As an upcoming small business, it can be difficult to attract new customers, especially if you have plenty of competitors in your field. However, with smart decisions to promote your brand and enhance its visibility, it can become significantly easier. The most important thing is to build trust and deliver value to your customers, or else it is unlikely that they will stick around. That is what a sustainable business model is based on. It might not show huge profits in the short term, but will definitely help your business survive, and even outclass the competition.
An important thing to remember is that we are living in an all-pervasive digital world. With the ease of access to smart devices and the internet, everyone is online most of the time and at their will. This means businesses also need to go online in order to keep up with the world and reach out to their audiences. Without a good online presence, it is really difficult to sustain a small business today. So, by going digital you can identify your potential users, know whom to market, and create an experience that will keep drawing more customers without any bar on distance.
How To Attract New Customers
Here are some of the basic things you will need as a new small business owner to get your customers flowing in. Of course, having a sustainable business model will entail a lot more than this, but these should get you started.
Create a Website
Every business, no matter how big or small, should have its own website. While this may seem obvious, surveys from 2021 have shown that 1 in 4 small businesses still do not have their website. While there are plenty of paid options to create a website, you can easily get started for free using Squarespace or WordPress. Otherwise, there are plenty of great website design services around the world that you can hire.
Searching online is how most consumers as well as B2B buyers look up for new businesses. This means your website not only has to look good enough to stand out from potential competitors, but also needs to be optimized well for people to actually find it. Another very important step is to make sure your website is mobile-friendly, since most of the online browsing today is done through mobile devices.
You should also consider including online reviews and client testimonials on your website, as these will encourage more people to trust your brand and avail your services. These have been proven to increase sales.
Make Brochures
Professionally designed sales brochures speak a lot about the reliability, trustworthiness, and quality of a business. They have the potential to leave a lasting impression on your clients, since being physical the clients can keep and refer them when required. These brochures can serve as a constant reminder about your business, which makes it all the more important that they are well designed, ideally by professional brochure design services.
You must use quality images that have either been purchased from a good online photo store, or clicked under your supervision by a good photographer. Make sure you use modern fonts and match them with the right colors. Also, make sure you write well about your products and services, as well as your vision as a company. The content should be brand-specific and all-encompassing. Most importantly, a brochure should be designed in a way that encourages people to read it. In other words, it should not be too cluttered or “over-designed”.
Leverage Social Media
Nowadays, there is barely anyone who is not active on some platform of the social media, with Instagram and Facebook having pretty much become a regular habit. Therefore, it has become far simpler for brands to reach out to their customers using the social media. As social media slowly but surely spreads its footprint across the world, it has become imperative for business professionals to use social media marketing services to grow their customer base.
Upto 90% of marketers have said that social media marketing has benefited their businesses (Vendasta). This particular channel of digital marketing has proven to be especially helpful for new and small businesses to grow their customer base. Since small businesses tend to be more focused on individuals and the larger community, they can provide personal attention to their users over the social media. They can sometimes even go for joint social media advertising efforts.
Social media is also a great place for influencer marketing. This deals with partnering with “influencers” or people with a significant following on the social media, and getting them to promote your products and services. While paying influencers may not be a part of your budget as a small business just starting out, you can always partner with local “micro-influencers”. It might be possible to get them to promote your business in exchange of free products.
Understand and Implement SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a true blessing for any business owner, as it improves the visibility of a website over time on the SERPs. So, the better your visibility is on the SERPs, the more are your chances of attracting customers. There are several pages from various SEO Services that you can read on the internet. These contain varied tips and tricks on how to get the best out of your SEO practices. Nonetheless, here’s some of the quickest things that you can do.
You should make sure the keyword research is relevant to your business. These keywords should be smartly placed on pages (within the content) across your website that you want to rank. These pages also need short and descriptive URLs and relevant metatags for Google to identify them. Further, you must ensure these pages have plenty of internal linking among them, as well as additional links wherever necessary. These links will signal the search engine that a certain page is important and of high quality.
Make Use of PPC Advertising
PPC, or pay-per-click, is a marketing model that an advertiser is required to pay based on the number of clicks the ad generates. PPC is the most common paid advertising campaign, and Google Ads is the most popular and widely used PPC platform. It is an efficient way to drive quality traffic to your website, as people looking for products or services similar to what you offer can simply be guided by Google to your website.
While every business may not be able to afford it, paid online advertising is certainly worth exploring for quickly creating a customer base, however small. It is always a good idea to keep a budget aside for online advertising, at least for the first few months of your business. You can also hire professional PPC services to ensure you get the optimal returns for your money.
There are some basic practices that you must keep in mind when creating such ads. For instance, you must make sure that your ad copy is short, relevant, and to-the-point. It needs to give reason for a customer to seek your service. Also, choose striking and well made images for your ads to capture the viewers’ attention. This will make your ads much more effective.
Conclusion
These strategies are simply a starter’s list, and things that pretty much every new business, big or small, should do to make a mark among the customers. It is a well known fact that it’s much easier to sell to the existing customers than to bring in new ones. The key idea with these pointers is to get started with your business. As you create a small customer base, you will find more and more customers coming in. And when the next financial year rolls in, you will be selling to an already expanded customer base.
