includes high-value keywords.
Paid social media ads prioritize your content for a specific period of time. They’re a great way to spread the word about a new product release or an upcoming sale.
Here, targeting is key. Paying for ads that target the wrong audience wastes both money and time, so brands need to make sure they do their research and find the ideal platforms and pages to post their ads.
Social video sites such as YouTube and TikTok offer brands ways to reach and acquire new customers using a show, don’t tell methodology. Our hiking company, for example, could create in-depth product production videos for YouTube that demonstrate a commitment to environmental sustainability or partner with influencers on TikTok to show their boots being worn in the wild.
Free trials are a great way for ecommerce companies that sell software or services to acquire customers. By providing prospective buyers with a limited feature set of the full product, brands can pique user interest and convince them to purchase the full version.
Brands must balance the features the free trial offers and those gated behind paywalls. Best bet? By showcasing some of their best features for free, brands can ramp up consumer interest.
Referral programs can help improve customer acquisition rates and reduce customer acquisition costs. The more brands spend on research, marketing, and sales to acquire customers, the higher their acquisition cost. If this cost is too high, it can offset any revenue gains.
Referral programs offer benefits for existing customers and new buyers. Current customers might get new features or increased usage limits, for example, while new buyers might receive a discount code provided by existing clients.
When it comes to effective ecommerce customer acquisition strategies, metrics make all the difference. It’s one thing to do the research and implement what should be ideal strategies – it’s another to see these strategies in practice and measure their impact.
Think of strategies and metrics as two sides of the same coin. Strategies use data to predict what should happen based on a given set of circumstances, while metrics measure what’s actually happening. Best case scenario, these outcomes align. If not, brands must leverage metrics to inform new strategies that better align with real-world outcomes.