When you start a small business, the first thing that comes to your mind is ‘how to get the right customers?’.
Getting more potential customers is after all the only way to get success and scale your small business in the long run.
Finding and acquiring customers for your business that has just arrived on the market is not a plain sailing task. You need to ensure that your products/services and marketing approaches are relevant to attract the right customers. The continuous influx of new customers will keep your business going and helps prevent the revenue to slow down or become stagnant.
Running a small business is an exciting endeavor but it is full of challenges, and getting potential customers is the first one. It has become more challenging in today’s competitive landscape!
Small businesses now need some effective strategies to put their business at the forefront of the targeted customer segment and persuade them to choose your products.
Finding and acquiring customers for your business no matter what kind of business it is; even if it is about wholesale fashion trends, it’s no easy feat. You must ensure your products and marketing approaches align with the latest trends to attract the right customers. In today’s competitive landscape, small businesses need effective strategies to stand out and convince potential customers to choose their products.
To make your hunt for new customers easier, we have come up with this inclusive blog that explains the crucial tips to get potential customers.
Take a read through this expert guide to get many actionable tips on how to get more customers for your small business.
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What Is Customer Acquisition?
According to HubSpot,
“Customer acquisition is the process of getting potential customers to buy your products.”
It simply refers to convincing the target audience that your products are worth buying and eventually, getting them to purchase your products. So, through the process, you are bringing down the customers in the marketing funnel, i.e., from brand awareness to purchase.
Customer acquisition strategy thus involves the following stages of the marketing funnel-
1. Creating campaigns and advertisements for awareness of the products.Attracting leads.
2. Nurturing the leads until they are close to conversion.
3. Converting the leads into customers.
Why Customer Acquisition Is Important For Small Businesses?
Before you learn how to get more customers online or offline for your small business, you ought to know the significance of customer acquisition.
Having good and steady customer acquisition is indispensable for any business, regardless it is small, or large, and operating physically or online. It allows your business to consistently make revenue and grow. With proper customer acquisition, you can show evidence to your investors, sponsors, or partners that your business is healthy and growing.
What Is The Purpose Of Customer Acquisition?
The purpose of customer acquisition is to attract and convert interested people into loyal customers of your business. It is fundamental for any business to have a growing customer base to establish a position in the market and expand its customer base.
More specifically, customer acquisition is finding a methodical and surefire way of obtaining customers for your business. You simply can’t wait for the customers to naturally come to you. Even if they come, it won’t assure that you can raise money or even maintain profits.
Needless to say, the ultimate goal of acquiring customers is to increase your customers, boost sales, and drive sustainable growth. Here’s breaking up the purpose of customer acquisition in a few brief points for you.
• Achieve business expansion:
To get more customers for your small business, you have to find ways to tap into new market segments and reach a broader audience. This results in the gradual expansion of your small business, which eventually leads to increased brand recognition. In other words, it causes market penetration, opens up new avenues to gain customers, and increases revenue streams.
• Generate revenue:
Being better and faster at acquiring customers will reward you with more revenue! When you get more customers to your business steadily, there is a constant influx of sales, which is vital for sustainable small business growth in the long run.
• Attain competitive advantage:
Knowing properly how to get more customers helps your business stand out from the competition. When you successfully attain a huge number of loyal customers, who post positive reviews or acknowledge your products on your website, it differentiates your business and makes it a preferred choice in the industry.
• Assure business stability:
Relying only on a handful of loyal customers is not enough in today’s fluctuating market scenario! You need to consistently grow your customer base to enhance the stability and financial resilience of your small business.
• Contribute to brand building:
When your customer base continuously grows, it not only results in more sales and revenue but also helps in brand building. As more new customers engage or buy your products, they become the advocates of your business. If they like your products, they will contribute to your marketing and brand reputation by spreading positive words about your business.
14 Tips To Get More Customers & Spur Growth Of Your Small Business
Is the prime strategy for your small business to increase your customer base? We bet it is!
