Crafting a Winning Client Acquisition Strategy for Financial Businesses

February 06, 2024

Any business needs a steady flow of customers to survive and flourish since its profitability directly depends on the number of clients. As for the MCA industry, it features a high dependence on clients since the level of revenues is affected by the number of borrowers. Thus, the main objectives of any business strategy are to find common points with a target audience and develop an effective campaign for smooth and stable interaction with potential clients.

The ability to create the right marketing strategy leads to business growth and profitability. In the article, we’re going to concentrate on how to develop a successful new client acquisition strategy and consider related issues to increase your chances for success.

What is Customer Acquisition?

Let’s start the topic discussion by giving the definition for the basic term of the article – “customer acquisition”. It’s a core of our consideration so you should clearly understand it. Customer acquisition is a strategic process of interaction with a target audience, during which new clients are successfully attracted and retained. It’s the initial stage of interaction between a company and a consumer.

Here, it’s important to realize the difference between customer acquisition and retention. Acquisition stands as the process of attracting and getting a potential lead interested in the provided services or products. Retention comes as the second step that comes after acquisition and is aimed at holding leads and encouraging them to make a purchase. The understanding and effective management of both processes are key to the success and growth of MCA businesses.

AIDA Model: Effective Tool for Consumer Behavior Management

The AIDA model is a powerful marketing tool used by companies to lead potential consumers to purchases. It’s an effective solution for consumer attraction, so it’s impossible to pass it through within our topic. The AIDA model has a direct relation to the customer acquisition process, which is why we pay particular attention to it. The model consists of 4 stages:

Attention

This stage implies the need to settle contact with a target audience. Its main objective is to introduce yourself to the market so that potential clients can find out about you. At this step, it’s essential to use different media sources and cover all the existing channels of communication to get in touch with consumers. The following methods are applicable here:

Social networks. Create profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Share engaging content, industry insights, and updates to establish a strong online presence. Set up targeted advertising on these platforms to reach specific demographics interested in financial services.
Paid advertising campaigns. Switch on paid ads on major platforms, such as Google Ads. Develop eye-catching advertising that demonstrates your strengths and catches consumer attention.
Informative content creation. Have an informed blog, publishing expert articles and industry-related notes on a website. Create SEO-optimized content that complies with search engine requirements. Establish your business as a trusted authority through educational content that resonates with your target audience.
Email marketing initiatives. Use email for sending personal offers and informing potential clients about actions and discounts.

Interest

Once you introduce your company to the target audience, you need to catch their attention to acquire new customers. A wide number of marketing techniques are used to win consumer’s interest. These include:

Participation in industry-related events. Take part in all the related (both offline and online) events, which helps improve brand recognition. Host webinars and workshops, or participate in panel discussions to position your business as an authority in the MCA space. Communicate with respectful industry representatives and potential leads to demonstrate your expertise.
Educational and interactive content. Improve consumer engagement by creating calculators or quizzes that help users explore the benefits of using your offer. Offer educational materials and tutorials, where complex financial concepts are explained in clear words.

The main task of this phase is to get potential leads interested. It’s possible to win their interest by showing your strengths, offering unique features, and providing interactive tools for enhanced involvement.

Desire

To stimulate the desire to buy your very services, it’s necessary to identify and highlight your distinctive features. Make a list of your strengths and use them to reassure potential clients of the superiority of your product if compared to competitors. The main objective of this stage is to introduce your offer value. This can be done by the following methods:

Articulate your unique value proposition (UVP). Highlight the key advantages and peculiarities of your product. List the key functions, terms, and benefits. Use clear wording to ensure easy reach.
Showcase success stories. Share real-life success stories of companies that have benefited from your MCA services. Use detailed narratives, including the discussion of initial challenges, the role of your services, and the positive outcomes achieved.
Highlight the peculiarities of your MCA offerings. Use facts and competitive visual materials to show the difference between your offers and other products and services provided in the industry. Charts, diagrams, and other comparative visual tools help sound more convincing.
Interactive desirability building. The use of interactive elements improves interaction since consumers can study what you offer and realize its features and strengths.

This step transforms cold consumers into hot leads that are ready to make purchases. So, the last phase is left to bring interested clients to take action.

