Acquiring new customers, for a startup and, more generally, for a newly established company, is no easy feat. With the right tools and strategies, however, winning new consumers and growing the business in a relatively short time is a challenge that can be overcome. But what are the best tools and strategies for gaining new customers? The answer to that question can be found in this guide.
Acquiring new customers: what does it mean?
In order to succeed in acquiring new customers you must, first of all, know what is meant by these three words.It should be made clear from the outset, therefore, that acquiring (new) customers means identifying and reaching the right target audience to increase the company’s turnover.
On a more practical level, it means finding out how customers find you and why they make purchases from you, so that you can then optimize and extend this process. In this regard, remember well the words of Zig Ziglar:
“You can have everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
Too many entrepreneurs, even today, consider the acquisition of new customers a matter of luck. In reality, this particular critically important activity is the end result of a very specific process, which in marketing is called a funnel.
Acquiring customers or new clients means reaching the right audience to increase the company’s revenues, and it is definitely the best way to maintain a positive or at least balanced relationship between revenues and investments.
Customer acquisition is a process closely related to the concepts of funnel and customer journey. It is a highly plannable and predictable process based on analysis of the market, buyer personas, and touch points through which potential customers might come in contact with you and your product or service.
The funnel represents the stages through which the potential customer is progressively engaged by the brand.
Taking the AIDA Model, which is one of the best-known models for acquisition, as a reference, there are four typical steps that lead from an unwitting user to a potential buyer:
- Attention (Knowledge of the product/service)
- Interest (Interest in the product/service)
- Desire (Desire for the product/service)
- Action (Purchase of the product/service)
We have further expanded the AIDA model based on our experience, transforming it into the AITDA Model, adding a fundamental step: Trust, or confidence. We believe that in addition to Attention, Interest, Desire and Action, it is essential to establish Trust between the potential customer and the brand. Trust (T) is the tipping point that enables the user to take the decisive step toward purchase, ensuring not only conversion, but also a lasting and satisfying relationship over time.
The AIDA (or AITDA) model can be further broken down into other stages of Customer Acquisition, often referred to as:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Consideration
- Intent
- Evaluation
- Purchase
The funnel, schematically, highlights the complexity of the new customer acquisition process and the importance of working on the different stages of awareness of buyer personas in order to “convince” them and turn them into customers.
In e-commerce marketing, the terms TOFU, MOFU and BOFU are often used:
- TOFU (Top of Funnel): represents the initial part of the funnel, related to gaining visibility and notoriety. At this stage, the brand begins to become known and products are presented for the first time, perhaps to new audience segments.
- MOFU (Middle of Funnel): represents a crucial stage, where the potential customer shows more than just interest, begins to explore the site, navigate it and consider different options.
- BOFU (Bottom of Funnel): represents the actual customer acquisition. However, this step is not always linear or straightforward, as it requires careful management of all previous steps in the funnel.
How much does it cost to acquire customers?
Knowing how much it costs to acquire a new customer is very important. There is a cost associated with each new customer, which you can calculate based on the marketing strategies you put in place to acquire them.
The formula you need to keep well in mind is:
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) = Cost of marketing strategies / Number of customers acquired.
Aware of this fact, you should then focus your investments on the customers who ensure the highest likelihood of repeat sales and who spend the most per purchase.
Acquiring customers with digital marketing in 2025
Digital marketing is the most valuable weapon at your disposal to acquire new customers. But what does digital marketing mean in 2025? What are the best strategies? And where to implement them? Don’t miss the next few lines if you want to find the answers to all these questions.
TikTok, Instagram and YouTube: the most popular social media of the moment
Video content is increasingly successful on the web, and, not surprisingly, the social media of the moment are TikTok, Instagram and Youtube.
Precisely because of their popularity, these channels allow you to attract a huge following of potential customers. You must keep in mind, however, that creating a social page so engaging that you can build an online audience through these platforms requires time, resources, consistency and quality content.
Obviously, each platform has its own specific characteristics and requires different considerations and actions. TikTok, for example, has a younger target audience (although the average user base is gradually aging) and therefore might be right for you if the product or service you propose is aimed at a younger clientele.
Instagram, precisely in response to the growing popularity of TikTok, has decided to focus heavily on Reels and is concentrating its efforts on pushing users to post more and more such video content, promising more views and engagement. If your customer-type is on this social network, this is the format you need to focus on to do Social Media Marketing. You don’t necessarily need to look for testimonials or invest in Influencer Marketing (more on that later): especially in the case of small companies, putting your face on it is often a winning move on Instagram.
Let’s move on to Youtube: to call it a social network is reductive, because the Google-owned site is also a platform where you can listen to music, watch TV shows, movies, series and sporting events, as well as a search engine (the first in the world for video content) and, last but not least, an advertising platform. Youtube’s powerful algorithm ensures that you can best index your videos according to SEO best practices, but natural traffic is only one aspect to consider: as mentioned, the platform is also a great paid advertising tool, thanks to the possibility to create Ads but also to open a corporate Youtube channel, where you can upload all your videos.
