Joseph is the CEO of Snap Adswhich helps local customers find small businesses willing to pay for auxiliary marketing.
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Starting a business isn’t easy and your expertise usually doesn’t include marketing. Even if your product is in high demand, letting customers know where and when to buy it is a challenge. Limited budget, no time and facing a big company with huge resources and employees to spread the word are just some of the obstacles small business owners face.
Knowing the right way to find new customers can save you countless hours of wasteful marketing tactics. Here are some specific ways I’ve learned to compete with the big companies while still meeting budget.
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Determine who you are trying to reach.
The first part of great marketing is knowing who your customer is and where they live. Doing so will make your message specific to your customers. When defining your customer, you want to find at least two common characteristics. This often comes from the target market you are looking for and the customer that is right for you. For example, if you’re a dentist and you want to target families and it turns out that most of your clients are teens, those two traits become a great target audience: families with teens.
If your product is brand new and you don’t know who the customer is, you can learn by going after the customer first. If you sell wooden toys and you sell to young children, but it turns out that older men come to the store to buy the toys, you may realize that grandfathers are actually who you are targeting because they may be nostalgic for wooden toys. and buy them for their grandchildren. So start somewhere and then reevaluate.
The next part is learning where your customers live. Are they from the other side of town or do they live within a 10 minute drive? This will help you understand why the customer chose you. If they live close by, you know to limit your marketing within a geographic area and not waste time marketing outside of that radius. If they come from all over the city, you know you’re offering something unique and you can consider a temporary location to accommodate more customers.
Collaborate with other companies.
Partnering with other companies can be a great way to find new customers. Free products or services allow you to help another business while growing yours. If you’re in an office building, look at the other companies in that building. Maybe there is a masseuse nearby and you can offer your clients flyers for a massage and in return the masseuse can offer their clients flyers for your business.
When customers visit your business, they may want to have lunch or breakfast. If there’s a coffee shop or bakery nearby, offer an option that entices them to visit that store. Work with business marketing so that if a customer visits the coffee shop or bakery, the owners can provide options for their customers to visit your business. Joint marketing gives potential customers great recommendations and is beneficial for both companies.
Offer incentives and rewards.
Offering special promotions and incentives is a great way to attract new customers and increase sales. Anything from discounts, free trials, or even price wins will work. It can also include rewards for repeat customers or for customers who refer a friend. Creating incentives for customers to view your business can give you the opportunity to shine.
Offering existing customers a discount to share with friends is a great way to find potential customers because it puts marketing in the hands of your customer. They know their friends, family and neighbors and can select potential customers. It can be difficult for customers to share, so help them with an easy way to reach out to people. An idea is a big sale where friends get an exclusive discount, something that makes it look like your customer is doing their friend a favor.
There are also social media platforms that help customers share your post. By learning how to use social media and other available tools, you can reach customers who otherwise wouldn’t have found you. Technology can provide great marketing. By offering discounts or promotions that your customers can ‘like’ or ‘share’, you can raise awareness and your existing customers can also ‘like’ or ‘share’ your content.
Keep track of what works and what doesn’t. There are many analytical tools to measure success and results. It will be very helpful to keep track of the different tactics you have tried during the month. By adding sales comparisons, you can see if the marketing from two months ago really worked this month. Marketing is often an investment, so it takes a few months before you see the results of your efforts.
If you find something that works, you can refine it to have more impact. Not every business is the same, so finding the best way to attract and retain customers is a process that gets easier over time.
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Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.