Customer acquisition in the festive season

It is said that customer retention is easier than customer acquisition, although many organisations struggle to get the balance between retaining existing customers whilst focusing on acquiring new ones.

Christmas is a critical period for customer acquisition and marketers rely on getting sometimes quadruple revenue and therefore spend a lot of money to develop creative campaigns to entice customers to their brands. In fact it’s often a case that marketers will bank that they will get up to half their profits in the Holiday period.

However, in what is usually the busiest time of the year and with only five weeks to go until Christmas, stores have slashed prices in an attempt to claw back some revenue from lower than expected shopper numbers.  Discounts and marketing campaigns are two classic ways of attaining brand new customers and tempting previous ones back, but if money is tight, this may not be possible.

Developing a fully integrated twelve-month acquisition strategy is a crucial step to make sure you’re not missing any measures or innovations that could help attract new business. As marketers work to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their spend, their measurement capabilities must become more sophisticated to get that cradle-to-grave understanding of the customer lifecycle.

Attaining new customers is critical, but a long-term challenge for marketers. Consumers are increasingly using the Internet to research their products for both online and in-store purchases. It is therefore crucial that retailers also understand online consumer behaviour to maximise customer acquisition opportunities in every channel in the lead-up up to Christmas. Analysing the behaviour of your customer will help you implement a solid informed strategy to capture, attain and retain your customers and predict their next step (or click).

Identifying the target audience and engaging them at every touch point throughout the year, will ensure the right strategy is in place for Christmas engagement.

Develop your twelve-month acquisition strategy now with some help from ADMA’s Multi-Channel Acquisition Seminar.  As part of its half day seminar series, ADMA has developed an acquisition seminar which will focus specifically on maximising your acquisition performance both online and offline. Hear how organisations like Fairfax, Aussie, Seek and InsuranceLine are pushing the boundaries of acquisition performance. Click here for more details.