Next Level Customer Acquisition Marketing For 2024

What to know what marketing strategies work best in 2024?

Here’s our complete guide to customer acquisition marketing!

Why You Should Use Marketing to Promote Your Lead Magnet, Not Your Products or Services

Traffic is expensive.

You either have to pay for it with your money or with your time.

And if you are going to invest resources into something, it makes sense to think about how to get the best ROI. 

Most entrepreneurs use marketing to promote their products or services directly. Meaning, they drive traffic to their company websites or their sales pages. 

However, we would argue that it makes much more sense to create a lead magnet and then use marketing to drive traffic to its landing page. 

Then, once a potential customer gives you their email address, you can pitch them your product or service via email. 

And if they are not ready to make a purchase yet, you can simply continue providing free value via email. 

That way, if they ever need a solution to a problem that your product or service addresses, you’ll be the first person that comes to their minds!

Now compare the outcomes of these two approaches:

• Driving traffic directly to your website or your sales page can help you make some sales now.
• Driving traffic to your lead magnet landing page can help you to not only make some sales now but also build an asset that you can then use to make more sales in the future (your email list).

An email list might not seem like a big deal when you are just starting out and have 36 subscribers but fast forward five years and imagine that your list has grown to 100,000 subscribers.

That’s 100,000 people that you can reach out to at any time. You can sell them your existing products and services or you can launch something new. Do you see the power of this approach now?

So start playing the long game right from the get-go. Five years from now you’ll be glad that you did!

How to Build a Customer Acquisition Funnel That Converts

You will need to build a customer acquisition funnel in order to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

Which Sales Funnel Should You Use for Customer Acquisition?

We recommend starting with the squeeze page funnel because it’s both the easiest one to build and the most versatile. 

Squeeze page funnel has just two pages:

1. A squeeze page where you pitch your lead magnet and ask the potential customer for their email address in exchange for it.
2. A thank you page where you thank the potential customer and explain how they can get access to your lead magnet.

If you want to learn more about various sales funnels, you might want to check out “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” where our co-founder Russell Brunson shares his top 22 funnels.

Get “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” for FREE!

Create a Lead Magnet That Provides a Complete Solution to a Narrowly-Defined Problem

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address. 

It should serve two purposes:

1. Help you attract potential customers
2. Help you build trust

Alex Hormozi argues that a lead magnet should provide a complete solution to a narrowly defined problem. Why?

Because when you provide a complete solution, the potential customer gets real value out of it. They had a problem, and you helped them solve it. That builds trust.

Meanwhile, if you provide an incomplete solution, the potential customer doesn’t get value out of it. They still have the same problem. You didn’t help them solve it. That damages trust.

This is a good way to think about designing lead magnets because it clarifies what “providing value” actually means in this context. 

Hormozi explains it in this video where he also shares his framework for creating effective lead magnets:

Use a Proven, High-Converting Squeeze Page Template to Create a Squeeze Page For Your Lead Magnet

It’s important to understand that the primary purpose of your squeeze page is to convert visitors into leads.

That might seem obvious but you would be surprised how often entrepreneurs lose sight of this simple fact and start focusing on aesthetics instead.

Sure, your squeeze page should look professional, but it doesn’t need to be an artistic masterpiece in order to convert well. 

In fact, aesthetics and conversion rate optimization often come into conflict in the context of landing page design because various bells and whistles that look cool can distract visitors from your call to action. 

That’s why your best bet is to use a squeeze page template that has been proven to convert well. 

Our software includes a whole bunch of templates that you can customize according to your needs with our visual editor!

Set Up a Welcome Sequence Designed to Convert Leads Into Customers on Autopilot

Okay, so the potential customer has given you their email address. What should you do next?

At this point, you are probably still a stranger to them. Maybe they saw a Facebook ad for your lead magnet, clicked on it, and subscribed to your email list without giving it a second thought. That’s great but that doesn’t mean that they are ready to give you their hard-earned money!

Also, you may feel like you have built some trust by giving them your lead magnet, but they probably haven’t had the time to check it out yet. So the trust level is probably still very low. Likely too low to close a sale.

That’s why we recommend sending them this six-email welcome sequence at a frequency of one email per day:

1. Introduce yourself – Who are you?
2. Share your origin story – How did you start doing what you do now?
3. Explain to them what it is that you do – What exactly does it entail?
4. Establish your credibility – What makes you qualified to do what you do?
5. Describe your target audience – Who are your dream customers?
6. Pitch your product or service!

