Five Ways to Gain More Business

One of the biggest problems when it comes to running your own business is the constant need to find new customers. You might have the best product on the market that’s sold at a reasonable cost and that all your existing customers seem to love, but all of that is useless unless you have new people to sell it to. Luckily there are lots of things you can be doing to increase your customer count. Here are five of the most effective ways to gain more customers:

Go Direct to the Customer

One of the most effective ways to gain a new customer is by contacting them directly. If you call, email, or even write to someone directly, you can explain how your business could benefit them a lot more effectively than any traditional advert can. The only problem with this method is being able to find those potential customers. Calling up every phone number in the country, hoping that on the other end of one of the random numbers is a potential customer, is not very time effective. Neither is sending a letter to every business address, and both methods could waste a lot of money. 

Invest instead in accessing marketing database lists from a company that has already done some research into your potential customers. Choose a business that has found out which customers are interested in businesses like yours. This will remove the guesswork out of any inquiries. For example, Lead Lists holds information on over 18 million contacts across Australia. They analyze everything from the customer’s demographic, locality, and even other interests to narrow this list down to people who are highly likely to want to use your business’s services. They regularly check the data is always valid and never more than six months old, so you can be assured you’re purchasing relevant data and not out of date details. 

Once you’ve got the data, decide the best way to use it. If you want to send an email, make sure it has everything on there to make a good first impression. If you’re going to call customers, make sure you prepare a script that will get across the most important points at the start of the conversation.  

Referrals 

Once you’ve gained a new customer from a marketing database, it’s time to work on multiplying those customers. Many people consider word of mouth to be one of the most guaranteed ways to get new business. If someone tells their friend, family member, or even colleague that your business has been a real benefit to them, then they’re extremely likely to trust what they’re saying more than a paid advertisement.

You might think that word of mouth can only happen naturally, and there’s very little you can do to affect the chances of one customer talking to another potential customer. Offering an incentive to existing customers to encourage their friends, family, and colleagues to also do business with you can have a huge impact on your business. Even just a small discount or financial reward could be enough motivation for a customer to start the conversation. You could even offer the same discount or financial reward to the new customer as well as the friend who has recommended them. 

Go Where Your Customers Are

If you are going to use traditional paid advertisements, it’s important that you choose carefully where you’re going to put them. For example, advertising in a national newspaper might seem like the best way to reach all your potential customers but the reality is you could be wasting a lot of money reaching out to tens of thousands of people who have absolutely no need or want for your product or service. 

If you’re selling a highly niche product, for example, a high performing computer part, consider instead advertising on specialist websites and in publications. Readers of computer magazines or gaming magazines will be a lot more likely to want that product. Many people might even be reading those websites and magazines because they’re looking for news and information on new products like yours. You could even advertise yourself on forums that specialize in these subjects for free. Write a post about what your product or service is and how it can benefit others, and then reply to any inquiries below the original post. 

Make Yourself Found on Search Engines

One of the most common ways people look for a new product or service is via an online search engine. You might think that by just having a website you’re doing enough to appear in those search engines. That might be the case, but unless you put the work in, or potential customers are searching for your exact brand name, you could find your website doesn’t even make the first few pages of results. Anything further down than that, and it’s highly unlikely that anybody would ever persevere through the results long enough to find your website.

The best way to make sure your website appears at the top of those search results is to improve your SEO. This stands for search engine optimisation. Google explains it as the process of ‘making small modifications to part of your website’. For example, if you make sure certain keywords are clearly and repeatedly present on your website, then it makes it easier for the search engine to understand what your business does. It means your website will be a lot more likely to appear when somebody searches those same terms. 

Be Sociable 

Whilst it’s important to gain new customers, it’s also just as important to hold on to those loyal customers who have already spent money with you. Once a customer has bought one of your products or services, encourage them to like your Facebook, or follow you on Twitter or Instagram. Then remember to regularly update these platforms with the latest new products and offers. As they have already bought from you once before, they’re highly likely to buy again if you remain in their feed and show them new products.