But, if you are not aware of the ways how to get new customers for your business, here are 14 tried-and-tested tips by experts for you. Have a look!
1. Define your niche customer segment
It’s called identifying what kind of people are worth attracting for your small business. To define your niche customer segment, it is essential to conduct thorough market research and analyze the needs or wants of your target audience.
Understanding the specific characteristics, preferences, and needs of your niche customer segment will help you tailor your products to better satisfy them. You can also tailor your marketing efforts to effectively reach and engage with them, which in turn assures that they get converted.
The right strategies that will help you identify your target customers are:
• Analyzing the current customer base:
It helps you to know who is already buying your products, what their purposes are to buy, who they are, what age they are, and where they live.
• Find out about your competitors:
You can learn a lot about the niche customers by analyzing your competitors. You can see who they are selling to, how they are targeting them, and whether they using online marketing modes more while understanding the benefits of online marketplace. Take cues from their success strategies to target the right customers.
• Create personas:
User personas let you know the general demographics, traits, preferences, and needs of your customers. You can create the personas based on data, surveys, and digital behavior or mobile engagement.
• Do market research and identify industry trends:
By doing thorough market research, you can find out the lacks in the existing products and try to cover up those lacks with your products. Also, look at the features of the products that are winning in the market and enhance them better in your products.
• Use Google Analytics:
This step is a must if your small business is online-based. Install the Google Analytics plug-in in your website/online store, which gives extensive and up-to-date data about the visitors to your site.
2. Get a suitable & feasible marketing approach
A marketing approach refers to the overall strategy and tactics employed by a business to promote its products or services, attract customers, nurture leads, and achieve its targeted sales goals. It encompasses well-planned activities, platforms, and channels to reach the target audience and engage with them.
We have come up with this step of creating a marketing approach for your business because of it:
• Aligns your marketing team to specific sales goals.
• Assists you to tie your marketing efforts to achieve the business objectives.
• Allows you to identify and examine what appeals to your target audience.
• Empowers you to understand the common industry trends so that you can capitalize on them for improving your products.
An effective marketing approach creates brand awareness and helps in driving conversions. To define an appropriate approach for your business, you need to underline the principles, methods, and tactics that you wish to apply in your marketing efforts.
This step of creating a suitable marketing effort should be your prime consideration when you are planning how to get more customers. It is a preliminary need that will help you define your marketing goals, better understand the potential customers, and reach them. In simple words, the marketing approach works as your long-term guide that directs your efforts and tactics for getting new customers while retaining your existing ones.
3. Join hands with relevant businesses as partners
This is perhaps one of the most underrated ways to attract new customers but it has truly been useful for small businesses. Partnering with other businesses will help you foster your network and cross-promote your products with them.
However, ensure to get into partnerships with businesses that are not your direct competitors but cater to the needs of the same customer segment. Together, both companies can contribute to each other’s sales by promoting their respective products. You can even provide special offers or discounts to the partner’s customers.
A great example that you can take for this is the partnership between a fitness gear company and a health supplement seller. When you run a store of health supplements, approach a prominent and reliable seller of fitness apparel and accessories. Ask them to add some coupons for free samples of your health supplements with each product. Any fitness freak, while purchasing fitness wear will come across the free offer of your supplements and might consider exploring more of your products, and buying them.
All the efforts of cross-promoting will go in vain if you haven’t provided a punchy or convincing sales pitch to your business partner. When the partner presents your persuasive sales pitch, it will instantly create an interest in customers about your products. When they find that the products are also useful to them, they are enticed to buy. That’s how you can get new customers by rationally partnering with a business that serves the same clientele or customer base.
4. Seek referrals from existing customers
Once you have gained sufficient loyalty from your existing customers for your small business, it’s time to put their feelings to your use. Ask your loyal customers for referrals as they are the best source to get new customers from their network or groups.