This email sequence gives them time to check out your lead magnet and allows them to learn more about who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. 

If you implement it correctly, by the time you send them the final email they might be open to buying your product or service. 

Our software, ClickFunnels, includes an email marketing functionality that makes it easy to set up a welcome sequence like this!

Drive ALL Traffic to Your Customer Acquisition Funnel!

Just to be clear: 

You should drive ALL your traffic to your customer acquisition funnel. That should be the goal of your marketing efforts. 

We want to emphasize this because we know that promoting a freebie can feel counterintuitive, especially if you are paying for ads or influencer shoutouts.

But it is the best play in the long run. Once you see the conversion rate data, you’ll realize that it’s true!

Customer Acquisition Marketing Strategy #1: Social Media Marketing

Okay, so now that you have your customer acquisition funnel all setup and ready to go, it’s time to start driving traffic to it.

Social media marketing is the most accessible customer acquisition marketing strategy because all you need to do in order to get started is create a social media account and start posting content.

Choose a Social Media Platform

Different social media platforms work for different audiences so you need to figure out which platform is the best way to reach your dream customers. 

You should also consider your own strengths when you are evaluating different platforms. 

Say, if you are good at writing, then a text-driven platform like Twitter might work well for you, while image-driven platforms like Instagram and Pinterest might make sense for someone who has photography skills.

Commit to a Content Schedule

While there’s a lot of debate among online marketers regarding how often you should post on which platform, the truth is that the exact posting frequency doesn’t matter that much provided that you are publishing content regularly.

What does matter is that you create a content schedule and stick to it. Sounds easy in theory, but in practice, the vast majority of people who attempt to build a social media following fail. Why?

Because they get distracted by something else, start posting less and less frequently, and eventually stop altogether. This means that you can get ahead simply by being consistent with your content schedule!

Interact With Your Followers

Engagement is assumed to be the most important social media metric that algorithms use to decide which profiles to boost.

This means that it’s not enough to just post content, you also need to maximize engagement. 

The best way to do that is to encourage discussion in the comment section and interact with your followers.

When you reply to people’s comments, you show them that you care what they think, which makes them more likely to comment on your posts in the future. 

That’s why you should respond to every single comment that you get except for the offensive ones (don’t feed the trolls!).

Drive Traffic to Your Customer Acquisition Funnel

You should promote your lead magnet in your bio.

You should also promote it in your posts but be careful with that because it can come across as obnoxious if you overdo it.

Keep in mind that if you consistently provide value through your posts, your followers will naturally get curious about your lead magnet.

Customer Acquisition Marketing Strategy #2: Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is another customer acquisition marketing strategy with a low entry barrier. You don’t need any money to get started.

We want you to have a realistic understanding of what you would be getting yourself into, though. SEO is extremely competitive!

The majority of clicks regardless of the keyword go to the top three search results. In fact, the #1 search result on Google has an average click-through rate of 27.6%!

This means that if you want to generate organic search traffic, it’s not enough to rank on the first page of Google for a particular keyword, you need to reach one of the top three spots.

That is possible but you will need to put in a lot of work, especially if you are targeting popular keywords.

If you aren’t willing to put in that work, then it’s best to not even start because it will be a waste of time. 

With all that out of the way, if you are still interested in SEO, here’s how you can start generating organic search traffic…

Do Keyword Research

Every piece of content that you publish should target a specific keyword with the goal of ranking in one of the top three spots for it. 

You can use free keyword research tools for this but we recommend going with Ahrefs if you can afford it. It’s what professional marketers use for SEO.

Here’s their keyword research tutorial that will teach you the basics of keyword research in 10 minutes:

Do Competitive Research

Once you have chosen a promising keyword, you should do competitive research by reading the top ten search results for it.

The goal here is to see what’s already ranking for this keyword and then figure out how to make your content better. 

Otherwise, if your content isn’t better than what’s ranking at the moment, why should Google give you someone else’s spot?

Create SEO Content

SEO content is content that is designed to rank for a specific keyword. Typically, this means writing a blog post on the subject. 

The main thing that you should focus on is meeting the search intent. Why would someone type this keyword into Google? 

