How to Calculate the Cost of Customer Acquisition
Gaining new customers is
always going to cost you money. Even if
it seems free, you are still investing time, effort and planning so as to
achieve your decided goal. The clearest
and most transparent way of calculating customer acquisitions is to research
the costs beforehand and then stick to the budget you set for it. Trying to figure out the costs after the fact
is like guessing the patterns of a stained glass window through picking through
its shattered remains on the church floor.
Firstly you should be
asking yourself how you may attract new customers and how to make visitors
become regular customers. Effective
customer acquisition may involve many methods/strategies and not all customer
acquisition methods are transferable/applicable to/for all of your web
projects.
You should always treat
your marketing efforts as a detailed and specific project, as per your company,
industry and marketing plans, because incorrect methods/strategies may weigh heavily
on your marketing budget.
Visitors are looking for
a friendly, reliable and easy to use website.
In most cases you are better off having tables without graphical
elements as well as toning down your more elaborate and colorful designs. The biggest part of popular and long lasting
websites have a simple and user-friendly interface. So for a start, you can save a lot of money
on intricate and convoluted designs. If
your website is genuinely useful, then tone down the fireworks and save on web
design. The navigation should not be
made too complex and complicated as this deters potential visitors from
becoming customers.
People value security, so
invest a little money in your sites security and make sure that all appropriate
security measures like SSL are met. This
is often an expensive cost to start with that is maintained (via updates) for a
lower cost, but it will help you to recruit and keep loyal customers.
Informative, interesting,
useful and compelling landing pages can turn visitors into new customer. Spend your money on making your site useful
and compelling instead of on fancy flash displays. Use dedicated Internet sites for studies and
surveys of potential customers that you may contact directly if you wish. Utilize free advertising such as, newsletters
in return for free downloads and product samples that may be used by your
visitors.
Affiliate
programs/marketing is a good way of getting new customers, and you are often
able to set your own budgets for how much you spend. This way you can monitor the traffic they
send you, and if you have the right tools you may be able to see how many
people/visitors from that traffic actually buy, and how many bounce. Calculate exactly how much you are willing to
pass on as commissions to the webmaster.
If you can set up a pay per action deal, then you only need pay
commissions if the visitors buy. If you
put this to work correctly then it is the same as printing money.
AdSense/Adwords is
already a web standard that is used in order to win new customers. Again you are able to use Adwords/Adsense to
calculate exactly how much money you wish to pay per click. Seek advice (if necessary) from agencies with
regard to conversion rates and cost-benefit analysis before you start your own
advertising campaigns to attract customers.
It is believed that only
8% of surfer’s searches, for a keyword in Google, go over the first 3
pages. So invest in optimizing your site
(SEO) and then monitor how much of your organic search engine traffic is
producing sales/conversions. If it is a
significant number, then consider investing more into SEO.
