No matter how successful your business is or how well your profit margins are, chances are that you (a business owner, marketer or salesperson) would still place great importance on attracting and acquiring new customers. 

 

There’s even a survey of more than 1000 business owners that backs this up, as it gathered that customer acquisition remains the top marketing goal regardless of industry. This is, of course, a given as any business without new clients gets diminishing profits.

 

So, if customer acquisition is already a top priority for you, well done – but do read on if you’re struggling as we’ll share tips later on in this article. If it isn’t part of your ongoing business goals, let’s go through what it is exactly.

 

Customer acquisition is the process of onboarding new customers or clients to your business by using specific techniques to get them to take action. The end goal of the whole process is to create an organic strategy to acquire new customers and grow your business’ revenue. 

 

The customer acquisition model is typically visualised as a three-stage process the customers move through. 

Image: HubSpot

 

The funnel begins with customer awareness and interaction with your touchpoints, such as visiting or making initial contact with your business. It progresses to the second part of the funnel, which is the stage where your service or product would be considered. Then, the decision-making process takes place where the opportunity to become a customer of your business is decided by both parties.

 

At the awareness stage, marketers typically put many strategies and tactics into play, one of which is direct selling.

 

Direct selling is basically the act of selling products or services directly to the consumers in a non-retail environment, which means that it can take place either online through social media or in-person such as at the prospective customer’s home or elsewhere. 

 

This methodology is particularly effective in eliminating layers of middlemen or intermediaries involved in the product or service distribution and allows you to avoid expensive overheads, reduce advertising costs and run your businesses flexibly. 

 

What’s more, customers also benefit from the convenience and personal attention they receive from you.

How to reimagine your customer acquisition strategy with direct sales

Image: Freepik

 

Direct selling has earned a bad reputation over the years as people tend to associate it with aggressive sales representatives. But these days, especially in the age of the Internet, direct selling can be a total game-changer for you and your business. In other words, it is a new dawn for direct selling. 

 

When done right, it can turn your business into an even more successful and trustworthy one – especially if you’re a work-at-home business because it doesn’t require an actual store to work. 

 

Unfortunately, you cannot throw in a spray and pray approach and hope that it helps you widen the net of your customers. 

 

Hence, by integrating direct selling at the first stage of the funnel in your broader customer acquisition strategy, you would be able to define accurate information on your target audiences and understand important return values such as the customer acquisition cost and lifetime value they bring to your business.

 

Here are a couple of ways how you can use direct sales properly and effectively:

 

Focus on building relationships, not sales

 

This may sound a little contradictory, especially since the goal of direct selling is to increase sales. However, encouraging your customers to give you their time and attention should be your main goal. Once you have created that rapport, identified their needs, and matched your products to suit those needs, you’ll find that sales will start flowing in easily and elegantly. 

 

You should also make the habit of following up on new prospects to quickly build new relationships and get to know them. 

 

Get social on social media

 

Social media has become an indispensable tool for both small and big businesses as it provides ample opportunities for them to engage in direct sales. 

 

With social media, you’re able to expand your business to a broader market. You can do this by creating business pages, posting high-quality photos, providing updates about your business, collecting feedback and more. Most importantly, however, social media gives you the ability to create and build a community. 

 

Your consumers will be able to engage with your business directly, which will lend your business credibility and reliability. In that same vein, you can also leverage social media to communicate directly with your customers about new products, offers or promotions. 

 

Use email marketing

 

Consider this option as the modern door-to-door direct sales approach. Email marketing, on its own, offers a number of benefits such as greater reach and affordability, and can be an incredible direct sales asset.

 

However, should you decide to use this method to execute direct sales, it’s important to remember the first point we mentioned: focus on building relationships. 

 

This means that you shouldn’t settle for automated marketing programs (which can be and sound insincere). Instead, focus on creating that connection as you’re writing that email – like you’re talking to your customers in person and are truly passionate about solving their problems (which we’re sure you are!).

 

Keep your pitches short and to the point, and state your offer in the subject line. Once you’re done detailing your ideas and solutions, remember to encourage the recipient to reach out to you directly by responding to your email or calling you. 

 

Successful email marketing will not only help you make a sale but also improve the connection between you and your customers.

 

Learn more ways to make direct sales a more integral part of your customer acquisition strategy

Image: SalesWorks

 

SalesWorks Asia is an expert in face-to-face marketing, delivering high-quality and high-volume customers to clients daily. With an extensive network around the region, we are able to provide customer-specific knowledge and expertise to help boost your customer acquisition strategy.

 

Our range of direct sales services includes executing campaigns for our clients where we provide end-to-end service from research and insight into prospective customers to connecting with them to generate sales, as well as administration and reporting of all of your target campaigns and results of sales.

 

Find out more on how we can be the right partner for you. Drop us your details here and our team will be in touch to get to know your business needs better and outline how SalesWorks can help you succeed.