Unlocking growth: How the right customer acquisition platform can transform your brand
Your guide to customer acquisition platforms, channels, and models; including what they are and how to use them to your business's advantage.
Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any growing brand. Your cash flow is only as healthy as the amount of new customers you have coming in, especially in your business’s early stages.
The challenge is greater than getting noticed, though. Social media, digital ads, influencer partnerships, and other digital marketing tactics are all optimal for spreading brand awareness, but converting attention into loyal customers is another matter — and that’s where customer acquisition platforms come into play.
What is a customer acquisition platform?
A customer acquisition platform is a comprehensive system designed to streamline and optimize the process of attracting, converting, and retaining customers. Traditional methods might become disjointed from one another — telemarketing, advertising, sponsoring events, direct mail, etc. — but a platform integrates various channel management tools into a single ecosystem. This centralization empowers your brand to manage your acquisition efforts more efficiently (and conveniently!).
It’s difficult to understate how valuable customer acquisition platforms are to young DTC businesses. Choices bombard shoppers from every angle, brands vying for their attention and trying to stand out with something unique. If you want to rise above this noise, a set of customer acquisition tools grants you a structured approach to your efforts and helps your brand’s message resonate with your target audience.
The benefits of a customer acquisition platform
A customer acquisition platform offers several advantages that can significantly enhance your brand’s growth strategy and make life easier for your marketing and sales teams:
Centralized management
A platform brings various acquisition efforts under one roof (though there is no one-size-fits all solution, which we’ll elaborate more on later), providing a single interface to manage marketing campaigns, track performance, and analyze data. This centralized approach saves time, reduces complexity, and ensures consistency across all channels.
Improved targeting
With access to data analytics and insights, a customer acquisition platform enables your brand to refine your targeting strategy. You can allocate resources more effectively. when you understand which channels, messages, and audiences deliver the best results.
Automation and efficiency
Many platforms offer automation tools that streamline repetitive tasks, such as social media posting and lead nurturing. This automation reduces the margin for error and allows your team to focus on strategic planning and creative development.
Monitoring customer acquisition cost
A customer acquisition platform is ideal for customer acquisition costs, also known as CAC. CAC is a key metric that represents the total costs of acquiring a new customer, including expenses related to marketing, sales, and other activities involved in the process (you can calculate CAC by dividing the total acquisition expenses by the number of new customers acquired within a specific period).
Monitoring this metric is crucial because it helps you assess your marketing campaigns’ efficiency and profitability. A lower CAC indicates that your brand is attracting and converting shoppers cost-effectively, while a high CAC could signal the need to optimize marketing channels, refine targeting, or adjust spending.
The role of a customer acquisition model
A customer acquisition model is a framework that outlines how your brand plans to attract and convert shoppers: it serves as a blueprint for all acquisition activities, such as guiding which tools you use, what demographics you engage with, your budget, and more. The platforms you choose should support your desired model (this term is also often referred to as your customer acquisition strategy).
Some examples of customer acquisition models include:
Inbound
Focuses on attracting customers through content marketing, SEO, and social media.
Outbound
Involves direct outreach through methods like cold calling, email campaigns, and advertising.
Hybrid
Combines elements of both inbound and outbound strategies for a balanced approach.
A customer acquisition platform can help you execute these models with the necessary tools and data to implement them effectively. For instance, an inbound-focused merchant might leverage a platform’s content management and SEO tools, while an outbound-focused brand could benefit from CRM and automation features.
Common customer acquisition channels
Part of a platform’s job is helping you manage your customer acquisition channels from a centralized place; i.e., where you source leads and have the most success with conversion rates. You are likely familiar with this concept already, but if not, some common channels that fall into the inbound, outbound, and hybrid categories above include:
Email marketing
Leveraging targeted email campaigns to engage with potential customers, nurture leads, and encourage conversions through personalized content and promotions. Email marketing is known to yield a high ROI and is also an effective channel for boosting customer retention.
Referral programs
Encouraging existing customers to refer friends or colleagues by offering incentives such as discounts, free products, or other rewards. This channel taps into the trust of word-of-mouth marketing and can significantly boost your customer acquisition efforts.
Social media
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok are excellent places to boost brand awareness and promote brand-related content. By creating engaging posts, running ads, and interacting with followers, you can attract your desired customer base and convert them in a more personalized way.
Organic traffic
Search engine optimization is a strategic way to attract organic traffic. When people search for relevant keywords, having your content appear at the top of search results increases visibility and draws customers into your sales funnel because they’re actively looking for your products or services.
