Find New Customers in 7 Quick and Easy Ways!

Everyone knows that customers are the lifeblood of any business. Indeed what a lot of sales professionals and business people often get confused about is how to find new customers considering the cutthroat competitiveness of today’s marketplace.    

After Shirley (33) spent twelve months and hundreds of dollars setting up an ecommerce website, she was disappointed when customers weren’t pouring in shortly after the site went live. “I’d assumed that people would find me automatically,” She said, “But in reality I had to spend additional time and resources on aggressive, sometimes complex, marketing campaigns.”  

Whether you own an online business, trade offline, are anxious for the first sale or just keen to expand a healthy client base, the following tips will help you find a horde of customers who will willingly part with their cash on a regular basis.  

1. Create a marketing funnel: Rather than embarking on sporadic marketing initiatives, first design a marketing funnel through which your stream of customers will flow. A marketing funnel is a system that allows you to offer ever increasing value and access to your customers at ever increasing prices. The top of this funnel comprises of free or cheaply priced products that give prospects a taste of your expertise with little or no risk.

For instance (in exchange for prospects’ contact details) online business owners can offer a free newsletter, a valuable e-book or even a complimentary audio download. Middle of the funnel products can include multimedia training courses, while pricey mentoring programs and live workshops make the perfect bottom of tunnel stock.  

Marketing funnels work well with offline businesses as well. For instance a hair salon can allow prospects sample hair care products after completing a contact form. The salon can then offer haircuts as standard as well as full blown makeovers and specialist beauty consultations on the high end. The more diverse your product range, the more customers you’ll get in through the door and the higher your sales conversion rates will be.         

2. Build customer profiles: Once you get a fair amount of customers it’s imperative that you get to know the kind of people who do business with you on a regular basis. For instance, what age bracket do your top 20% of customers belong to? Are they male or female? City dwellers or suburban residents? What magazines do they read? What TV programmes do they watch? What income group do they belong to?

Valuable information about your biggest spenders will enable you focus your marketing strategies more appropriately and find more of such loyal customers. It’s also a great idea to get your top customers to recommend their family and friends as people usually associate with those who are similar to them.    

3. Sell to existing customers: Business owners often forget that when it comes to sales, quantity doesn’t necessarily surpass quality. In fact studies carried out by the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, proves that 20% of customers (the vital few - rather than the trivial many) are responsible for 80% of sales.

While it’s always great to get more prospects into your marketing funnel, you can get new customers far more quickly and easily by selling to your existing customer base. Whilst word of mouth marketing often occurs naturally, it’s best to offer existing clients an incentive (e.g. special discounts and free samples) for referring family and friends to you.   

4. Create joint venture partnerships: When you’ve built your customer profile, consider approaching people who can get you in front of your desired target audience. You can’t do it on your own so don’t compete – collaborate.

For instance, if you’re a consultant who works with small business owners mainly, you can develop a symbiotic relationship with the presidents of various trade associations and business networking groups. If you’re a wedding photographer, consider working closely with top hoteliers in your area and if you own a winery, get in touch with local bars and restaurants. By partnering with peers you can share advertising and marketing expenditure as well as gain quality lead referrals.  

However, joint venture partnerships don’t come easy (nothing good does, by the way). Naturally, many business people are reluctant to collaborate with people they don’t know and can be extremely protective of their client database. The easiest way to create profitable joint venture partnerships is by approaching prospective partners through mutual contacts (e.g. family, friends, neighbours, old schoolmates or fellow members of professional and social networks).            

5. Seek PR opportunities: Public Relations initiatives can create rapid business growth because consumers are constantly bombarded with adverts and thus more receptive to what they perceive as unbiased media coverage e.g. magazine features and radio interviews. Rather than spending a fortune on paid advertisement, hire a PR professional who can work as part of your team on a long term basis.

Your PR expert could be responsible for researching story angles that will interest the media, writing articles and press releases which will be sent to relevant media outlets, actively seeking radio and TV appearances and helping you present your business in the best possible light.  

Media coverage can quickly and easily lead to hundreds of new customers if managed properly. Before embarking on a PR campaign, do make provision for a potential deluge of enquiries (for instance you may need to hire competent call handlers to deal with telephone enquiries and process orders. It may also be necessary to setup a special webpage that your prospects can visit for detailed information).    

6. Diversify your marketing efforts: Many business owners like to find one or two marketing strategies that work and stick with those. However, the more diverse your marketing strategy is, the more customers you will attract. Of course it’s wise to stick to what works but it’s even wiser to keep seeking more effective marketing strategies.

For instance if you currently rely on word of mouth and PR marketing, try prospecting online using tried and tested methods such as article marketing, pay per click advertising and basic search engine optimisation. You should also consider information marketing techniques (i.e. marketing that requires you to give away expert information at little or no cost e.g. through public speaking, organising community workshops or writing for reputable publications that cater to your specific target audience).  

On the other hand, if you’ve been concentrating mainly on online marketing efforts, it may be time to consider direct mailing – which works brilliantly so long as you can get your hands on an up to date list of contacts that fit your customer profile and use well written copy that will engage your prospects from start to end. Remember that old fashioned letters work far better than fancy full colour postcards so keep your direct mails sweet and simple.   

7. Run special promotions: Everyone is always on the lookout for a great bargain. In order to create excitement about your brand, increase customers and boost sales, you may need to organise sales promotions or special events from time to time.

The secret to success in this area is applying bags of creativity during the planning process. Think, ‘what’s unique about this promotion? Will my customers find it exciting and memorable? Will they talk about it to others thus creating a buzz? Is my event news worthy; will the media be interested in it? What specific (sales) goals am I trying to achieve through this promotion?’  

Competitions and prize draws work best when they have an unusual theme, coincide with popular holidays or historic celebrations, offer outlandish prizes or have celebrity endorsement.  

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As you can probably tell by now, setting up a business is the easy part. However, whether you own your own company or belong to a vibrant sales force, these powerful tips can help you find new customers, increase your bottom line and stay in business year after year.

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Ogo Ogbata is a multi talented writer, speaker and consultant. Founder of the Creativity and Sense Network, she empowers people to create financially rewarding work that allows time and energy for what matters most in life.

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