The Customer Acquisition Playbook 2023

by Garett Campbell-Wilson — Unlock the Secret to Steadily Decreasing Your Customer Acquisition and Retention Costs for Your Local Business!

Hello & Welcome!

If you’re reading this post, you’re already taking the first step toward investing in the growth of your business, so kudos to you.

Today, I want to talk about dominating your marketing this year, but before we dive in, I’d like to recommend a fantastic podcast episode that might interest you. In it, we interview Chef Lynda Larouche, who shares her insights on the restaurant industry, branding, and surviving in a competitive market.

And if you’re looking for more food and beverage inspiration, make sure to follow Tasty Local Eats USA & Canada, a community that my business partner and I created to help businesses in the restaurant industry pivot, survive, and thrive.

Now, back to dominating your marketing. If you read my last article on how to take ownership of your online traffic, you already know about our service called Cerebrum Connect. Our team at Cerebrum Marketing Group designed this service to help business owners generate new customers and encourage existing customers to come back more often. It’s an excellent resource for those looking to boost their online presence and grow their business. So, buckle up, and get ready to take your marketing to the next level!

How To Sustain a Cost-effective Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy

Simplicity is key when it comes to marketing strategies. It’s important to have a clear and concise message that resonates with your target audience. By keeping things simple, you can easily communicate the value of your product or service, and make it easy for potential customers to understand how it can benefit them. Even if you don’t have a massive social media following, you can still take control of your online traffic and drive more revenue into your business.

I’ve seen many businesses spend a ton of money on marketing campaigns without seeing the best ROI for their investment. That’s because they’re not capturing visitor information to build their database of customers, and they’re not incorporating smart follow-ups into their marketing strategy. This is where building a database of customers comes in, and it’s something that every business should be doing.

By building a list of customers, you can easily remarket to them on-demand, which is a fundamental marketing principle. As the saying goes, “the money is in the list.” It’s important to have a system in place that allows you to capture visitor information and follow up with them in a smart way, so you can maximize your marketing efforts and drive more revenue into your business.

However, if you’re running a business without building a list, at some point, you’ll have to reinvest more advertising dollars to reach those lost customers again and again. Let’s fix that and make your marketing strategy more effective.

The Timeless Relevance of Marketing Principles

This article is grounded in fundamental marketing principles that are as relevant today as they’ve ever been. The reason I call them “principles” is that they work consistently, no matter which platform you use to market your local business. I can’t help but recall a quote that stuck with me from long ago:

“Techniques, methods, tactics, trends, and even strategies may change, but principles remain constant.”

At Cerebrum Marketing Group, we understand that marketing is a continuous process that requires a well-designed system to achieve sustained revenue growth over time. That’s why we have developed Cerebrum Connect’s 7 core acquisition plays — a Smart Customer Database system that you can plug and play to get both existing and new customers to spend more money at your business anytime you want.

By implementing these tools that can operate in the background of your business, you can grow your smart customer database and enjoy the benefits of predictable growth in your business.

The Benefits of Implementing a Smart Customer Database in Your Business

A Smart Customer Database is designed to help you enhance customer frequency, build brand loyalty, and increase revenue. One of the great things about Cerebrum Connect is that it provides an efficient and reliable way of keeping your audience up to date on what’s happening in your business, whether it’s new products, hiring staff, or changing hours.

Essentially, Cerebrum Connect is a system that does three things: helps your business generate new customers, encourages existing and new customers to come back more often, and provides a quick and reliable means of communication with your customers.

With these functions working together, you’ll have a customer frequency-enhancing system that runs on autopilot. Keep reading and I’ll cover all 7 of our fundamental marketing principles, that we’ve created to help you leverage your existing customers to become your marketing army. This means you can build a strong online and offline business identity through word-of-mouth, which is increasingly important in the age of social media.

By building word-of-mouth online and offline, you’ll be able to attract more customers and increase your business’s value per customer. Cerebrum Connect is perfect for any business owner, whether you’re a retail store, hair salon, local restaurant, spa, massage studio, car wash, and so on.

I see many local businesses invest in advertising just to stay top-of-mind and not be forgotten, without really focusing on generating new customers or encouraging existing ones to come back. At the end of the day, what you really want as a business owner is a predictable way to consistently bring in new customers and keep your existing ones coming back. So, lets continue.

How To Leverage Your New & Existing Customers for Growth and Expansion

For starters, it’s a great idea to have a list of all your new and existing customers in a system that you can use to communicate with them anytime. The first step is to capture customer information such as email, name, phone number, and optionally, a birthday or an anniversary. From there, we can do some cool stuff with this information.

