The key to successful customer acquisition in today’s competitive marketplace is to find the tactics, tools and strategies that work best for your customer persona(s). Here we are sharing seven effective strategies you can use to increase your customer base.

Borrow or Purchase a Fellow Marketer’s Subscriber List

It takes time to build an email subscriber list, buying a spot on a list or piggybacking off a subscriber list can save time, increase your reach and reduce the overall cost of customer acquisition. First, you need to find a brand that fits with yours, or is mutually complementary with your service or product. Then, together you can develop a plan that will work for both of you. You may decide to trade email lists, they may feature your information within their email, or they may tell their readers why they are in love with your service or product. And of course, you can reciprocate.

Integration with Other Products or Platforms

Building a customer base from scratch can be difficult, but it’s possible to build on work others have already completed. An example is Spotify who took that first leap of faith and integrated their products into Facebook’s news feed. It took off like wildfire. Other successful integrations include Ebay with Paypal; and Airbnb with Craigslist. Integration can be a dynamic shortcut to growth. You’ll need to do a bit of research to find the perfect fit, but you’ll have a ready-made potential customer base to work with.

Buy an Established Website

Growing a website is hard work. You’re constantly working to obtain more traffic, leads and customers. Acquiring another website is an excellent way to speed up this type of growth. Look for a well-established website that is designed to reach your target audience. Make an offer, and purchase the site and then migrate their content over to your domain. You can use 301 redirects to get all the content and backlinks pointed at your domain. You’ll get a huge SEO boost and all the traffic they worked to obtain and you’ll be acquiring an entire customer base, increasing the size of your market share and eliminating competition in a single move.

Engineer Viral Elements into Your Product/Service

Ideally, building virality into your product means increasing user acquisition without increasing the cost per acquisition. It may sound simple enough to create shareable content and include “share” or “invite” buttons to make it easy for users. While viral growth means lowering the cost of customer acquisition, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Virality has to be engineered into your site and brand. Think of it more as an element and not just a design principle or possibility. Don’t leave it to chance, integrate it into your system and make sharing a natural, appealing and easy step for users to take. You may experiment with referral programs and ways to share benefits with other users to make it attractive for both the sharing and receiving audience. Make it fun to share and engage with your brand.

Co-branded Content and Shared Leads

Co-branding content involves sharing content to a shared audience. When you join forces with another marketer to address your audiences as one, it cuts the work in half and doubles the reach for both of you. Again, you’ll want to partner with a brand that fits well with yours and you’ll both need to have a level of appeal with both audiences to be effective. Your products need to provide more benefit to both customer bases and you can collaborate on your marketing efforts and execution.

Offer Free Trials

Offering free trials can attract new clientele as well as increase brand loyalty from your existing customers. Consumers like free trials and it allows you to demonstrate the value you have to offer them. To boost conversions, free trials need to be well thought out and well planned. Consider the cost and how long you need the campaign to be to convert. They are not meant to last forever, just long enough to be effective. Clearly state your terms and conditions to avoid confusion and help establish trust with your customer base. Make your offer visible, create interest, generate engagement and make sign-up easy to ensure participation.

Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools for both customer acquisition and retention. Make sign-up easy to build your list and increase your reach. Personalization is the primary influencer behind a successful campaign. To maximize email marketing, it needs to be tailored to fit your audience, always considering your user/reader first. Not only does content need to be personal, engaging and relevant, it should be shareable. Also, note that mobile visitors make up more than half of your traffic so optimizing for mobile devices is essential.