You probably started your small business because you're passionate about what you create and provide to your customers. Growing your small business's customer base is always a focus, although how you do that might be secondary to your operations. Still, you can choose from several ways to reach out to your existing customers and get your business in front of potential customers.
- Focus on the Customers You Already Have
When most owners or managers think about marketing their business, they often turn efforts toward reaching new customers. Depending on your line of business, this is a good strategy, but it's often significantly more work than focusing on enhancing your current relationships and the spending habits of existing customers. The barrier to getting someone new to visit your store or website (let alone make a purchase) is much higher than getting your current customers to purchase or use more of your business's products or services. - Look at Your Data and Customer Base
Are you using this information to reach customers? Sending an email newsletter or coupon deals to your customers once a month is more cost-effective than buying ad space on the local radio station or newspaper and will likely give you a higher (or easier to measure) return on your investment. How much do you know about your customer base? Think about email, age, gender, profession, preferred shopping time and day, and who spends the most in each group. If you don't know these questions, consider a customer survey to find out. Why? This information can be aggregated to give you a picture of the customer buying from you. It will be invaluable as you identify where to advertise, how to focus your outreach and determine any critical shopping times or days that you can capitalize on. - Loyalty Cards
If you're already on top of these suggestions, it's time to take it to the next level. Consider implementing a customer identification process so that you can track buying habits. Many companies do this already, the most common example being grocery store club or loyalty programs, which are generally associated with your phone number. When customers use loyalty cards to get discounts on specific items and earn points, the company can track how much specific households spend and what. These companies know exactly who their customer is, what they like to buy, and when they shop. This means they can build a strategy around that information. You can do the same! If you're not sure where to start, WaFd Bank offers customer engagement tools with analytics to help you get the most out of your program. - Outline a Plan to Build Awareness and Trust
Your efforts don't have to be complicated, just consistent. Repeat your messaging over time so potential customers learn what your business can do for them. While you do this, make sure your current customers are kept informed of news about your company, and communicate sales and other benefits they can take advantage of. You could also see what's most important or meaningful to your customer base and participate in different ways, such as donating a percentage of sales of a particular item to a local nonprofit, talking about sustainability efforts, or giving back to the community in some way. - Host a Giveaway
To enter, customers simply need to complete a form asking for their email, age, gender, physical address, etc. Then, use this information to reach out to your customers later and determine where you may want to advertise. If your customers can purchase online, make these fields required during checkout. Review your state's marketing regulations before starting any new marketing campaigns. Some states have laws about how businesses can use customer information for marketing or sales purposes, along with any laws related to giveaways or sweepstakes and how those are defined. - Maintain Social Media Accounts
You don't need to be tech-savvy or have a large advertising budget to use social media to market your small business. You can feature specials via free posts on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms or create targeted ads that will only appear to your most likely shoppers. Unlike traditional advertising, social media ads have the capability to allow you to specify education level, zip code, age, and more.
This shows why it's essential to know who your customers are. Plus, you have the opportunity to get your followers to do your advertising for you. Enter customers who share your content in a drawing to win a gift card, give $5 off to customers who check in on social media at your location, or create a trivia contest by asking customers to take a picture of their answer and tag you. All these help to ensure that your business is shared with your customers' followers in a positive and interesting light. - Establish and Consistently Improve Methods and Procedures
This is one of the most important things you can do for your business. Getting people to visit your store or site is one thing, getting them to buy is another. There is a lot of effort involved in getting new customers, so the last thing you want is to lose them because of inefficient procedures or a clunky check out process. Take advantage of what is available to you and modify or replace your procedures as needs arise. - Invest in Upgrades
As your business expands, your needs and the needs of your customers will change, right along with improvements in technology. If your checkout terminal is slow or temperamental it affects your employees and your customers negatively so it's worth it to invest and upgrade. Less time dealing with the register means more time for productivity and helping customers! - Form Strategic Partnerships
Forge an alliance to give both of you the chance to reach more customers and expand your reach. This might be cross-promoting in both of your businesses, giving referrals to each other, or even setting aside a small amount of space dedicated to the other's products or services. Think about big partnerships that have paid off, such as coffee stands inside of grocery store chains and other retailers. Find a business that would work well with yours, build a strong relationship with them, and help each other succeed. - Measure What Works and Refine Your Strategy
There is no one size fits all plan, so pay attention to the results you're getting and whether or not it's worth your time and resources to continue it and if reallocating budget to a different effort instead. Over time your customer's needs and habits will change, so it's essential to stay on top of changing demands and adapt your business strategy with those demand changes. Try to check in and see how things are doing once a month, or at the very least every quarter so you can make changes as needed.
