InDesign Elements - June 18, 2025
5 effective customer acquisition strategies to attract and convert more customers
To scale and sustain any online business, you need a steady stream of new customers.
But it’s not enough to simply make up the numbers: to guarantee long-term customer satisfaction and retention, you need to ensure your marketing efforts are reaching (and appealing to) the right people.
With a little know-how and a lot of customer research, you can create a customer acquisition strategy that attracts, engages, and delights the best customers for your business.
Read on to learn about five customer acquisition tactics that help you drive sustainable growth, along with actionable tips on how to implement them.
5 winning customer acquisition strategies
A customer acquisition strategy is a plan to bring new customers to your business. It usually involves a mix of techniques and methods to help you attract, engage, and convert users into paying customers.
Here are five customer acquisition strategies to try today.
1. Customer research
What it is: customer research is the process of collecting data and insights that help you deeply understand your target audience—and empathize with their experience.
How it helps with customer acquisition: when it comes to acquiring the right-fit customers, knowledge is power. Understanding your target audience is the number one strategy to get and retain more customers, and should underpin everything else you do.
Use product experience insights platforms like Hotjar (that’s us!) to connect the dots between what people do on your site and why, so you can combine quantitative and qualitative data to create a more compelling customer acquisition strategy. Look for platforms with customer research tools such as:
Recordings: watch video playbacks of your customers’ full journey to experience your website as they do
Heatmaps: see exactly where users scroll, click, scroll, and engage (or don’t)
Feedback and surveys: get in-the-moment feedback with a widget (like the red ‘Feedback’ button on the right of this page 👉), or send targeted surveys to specific user cohorts to learn more about what they love or hate
Interviews: run user interview and research sessions to connect with the right people and get deeper insights
Use your customer research to fuel every other strategy on this list, from supercharging your email marketing to helping you create content and assets that really resonate.
Three tips for using customer research to acquire customers:
See what your users see
Do a deep dive into your customer experience using session recordings and heatmaps to understand how users navigate your site.
Spot (and plug) leaks in your funnel
Map and analyze the customer journey using a customer acquisition funnel to identify any pitfalls in your current acquisition flow
Hear directly from your ideal users
Run user interviews to get qualitative insights from your target audience and understand their needs, so you can ensure you’re meeting them.
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)
What it is: search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your site so it ranks better in search engines like Google.
How it helps with customer acquisition: improving SEO is one of the best ways to increase organic traffic to your site, meaning you can bring more visitors to your business (and hopefully acquire more customers) without needing to spend a fortune on paid advertising.
Three tips for using SEO to acquire customers:
Prioritize people over search engines
Follow and stay up to date with SEO best practices, but never at the expense of your user experience. Don’t put algorithms above people: focus on delivering value for your customers, not Google.
Get granular to understand your users
Segment users based on the channel they come from (such as organic search) and watch session recordings from this cohort to help you understand which tactics are working and which ones you need to improve.
Track the journey from SEO to acquisition
Track bounce rates and funnel drop-offs throughout the customer journey to see whether users landing on your site are finding what they need, encountering issues, or not getting enough information.
3. Content marketing
What it is: content marketing is the process of creating and sharing content (like this blog post 🤓) that helps you acquire, engage, and persuade people to become paying customers.
How it helps with customer acquisition: use content marketing at every stage of the customer acquisition funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention). For example, you could:
Use an SEO-optimized blog post to attract new prospects
Create landing pages outlining key product features and benefits for people at the consideration phase
Share a comprehensive ‘Buyer’s Guide’ ebook to help with conversion
Host webinars with quick tips and best practices to help customers learn about new features and get the most from your product
Three tips for using content marketing to acquire customers:
Use heatmaps to understand how users engage with your content
Are readers not scrolling to the end of your page? Maybe your content is too long; try experimenting with different lengths or even formats to see if these affect your key metrics (such as click-through rate, engagement, or time on page).
Ask readers what they likebor dislike with feedback widgets
Prompt readers to leave a feedback rating after reading a blog post so you know which content they find valuable (and can create more of it). You can also ask them what type of content they’d like to see in the future, so you can identify any gaps in your content roadmap.