However, you can’t take just ask and wait for them to provide referrals from their friends or family groups. You need to create a definite approach to actively get referrals from your customers. For this reason, create referral-generating strategies in your sales channel.
Acknowledge the customers after their purchase through a follow-up mail. Next to that, send another mail asking for referrals. You can provide some redeemable loyalty points, discount coupons for your next purchase, or cash-back offers for every successful referral they make. These work as an incentive for the customers and ensure that every customer refers your business to others!
Loyal and repeat buyers are your biggest advertisers. Since they are contented and satisfied with your products, they are expected to say good words about your products while referring to and convincing the listener to finally buy your products.
5. Build a relationship by utilizing your business network
Being a small business owner, you ought to attend business seminars, workshops, and trade show exhibits regularly and meet other owners and visionaries. So, why not use your networking gained through these industry events to promote your products?
You need to attend these events with a positive attitude to promote your business through effective word-of-mouth marketing. Tell everyone you meet at the event briefly about your products, what is their usefulness, and in what way they are different from the competitors. However, the approach should not have a direct marketing bend. It should have the intent to do good or help the person you are approaching.
This is also called approach networking since you approach with an attitude ‘How can I help you?’ rather than going, ‘Our products are what you need’.
By intending to help them, you can foster a friendly relationship with the other attendees of the business events. As a result, they will remember your business for a long time and might decide to buy your products when they are in need.
6. Promote your products in community service events
Community service events are indispensable in every community and several events, including charity, cleanup, food/clothes distribution, and blood donation drives take place at regular intervals. It is surveyed that most people like to be a part of community service events.
So, if you are looking for some unique ways how to get more customers for your business, this is it. Participate in community events with sponsorships! People would also love to support small local businesses in those events. You can organize a little fun event like a maze run or a talent show after the community service event and give away your products as freebies to the participants.
In doing this, you get to achieve more than one thing – contribute to community service, give some moments for enjoyment to your community members, and promote your products.
7. Offer discounts or a free trial
If you are wondering how to attract more customers to your new small business when it has not yet achieved any exposure in the market, offering a free trial or discount is a fruitful way out.
More than the discounts, people are enticed by free trials! Thus if you think it is affordable for your business, then offer a free sample or trial product on your website/store. This is considered highly effective for getting the market reach for your small business because you get even hesitant customers to try your products. And, if they like it, they are surely coming back to purchase the same or try your other products. On getting the same satisfaction again, they can even refer your products to others and help your customer base to grow.
Needless to say, this is a win-win tip when you have just launched your small business into the market and have no clue how to reach more target customers and start selling. Just talk about your limited-time trial offer or discount in all your promotions, including online, social media, and print advertisements.
8. Request your happy customers to rate or review
This is one of the imperative tips on how to get more customers for small businesses. Today, online shoppers as well as offline buyers never take the risk of buying anything without learning about the experience of the existing customers from online ratings and reviews.
Take advantage of this behavior to get more new customers for your business. Request your existing customers to give ratings and post positive reviews of your products on popular online review sites.
However, you have to keep monitoring the reviews posted on the sites to quickly respond to any negative reviews or complaints.
To utilize the positive reviews posted on your website, link them to the said product page or your website’s homepage.
Reviews posted on social media also have a far-reaching effect on your business reach. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are ruled by millions, including your target customers. Thus, if you manage to get positive reviews and higher ratings on your social medial page, it would add valuable perspectives to your target customers and may even convince them to buy. Social media proofs are a powerful tool and are likely to get you more new customers. Many will be interested to try your products when they see others are talking good about them or praising them.
If you want to know how to get more customer reviews for your business, here are some effective ways.
• Enhance your customer support services quality.
• Directly ask the customers to leave reviews after a satisfactory purchase.
• Request reviews when the experience of your products is fresh in the customer’s mind.
• Provide incentives like a discount coupon or code after they post a review.
• Send reminders to the customers who haven’t left any reviews.
