An important aspect of your customer focus is deciding whether you want to emphasize attracting new customers or retaining and growing existing customers. One or the other may need to dominate your marketing program, or perhaps you need to balance the two. Marketing to new prospects is usually a different sort of challenge from working with existing customers, so knowing which goal is most important helps you improve the focus of your marketing.
Here are some of the most common marketing practices successful businesses use to attract customers.
- Referrals: Word of mouth is a great way to stimulate referrals, and your existing customers may be the best resources to help you sell your product.
- Social media: Your presence as a provider of helpful or interesting content can't be underestimated in its potential impact on brand development and as a source of customer leads, so try to get ever more comfortable with blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and similar platforms.
- Trade shows and professional association meetings: Making contacts and being visible in the right professional venue may be a powerful way to build your business.
- Sales calls: Salespeople sell products, so make more calls yourself, or find a way to put commissioned salespeople or sales representatives to work for you.
- Advertising: Advertising sells the product, but only if you do it consistently and frequently, whether in print, on radio and TV, outdoors, or on the web.
- Product demonstrations, trial coupons, or distribution of free samples: If your product is impressive, let it sell itself!
- Placement and appearance of buildings/stores: Location (both online and in the real world) is still one of the simplest and best formulas for marketing success.
Every business has a different optimal formula for attracting customers. However, in every case, successful businesses report that one or two methods work best. Their programs are therefore dominated by one or two effective ways of attracting customers. They put between one-third and two-thirds of their marketing resources into their primary way of attracting customers and then use other marketing methods to support their most effective method. To find your business's most effective way of reaching out to customers, you need to ask yourself this important question: What's my best way to attract customers, and how can I focus my marketing program to take fuller advantage of it? With persistence, you'll eventually work out what your winning formula is, and then you may have to make only minor changes from year to year to keep your program working well.
What's your proven method to tap into a new customer base? Share your tips in the comments section below!