6 Customer Acquisition Strategies for Growth (2026)

Customer acquisition strategies describe how brands find their target audience and convert them into paying customers. 

“The strategy with ads and marketing: we try to be as proactive as possible,” says Selom Agbitor, cofounder of tattoo aftercare brand Mad Rabbit in a Shopify Masters interview. 

“If you’re reactive, you’re just waiting for someone else to do something for you to copy. So we tried our best to make sure that whatever we are putting out there is a new concept. And we also made sure that we were testing a lot of different things to try to find what was working.”

For those willing to think outside the box, there’s still plenty of opportunity to build a loyal customer base. This guide shares six customer acquisition strategies, with a plan-building framework to create your own. 

6 customer acquisition strategies

An effective customer acquisition strategy depends on your business model, product type, and target audience. Here are six examples from business owners who’ve crafted their own customer acquisition process, including what you can learn from each.

1. Build pre-launch demand online
2. Connect with customers in person
3. Spark interest with educational content
4. Drum up user-generated content with gifting
5. Pursue brand-building retail partnerships
6. Balance acquisition with customer retention

1. Build pre-launch demand online

Testing ideas and building demand before going into production can help ensure you’re investing time and money in the right things. 

Do this with a pre-launch landing page to collect email addresses and phone numbers with Shopify Forms. You could also take preorders with apps like PreOrder Me. 

For example, hydration brand Waterboy’s Founders Mike Xhaxho and Connor Saeli focused on telling their story on TikTok before officially launching their product. They shared who they were and how their single-serve hydration sticks were filling a gap in the market. It resonated: They gained 7,000 followers after their first video, and only grew from there.

Next, they ran a presale campaign, allowing people to place orders for their product before it was made. It was a huge success. 

“We decided to do a presale to see if people were actually willing to buy and spend the money,” Mike says on Shopify Masters. “That’s when we sold what would have been the entire first production run in the first hour.”

This online customer acquisition strategy has benefits beyond the buzz: Presales give a business crucial early cash for production and brand-building. 

In Waterboy’s case, the success of the team’s presale gave them the validation (and the capital) to buy the domain waterboy.com. Not only did this boost the brand’s public-facing legitimacy, but it also prevented competitors from taking the domain for their own gain.

A crowdfunding campaign through a platform like Kickstarter provides many of the same benefits as presale: You get to validate your idea, build groundswell buzz, and acquire customers and cash. And it has the added benefit of de-risking for both the customer and the entrepreneur. If your Kickstarter doesn’t hit its target, it automatically returns backers’ money.

This was the approach taken by camera brand Moment, which raised its initial funds on Kickstarter. That DIY approach is now part of the brand’s DNA.

According to Founder Marc Barros, Moment still uses crowdfunding about once per year to get particularly ambitious projects off the ground and gauge interest without committing funds. 

“When you do a harder project, there’s a lot of financial risk,” Marc says in a Shopify Masters interview. “We do crowdfunding because it helps us figure out: OK, we’re about to press the manufacturing button. Is this worth doing or not?” The interest drummed up via crowdfunding validates the product and signals that it’s worth the investment.

2. Connect with customers in person

In-person events allow you to meet potential customers face to face and get real-time product feedback. 

McKinsey reports that in 2026, physical stores were the top channel through which Gen Z consumers discovered new brands. Some 28% discovered new brands in-store, ahead of social media at 23%. With Shopify POS, you can sell in-person using the same platform that powers your online store.

Craft fairs were crucial to the early success of P.F. Candle. “The amazing thing about craft fairs is that you’re put in front of thousands of people who are your audience,” says Cofounder Kristen Pumphrey in a Shopify Masters interview. “When do you ever get that chance?”

These in-person touchpoints also provide P.F. Candle with audience insights. When Kristen went to shows with her husband and cofounder, Thomas, she noticed there weren’t many products that appealed to men. 

“I got this idea when I was developing the look of the container candle to create something that was unisex,” she says. “And that actually created our niche in the market. A lot of our scents are unisex, and because of that, we were able to have this large male customer base. When we started, I think it was probably 5%, 10%, and now we’re up to 30%.”

Retail customer acquisition strategies also help brands build relationships with other businesses. Travel bag brand Aloha Collection’s founders put a large portion of their initial funds into attending the Magic fashion trade show in Las Vegas, and it paid off. 

“We ended up getting some of our very first accounts that are still our customers today,” says Cofounder Heather Aiu in a Shopify Masters interview. “That was 10 years ago already.” 

3. Spark interest with educational content

As a business owner, you know what makes your product great. Share that information with your audience, especially if you’re introducing a new product into the market or reintroducing an existing product to a new audience. 

You could create a content marketing strategy that includes:

• Behind the scenes of product development on TikTok
• Product education quiz through Instagram Stories
• Customer education on how to use the product they’ve bought, with a Shopify Flow–powered email sent after their order is marked as delivered

Take Sugardoh, who introduced Gen Z to the hair removal practice of at-home body sugaring. Founder Aliyah Marandiz reached a younger generation with a TikTok marketing strategy focused on sharing sugaring tutorial videos that felt authentic, satisfying, and snappy. 

“The best education is education that people don’t know they’re actually learning from,” says Aliyah, whose videos’ ASMR-like qualities capture viewers’ attention. “They’re watching because they’re sucked into that satisfying element. Then, at the end, they’re like, ‘Wait, I just learned how to sugar.’”