9. Re-connect and engage with your prior customers
It might sound like a wasted effort because why a customer who has earlier brought your products but then stopped would come back again? Makes no sense, right?
But, probably, it isn’t a waste of time! Remember, you are here for doing business, and getting more customers is only your only aim. Who knows the reason for customers to back out or switch to another business? It could be a raise in your product price, a dip in the product quality, or dissatisfactory customer service. Contact your prior customers and ask the reason why they have left! Tell them how you have improved your products and services over time.
If you want to know how to reach those one-time or lapsed customers of your business, then there’s a definite way. Create a list of customers who have left your business long ago, mostly 6 months ago. Check for their contacts and reach out through email, text, or phone calls. Simple messages like “We miss you!” or “We would like to have you back”, are likely to persuade them to once again visit your website and check your new products.
If you are determined to try this trick to get more customers for your small business, then we would suggest you greet back your former customers with more tempting messages like “Check out what you are missing”, and “Check out our new products.”
10. Nurture your relationship with potential customers
This is not just a tip for how to get more customers for your business but also to retain them. Those who have used your products one time or multiple times are your ‘potential customers’. With effective strategies, try to convert them into loyal customers and achieve consistency in your revenue stream.
Provide your potential customers with additional information about your products and help them in their decision-making. Also, greet them with a welcome mail after their first purchase. Make sure to follow up after every purchase with a friendly email saying, “Huge thanks for choosing us!”, “Don’t forget to come back”, or “Would you like to look at other products?”.
While follow-up emails are a good way of creating an impression on your customers, it’s even better when you provide discount coupons, buy-one-get-one offers, or any other offer as loyalty rewards to your repeat customers. It makes your buyers happy and tempts them to return often to purchase your products.
11. Make your website appealing and user-friendly
As the world is going digital, a majority of small businesses find it convenient to start their venture online with a well-built website. It is insanely cost-effective and also promises to help them reach more customers in a short time which is not possible when they operate a physical store. Moreover, a small business can choose from a wide range of the best things to sell online without worrying about their storage and distribution.
Since the website is your storefront, you should make sure to create a professional, visually-pleasing, and user-friendly website. Creating a website that’s easy to navigate is essential to make your value proposition clear to visitors. They would know in a few seconds that they have landed on the right website!
To make your website appealing, engaging, and user-friendly so that it is capable of converting your visitors to potential customers, keep these guidelines in mind.
• Keep your website’s or store’s theme at par with the brand theme.
• Display the products with high-resolution images and from multiple angles.
• Put clear CTAs (Call-to-actions).
• Integrate social media buttons.
• Put details for customer support services.
Apart from these, ensure to make your website mobile responsive to capture more customers.
According to recent studies by Statista, mobile phones account for over 58.33% of website traffic with desktops and tablets only generating the remaining %. The figure says it all! If you are not making your online store mobile-friendly, you are going to lose out a huge number of potential customers.
12. Create your Google Business Profile
Listing your new small business on Google is one of the best and most free ways to get more local customers. ‘Google My Business’ or simply GMB is a search engine marketing tool that helps anyone find a service or product near them in seconds.
For instance, if you are a small-scale seller of mobile accessories and have done your GMB listing, Google will show your business name among many when anyone searches with terms such as “mobile accessories near me”, “best mobile accessories seller near me”, and such phrases.
Whether it’s a physical storefront or an online business, Google gives prime importance to local listings on the search results page. So, your business is expected to get found when buyers search for your products with relevant keywords. However, ensure to optimize your Google business profile while listing it with the correct contact information, product details, and keywords. Your GMB can start getting reviews from the customers and hence, be sure to provide appropriate responses to them to make your business look professional and updated.
13. Post blogs that are valuable to your target audience
If you’re looking for some easy-peasy ways how to get more retail customers to your website, we recommend posting blogs that offer value to your audience.