To make it more appealing for customers to share their information with you, we need to provide an incentive. For example, if you have a restaurant, you could offer a “FREE cheesy bread or soft drink” to customers who sign up for your Exclusive Members Club. And to help your offer reach more potential customers, we can put it all over social media!

It will exist as a web link, a description on your Instagram, a post on your Google My Business listing, a button on your Facebook page, and everywhere that can be used to drive someone to your signup form.

We can also put a call to action on all your promotional marketing materials, including take-out bags, existing packaging, business cards, and flyers. In all my years of experience, this has proven to be an easy and effective way to grow your customer database and incentivize customers to join your Exclusive Members Club.

The Two Most Essential Customer Acquisition Plays for Monthly Growth

The main goal is to keep your business “exclusive member ready” and to drive customers in passively. To achieve this, we recommend focusing on two plays:

1. The New Customer Frequency Play, and
2. The Existing Customer Frequency Play

It’s best to implement both plays at least once or twice a month to create a consistent flow of new and existing customers and to build top-of-mind awareness in your local community.

Cerebrum Connect will manage the integration of these methods to continuously drive new customers into your business.

Once you’ve implemented all 7 different plays, you’ll have a comprehensive approach to planning your marketing for the months and years to come.

As your list grows, you can simply make simple edits to your campaigns and special offers of the month. We can also talk about how to get your audience excited about joining your Exclusive Members Club and receiving offers and promotions from your business. Does that sound good?

1) The Smart Digital Offer Campaign

I want to emphasize “The Smart Digital Offer” as one of the main offers that you should be leading with to grab the attention of potential customers. Let me tell you more about it.

Our Smart Digital Offer is a social media offer that comes with automated follow-up messages aimed at getting new customers and generating more visibility for your business. By promoting this offer in-house and on all your social channels, you can entice local consumers to click on the link in the ad, or share it in a direct message amongst friends. This will lead them to a signup form to get a “FREE appetizer or save 10%” with the purchase of another item.

This offer has proven to greatly increase the redemption rate and helps you stay in your customers’ back pockets. Once they sign up, they’ll start receiving built-in automated text and email messages that will continue to promote your Smart Digital Offers. It’s a touchless marketing experience that your customers are looking for.

With our built-in logic, you can leverage this offer in multiple areas to give it life and build your list of exclusive customers. It can stop any further messages once an offer has been redeemed and can trigger other messages to go out to motivate further action from your list, such as sharing new promotions, running surveys, building your reviews, and more. It’s an effective way to consistently generate new customers and get existing customers to come back more often with predictability.

At Cerebrum, we understand that growing your customer database can be overwhelming, especially without proper systems in place. But trust me, the cost of NOT doing it is far greater. It’s easy to procrastinate, but let’s work together to create a plan that works for you and your business.

So, if you’re looking for a more effective and sustainable way to generate new customers and retain existing ones, I highly recommend our Smart Digital Offer.

2) The Exclusive Members’ Marketing Campaign

Now, let’s dive into the benefits of having an Exclusive Members Club and how it can help you grow your business. Let me tell you, it’s a game-changer!

The primary function of an Exclusive Members Club is to build a list of new and existing customers, and then market to that list by broadcasting Smart Digital Offers using both text and email. This double leverage of running a Social Offer Campaign is a fantastic way to reach more people in your local community and build your list faster.

Start by inviting the customers who frequently buy from your business because it always costs more to market to new customers than existing customers.

By using advertising to promote your Exclusive Members Club and digital offers, you can easily showcase your business to thousands of people in your local area, which is an excellent way to attract new customers and build a loyal following.

You can use Cerebrum Connect to reach your customers faster and share content that you already share on social media, such as new menu items, calls for hiring staff, new hours of operation, new products or services, etc. Plus, you can also use it for general communication and important messages such as customer appreciation day or a new menu item.

The fact that you can have a list of people who raise their hand for your offers is powerful, and it allows you to do stuff with it. Each month you can rinse and repeat this process to increase the value of your list. Over time, your list begins to compound, which is fantastic for your business.

Imagine having 1,500 people on your list, and you could use Cerebrum Connect to implement an “Exclusive Offer Blast” to communicate with all of them at once. You could offer something like BOGO with the purchase of two drinks, which is a great way to drive more sales and increase your revenue.

By using Cerebrum Connect, you can plan out your marketing calendar for the year so that you can tell your customers ahead of time what to expect. This is a fantastic way to keep them engaged and interested in your business.

Overall, using an Exclusive Members Club and Cerebrum Connect is an excellent way to increase your customer frequency and enhance your revenue. It’s a powerful tool that every business owner should consider using, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have about it.

