Growth & Strategy

How To Market Your Business And Acquire Customers

When it comes to acquiring customers some entrepreneurs and startup businesses don’t really know where to start, so in this article, I will be covering how to market your business and acquire customers.

A successful customer acquisition program should follow certain lead-generation process or tactics in order to work well. In addition, this process will incorporate your marketing strategy and a plan which will channel your sales funnel and should also be optimized to reduce costs and expenditure, whilst maximize the profitability of your business.

There are a lot of ways to acquire new customers for your business and brand. The main problem with businesses is how to acquire customers while at the same time keep low costs of getting them or monitoring your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition.)

Traditional CPA models and methods for attracting and converting customers are becoming very costly and even some of the traditional sales & marketing campaigns tend not to work well anymore.
Consumers have become more savvy and “educated” in how they engage with businesses brands and products. So our methods of marketing and selling have had to adapt to the times.

Things like youtube, Twitter and Facebook have had a huge impact on consumer influence and buying behavior. How many of have watched a youtube video of a mobile phone, video game or product review before we went out and bought it?

With multiple sources of information its now far easier for consumers and buyers of services to do their own research first, before committing to a transaction.

Another example of this, when I get ill or am feeling something is wrong, before I even go to my doctors I go to google and do some research on what might be affecting me. This way I can look up a number of remedies and brand products that might help me out before I even commit to a doctors appointment.

Therefore a shift towards more effective marketing methods is very crucial for ensuring sustainable profitability for a business and its services.

Strategies for acquiring customers

Define the market for your product

You should be able to get information concerning your existing customers which can be analyzed and optimized to increase your conversions and get more wins. Or if you are a new startup you should have conducted your product customer discovery, survey Idea validation and verified your assumptions to test your idea and define your MVP (Minimum Viable Product.)

Make sure that you identify those customers who have a great influence on others and use them to attract the attention of more customers.

The current customers can be parents for example and these can be gatekeepers for those products targeted for children.

You should be able to come up with good plans on how to reach your targeted customers and the best methods to use in order to be able to get their attention.

One of the best ways to ensure you get to your potential customers is by identifying their needs and redesigning the existing products if necessary in order for them to match the needs of the customers.

In this way, they will feel special that someone has gone to great efforts to ensure they get exactly what they want.

Sell more to the existing customers

Most business people believe that the only way to increase their sales is to go and get new customers not knowing there are other ways of doing it.

One of these ways is ensuring that the existing customers are satisfied with all the products and services you are offering. Selling more to your customers means they have faith in you and that you offer quality services and products.

Convincing your existing customers to buy your products is actually far easier than convincing a new customer. If the existing customers develop faith and trust in you then they will attract a larger audience of customers for you.

The worst thing is when your current customers are not satisfied with your services and products because they will discourage the others from buying from you.

Generate more sales leads

It is very important if you are able to understand all the choices you have because this will help you determine those ones that will be able to work best in the attraction of new customers.

You should be in a position to better understand the lifestyle of your potential customers. If your targeted customers spend most of their time in the social media then advertising your products and services on the newspaper will not reach them and vice versa.

When making advertisements for your business make sure you choose the appropriate market where you are sure to find your targeted customers.

An older audience can be reached traditionally, with the use of newspapers or magazines.

This demographic still prefer a traditional, less-fuss way of consuming information, you don’t need to be connected to the internet, have a smartphone or anything you simply buy a newspaper or magazine and away you go.

Combine your business with social and events

You can arrange for events like a cocktail reception, lunch, dinners, seminars or a party. You can invite a lot of people as well as their friends.

During such an event people will enjoy themselves, be able to network and they will feel good and eager to listen to what you have to say.

It is during this moment that you have the chance to talk about your business and the products and services you offer.

You can even demonstrate, show examples or samples of what you do and then continue with the party or event.

You can even combine your business with something such as charity and donate some money or some of your products and this will help in creating a great networking opportunity for your guests.

You will be able to reconnect with current consumers as well as the potential new ones.

Do not let your current customers slip away

Being able to maintain your current customers is the best you can do for your business. If you are capable of doing this then it means that what you are offering is something of quality and that addresses their exact needs.

Always remember that it is not good for your business when you choose to concentrate more on your new potential customers and forget the needs of your existing customers.

They will definitely slip away from you and seek the services and the products of other businesses, especially if they are getting better customer service and support.

Make sure you continue to make your existing customers happy by offering them discounts, free gifts and most importantly continue offering quality products and services to them for their loyalty to you.

You should also take into account all their concerns as well as their complaints and try your best to explain and solve any problem that may arise concerning your products and services.

Do internet marketing

Most people today are spending much of their time on the internet. Some are there to get entertainment while others operate their businesses on their internet.

Still, others use it for communication and for studying. All these combined together make a very large audience and using the internet appropriately can make you attract a good portion of those who use the internet.

One good thing about the internet is that if the users find your product to be good they will attract other users. You should differentiate your products and your brands from those of your competitors so that the internet users will know exactly what you want to offer them. This will create a strong brand identity.

On the internet, you should not only seek targeted information but also more general information as this will put you in a better position to determine exactly what consumers are searching for.

With this kind of information, you can redesign your products to match the needs of your current customers as well as your potential customers.

Monitor your marketing results

While you are concentrating on winning new customers, you should also make sure that your marketing techniques are in line with the goals and objectives of your business. Set metrics and make sure you have goals that you can measure against.

You can set a series of short term and long term goals, 30 days, 90 days 1 year etc.

If you are targeting specific customers ensure that your marketing techniques are specific to that target market.

Monitoring the marketing results also ensures that you will be able to notice if they are working or not.

If they are not then you will have to change them in order to ensure you incorporate everything needed for acquiring the new customers.

If you succeed in doing all the above then you will certainly market your business and acquire more customers that you had imagined.

Please share your experience with us, what type of marketing techniques have you been using and how have you been able to measure and grow your sales pipeline?

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