Top Ten Tips to Attract New Customers

We have scoured the Internet for some of the smartest thinking on attracting new customers. While no list of tips is exhaustive and each firm’s needs will be different, we hope you will find inspiration in these suggestions.

Identify Your Audience

Look at your customer base and search for similarities between purchasers, so you can segment your audience. For example, you may find certain groups share characteristics in how old they are, what they buy, and their demographic. Use questionnaires and customer feedback to create a profile for each type of customer and use that to guide your decisions – you want to attract the high-value segment.

Re-appraise Your Offering

Established businesses that have a steady, but not improving, customer base may have become too settled in their ways. Take a fresh look at your products and services and make sure that new trends in the market aren’t leaving you behind and losing you new custom. You have to find a way to update your offering so it stays current, without alienating the core of your business.

Refresh Your Layout

High street firms need to make sure that their premises are always enticing, with an atmosphere that encourages customers to browse. Has your signage moved with the times? Do your walls need a lick of paint? Are you showcasing your products in the best light? Premises should act as a silent salesman for the business. Go and look at your greatest competitors, the firms you want to be, and see how they do things.

Connect With Other Companies

A powerful way to find new business is to collaborate with other firms. Combine your offering and create a suite of options for customers. For example, I knew a Web design agency that teamed up with an accountancy firm to build websites for clients that had just registered companies. Look for a common audience and see how your alliance can add value and result in a win-win.

Make Your Business a Destination

With footfall decreasing in some retail locations, stores have to give customers a reason to visit besides shopping. Are you able to hold fun workshops or interesting classes? Can you offer people advice or help using staff expertise in a Q&A session? Become part of the community, and visitors will turn into customers. (This is especially relevant to firms that offer products to families and children, since it can turn into a kind of day out.)

Create Loyalty and Recommendation

Give your high value customers a reason to like you more by creating a loyalty programme and giving them an incentive to recommend friends. Your segmentation work should have identified whether they are motivated by discounts, personalised services or free gifts such as vouchers and days out. If you are a B2B firm, you could even create a scheme that applies to companies rather than individual shoppers.

Become a Broadcaster

I know of a Chartered Financial Planning company that started a weekly podcast. It gave them a platform to share their expertise and reinforced their brand. Other firms have set up YouTube channels, where they demonstrate and discuss products. Creating content like this allows your company to become part of people’s daily lives.

Have a Happy Hour

There is a reason that bars and pubs have a happy hour: patrons know when it is and will build a schedule around it. Seek to offer regular, but time-limited, discounts and/or bundles on stock and services. Test whether you get more responses by announcing the offers beforehand or only revealing them at the start of the period (mystery is a motivator).

Free is a Powerful Word

A good idea for new businesses, or those re-launching themselves, is to have an opening day giveaway and to let local newspapers and radio stations know. (This giveaway could be in the form of stock or, for service companies, time with staff.) It’s been proven that FREE is a powerful motivator – people will queue to get something for nothing, generating buzz and publicity.

Be an Online Expert

If you have specialist knowledge of a sector, seek out Internet message boards related to your market. With the permission of moderators, offer help and impartial advice by stepping in to conversations. You will have to post regularly, but depending on the website’s size it could give you access to an audience of thousands.

Get on Social Media

Finally, every business should be on social media. Use these spaces to promote offers and strike up informal exchanges with customers (and to handle complaints and queries – but take them to a private channel as soon as possible). If you have visually appealing products, then do share pictures of them online and encourage customers to do the same.

Author: Inksmith