How to Attract Customers: 9 Results-Driven Tips
Does your startup need to attract new clients? There’s an approach that’s easier than you think. If you want to know how to attract customers, follow these 9 tips.
Are you ready to attract new clients to your startup?
Getting your startup off the ground can be incredibly daunting. Given the fact that 90% of startups never reach take-off, it’s essential to take steps from the beginning to ensure a solid client foundation.
Luckily, bringing more customers through your doors is easier than most business owners and entrepreneurs assume.
In this post, we’ll look discuss how to attract customers to your business effectively, no matter where you are at in your startup timeline.
Read on for insight!
1. Identify Your Target Client
Before you start figuring out your marketing budget or hiring new personnel, identify your target client. A target client is your ideal customer–the person who will benefit most from what your company has to offer.
In many ways, this step has much to do with the next one (knowing your product or service). Both inform the other.
You can also identify your target client by pinpointing the specific need your company is addressing. The most successful companies identify or manufacture a market need a certain portion of the population is likely to have. They then prove that they can meet this need via marketing and product selection.
If you’re unable to pinpoint a need, spend some time chatting with potential customers in your company niche. Research through surveys and interviews can be a gold standard for identifying target clients and then attracting them.
2. Know Your Product or Service
As discussed above, choosing your market audience concerns knowing your product or service intimately. If you are in the prototype stages of your startup, this may be a bit trickier.
Nonetheless, prototypes give entrepreneurs a chance to test out the viability of a product and a target audience. They can help clarify what a top-notch product needs in order to meet the desires of its ideal customers.
Understand what need your product or service addresses and use this information to direct all of your marketing efforts. In fact, all product descriptions should be tailored to what that particular item can do for a customer.
If it’s hard to put this into clear terms, this means that you need to spend a little more time hashing out product specifics.
3. Implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Digital marketing should be at the heart of any effort to attract clients, no matter your life stage as a business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), in particular, is an excellent means of getting you and your product noticed online.
Google processes, on average, 40,000 search requests every single second! Consumers turn to Google to find information, locate businesses, and purchase products.
Anyone can implement SEO, even entrepreneurs who don’t have a background in digital marketing. Begin with on-page SEO, which involves the optimization of your web content for popular keyword searches.
This will require some research on your part for keywords your ideal customers are likely to enter into Google to discover your business or product. Use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to assist, and always keep your customers’ needs and mindsets at the fore when researching.
Integrate distinct keywords on individual pages, and don’t forget to optimize social media content for searchable words and phrases. Local SEO–optimization of location-based terms–is also ideal for startups that are locally based.
If you’re keen to turn to the experts for SEO services, you have plenty of options. Check out Climb Online to learn more about SEO help.
4. Get Personal With Content Marketing
Consumers are inundated with all kinds of ads on a daily basis. They are more likely than not to ignore these ads, particularly the ones that seem too gimmicky.
They are likely to respond, however, to ads that attempt to engage with them personally. Unobtrusive ads that seem to directly target a consumer’s needs are far more successful than sales-y, generic ones.
Content marketing is another tool in your advertising arsenal. When crafting ad content, prioritize content that is personalized to your audience’s specific needs. Get personal, intimate, and humorous, and avoid the generic at all costs.
5. Hold Local Events
If you are a local business, start building a community reputation now. Hold local events or apply to be a vendor at organized gatherings, like farmer’s markets, conferences, and sponsored athletic events.
Use social media to advertise your participation in these events. A Facebook business profile can be your key to attracting clients to product launches, soft opens, and more.
6. Build Virtual Partnerships
Speaking of social media, use these networking platforms to forge virtual partnerships. Much like corporate, real-time partnerships, virtual partnerships align your startup with other prominent companies in your industry.
Build virtual partnerships by following companies you admire, liking their content, and reposting their material. Show your commitment to businesses with values similar to yours in order to drum up interest in your product or service.
7. Use Video
Video content is the hottest type of content available to digital marketers, and for good reason. Video is endlessly intriguing, easy to create, and a great means of engaging with your audience quickly and effectively.
Consider starting a YouTube channel for your business. Release educational videos and tidbits about your product, service, or industry niche.
Or upload video content on Facebook and Instagram as part of your social media marketing campaign. Some social ads even enable marketers to upload video content into the ads themselves.
8. Check-In
Consumers are more likely to become active customers when a business demonstrates its commitment to them. Check in with your current customers as a means of nurturing and fostering these valuable relationships.
Follow up with customers through emails, text messages, or phone calls. Social media messaging gives you a chance to engage with customers in real-time. You can even send out surveys via Facebook!
9. Jazz Up Your Website
Your website is like your digital business card. It is the heart of your digital marketing efforts and time and again gives prospective clients a first impression of what you are about.
For this reason, make sure your website is functioning at its peak. This may require investing in professional web design services. It may mean upgrading your current web services, selecting a more reliable web host, or integrating a responsive user-driven design.
Whatever the case, keep your product and client knowledge in mind as you craft a website ideal for boosting conversions.
Final Thoughts: How to Attract Customers
A vibrant, steadily growing customer base is essential for any startup seeking to make a splash in the corporate world. If you’re wondering how to attract customers and keep them coming, don’t neglect content marketing and digital advertising strategies.
SEO and social media are valuable tools for driving traffic to your website, particularly when leveraged with personal, well-crafted content. Hold local events and create virtual partnerships to build community reputation.
Most importantly, know who you are marketing to (and why).
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