Whether you launched a new product or have some crucial information to share about your existing products, talk about it in your blog. You can also discuss your challenges, success stories, business journey, and so on, to make your target audience feel connected to your small business. You can even request an influencer in your industry segment to publish your blog or link it to one of their posts.
We thought to talk about this tip here because ‘content marketing’ today generates nearly three times more leads than outbound marketing due to the widespread use of the internet. Besides, it cost much less than any form of outbound marketing. Thus, why not leverage easy, popular, and economical methods of marketing for getting new customers to your small business?
Blogs are a great way to educate your target audience while highlighting the usefulness of your products and building a connection of trust with them. By getting more subscribers for your blog, you can also continuously bring potential customers back to your website and keep your business name always in their minds. So, the next time any peer business asks you how to reach more customers effortlessly, tell them that blogs are a way!
14. Enhance your social media presence
Don’t forget about this preeminent tip while considering how to get more customers to your website! In today’s digital age, social media has become an inevitable tool for businesses that help raise awareness of their brand, promote their products/services, and acquire new customers.
By actively engaging with your audience on mass-ruled platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can increase brand visibility, build relationships, and attract potential customers. Regularly posting engaging content, responding to comments and messages, and running targeted ad campaigns can help you expand your reach and connect with a wider audience. By using the power of social media, you can effectively promote your products or services and ultimately drive more new customers to your business.
To leverage the social media platforms for getting more customers, what you need to do is post content, videos, polls, facts, or whatever you need regularly to engage your customers.
Also, when it comes to getting more customers online, why not use social media to post related snippets? When you link them to your blog or a product page, it increases the traffic inflow to your website and thereby, attracts new potential customers.
SOME BONUS TIPS:
While the above tips are the best elementary practices to ensure reaching and obtaining more customers, here are some more that are equally efficient.
• Build a customer loyalty program:
Follow-ups, discount coupons, and cash-back offers are okay! But ensure to create a specific rewards program to keep your loyal customers hooked to your business. Use a ‘point system’, where they earn points for every dollar spent or provide them with personalized offers on festivities and birthdays.
• Connect with local advertisement or media agencies:
Try to connect with radio stations, newspapers, magazines, billboards, or other print media agencies for advertising your products. Pitch them a truly compelling story that will sell to the audience.
• Have an advertisement plan:
Once you know who your target audience is and what their purchase intentions are, prepare a proper advertising plan and work on it. An effective advertisement plan includes all forms of online and offline marketing modes, such as inbound marketing, email marketing, social marketing, SEO, Pay-per-click advertisements, and affiliate marketing.
Start Getting More Customers With Main Street Market & Gifts!
Understanding your niche customer, their needs, and preferences is the foundation for tailoring your approach and standing out in the market. If you are a small business owner and looking for tips on how to get more customers, these tried-and-tested, easy, and economical ways are a must-try. Start employing these for your business in the right way and wait for the results to appear soon! Your business will have a continuous flow of new potential customers that will ensure you keep growing.
Nevertheless, you need to build a custom online store in a popular online wholesale marketplace for your business before applying any of these tips or tricks. With Main Street Market & Gifts, you never have to worry a bit about that! We operate an unmatched online marketplace for wholesale business bringing retail brands of different segments together in one place. Join our marketplace to create your online presence and then work on our expert tips to get more customers to your website.
In conclusion, for small business owners seeking to expand their customer base and attract new customers, leveraging the power of social media and online presence proves to be an effective way to reach potential customers and engage with existing ones. By utilizing various social media platforms, implementing targeted marketing strategies, and fostering relationships with happy and loyal customers, small businesses can create brand awareness, promote their products and services, and ultimately grow their customer base. Additionally, employing tactics such as follow-up emails, offering special discounts and free trials, and participating in industry events and community gatherings further solidify the company’s presence and reputation. By embracing these approaches, small businesses can effectively reach their target audience, establish themselves as a great example in their industry, and thrive in a competitive business landscape.