You need to figure out what they are looking for and make sure that your content provides that information. 

You also want to make your content as valuable as possible. One way to do that is to share your experience, ideally with data to back it up. Generic information is cheap, and unique case studies are valuable. 

Of course, sharing personal experience may not always make sense, but it’s worth considering because it can help you differentiate your content from all the other content out there that targets the same keyword.

Optimize Your SEO Content

We recommend using tools like Clearscope or Surfer to optimize your content before you publish it. It’s well worth it if you can afford it.

Build Backlinks to Your SEO Content

Creating high-quality SEO content that is better than everything that is currently ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword is just one half of the puzzle. The other half is link building. 

Once you have published your content, you need to build as many backlinks to it as possible. This signals to Google that other people find your content valuable. 

Adam Enfroy is one of the best link builders out there. Here’s how he built 3,157 backlinks in just one year:

We want to emphasize that your SEO content is not going to rank if you fail to build enough links to it. 

If you are serious about search engine optimization, you need to go out there and get those backlinks. There’s no way around it!

Drive Traffic to Your Customer Acquisition Funnel

Let’s say that your SEO strategy works. 

How can you convert that organic search traffic into leads?

You want to optimize your website for lead generation by promoting your lead magnet at the bottom of your blog posts, with exit-intent pop-ups, and with a feature box on your homepage. 

This will help you capture the email addresses of visitors who come to your website from Google!

Customer Acquisition Marketing Strategy #3: YouTube Marketing

Building a YouTube channel will require more financial investment than amassing a social media following or generating organic search traffic. But if you can make the algorithm work for you, it can be a great way to reach your dream customers!

Get the Equipment You Need

This might be surprising but the single most important piece of equipment that you need for YouTube is a professional-grade microphone. Why?

Because people will forgive mediocre video quality if your content is great but they will nope out immediately if the audio is terrible. 

As for the camera, your smartphone camera is probably good enough to get started with. You can invest in a better camera later. 

You will also need camera lights. A simple ring light may be enough, especially if you are filming with your smartphone.

Build a Home or Office Filming Set

We recommend building a permanent home or office filming set, meaning, you want to have a dedicated space for filming your YouTube videos.

This will make it much easier for you to stick to your content schedule because you won’t need to build a filming set every time you want to shoot a video.

Create a Content Schedule

You want to create a content schedule and commit to it.

Ideally, you should post weekly, but that can make it challenging to maintain content quality, especially when you are still learning the basics of video production.

Consider starting with a monthly publishing schedule, then moving to a biweekly schedule, and finally to a weekly one.

That way, you will be able to gradually ramp up your content production while maintaining content quality.

Have a Professional YouTube Presence

Your YouTube presence should look professional. 

Your aim should be to create a consistent aesthetic that remains the same throughout your channel banner, profile image, and video thumbnails.

Target a Specific Keyword With Each Video

The #1 secret to growing your YouTube channel is targeting a specific keyword with each video. So basically SEO but for YouTube. 

It’s very easy to do keyword research: simply type in a general keyword related to your niche in the search bar and look at the search suggestions that come up. These are the popular long-tail keywords. Pick the one that looks the most promising.

Once you have your target keyword, do some competitive research. Watch the top five videos that are ranking for that keyword and read through their comment sections. What’s missing?

When you are doing competitive research, don’t just look at the content of the top-ranking videos, pay attention to the thumbnails and the titles as well. Can you make yours better?

You need to make sure that your video is better than everything that is currently ranking for your target keyword. 

Also, don’t forget to mention your target keyword in your video title and description and use relevant tags. All that has an effect on the ranking as well.

Write a Script For Your Video

You need to create a script for your video because speaking off the cuff doesn’t really work, especially if you aren’t used to talking to the camera.

Those YouTubers you watch that seem like they are speaking off the cuff? They are probably reading a script. You should do the same!

Shoot and Edit Your Video

You probably already have some experience shooting videos with your smartphone so shooting a video for YouTube should be pretty straightforward. 

Keep in mind that the raw footage doesn’t have to be perfect. You can always edit out the awkwardness. Post-production is where you whip your video into a publishable shape. 

Also, if you don’t have any video editing skills yourself and aren’t interested in learning them, you can find a freelance video editor on UpWork.

Create an Attention-Grabbing Thumbnail

Your thumbnail is the main factor that determines whether someone will click on your video. 