Affiliate marketing
This marketing strategy involves partnering with affiliates who promote your products or services in exchange for a commission on sales generated through their referral links. It’s a process that allows your brand to leverage the reach and credibility of individual affiliates to attract new customers at a lower acquisition cost.
Content marketing
Creating valuable and informative content, such as blog posts, videos, and webinars, to attract and educate potential customers. This approach positions your brand as an authority in your industry and nurtures prospects throughout the customer journey. Content is also a convenient place to include calls to action that motivate further investigation.
Influencer marketing
Collaborating with influencers with strong followings in your target market to promote your offerings. This kind of partnership helps you quickly reach a broader audience, build brand authority, and generate new leads through endorsements.
What customer acquisition tools to look for
Not all platforms are the same; many offer a different assortment of marketing tools that you’ll need to use in tandem. There is very rarely an all-in-one solution that meets all of your business’s needs. For example, you could use:
• Google Analytics to track your website’s traffic,
• Hubspot for customer relationship management, email campaigns, and lead generation,
• Salesforce for managing outbound sales campaigns and customer data,
• Meltwater for working with influencers,
• Kissmetrics for tracking user behavior and generating customer lifetime value reports,
• Buffer to manage social media accounts from one dashboard, and
• Thingtesting to drive trial, brand awareness, and online and in-store sales.
Each platform is designed to address different aspects of the customer acquisition process, from attracting shoppers to nurturing relationships and retaining them. Some essential tools you’ll want to be on the lookout for include:
CRM Systems
These tools manage customer relationships, track interactions, and store valuable data.
Marketing Automation
Automation tools streamline repetitive tasks, such as email marketing and social media posting, allowing you to focus on your customer acquisition strategy.
Analytics Software
Insight-driven decisions are key to converting shoppers successfully, and analytics tools provide insightful metrics you can use to optimize your marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions.
Social Proof
As they say, word-of-mouth marketing is the truest form of marketing, so leveraging social proof is critical because shoppers will trust other consumers before they trust you. There are marketing platforms that specialize in reviews and user-generated content that you can use to showcase how happy real customers are with your product or services.
The platforms and customer acquisition tools you select depend on how well they align with your goals. Customization is key; it’s best to find options that offer flexibility and complement each other’s functionalities.
How to choose the right customer acquisition platform
Once you’ve identified which tools you want to incorporate into your tech stack, how do you decide which particular platforms to commit to? Here are some key factors to consider:
Scalability
Ensure the platform can meet your business needs and scale as you grow, accommodating increasing demands as your brand expands.
Integration Capabilities
Does the platform integrate with your existing systems and tools (and does it need to)? For instance, your life will be much easier if your SEO platform integrates into Google Analytics.
Cost
Pay attention to the total cost of ownership, including subscription fees and implementation costs compared to potential ROI. Even if the platform you chose doesn’t offer a free plan, it’s a green flag if it provides a free trial so you can get the lay of the land before committing.
Customer support
Does the platform leave you to your own devices, or does it offer dedicated customer support for when you need assistance? Your own customer experience matters as much as the one you provide for your customers.
A common pitfall eCommerce and other brands fall into is choosing their customer acquisition software based solely on price or failing to consider long-term needs. Instead, focus on finding platforms that align with your customer acquisition model and offer relevant features.
Thingtesting as a customer acquisition platform
Many consumer brands, young and established alike, struggle to find audiences who are willing to try their products for the first time. They also search for creative ways to push sales in both in-store and online channels. That’s where Thingtesting for Business can help: our customer acquisition platform makes it possible to drive in-store velocities while collecting insights and social proof.
It works like this: all you need to do is create and publish a campaign. Think of a promotion for a Free product, a BOGO offer or a 50% off discount. Once you’ve created a branded landing page and composed a few customer survey questions, you promote the campaign on your channels and we’ll do the same with the Thingtesting community.
Consumers who are interested in the campaign sign up, head to their nearest store to shop, upload their receipts, and you sit back while we handle the receipt validation and cashback reimbursements via Venmo & Paypal. You can then access reviews from these new customers, NPS, feedback from surveys, and more — all for $99 per month plus a percentage fee of each reimbursement.
You can check out a few of our favorite success stories here. Some highlights include:
Wellah, a protein powder merchant, acquired 2,000+ new customers
Taika, a matcha and coffee brand, acquired 1,500+ new customers
Joydays, known for its healthy cookies, acquired 850+ new customers
All in less than six months. Ready to start acquiring new customers immediately? Sign up for a free trial with Thingtesting.
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