Five ways to attract new customers (that needn’t cost the earth)

2nd December 2016

It’s clear that companies with limitless budgets could spend vast sums of money on marketing messages and hope that some of them lodge themselves in the minds of their target customers. But for the majority of companies, costs need to be controlled and money needs to be spent only on those activities that demonstrate the best return on investment. So, vast marketing and advertising spends aside, here are some suggestions about some less pricey ways to attract new customers.

Encourage referrals, endorsements and word-of-mouth recommendations

Happy customers are your best ambassadors. One endorsement from a happy customer is worth a thousand company statements. It’s easy to blow your own trumpet but it involves much more work to make customers happy, keep them happy and win them over sufficiently for them to take it upon themselves to recommend you and endorse you.  

If you are confident that you have generally happy customers and that you are doing everything you can to service their needs, it’s possibly worth considering harnessing the power of social media to pull a community together around your company. If you’re putting out interesting content that appeals to people and gets them engaged, you get the opportunity to bring together existing customers with potential customers. And if you can get people engaging with each other around topics that are broadly related to your business activities, there’s a high chance of some ‘accidental’ recommendations as conversations turn towards the activities that you’re involved in.

Or you could try to harness the power of word of mouth recommendations more formally by introducing a ‘recommend a friend’ programme offering money off, free delivery, free gifts or whichever reward you think would drive your customers to recommend you to others.

Listen to your customers

Who better to tell you what you’re doing right (and wrong!) than the people who have got on board with your proposition and have first-hand experience of your products or services? Find you what you could have done better. What attracted them to your offering in the first place? Would they buy from you again? Or are there other products or services they would like you to offer? 

Use networking to build connections

Not everyone responds well to direct selling attempts from salespeople but everyone who takes part in networking is completely open to talking about their own business activities, and other people’s. That’s why networking is a perfect platform for couching some positive messages about your business activities within amiable conversation and relationship-building. It’s a great way to sow the seed about your business activities, although the primary function of networking must always be to build relationships, not to secure deals. Anyone who is too obviously trying to sell their wares at a networking event will be quickly ostracised. 

Profile your target market 

It can be tempting to chase the next sale to such an extent that we don’t take the time to fully understand the profile of existing customers and the reasons for their purchasing behaviour. However, it’s good business practice to find out as much information about customers as possible (age, gender, location, reasons for buying as they do, etc.). Is there a pattern forming in terms of customer profiles? 

If it transpires that a significant proportion of sales are coming from a particular profile of customer, then marketing or advertising activities can be focused on this segment as a starting point. 

Does your target market exist in other countries?

Once you’ve gone to the effort of identifying your target market and fully understanding their needs and preferences, it’s worth capitalising on that knowledge by finding out whether the same (or similar) customer base exists in other countries. Despite cultural differences around the world, it’s likely that there are considerable similarities amongst specific consumer segments across borders. Decisions about whether to adapt products or services to different markets, or whether to keep things standardised internationally will depend on the nature of the offering and the audiences, but in some cases it needn’t be any more complex than deciding on ways to make people in other countries aware of your products or services (e.g. online).

And at this moment, whilst a weak pound is threatening to push import costs up, it is having the opposite effect on the price of British products abroad. This is opening up further potential opportunities for international selling. Now might be the right time to dig deeper into the idea of looking into international trade.

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