In order to grow your enterprise from its current position, you need to bring in business from new customers. This might seem obvious on paper but finding ways to attract prospects and turn them into loyal (i.e. repeat) customers requires understanding them and how best to influence their decisions. As such, here are some of the factors you should be looking at in order to keep attracting customers.
1) Understanding Your Customers
You’ll need to establish who your target audience is. Who is most likely to buy from you? What are their needs? When you assess the day-to-day headaches and frustrations your customers face in their work, you can determine how best to reach them by positioning your service as the solution to their specific problems. Content marketing and SEO are effective ways for attracting new business, and once you have an idea of your ideal customer you can structure your marketing methods to best capture their attention.
2) Be Consistent
It might be tempting to engage in several marketing strategies simultaneously in the hope that at least one will get the desired outcome. The problem is that not all strategies work at the same time and trying to do too much at once risks overstretching your resources and budget while delivering disappointing results. Finding the right marketing strategies and using them consistently will ultimately achieve better results, and as time goes on these strategies can be optimised or changed depending on what is most successful.
This isn’t to say that different strategies – social media marketing and PPC, or email – don’t work together. They do, and can actually compliment and reinforce each other. It’s just that the average SME doesn’t have many resources to pour into marketing, and there is the risk that with too many irons in the fire, they’re all going to go cold. You can get round this by calling in extra help in the form of a marketing agency partner.
3) Define Your Unique Selling Point (USP)
What makes your business different from the other garden variety service providers out there? Is it your lower prices, higher quality products, experience, a unique angle or background, excellent customer service or something else entirely? Every business needs to have at least one feature they can market to get ahead of the pack, and knowing what your Unique Selling Points (USPs) are allows you to define what sets you apart from your competitors and why customers should choose to give their business to you instead. Your USPs should feature heavily in all your core marketing messages, as that will be a huge factor in influencing buyer decisions.
A note about USPs: You don’t simply choose one, e.g. ‘the most innovative EPOS provider’. Rather you recognise, draw out and develop your USP through a rigorous analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. SWOT analysis is a good place to start. Also, a USP is only a USP if your competitors aren’t doing it as well. If all your competitors are independent, family-owned businesses, or offer free postage, then these can’t be your USPs. Find out what your competitors AREN’T doing, or are doing badly, and see if you can fill that market need using your strengths and experience.
Winning New Business
Knowing how to appeal to prospective clients will help you maintain a consistent stream of new customers to your business. Combined with a well-informed customer development and retention strategy, this will place you in a strong position to grow your revenue.
To find out how inbound marketing – and the assistance of an experienced agency – can help you reach these goals, please call 01332 343281 today.
Or book a FREE website and marketing audit with myself here!
Image source: Pixabay
