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magnet showing acquiring customers with content

Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any business. It’s the driving force behind marketing strategy and overall business growth.

It’s also extremely competitive and more expensive than ever — customer acquisition cost (CAC) has increased more than 60% in just the past six years. Sounds daunting, right?

It’s definitely a challenge in today’s oversaturated digital marketplace, where every company(?) has websites, blogs, paid ads, social media, and more. But those same digital channels offer a huge opportunity to attract new customers acquisition with content — and not just any content.

We’re talking high-quality, user-focused, SEO optimized, unique, innovative content that grabs attention and converts web visitors into paying customers.

The thing is, pretty much every company knows that digital content is important. But far fewer of them are staying laser-focused on creating quality content that actually performs rather than the crap most companies spit out.

We are proving every single day with our own clients that getting smart about content helps you acquire more customers more quickly, more affordably, and faster than your competition.

Ready to learn how to do it? Let’s get started.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Great content drives customer acquisition by building brand trust, an important motivator of purchase decisions.
  • You can optimize your content strategy for customer acquisition by creating content for every stage of the buyer journey.
  • Brands can capitalize on existing content by continually optimizing their best performing posts and webpages.
  • Gated content like high-value lead magnets drives acquisition by capturing contact information.
  • Social proof is another important creator of brand trust and assures customers your brand will deliver on its promises.

The Connection Between Customer Acquisition and Content

Like savvy companies leveraging digital opportunities to find and convert customers, consumers are smart when it comes to choosing brands and making purchases. Traditional marketing tactics of the past — catchy taglines, salesy language and the like — are not enough anymore to capture their interest.

This dilemma? It’s why content has become so important to customer acquisition.

Consumers are not just looking for the brand with the best marketing slogan of the moment — they’re looking for brands they can trust. Research has found that 81% of consumers cite brand trust as an important factor in their buying decisions. They rated it above any other company factor or attribute outside of direct product quality and value.

The research proves that being a helpful provider of thought leadership content will win you new customers.

Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust in 2020 | Edelman

Image Source: Edeleman

To boot, the same study found that 76% of consumers pay attention to ads from brands they trust, versus only 48% for brands they don’t trust.

Where do consumers go to establish the trust they value so highly? Your content. By creating and publishing consistent, high-quality content, you establish credibility and brand authority, build your brand’s personality, and provide value for consumers that tells them your brand can deliver what they need.

Why Content is the Key to Customer Acquisition

Content vs Ads

Most people think marketing is just ads. It’s the annoying stuff that interrupts the content you are trying to consume. Watching the superbowl? Nope, we’re gonna serve up 3 ads first. Reading an article of Forbes? Nope we’re gonna pop-up an ad for something you are not interested in. Ads don’t work. And everyone knows it. But that’s what most people think marketing is.

We use the term “content marketing” to refer to the kind of content that actually helps people. It’s what marketing is supposed to be. And marketing’s main goal is to acquire new customers.

Content marketing works because it is written by people for people. It works because it is intended to help you get educated, to share experience, to drive you forward. Content marketing works better at acquiring new customers because it’s goal is to help, not sell.

Content for Search, Email and Social

Want to rank for search engines? Don’t try using ChatGPT for that! In order to rank for search engines, you simply need to answer the search intent of the keywords and questions your buyers are asking.

When you create content that ranks, it also works well in email and social media. You see, search still matters! Alot.

How to Shop for Video Games from the USA to Worldwide | Ship7.com |

Content ROI

Ok, now we’re really getting into it. I said the main reason to use content marketing for customer acquisition is because it works. There is the famous marketing stat that content marketing leads cost 62% less than traditional marketing. And that’s because content marketing is better at attracting and converting new customers for less money.

At SAP, our content marketing platform delivered $7 in revenue for every dollar we spent. That’s a 7X ROI. Guess what the ROI was of the rest of marketing? Around 1x. In other words, marketing barely paid for itself. (In fairness, we influenced hundred of millions of dollars of pipeline that didn’t get “credited” to marketing)

Content + Paid

There’s a lot of talk about AI taking over content marketing. And while we’ve proven that nonsense wrong, it is true that it’s getting harder, not easier, to acquire new customers through organic means. One way to supplement organic content acquisition is through paid.

I’m not talking about banner ads that have 99 problems and a click ain’t one. I’m talking about paid content marketing. We take our best client content and promote around the web. Then we re-target those readers with later stage offers.

Our CPC is 90% less than industry average and our click through rate is 20x higher. Paid content marketing works for customer acquisition as well!

How to Ace Customer Acquisition with Content

Align your Content with the Buyer Journey

You might hear that any traffic is good traffic when it comes to website visitors. To some extent that can be true, especially when your company is new and your main goal is increasing awareness. But when it comes to powering customer acquisition with content, you need to get intentional.

That means matching your content up with your buyer’s journey.

As your buyer moves through the sales funnel, the content that best matches the intent of their visit to your website will change. Someone doing their first Google search on a product or service they need is likely looking for more information about the problem they’re experiencing, meaning content like your top-of-the-funnel blog posts would be really relevant.

