How To Attract More Business

Attracting More Business

I haven’t met anyone who owns their own business that does not want more customers. Here are a few tips to help you get more business.

Identify your ideal client

This might sound like an obvious thing for any business to do but you would be surprised how many businesses don’t identify who their perfect customer is.

Most businesses use the scatter-gun approach when it comes to finding consumers. They think that ‘everyone’ is their ideal client. The problem is that when it comes to marketing to everyone, businesses usually attract no one.

Here are a few things to think about. Remember, you are thinking about your IDEAL client.

• Are they male, female or is your product perfectly suited to both?
• Is your ideal client under 10 years old, a teenager, between 20 and 40, between 40 and 60 or over 60?
• Would you consider your ideal client to have children or not?
• Would your perfect client own their own house?
• Is your ideal customer a business owner, self employed or an employee?
• What income bracket is your ideal client in?

These are just a few of the demographics to think about and as you can see there are many parameters to consider. By taking them into account you will find it much easier to market to the right people. As an added bonus it will be a lot less expensive than marketing to everyone.

Know your business inside out

You might think  that you already do know your business. But if you had to step into the day-to-day job of someone working for you, would you be able to do their job?

Of course you don’t want to have to do these things but it is really important that you know everything about your business in great detail.

Be very knowledgeable about marketing

You may be the person who does the marketing for your business or you may have an employee or external company do your marketing for you. Whichever it is, it is important for you to understand how marketing works.

Successful business marketing is all about building relationships.

You can of course build relationships with face to face meetings or by networking. But you can also build relationships with people online through social networking or forums.

Once you build solid relationships with potential customers you will find they are much more open to what you have to say and that includes what you say about your business and product. Some business owners mix up selling with marketing. They are both very different things.

Check out books like The 1 Page Marketing Plan by Alan Dib or The Art Of Selling To The Affluent by Matt Oechsli for some useful insights into marketing

Ask for reviews and recommendations

Before the internet became so popular word of mouth was the review system most people used.

One happy person would tell a friend about the marvellous experience they had in a particular shop and that friend would tell other friends and word spread about the good reputation of the business,

But another customer may tell others about the terrible company they recently used.

These days, recommendations are not limited by geographical location or to the people you might meet day to day. A happy or unhappy customer can now literally tell the world about their experience, good or bad to millions of other people.

As a business owner you need to know what people are saying about your business.

You need to hear the good and bad reviews so that you get a true indication as to what people think of your business and your product or service.

Know how to attract new customers and keep existing ones returning

As a business owner you basically have two types of customers. You have customers who don’t yet know they are your customers (new customers) and customers who have already used your services or bought your product (existing customers)

While your goal is the same for both; to spend money with you, you need to differentiate between them and not treat both types the same. Attracting new customers is different in many ways as attracting existing customers back

Done correctly you can turn existing customers into ambassadors for your business