3) The Birthday Marketing Campaign

Here’s another powerful way to increase your business’s revenue and attract new customers. Did you know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of potential new customers celebrating a birthday EVERY WEEK in your town? That’s where Birthday Marketing comes in. It’s a simple method that can help you quickly get people on your list and generate immediate customers.

As a business owner, I understand that you face many challenges, such as keeping your cash flow going during non-peak hours, increasing repeat business with existing customers, having ongoing visibility and exposure, and generating a consistent flow of new customers. These challenges require you to advertise in multiple channels, which can be very costly with no guarantee of results. It can be tough to position your business in such a way that breaks through the noise of other competitors and gets the attention of your potential customers. That’s where our Birthday Club Marketing Campaign in Cerebrum Connect can help.

The Birthday Club Marketing Campaign in Cerebrum Connect gives you the ability to generate daily new customers and increase your sales by upwards of 30%. It’s a unique way of marketing that enables your business to become the talk of the town. It’s also one of the best ways to build your business with predictability and consistency.

Unlike most birthday clubs that focus on existing customers, Cerebrum Connect uses a unique system to drive new customers to your business on a daily basis and will continuously follow up with them every year leading up to their next birthday celebration. Using a unique targeting system, Cerebrum Connect is able to identify thousands of residents local to your business, who are having a birthday within the next 7 days, and who live within a 15–20 mile radius of your business.

Birthday customers are your highest valued customers per transaction as they rarely celebrate alone, and they typically bring groups of people to celebrate with them. By providing them with an incentive to spend their special day at your business, you can attract new customers and significantly increase your revenue.

Cerebrum Connect is so effective that we typically only work with a handful of businesses that share the same niche per geographic area. It’s only fair. That’s why we’d love to work with you and help you achieve your business goals.

Let’s move forward and talk about how contest and giveaway campaigns can be a powerful way to help your business generate more revenue.

4) The Contest & Giveaway Campaign

The campaigns within Cerebrum Connect are designed to help you structure contests and giveaways for your exclusive customers who are already in your database. Smart Contests & Giveaways are an effective way to generate new customers and generate repeat business through existing customers by advertising your contest on social media.

To give you an example, you could send a text message to your existing customers saying, “Hey! Would you like to win lunch for a whole week for free? Just go here!” You can then route them through different areas within a text message and an email where you can market to existing customers easily to drum up more engagement and generate more revenue.

When using contests to generate new customers, it’s recommended to structure your contests as follows: have one grand prize winner, 1 second-place winner, and one 3rd place winner. All winning coupons will automatically expire in 7 days from the end of the contest date, and the winners have been notified. Using Cerebrum Connect, you can also motivate the remaining 497 contestants to still have a reason to come into your business by issuing them an offer of lesser value as a reward for participating.

To advertise your contest, it’s best to target the followers of your social media pages and their friends that live within a 15–20 mile radius of your business. This type of targeting works extremely well.

Overall, this is a simple and quick way to generate more business. Next, let me show you how survey and review request campaigns can also be a powerful way to help your business generate more revenue.

5) The Survey & Review Request Campaign

I am excited to talk to you about how Cerebrum Connect can help you gather feedback from your customers to improve their overall experience with your business. Cerebrum Connect has built-in Survey & Review Request Campaign features that make it easy for you to collect feedback from both new and existing customers.

By leveraging the feedback gathered from these surveys, you can gain a better understanding of what your customers like and don’t like, allowing you to make the necessary improvements to enhance their experience when they purchase from your business.

One of the most exciting features of Cerebrum Connect is that once your customers complete the survey, you can reward them with a Smart Digital Offer. This helps incentivize customers to take the survey and show your appreciation for their participation.

Additionally, Cerebrum Connect can help you generate reviews on popular platforms such as Google, Bing, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more. By using this feature, you can encourage your customers to leave positive reviews and share their positive experiences with others.

To take it a step further, once a customer has left a review, Cerebrum Connect can issue another offer to them via text and email as a way of showing your appreciation for their support. All they need to do to get started is to follow the link in your text, complete the survey and the system will automatically send them a reward.

By using Cerebrum Connect, you can generate a lot of business by capturing feedback from your existing customers. With this intel, you can improve the user experience, encouraging more visits, and resulting in an increase in revenues.

I believe that loyalty campaigns can also be a powerful way to help your business generate more revenue. Moving right along, let’s talk about how Cerebrum Connect can help you develop a strong loyalty program that will keep your customers coming back for more.

6) The Loyalty Marketing Campaign

Let’s dive right into Cerebrum Connect’s Loyalty Campaign!

