Customer acquisition is more important - and challenging - than ever. In fact, Hubspot reports that 61% of marketers considered lead acquisition their biggest challenge.

The market changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, and while we can't predict the future, it's clear that "business as usual" just won't cut it in a rapidly changing environment.  To set up your business for future growth and withstand market uncertainty, a continuous, multichannel customer acquisition strategy is critical to engage, entice, and convert new customers.

Create (and Maximize) Compelling Content

Customer journeys and buying cycles are no longer linear, and every customer is different. Today's empowered customers seek out information across channels - bouncing from a Google search to your website, to cost comparing on Amazon or reading reviews on social media. Each channel interaction is an opportunity to acquire a new customer. Of course, capturing and maintaining attention across this multichannel journey can be challenging, and that's where content comes in.

Informative content helps you "meet them where they are" and introduce your brand to new prospects via search results, social, and more. It's food for your channel strategy. You'll build credibility with potential customers by supplying answers, inspiration, and opinion, and can guide deeper interactions with your brand. Meanwhile, you gain insights into your customers' questions or topics that interest them, giving you better ammunition for personalized follow up.

Start by creating informative content that is relevant to customers at any stage of the buying process and make it available across channels. Maximize your efforts by packaging pieces focused on the same topic in different formats, like video, articles, case studies, infographics, and more. This allows you to distribute relevant content in a format that is appropriate for a variety of channels and widen its spread.

Optimize Your Website to Enhance the Multichannel Experience

Customers expect a connected, consistent experience. The more pleasant and painless you make the customer experience, the more likely a lead will turn into a lifetime customer.

Whenever possible, try to anticipate customers' next needs and interests, and simplify that action. Make finding information, like Contact, FAQ, or customer service easy and intuitive. Optimize your website's search to make it easy to return the right information. Use recommendation engines to algorithmically recommend complimentary products or services, guiding the prospect into exploring your products or services further.

Contacts arriving from social, email, search, or a pay-per-click ad should arrive on a targeted webpage or landing page for the content they're seeking, not a random page. In some instances, web content may be freely available, like an article or a blog post. In other cases, you'll choose to gate the content behind a webform, asking the customer to part with their contact information in return for the content piece.

An optimized webform shouldn't scare away the customer - it should be short, easy, and straight to the point, adhere to compliance regulations, and deliver a good user experience. Remember, you are attempting to cash in on the positive experience you've created by collecting their data.

Landing pages and forms that live on your domain and match your branding bolster trust and encourage visitors to engage further. Optimize your webpage to load quickly and deliver a seamless mobile experience.

Drive Leads to Your Website with SEO

Search engines drive new, quality leads to your website, so it's important to appear high in the search results for your target audience's queries.

For a high ranking, Google says your website must E.A.T. - that is, establish Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

Expertise refers to content and website assets that provide complete answers to users' search intent. The content is well-researched, credible, and focused on answering questions and informing the customer.

Authority means links to your website and content are shared on credible, relevant, and high-quality sites. This can be on social media or  branded keyword campaigns, or another website quoting and linking to yours.

Trust is a major factor in both SEO and customer experience. Trust on your website is established through reviews, clear and easily accessible policies and contact information, and a secure protocol, or HTTPS (you know, the best practices for content we referenced above!).

Of course, don't forget about keywords! Leveraging keyword research allows you to better understand your target audience's goals and motivations, and to generate the right traffic for your brand. What are they searching for that you also offer? How can you incorporate those keywords into your website and content?

Unique, strategic keywords should be included in the titles, heading, and body of every content piece and across your website, including page titles and descriptions, tags, alt text, and URLs.

Technical and on-page SEO efforts will drive traffic to your website, but most importantly, they'll be the right, high-quality leads to meet your acquisition goals.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Strategy Compliments SEO

While SEO is important for the long-term health and reputation of your website, PPC provides a quick win to kickstart your entire customer acquisition campaign. By bidding for ad placement at the top of search results, marketers essentially pay for an increase in high quality website traffic and the opportunity to acquire more customers.

The search queries where your ads appear can be as broad or narrow as you'd like, but should remain relevant to your business objectives. Your PPC ads can include links to specific product pages, blog posts, thought leadership, and other attention-grabbing content.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

A multichannel customer acquisition strategy offers multiple paths for customers to find your business, and endless opportunities for you to engage, delight, and incentivize action. The channels should work together to widen your audience reach and create memorable, connected customer experiences, driving sales, increasing average order value, and deepening relationships with your brand.

Not sure how to get started? Reach out to talk with a digital marketing expert about optimizing your customer acquisition strategy for the modern customer.