Diversify your content and distribution channels
What channels are your target audience on? Go there. By delivering your content in different formats and channels—like blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, and short-form videos—you reach more users and improve your ROI.
4. Email marketing
What it is: email marketing is the process of creating targeted, segmented, personalized campaigns that reach prospects right in their inboxes.
How it helps with customer acquisition: much like content marketing, you can use email marketing at various stages of the customer acquisition funnel. It helps you build relationships with new customers, keep prospects engaged, and secure a conversion by informing them of sales, sharing special discount codes and offers, or reminding them of their abandoned shopping carts.
Three tips for using email marketing to acquire customers:
Personalize your emails with dynamic content
Use dynamic content (and your all-important customer research) to create personalized, targeted emails. With dynamic content, you can automatically populate fields like first name, job title, or company based on information you’ve already gathered, enabling you to speak directly to each user.
Trigger marketing flows based on user behavior
Send emails based on actions your users take (or don’t) to deliver a more cohesive experience. Use segmentation and automations to orchestrate messaging campaigns that deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
Keep things focused with one clear call to action
Don’t overload your emails with too many next steps, or your readers could end up getting overwhelmed—and not taking any of them. For higher conversion rates, keep your message focused around one clear call to action (CTA).
5. Customer testimonials
What it is: customer testimonials are reviews and user-generated content (UGC), such as photos or videos, that you can use throughout your marketing efforts and on your website.
How it helps with customer acquisition: content like this is known as ‘social proof’, and it helps you increase conversions by building trust in your brand. One study found that 95% of customers read online reviews before they shop, and 58% say they would pay more for the products of a brand with good reviews, making testimonials, reviews, and UGC powerful tools in your customer acquisition strategy.
Three tips for using customer testimonials to acquire customers:
Include social proof on key conversion pages
Leverage testimonials, reviews, and UGC on conversion-focused pages such as product pages. Use heatmaps and session recordings to track engagement with these elements, or A/B test pages with and without social proof to measure its impact on your conversion rate.
Tailor your testimonials to your audience
For example, an ecommerce store might benefit from customer videos, while a B2B SaaS company (which generally has to persuade more people in the buying committee to get purchase sign-off) may get more mileage from turning testimonials into in-depth, benefit-focused case studies.
Source customer testimonials and reviews by sending surveys
Follow up with customers after a purchase to ask for feedback and collect glowing reviews for your site. You can also offer incentives for reviews by offering a discount or running a competition.
How to pick the right customer acquisition strategy for your business
Still wondering which of the five customer acquisition strategies outlined above to start with? Here are four factors to consider.
1. Your audience
What channels are your audience on? What are their demographic characteristics? The more information you have on your audience both their attributes and user behavior the more you can tailor your customer acquisition efforts to their unique needs.
This means you focus on attracting the right customers from the very start, setting you up for long-term customer satisfaction.
2. Your budget and resources
What resources do you have? This includes people-power and money. For example, your available budget will affect whether you prioritize paid or organic customer acquisition strategies.
In addition to the organic methods outlined above, paid customer acquisition strategies include:
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Display ads
Paid social media advertising
Referral programs (which can be either paid or unpaid)
3. Your industry
What customer acquisition strategies are your industry competitors using? We’re not saying you shouldn’t innovate (we would never), but it’s always smart to draw on tried-and-tested strategies.
For example, an ecommerce business may acquire a lot of customers from robust social media marketing, replete with user-generated content and a strong email marketing strategy to remind prospects of sales and special offers.
On the other hand, a B2B SaaS company may not acquire quite so many customers from participating in the latest TikTok trend; instead, they would focus on creating quality content about best practices for their service to foster product-led growth.
4. Your customers’ journey
What does your average customer journey look like? Create a customer journey map to understand the stages people go through before becoming a new customer. What customer acquisition strategies can you use at each stage?
When it comes down to it, there’s no one strategy that will tick every box: you need to use a combination of customer acquisition methods to meet your goals effectively.
Drive growth with a user-centric customer acquisition strategy
A successful customer acquisition strategy helps you turn potential customers into loyal brand advocates, improving your customer retention and satisfaction along the way.
Mix and match these digital marketing strategies to create a customer acquisition plan that works for your business and grows your customer base.
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