Strategies to Attract Prospects and Engage More Customers for Small Businesses
As a business owner, you must understand that marketing is one of the key aspects that can turn small business ideas into profitable ventures. You can spend countless hours and resources on achieving perfection in your product/service. In this article, we’ll discuss all the strategies we used to attract and engage more customers for small businesses.
It takes a lot of thought processes, strategies, and experiments to achieve desired results. You’ll only get the fruits of labor once you attract new customers and retain them for the long term.
Fortunately though, we have already tried countless methods to bring in new customers before landing on the right strategy.
In this article, we’ll discuss all the strategies we used to attract and engage more customers for small businesses.
So, without any further ado, let’s just jump into it.
Identify your Ideal Customer
Many businesses can go wrong when they fail to identify their ideal client. So, before you forge a marketing plan, it’s vital to know the customers that you are targeting.
To understand this, you have to first start by creating a buyer persona of your ideal customer.
Constructing an ideal buyer’s persona requires you to research the demographics and psychographics of your model buyer.
Think like your clients and understand their motivations, goals, and biggest fears.
Research their current habits like what they search for on the internet and what piques their interests.
Take notes of customers’ buying patterns too.
Some consumers purchase things right off the bat while others like to conduct their own comprehensive research before making a purchase.
To conduct research on your ideal clients you can:
- Use tools like Google Analytics
- Join social media groups in your industry
- Utilize Google Trends
- Conduct interviews and surveys
Also, it is important to avoid targeting a broad market segment that has no relevance to your niche and market.
Be the Solution to your Client’s Problems
After developing a buyer persona, the next thing you need to do is become your client’s helping hand.
Get familiar with the problems that they are facing and propose a solution.
Give customers a good reason to purchase from you.
Produce great content for your clients and let them know about your services and how you can help them solve their problems.
It is important to weigh in on your unique selling points and why they should choose you over the other options that are available.
The best way to find the solution to your customers' problems is by asking them how they wish these issues to be solved.
Your goal should be to make these problems your own and work towards providing the best possible solution for these matters.
Run a Direct Response Marketing Campaign
Direct Response Marketing in simpler terms is a call to action marketing strategy.
The goal here is the persuade customers towards a certain action and persuade them to generate new leads.
This action can usually lead to a sale, a sign-up, a survey, or even just as simple as sharing a post on social media.
The call to action (CTA) is the most important part of a DRM campaign. Your CTA should be solid, clear, and bold. So after reading your content/message, your target audience should know exactly what to do after.
The DRM campaigns that create a sense of urgency in customers’ minds are the ones that get the most responses. And to create this sense of urgency you can use tactics like deadlines and limited stock offers to generate newer leads.
Develop Business Partnerships
This is an amazing method for businesses that are looking to connect to a wider and newer audience.
Think about other small business services that ideal customers might want and incorporate their services with your own.
You can team up with these businesses to offer complementary services that are relevant to your niche. This way it is easy to expand your business and build relationships with other businesses as well.
For example, if you are a web development company you can partner up with an SEO company to provide SEO services to your customers as well. Or you can take advantage of your partnership with them and ask them to tell their customers about their all-new website building services.
For a small business, this is a great way to attract new customers and earn their trust.
Effectively Utilize Social Media
Almost every business can be found on social media. And if yours isn’t there, that is a huge market that you are missing out on.
Facebook alone has over 10 million active businesses that are advertising.
Social media is one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise to a large number of people and attract potential new customers.
Many people also use social media to check the authenticity of a business by looking at customer reviews and referrals.
However, before you create a social media presence, here are some things that you should consider:
- Create a business profile on social platforms that your ideal customer is active on.
- Post relevant and engaging content for your customers.
- Don’t always try to sell on social media. Instead, focus on building a good relationship with your followers.
- Listen to your customers and try to help.
- Use hashtags and relevant keywords to reach more people in your industry.
If you interact with your audience on social media in the right way, you can not only get more exposure but also gain a loyal following.
Generate High Quality Leads Through PPC Ads
You might have noticed that when you search for something on Google, the top results are mostly ads that are related to your search query.
This is a form of pay-per-click (PPC) ad known as Search Engine Advertising (SEA). These ads are published through the Google Ads platform.
The way these ads work is that advertisers bid on keywords or phrases relevant to their target audience. When someone searches for that keyword, their ad gets displayed in the top results.
PPC ads are an effective way to attract a relevant audience to your brand. And the best part is that you only get charged when someone clicks on your link.