Without customers, your business would cease to exist – it’s as simple as that. While it’s great to have a healthy number of repeat customers who come back time and time again to support your business, it’s incredibly important to work to attract new customers to compliment your long-time shoppers. However, we know it can be difficult to know where to start when looking to attract new customers, so we’ve compiled our five favourite ways in this blog post to help get the ball rolling.
1. COLLABORATIONS
Collaborating with other businesses is a really great way of exposing your brand to potential new customers.
The trick is to find a business whose mission aligns with your own, whose target audience overlaps with yours, and who you could create a meaningful and impactful product with, all while ensuring that your businesses aren’t directly competitive. Essentially, you want to be complementary businesses (for example, a baby food brand and a maternity wear shop). This way, you can both maximise the return from your investment in the collaboration, without running the risk of losing customers to the brand you collaborate with.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is a non-negotiable part of any business marketing strategy nowadays, due to its ubiquitous nature. As well, you can reach vast numbers of people with very little overhead cost involved. The spotlight your business can gain through social media, for existing and new customers alike, is unparalleled.
Some easy ways to attract new customers via social media include putting out unique and creative content that is relevant to your business mission, sharing content on industry trends and hot topics, and engaging with your following.
Social media also works as a form of word-of-mouth marketing, wherein your loyal customers can share your content or tag your brand, promoting you as a worthwhile business to their following.
3. NEW-CUSTOMER PROMOTIONS
Customers are always on the look-out for great value offers and deals. It’s a smart idea to capitalise upon this and run new-customer promotions (think money off, bonus products, free trials, and more) to attract people to your business.
These promotions are great for attracting new customers who have been on the fence about trying out your products or services – they act as a final nudge in the desired direction.
Just make sure that you’re not giving away more than you can afford, to ensure that these promotions don’t negatively impact your bottom line.
4. WEBSITE UPDATES & OPTIMISATIONS
Search engine results are still a primary method for people to find businesses that are new to them, so it’s well worth ensuring that your site is updated regularly and running optimally.
Do a full review of your site’s content – from copy through to imagery – and make sure that everything is up-to-date and accurate, making any amendments as is required. Next, review the SEO tactics in use across your site, and check that they’re still working to support your marketing strategy. You may need to update the copy to reflect changing search volumes, or compress some images to ensure that the site’s loading speed is as good as it can be. The list goes on.
As well, it’s worth checking that your site is easy to navigate, to make the user experience as smooth as possible, and retain their attention for longer.
5 . PPC ADS
Pay-per-click, or PPC, marketing is a method in which targeted adverts are placed at the top of relevant search engine results, for which the advertising company pays a fee every time the ads are clicked on. It’s an effective way of bypassing the long process of implementing SEO into web content, and of gaining customers much faster.
The benefits of PPC ads include your business being displayed front and centre in search engine results, it provides instant traffic to your site, and you can run multiple adverts for the same search.
It’s a great method for getting people to your site, and when it’s used in conjunction with method number four – website updates and optimisations – it’s likely to convert to a sale.
These suggestions are just that: suggestions. Ultimately, what works for you and your business is going to be different from what works for someone else, and it’s a matter of trial and error, testing out various methods and tracking the results gained. These tactics work for businesses of all sizes, from start-ups through to established household names – give them a try and see how many new customers you can attract!
If you’re looking for help with gaining new customers to your own business, we’d love to hear from you! Follow this link to start a conversation today.
