Chapter 13. Acquiring Customers (Part 1)

In This Chapter

• Using watering-hole marketing to find customers

• Advertising your Yahoo! store on the Net

• Using email marketing to attract customers to your Yahoo! store

• Doing internal store marketing

The second word of the marketing concept of PARM is acquisition. You've positioned your business in the digital marketplace, you've created a unique brand, and you have a dynamite product or service offer. Now it's time to promote that offering to consumers and attract them to your online storefront.

Acquiring customers has to be the most important and the most challenging job of any e-commerce business. Not only must you determine which of the many available acquisition tools to use, but you also must use those tools properly. Here's a list of the most important tactics and tools for customer acquisition covered in this chapter:

• Watering-hole marketing

• Advertising

• Email marketing

• Internal marketing

But before we go into these in detail, we need to first discuss where to find the prospects of your target market.

Web Resource: Are You Marketing Savvy?

Take the quick 10-question quiz on marketing at www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/marketing/customer_service_acquisition/quiz_are_you_marketing_savvy.mspx to see how you rate. Then, focus on the areas of marketing that you need to better understand.