This strategy has two customer acquisition benefits: The videos’ viral reach creates new interest for their products, and the educational content turns that interest into purchases.

4. Drum up user-generated content with gifting

Some of your happy customers will naturally share their experience on social media and review sites. Smaller brands can kickstart this type of customer testimonial, known as user-generated content (UGC), with intentional gifting.

Salsify’s 2026 Consumer Research report found 57% of shoppers think UGC is the most important product page element when completing a purchase. As a result, in a 2025 Shopify survey,* 53% of store owners cited word of mouth as their most common Year 1 growth strategy, followed by social media at 35%.

Amy Liu, founder of beauty brand Tower 28, saw an opportunity to provide a valuable service and earn UGC in the process during the pandemic, when masking was the norm. Her team noticed an increase in customers recommending Tower 28’s SOS Daily Rescue facial spray. 

“All these people were wearing masks, especially essential workers, right?” Amy says in a Shopify Masters interview. “People were getting ‘maskne’ for the first time in their lives. We saw people saying, ‘Hey, this spray is really changing my skin.’”

When she realized how helpful the spray was for essential workers, Amy gifted hundreds of bottles to health care workers, who would often post before-and-after photos on social media. Tower 28 then used these images (with permission) on its website as social proof of the spray’s efficacy.

There’s an important distinction here: You can use tools like Shopify Collabs to gift products to influencers, but the FTC prohibits businesses from incentivizing customers to write a review. Creators must also disclose any relationship they have with a brand (including a free product). Contact a legal professional to clarify your legal responsibilities before taking this route. 

5. Pursue brand-building retail partnerships

Once you have a retailer on board, you have a business-to-business (B2B) customer acquisition partner. You both win when someone buys.

Original Duckhead, for example, sells its sustainable umbrellas where their artful details are sure to be appreciated, such as New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens.

Actually getting this type of retailer to stock your product may require finesse. 

“It’s really important to not be afraid to just call and email,” says Founder Morgan Cros in a Shopify Masters episode. 

Typically, her team expects 8 to 10 touchpoints before a retailer commits.

“That’s what I like to tell my team so that they don’t get discouraged,” she says. “Like, OK, you’ve only reached out five times. You’ve still got to keep going.”

But the benefits for Morgan are undeniable. Pitching products to a specialty store allows for more leeway to negotiate flexible terms. She’s gotten her umbrellas in front of a sizable audience without requiring the retailer to make a major commitment. Her advice for anyone pursuing the same strategy: Make it easy for retailers to say yes and hard to say no.

“I made it so the barrier to entry was very low,” Morgan says. “Very low minimum [order quantities], but still giving them great margins. … And then I solved a few problems that they might have: If it didn’t sell, I would do a return, so I made it really risk-free for them.”

6. Balance acquisition with customer retention

Retaining customers is just as important and potentially more lucrative. Gorgias found repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time customers.

One way to do this is through email marketing. Shopify Forms lets you gather customer data through pop-up forms on your website. Reach out to subscribers on your mailing list with Shopify Messaging, then layer in Shopify Flow automations to trigger specific campaigns when customers leave or join a segment.

Listen to your customers and evolve alongside them, tapping them for new products tailored to their interests. Marc shares how Moment’s product line evolved from iPhone accessories to selling everything a photography enthusiast needs.

“We’ve organically evolved based on what the customer’s done. When we started making just phone products, there was a struggle, which is that the repeat purchase rate is once every 18 months,” Marc says. “By expanding into the rest of the things creatives need, it allowed us to grow and keep the business growing.”

This allowed both the business and its customers to grow. 

“A lot of our customers have gone from, ‘I shot on my phone [to] now I shoot on a camera, now I’m a filmmaker, now I’m a producer and a [director of photography],’” Marc says. 

“It’s been fascinating seeing the growth of the customer, and we’ve just grown Moment to keep up with it. If we had stayed with the original five or six products, I’m not sure we’d still be here.”

How to create a customer acquisition strategy

The best customer acquisition methods depend on your business. It’s often a matter of trial and error to find out which strategies bring the highest value customers your way.

“The way I look at marketing is like you’re walking down a hallway with a million doors,” says Dan Demsky, cofounder and CEO of Unbound Merino, in a Shopify Masters interview. “There's a million opportunities and you’ve got to nudge the door open with your foot. Is there something in there? Nope. Just keep going. You have to never stop trying.”

Here’s how to create your own ecommerce customer acquisition plan: 

1. Determine your target audience

Create buyer personas that reflect the most valuable customers who already buy from you. Then, draft a customer journey map that includes the marketing channels they use at each stage of the funnel. 

2. Set a customer acquisition cost (CAC) target

A 2025 Shopify survey of store owners found high revenue merchants (revenue of $1 million and above) track customer acquisition cost at a 30% rate compared to only 5% for low revenue merchants, six times the difference.*

3. Test customer acquisition channel mix, creatives, and offers

Kettle & Fire started with paid advertising. “You’ve got to apply the same systematic process to each channel to prioritize what to work on, and then test it from there,” says Wilson Hung and Jack Meredith, who worked on growth at Kettle & Fire, in a Shopify Masters interview.

4. Think about customer retention

Test loyalty programs, referral programs, and post-purchase email sequences that encourage existing customers to make another purchase. NOBULL, for example, launched a loyalty program that increased repeat buyers by 46%.

5. Measure performance and tweak

Use Shopify Analytics to track customer lifetime value (CLV) and identify patterns. Double down on where your most valuable customers come from. 

*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.