Someone later in the stages of the buying process might be looking for confirmation that your brand is indeed the one to choose, and that person might be better convinced by a whitepaper or in-depth case study.

Here’s a great visual to help you think more about the kinds of content that belong in each stage:

buyer's journey graphic showing progression through the awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage

Image Source: Hubspot

When you’re thinking about aligning your content with the buyer journey, you always want to think of two things:

  • Giving potential buyers the information they need at their current stage
  • Including a Call To Action (CTA) or other motivator to pull them into the next stage of the buyer journey

Get Serious About Your Blog

Your blog is the foundation of your content marketing strategy. It’s great to know that you need a blog, and by now most companies do. But it’s not enough to just publish content — even if it’s fairly relevant to your industry — and hope it will perform.

Your blog content must be consistent and customer-focused. Always be extremely intentional with your blog content. Use categories to organize your content in ways that align with your content goals with customer search intent and your buyer journey.

You can start with SEO keyword research and a current content audit, then build from there. For more on the process, check out our guide to choosing blog categories and content themes.

You can set up your blog for success by combining your content optimization tactics with close attention to backend technical details that help your blog perform, including blog visibility on your home page and main navigation, using article page templates, configuring URLs and more.

(Or maybe you need a weekly blog service from us?)  😜

Optimize your Best Performing Content

Optimizing your best content is the low-hanging fruit strategy of enhancing your customer acquisition with content. You’ve already done all the work, and your work is already paying off — the content is performing well and driving traffic to your website.

Now it’s time to take it a step further so it converts that traffic into leads and sales.

Here’s how you can find and optimize your best content:

  • Visit tools like Ahrefs or Semrush and search for your domain.
  • Click on “organic keywords” to access a list of keywords you rank for and their corresponding URLs

Once you can see which content is ranking high, do a deeper dive using other tools on these platforms or by doing your own research. Be sure they’re as optimized as possible. Mainly, be sure they rank for the right keywords and have tactics in place to capture visitor information (like gated content, CTAs, subscription forms, and more).

One of our favorite tricks is to find articles that used to perform well and update them. This post was originally published in 2018 but we updated it with the latest stats, links and information. Here are some tips to updating your old posts.

Digital Customer Acquisition Strategy: 2023 Guide

Leverage High-Value Gated Content

Gated content, also known as lead magnets, capture visitor information by offering them something extremely high-value in return. Gated content comes in many forms, but it always offers something different and more valuable than what your visitors can access in your free content.

So, for example, if your blog covers why content audits are important, your gated content could be a complete PDF guide to performing a content audit.

Some of the most commonly used (and effective) types of gated content include ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, templates, and how-to videos.

Create Videos

Video is currently the most in-demand type of content by online users across the board, and brands are responding accordingly (86% of companies currently use video as part of their marketing strategy). Cisco predicts that video will account for 82% of all online traffic by next year.

The good news? You don’t need to have expensive video production equipment to produce great videos that can drive customer acquisition.

Companies (and most people around the world) are using smartphones to record and share high-quality video content.  Simply creating social media stories is an effective way to make your brand visible to customers. As you get better at video (or can afford more resources), you can expand your strategy.

Other exciting video marketing trends you can try include vlogging, live online events, webinars, and user-generated content (sharing video of customers interacting with your product/brand).

Demonstrate Social Proof

Social media alone isn’t enough to acquire new customers. But it can support your content marketing customer acquisition.

Do you look for reviews and testimonials when you’re buying a product or choosing a brand? So does everyone else! Research shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations, and buyers often read dozens of reviews before making a purchase.

You can power your customer acquisition potential by highlighting social proof throughout your content. Some of the best ways to do this are:

  • Including reviews and testimonials throughout your website
  • Publishing case studies that demonstrate your success with other customers
  • Sharing user-generated content (like online reviews and product photos or videos)

Social proof assures your potential customer that you’ll deliver on your promises. It is often the deciding factor for a customer considering making a purchase. Integrating social proof content into your customer acquisition strategy makes it more likely to convert leads and drive sales.

Grow Your Business with Customer Acquisition Content

If you’re ready to publish content that is always optimized to drive results, Marketing Insider Group has solutions. Our writers can deliver ready-to-publish content every single week for a year (or more!) and our Content Builder Service includes a customized strategy to help you deliver it.

Schedule a quick consultation to get started today!

The post Why Your Customer Acquisition Strategy Should Be Content-Driven appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

man pointing out metrics on his tablet

Some aspects of your business are easier to measure than others. Revenue, expenses, and customer acquisition can all be gleaned from sales figures and budget reports, whereas metrics such as customer satisfaction can be determined through surveys and qualitative data.

But are these metrics actually helping improve your business? How can you be sure that your marketing strategy is getting to the right customers and sharing the right messages? Many promotional metrics look at overall engagement volume, which only looks at part of the picture of your marketing strategy. How do customers feel about your products? How are your products being talked about?

To help revamp your approach to measuring your marketing strategy, this article will explore three new promotional metrics:

  1. Net Promoter Score
  2. Social Media Engagement
  3. Influencer Support

Metrics you are likely already using, such as traffic and clickthrough rate are still useful, and using additional metrics can help supplement their data. When used alongside your other metrics, your business can begin to take a holistic, modern, and community-oriented approach to marketing.