Action

Finally, we come to the final stage of customer acquisition management. The ultimate objective of any business is to transform potential clients into real ones. If a consumer passes through the previous three stages, he’s already ready for the action. So, your task is to bring it to the purchase by implementing a set of targeted actions:

Optimized website forms. Make sure to create a user-oriented easy-to-navigate website with an intuitive layout to simplify the process of request application. Use clear forms to improve data collection mechanisms.
Personalized communication. Tailor communication with different groups of clients, based on their preferences and specific demands. Use personalized data and analyze it to develop the most effective routes for interaction.
Incentives and promotions. Arrange promo sales, hold discounts, and offer incentives for regular consumers to stimulate their involvement and improve retention.
Multi-channel engagement. Use different channels for communication with leads. These include social networks, messengers, email, etc. Make sure to create a single network, where all channels are interconnected.
Data-driven analysis and optimization. Use digital analytical tools to monitor the efficiency of implemented marketing campaigns, identify weaknesses, and eliminate them promptly. Improve and adapt your sales strategy constantly by analyzing KPIs to ensure stable growth and big income.

By aligning the AIDA model with the specific dynamics of the MCA industry, businesses get a powerful tool to develop highly effective marketing strategies, which contributes to improving campaign efficiency and acquiring more clients.

Understanding Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

When considering the issue of consumer attraction, there is a variety of methods. In this regard, such a term as “customer acquisition cost” (CAC) becomes a decisive factor when selecting a suitable method. Thus, CAC is the total cost incurred to acquire a new customer, encompassing advertising, marketing, and sales expenses.

CAC is a metric that quantifies the resources invested in acquiring a single customer. The metric plays a key role in assessing the return on investment (ROI) of client acquisition efforts. To calculate CAC, the following formula is used:

CAC = the number of newly acquired clients / total sales and marketing costs

Let’s consider how the formula works on an example: if a company spends $20,000 for marketing, advertising, and sales and acquires 200 new customers, CAC is $100.

The understanding of the CAC metric helps companies allocate resources efficiently, optimizing their client acquisition strategy for maximum efficiency.

How to Increase the Acquisition of New Customers?

Finally, let’s mention customer acquisition best practices to improve the influx of new leads and raise revenues. The following strategies will help improve business presence and interaction with the target audience:

Increase your online visibility. Online presence plays an important role in modern business. Social networks and web portals serve as powerful tools of interaction with the target audience, which helps improve brand recognition and attract new consumers. Thus, make sure to create a good website and profiles on social media. Fill in web pages with quality SEO-optimized content, including local SEO and Google My Business. Your website must look professional and demonstrate expertise through its visuals.
Use different channels to attract customers. Make sure to embrace all possible ways of interacting with potential leads. Switch on paid advertising, content marketing, email marketing, events, and sponsorships. By encompassing these channels, you’ll improve brand recognition and extend the circle of acquaintances, meaning that more consumers will know about your company.
Work with customer testimonials. Reassure your expertise and high reputation by showcasing success stories and positive testimonials from satisfied MCA clients. Telling about successful projects of real clients helps build trust and credibility in the minds of potential clients. Besides, listening to customer feedback helps identify weak points and eliminate them effectively. Thus, never neglect feedback and contact clients to get an unbiased assessment of their experiences.
Create conversion funnels. Make sure that potential clients won’t have difficulties with contacting you or leaving their requests for contacting them. Develop lead generation forms on your website to capture and nurture potential MCA clients. The ease of filling in a request form affects the customer’s intention to build a partnership with your agency.
Use CRM software. The integration of digital software is an indispensable element of successful business development. With the help of CRM, you will better understand how customers move through the sales funnel. To improve customer acquisition, businesses should have clients’ data well-arranged. The implementation of CRM software allows for simplifying the process of data collection, storage, analysis, and processing. By using such solutions, businesses manage to tackle routine duties more effectively, increasing overall productivity and freeing up employees for more significant tasks.
Work with marketing to improve the quality of leads. Pay due attention to marketing strategies and improve campaigns to ensure a high reach of the target audience. Monitor metrics and make analyses to find out why the leads go cold. Create a cross-functional plan to get better ones. Marketing strategies require regular improvements and customization since consumers’ preferences and demands tend to change.

The success of the MCA business highly depends on the number of attracted clients. To gain more revenues and extend the circle of covered potential leads, MCA providers should promote their brands, improve marketing campaigns, and explore new channels of interaction with a target audience.

The AIDA model comes as a highly effective and powerful tool to increase new customer acquisition. By developing a correct business strategy according to all stages of the model, businesses can increase the conversion rate and get more leads from potential consumers. By passing through the AIDA sales funnel, cold clients become ready to make a purchase. However, when evaluating the cost-effectiveness of customer attraction, make sure to calculate whether the applied strategy is cost-worthy by calculating the CAC with the formula.

To improve the efficiency of the applied strategy, use the above-mentioned tips. The integration of modern digital software for customer data processing helps simplify the workflow and improve business productivity. SugarAnt is an example of a high-quality CRM software tailored specifically for the MCA sector. Thus, MCA brokers get all the needed functionalities and tools for client data processing and management.