Sure, the title matters as well, but the thumbnail is how you get people’s attention in the first place. You need to get them to notice your video if you want them to read its title and click on it.

We recommend investing in professionally designed thumbnails. You can find freelance graphic designers that specialize in that on Fiverr and Upwork.

Come Up With a Compelling Video Title

Your video title needs to be both informative and compelling.

Simply providing information isn’t enough, you also need to pique curiosity so that people would want to learn more. 

We don’t recommend going full clickbait, though. Clickbaity titles will get you clicks but overpromising and underdelivering will damage trust. And that’s bad for business!

Repurpose Your Videos into YouTube Shorts

YouTube is trying to compete with TikTok so the algorithm appears to be promoting shorts. Why not capitalize on that by repurposing your video content?

By the way, you can also repurpose the same content into TikTok videos!

Drive Traffic to Your Customer Acquisition Funnel

You should promote your lead magnet on your channel homepage, in your video descriptions, and at the end of each video.

You can also pin a comment with a link to your lead magnet under each video.

Customer Acquisition Marketing Strategy #4: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing, while not as reliable as other marketing strategies discussed in this article, can work really well once you find someone who is a good match for your business. But how can you do that?

We recommend working with:

• Nano influencers (1,000 – 10,000 followers)
• Micro influencers (10,000 – 100,000 followers)

At that size, they are likely to have an engaged audience that is closely aligned with them, which makes it easier to advertise to it. 

Reach out to promising nano and micro influencers and offer them a three-shoutout deal where they give you three shoutouts over the course of three months promoting your lead magnet. Every influencer should have their own unique lead magnet link.

After those three months, look at the data. How many leads did you get from these three shoutouts? Calculate your cost per lead. 

If your cost per lead seems reasonable, you can offer that influencer another three-shoutout deal. See if the original results are replicable. 

Eventually, if you are happy with the performance of these campaigns, you can negotiate a long-term partnership with that influencer.

As time goes on, you want to start looking not just at the number of leads generated but also at whether those leads convert into paying customers.

If the people are subscribing to your email list but don’t seem to be interested in your products and services, that influencer is probably not a good match for your business even if they can generate leads.

Customer Acquisition Marketing Strategy #5: Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is the fastest way to get traffic.

But it’s also a great way to burn through your entire marketing budget and end up in the red. So how can you prevent that from happening?

You can prevent it by starting small. When it comes to paid ads, you first need to validate your campaign with a small budget. Is it profitable?

If it’s not profitable yet, optimize it until it is. Only once you have reached profitability should you start scaling your campaign.

And you should scale it gradually. When your campaign is working well, it might be tempting to just dump a ton of money into it. If you put in 1$ and get $2 back, then putting in $1,000 would give you $2,000 back right? 

Not necessarily. Ad campaigns don’t always scale like that. Something, somewhere might go wrong. That’s why it’s important to take a cautious approach to scaling. 

We recommend starting with one platform, creating one ad campaign, and then optimizing the hell out of it. Once you are happy with it, scale it as much as you can afford to. Make sure that you master running ads on one platform before you start expanding to others.

And keep in mind that ads typically get more expensive over time. If you have a campaign that’s working well, it probably won’t remain as profitable as it is now. And the numbers can change suddenly. 

Jen Street, the founder of Forged Flare, wrote an interesting article sharing her experience with social media ads becoming more expensive. 

They had quadrupled their income in 2022 and at the beginning of 2023 felt that everything was going great.

But then one day they noticed that the ad campaign numbers were changing. They were paying more but getting fewer conversions. By April, their ad spend was up 20% but their sales slowed down. Eventually, Forged Flare had to stop running ads and focus on other channels for a while.

That article is worth reading if you want to understand how volatile paid advertising can be. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing!

Build Your Customer Acquisition Funnel in Just Five Days!

Want to build a customer acquisition funnel?

During this free five-day workshop, our co-founder Russell Brunson will walk you through it step-by-step.

You will create your lead magnet, build a squeeze page funnel, and set up a welcome sequence in just five days. 

You will also launch your funnel using a free social media marketing strategy that doesn’t require any money to implement. 

So don’t hesitate. Take action now and join our 5 Day Lead Challenge. It can help you take your business to the next level!

Join Our 5 Day Lead Challenge Today