1. Net Promoter Score

Most consumers don’t take ads at face value. Instead, they’re far more likely to believe a product is worth the hype when rave reviews come from their friends and family rather than a business they’re unfamiliar with. Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools across multiple industries, and you can measure it by tracking your net promoter score.

Net promoter score measures customer experience and provides an estimate of how likely customers are to speak positively about your business. You can discover your net promoter score by adding a question to your satisfaction survey asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service with a number of 1-10.

You can then calculate your average net promoter score by dividing responses into three groups:

  • 0-6: Customers who respond with a 0-6 are detractors and may speak negatively about your business.
  • 7-8: Customers who responded with a 7 or 8 are passives. These are generally customers who had a fairly positive experience with your business but may not feel the need to go out of their way to continue their relationship with your brand.
  • 9-10: Customers who respond with a 9 or 10 are promoters, who had an exceedingly positive experience with your business and are likely to enthusiastically recommend your business if an opportunity ever arises.

Calculate your net promoter score by subtracting the number of detractors from the number of promoters. This means your net promoter score can be in the negatives, and if that’s the case, it’s a sign you’ll need to reassess your customer experience practices.

You can improve your net promoter score by taking a closer look at the customer feedback collected in your satisfaction surveys. Look for common pain points that many customers experience, such as a suboptimal online ordering experience, poor packaging, or frustrations with customer service. Each of these factors might seem small but can ultimately add up to determine whether a customer becomes a promoter or a detractor.

2. Social Media Engagement

Social media has transformed how consumers shop, with surveys showing that up to 80% of users report that seeing a brand on social media influenced them to make a purchase. With internet native generations, Millennials and Gen Z, beginning to make up the bulk of the modern workforce, few businesses can ignore how their social media posts are performing.

Each social media platform has its own analytics tools, but you can measure your engagement rates on most platforms by looking at your:

  • Comments, likes, shares. Comments, likes, and various forms of sharing posts are the most straightforward way to measure engagement. Research the platforms you regularly post on to discover what types of interactions best drive their algorithm. For example, Twitter prioritizes engagement, which means lots of comments can get your post more attention. You could then use this information to create promotion tweets that prompt questions, such as asking what designs customers might want to see on a t-shirt.
  • Direct outreach response. Platforms that allow direct messaging can be useful for building relationships with customers. For example, after a customer comments positively on one of your posts about a product they just bought, you can message them directly to thank them for their purchase and promote other deals. Many strategies you use for email marketing can also work for direct social media marketing, though keep in mind your messages will likely need to be shorter and to-the-point.
  • User-generated content. You can see your net promoters in action by monitoring user-generated content. These are posts that your customers make of their own volition about your products and services. These might be in-depth reviews or simply a photo of themselves wearing your branded merchandise. While you can’t respond to every tweet or Facebook post, keeping an eye on the general conversation around your brand can be essential for your future marketing campaigns.

To grab the attention of potential customers scrolling through social media, ensure your branding is immediately recognizable. Customers unfamiliar with your brand should be able to make connections between different variations of your logo with ease, whether it’s featured on a promotional post from your business or is printed on a t-shirt an influencer promoting your products is wearing.

Ensure your branding will stand out and look consistent when seen in a variety of locations. 

You can also connect with customers who first got involved with your brand through other channels on social media, as well. Try using a social media append to discover what platforms your current customers use, what types of content they interact with, and how your brand could potentially appeal to similar potential customers on that site.

3. Influencer Support

Influencers exist in nearly every field, from the performing arts and nonprofits to financial management and fitness. With the importance of social media and word-of-mouth marketing, you can leverage both approaches by partnering with a trusted influencer in your industry who has a large following.

Estimating how successful an influencer’s support will be requires taking a close look at their audience. For instance, an influencer with legions of fans whose primary content is only tangentially related to your business may have strong marketing strategies but lack connections to the correct audience, whereas an influencer with a more niche audience may have fewer followers but a higher percentage of them will be interested in your business.

After partnering with an influencer, you’ll also need to give them the tools they need to successfully market your products. This could include a script to read aloud, affiliate links to your product pages, and sample images of your products. Additionally, ensure your product pages are also professionally designed and ready to see traffic from new audiences who are otherwise unfamiliar with your brand.

Set up professional product pages before partnering with influencers.

You can measure your influencers’ impact by looking at website traffic, using tracking links, and monitoring overall sales. Additionally, keep an eye on your reviews after bringing in an influencer, as you may see an influx of comments from their audience.

More involved influencers may be able to help your business in other ways, as well. For example, a business that sponsors a nonprofit’s charity walkathon might ask influencers they’ve partnered with to participate. Or some brands may even invite influencers who have reliably promoted them to even design custom versions of their products, such as apparel, water bottles, mugs, and other items.


Your marketing strategy is always evolving, and how you measure it should evolve right alongside it. Social media and referrals are two of the most important forces in marketing, and your business can make the most of them by staying up to date on the latest trends and keeping a close eye on your new metrics.

The post 3 Strategies for Revamping Your Promotional Metrics appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.