Google ADS and SEA
You will not be surprised to learn that and people find out about new products or services and new brands through search engines. Likewise, you will not be shocked to learn that Google, in this field, is the undisputed king.
SEA (Search Engine Advertising, i.e., paid advertising on search engines) allows you to intercept new potential customers among users interested in what you offer in the marketplace. Not only that, doing SEA Marketing gives you the opportunity to consolidate your online presence and make yourself known more and better than competing brands. Especially, you should know that Google ADS campaigns prove particularly useful for those operating in niche markets, where supply is lower than demand.
Influencer Marketing and Affiliate Marketing
We mentioned it earlier, with a promise to return to the topic: it is time to talk, in more detail, about Influencer Marketing.
If you have a budget to devote to marketing, collaborating with influencers is the right choice. In fact, it is one of the strategies that can achieve the quickest results, allowing you to reach a relevant audience and thus increase brand awareness.
Keep in mind that you don’t need to collaborate with top influencers with millions of followers: even so-called micro-influencers can be very useful to you, because they allow you to reach a niche but specific audience that is interested in the products or services you offer.
The potential disadvantages that you have to consider if you decide to go for Influencer Marketing are essentially three: tracking ROI is more difficult than with other marketing solutions, choosing the wrong influencer risks compromising the brand’s reputation, you will often (almost always) have to pay upfront for the content created by the influencer.
What influencers do is just one part of what is called Affiliate Marketing: this is a type of performance marketing that involves a partnership between a brand and a publisher in which each conversion achieved by a promotion on the publisher’s pages earns the publisher an a priori established percentage.
The publisher (or affiliate), that is, the one who concretely takes care, on behalf of the brand, of promoting the latter’s business using all the online advertising tools at its disposal, can be a newspaper, a blog or, as mentioned, an influencer.
The great advantage of Affiliate Marketing is that it allows you to acquire a prospect (i.e., a person potentially interested in the products or services offered) virtually effortlessly. The impact on the budget is also minimal because the commission payment is triggered only when a sale is made. The disadvantage is that, with this strategy, results may be slow in coming.
Search Engine Optimization
As we have already pointed out, Google is in many cases the place where users search for information about brands or products or services that interest them. Search engine optimization (SEO) includes all those activities aimed at creating content that can help the brand appear among the first non-paid results of the search engine.
Keep in mind that competition is high and the growth your brand can register through SEO optimization is slower than you can achieve through the aforementioned SEA. SEO, however, if done well, is a continuous source of traffic that will continue over the long term.
In 2025, it is impossible to talk about content creation without referring to Artificial Intelligence. Choosing AI to do content marketing might seem like a quick and convenient solution, but be careful because the standards of originality and quality imposed by Google are very high and prohibitive for content generated by an Artificial Intelligence.
Predictive analysis to optimize marketing strategies
In the modern marketing world, making decisions based on intuition is no longer enough to achieve concrete results. Today, thanks to technology and available data, it is possible to perform predictive analysis on the SEO, SEA, and social media sides, which allows predicting which strategies and channels will be most effective in acquiring new customers. This data-driven approach allows each individual investment to be optimized, identifying the best performing channels and minimizing waste.
Why continue spending money on marketing without a solid strategy, risking wasting resources on ineffective initiatives? Predictive analytics provides clear insight into the trends and behavior of your potential customers, allowing you to focus your efforts on the channels with the greatest conversion potential. With advanced tools and accurate data, you can plan more targeted campaigns, improve the performance of SEO, SEA and social media activities, and ensure sustainable and measurable growth for your brand.
At B-PlanNow, we do predictive analytics to help you identify the best market opportunities and maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns. Leveraging your data means turning uncertainty into a solid, winning strategy, ensuring you reach your ideal audience and gain a significant competitive advantage.
The search for new customers: an ongoing and strategic process
Now that you know how to acquire new customers, you need to think about another aspect: research is an ongoing and strategic process.
Your startup may attract a certain type of customer at a certain time, but the scenario may change and you may find that the most important group of consumers for you is another. Knowing at all times who your potential customers are (and knowing their buying habits) makes it easier for you to reach them and ensure continued growth for your company.
From acquisition to retention: how to turn new customers into repeat customers
Attracting and acquiring new customers, as just pointed out, helps you grow, but it is their retention that allows you to keep your balance sheet in the black.
Building customer loyalty means establishing a positive and ongoing relationship between him and the company. You can achieve this in a number of ways, all of which are aimed at improving customer satisfaction: for example, one aspect that needs to be taken care of in particular is the user’s browsing experience on the site (which must be smooth and memorable), but much attention should also be paid to customer service. There are, then, precise strategies and techniques for building customer loyalty, such as using loyalty programs with discounts and free gifts for repeat customers and using e-mail marketing to communicate with customers and build personalized offers.
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