Everyone knows you’ve got to spend money to make money, and acquiring customers for your business is no exception. The problem is, if your expenses outweigh your revenue, you’ll be chasing growth forever.
In order to accelerate growth, you need to hit that gold balance of keeping expenses low while increasing revenue.
Let’s take a look at a few ways you can impact expenses by cutting your customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Encourage repeat business.
Not only do satisfied customers return again and again, but they’re also more likely to share their positive experiences with others, which equates to valuable word-of-mouth marketing. To increase your odds of repeat business, invest time and effort into the following:
- Product-customer fit. Build products and services your customer base will be sure to rave about.
- Automation: The more you can streamline your workflow, the more efficiently you can serve your customers and provide a human touch in the areas that matter most.
- Incentives: Motivate your customers to come back to your business and send referrals your way.
- Service: Create memorable and meaningful experiences before and after the sale to stay forever imprinted on your customers hearts and minds.
Keeping your current customers happy makes acquiring new customers and winning repeat business much easier.
Offer incentives
Offering incentives not only motivates your current customers, but can also influence new customers to do business with you. For instance, starting a loyalty points program or offering a discount in return for a long-term commitment are both very powerful motivators to generate sales without a significant monetary investment on your part.
Furthermore, you can also use incentives in exchange for user-generated content. Participants share their personal experiences with your brand on their social networks for a discount, upgrade or free product. As a result, your brand enjoys a huge boost in exposure without having to pay for advertising.
Leverage marketing automation
Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (Adobe CMO)
Marketing automation is an intelligent, cost-effective way to grow your database and turn cold contacts into new customers for your business. With the power of marketing automation, you can capture new contacts from your website, nurture them with automated emails (personalized to their preferences, of course) and keep tabs on your hottest prospects.
Instead of sending the same, bulk newsletter to everyone in your database once a month, marketing automation picks up on your contact’s preferences and level of interest so you can send emails tailored to each person’s unique needs. Then, when a hot prospect expresses interest, you can automatically notify your sales team. It’s a seamless way to keep your sales team in meaningful conversations with your most important prospects. You never miss an opportunity – and avoid wasting time on prospects who will never be a good fit for your business.
Use retargeting.
Lastly, you can improve the chances of a prospect converting to a paying customer by keeping your brand top-of-mind. The fact is most people who come across your products or services will not be ready to buy right away.
By using retargeted ads, you’ll keep your brand positioned in front of them and create additional touch-points so that when the time comes and they’re ready to make a purchase, they’ll naturally want to come back to you to close the deal. Retargeting can generate better ROI than regular advertising because you’ll be targeting people you know are already interested in what you have to offer.
There’s no way to avoid spending money on the growth of your business, but by taking the right approach and implementing smart strategies, such as the ones listed above, you can keep those costs as low as possible. This will allow you to generate more revenue and achieve continued growth over time.