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Fast and Effective Ways to Attract New Customers
When you own and operate a small business, you probably feel like the majority of your time goes toward new customer acquisition. That’s likely not just a feeling and is the reality. Finding new customers is one of the most difficult parts of owning a business, but also one of the most essential.
To find new customers, you have to be creative and have perseverance. The following are some of the most effective tips and things you can try out for new customer acquisition.
Don’t Underestimate the Traditional
When you’re a small business owner, you may be so wrapped up in trying to stay innovative in your customer acquisition strategies that you start to underestimate the value of traditional methods.
Usually, businesses find the most success when they combine traditional and newer ways of getting new customers.
As an example, why not use feather flags to acquire new customers from car and foot traffic that goes past your business every day?
Business owners may get discouraged and feel like there’s no way to ramp their foot traffic up in the digital era, but that’s not true. Often the biggest issue is simply that customers don’t know or remember you’re there.
Some of the cheapest traditional marketing and advertising methods are not only effective, but they’re easy to use. They don’t require a lot of time investment as well as needing minimal financial investment.
Multichannel marketing strategies tend to be best for reaching new customers and also maintaining relationships with current customers. You want to go through several channels simultaneously and focus on the ones that provide the best ROI.
Partner with Other Businesses
Partnering with other businesses is something you can do, whether you’re primarily a digital business or you’re a brick-and-mortar business.
If you’re a digital business, you can partner with another website and take advantage of one another’s social media followings and email marketing lists to reach new customers. There’s something in it for both of you.
If you are primarily brick-and-mortar, you can partner with other businesses in your community to host events or create a shared marketing approach.
When you’re looking for businesses to partner with, you want to think about options that will have a customer base similar to what you want to target.
In addition to partnering with other businesses, partnering with local charities or community organizations is a good tactic too. This builds your brand in the community in addition to giving you the opportunity to reach new customers.
In general, if you have a brick-and-mortar business, do your best to participate in your local community and be active. This will introduce you to a broad base of people who have the potential to become customers.
This also puts a face to your business, and people want to do business with companies that feel familiar and personal to them.
Another way working with other organizations in your community and getting involved can be helpful is because it shows what your values are. Customers are drawn to businesses that share their values, and if you’re out and about showing what you care about, they’re going to see that, and it’s going to resonate with them.
Use Direct Response Marketing
Digital marketing is still important, even if you’re a brick-and-mortar small business. A particularly effective form of marketing is direct response.
You visualize your targeted customer, and then you create marketing with that targeted demographic in mind. You also ask them to take a specific option. Don’t leave it open-ended.
If you can give yourself a crash course on direct response marketing, you’ll learn how to create messages that will show value and encourage your audience to take action.
A big component of direct response marketing is the identification of particular pain points you know your targeted audience is likely experiencing. You position yourself as the remedy or solution to that pain point.
Use Your Current Customers
Finally, your current customers are likely one of your best resources to get new customers. Your current customers can serve as marketers for your company if you know how to harness that power.
Encourage your loyal customers to not only share through word-of-mouth but to share online. Talk to them about very specific things they can do to help you reach new customers—don’t make it a gray area.
For example, maybe you want to encourage Facebook reviews or Yelp reviews.
You can also incentivize your customers to spread the word.