Running a small business? Here’s how to get more customers
As a small business, a regular and plentiful flow of customers and clients is your lifeblood, and without it you will find yourself out of business pretty quickly. Whether you operate a convenience store, or you run a studio or practice of some kind, there’s barely any point operating if you don’t have the inflow of new customers you require. With that in mind, here are some top tips on how to get those important customers through the door and spending money with you.
Word of mouth
Recommendations are the most powerful keys to getting customers. People are likely to trust what their colleagues, friends or other acquaintances tell them, and that’s because the person giving the recommendation has more to lose if they provide a recommendation which then goes wrong. This gives it a distinct advantage over other forms of marketing. Internet recommendations are good, of course, but they can also be easily faked.
Offers and incentives
In order to work to its full potential, though, the word of mouth approach requires a little nudge along – and this can often take the form of incentives and offers. The downside of relying on the word of mouth approach, of course, is that it takes time to build up a client base large enough to meaningfully spread the word. Say you have ten customers in your first week: even if all ten are satisfied, only three will find themselves in a conversation in which your services come up. And of those three, only one may be in a position to act on it and buy. Gently reminding happy customers and clients to spread the word – or even incentivizing them through commission for any referrals, if that suits your business model – is a good way to go.
Marketing campaigns
As any number of high-profile marketing campaign failures can show you, amateur marketers don’t always achieve success when they use these tools to promote their businesses. Take social media: Facebook Ads Manager and Twitter tools like TweetDeck are complex and hiring an expert to help you navigate what can be quite difficult interfaces pays off. As https://vimeo.com/valentinovaschetto shows, Valentino Vaschetto knows a lot about this field – and it’s often providers like him who can deliver the most value thanks to their honed expertise. Whoever you choose to help you, it’s important to make sure they have the knowledge and experience that only an expert can provide.
Running a small business comes with plenty of tasks to do. But customer acquisition is essential in order to keep your firm’s lights on and the cash coming in. As this article has shown, there are lots of ways that you can boost the flow of customers if your business is finding this process hard. From hiring an expert to help you with a marketing campaign to ensuring that your happy clients have everything they need to effectively spread the word about your business and what it can offer, you’ve got plenty of options.