The Loyalty Campaign built within Cerebrum Connect is an excellent tool for businesses to keep track of customer spending and reward them accordingly. By tracking your customers’ spending habits, you can offer them a Smart Digital Offer as a reward for their loyalty. Additionally, you can also reward them based on the number of redemptions they’ve claimed.

One feature that sets Cerebrum Connect apart is its ability to keep track of how many offers your customers have claimed. This means that the system can automatically reward them with another smart social coupon offer based on their loyalty, measured by the number of social offers redeemed.

To make the checkout process more efficient, customers can “check-in” by scanning a QR code on a table tent or texting a code. The system will then send them a Smart Digital Offer that will expire in 5 days, encouraging them to revisit your business. This eliminates the need for physical punch cards and is particularly useful in our current contactless society.

Another great feature is the ability to offer Tiered Rewards. For example, you can set a “master goal” of $500 and reward customers with a generous offer such as a “free haircut” or “dinner for two” when they reach that milestone. You can also set smaller rewards for reaching halfway, such as a “free appetizer.”

Cerebrum Connect’s Loyalty Campaign is an excellent tool for businesses looking to keep track of customer spending and reward their loyalty. With features such as Smart Digital Offers & Tiered Rewards, you can generate more revenue by getting your customers to visit your business more frequently.

But, that’s not all. We also offer Referral Marketing Campaigns, which can be a powerful way to generate more revenue for your business.

7) The Referral Marketing Campaign

Have you tried implementing a Referral Campaign in your business yet?

The Referral marketing campaigns built into Cerebrum Connect are designed to incentivize your existing customers to refer new customers to your business. By offering rewards or discounts for referrals, you can increase your customer base and revenue.

It’s a powerful marketing strategy that can help you generate new customers and increase top-of-mind awareness.

You can incentivize your subscribers to refer your business to their friends and family in exchange for free offers. And the best part is that you can promote this campaign on social media to reach even more potential customers.

Here’s how it works: Every exclusive member or new customer that signs up to be an Exclusive Club Member will receive their own unique referral link. When they share this link with their family, friends, and associates, it will lead to a signup form for them to join your Exclusive Members Club. And Cerebrum Connect will track their referrals and notify them of their progress.

By using this strategy, you can quickly and easily expand your customer base without spending a lot of money on advertising. And when an exclusive member reaches the desired goal of 10 referrals, the system will automatically send them a text message and email with a link to the reward for referring the required number of referrals.

There are many other cool marketing campaigns that come from using referral marketing, and you’ll quickly see how small incremental numbers will compound over time using all the various plays that are available in Cerebrum Connect.

Boost Your Revenue with Cerebrum!

In conclusion, if you’re looking for ways to increase your revenue and take your business to the next level, implementing the customer acquisition plays discussed in this article is the way to go. By doing so, you’ll be able to generate new customers, increase customer retention and spending, maintain ongoing visibility and top-of-mind awareness, build a valuable customer contact list, and ultimately grow your revenue over time. It’s important to note that many businesses are paying for local offers without the ability to build an asset or utilize smart marketing campaigns. By using Cerebrum Connect, you’ll have the opportunity to take advantage of these powerful tools and increase your revenue predictably. Don’t leave money on the table, invest in your business’s success today.

Need Help Implementing The Customer Acquisition Playbook For Your Business?

In conclusion, if you’re a local business owner looking to streamline your customer engagement and boost your revenue growth, Cerebrum Connect is the perfect solution for you.

With its automated tracking of redemptions, touchless Smart Digital Offers, and fast communication platform, Cerebrum Connect will not only save you time but also encourage your customers to return more often and spend more money. By utilizing Cerebrum Connect, you can predictably generate revenues on demand and stay top of mind with your customers.

So, if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, reach out to our team at Cerebrum Marketing Group today and request a demo by texting ‘CONNECT’ to 778–770–5809.📲

Thanks for reading!

So there you have it, some valuable marketing and advertising tips from GCAMWIL. I hope you found this article insightful and helpful in your own marketing efforts. Remember to hit the subscribe and like button to stay updated on future articles, videos, and podcasts. If you know someone who could benefit from this information, please share it with them. We are all in this together, and by sharing our knowledge and experiences, we can help each other succeed. Thank you for reading, and take care!

About Garett Campbell-Wilson

Garett Campbell-Wilson is a creative strategist and digital marketer, sharing his expertise and experience in art and technology to help businesses thrive. As an artist at @gcamwilstudio and marketing consultant at @cerebrummg, he explores the powerful connection between creativity and business success.

Find Me On Social Media

Keep in touch with me through social media! You can follow me and send me a direct message on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you have any business-related questions, feel free to email me at garett@cerebrummarketinggroup.com.