Marketing Management, 16th Edition

Managing Customer Acquisition and Retention

The ability to effectively acquire new customers and retain existing ones has a direct impact on the company’s bottom line. To achieve success in acquiring and retaining customers, a company must have a clear understanding of the customer acquisition funnel and effectively balance its customer acquisition and retention efforts.

The Customer Acquisition Funnel

The main steps in attracting customers can be imagined in terms of a funnel that depicts the phases in the customer acquisition process, from merely being aware of an offering to becoming loyal advocates. The customer acquisition funnel can be represented in terms of five relatively distinct phases: awareness, appeal, ask, act, and advocate. ...