The customer is always right. It’s a phrase we all know very well by now, right? And that’s because customers are the most important and key part of any business.
No matter how big or small, it all comes down to your clientele.
At the end of the day, they are the ones that are going to purchase your products or services, get you those sales, and generate your income.
So keeping them on your good side is imperative if you want a thriving company.
But before all that, you actually need to attract and generate a customer base in the first place. And thinking of ways to do so can be a bit of a head-scratcher.
But, the simple fact of the matter is that customers just won’t flock to you all by themselves. You need to incentivize and draw them into you. It’s all about what you can provide for them.
And in this article, I’ve got 10 great tips and tricks for bringing those customers right to your doorstep. Or your website. So read on to take your first steps toward entrepreneurial success.
10 Tips & Tricks To Attracting Customers
1. Build Relationships
You want to create a close relationship with your customers. You don’t want to seem too focused on just generating sales.
Customers want to know that you care about them and their specific needs. Therefore you should provide evidence that this is the case if you want to generate new clientele.
There are many different ways that you can do this. First, you’ll want to ensure that you are producing content that has value. This is the case for blogs, social media channels, and your website.
You want to make sure that you are actively engaging with customers.
Listening and acting upon the criticism you receive and are always trying to enhance their shopping experiences
is a great way to build the trust and overall relationship with your customers.
2. Define Your Niche Customer
To attract and retain customers, you need to truly understand the type of customer your service or product is tailored towards.
When you know this, you can ensure that you are looking at your business or company through the eyes of your ideal customer.
This way, you’ll gain a better understanding of the best marketing strategies to use.
For example, if you’re targeting teens and young adults, you’ll want to focus more on social media, mobile optimization, and the use of videos and emojis.
Whereas these things might not be the most effective method, say, if you were trying to attract those aged 60 and over.
3. Define Your Marketing Approach
This links in pretty well with the tip above. Once you have a clear understanding of your specific niche and who you are targeting, you can start to develop strategies to outreach this niche customer.
There are many different marking approaches and you’ll want to find the most appropriate fit for you.
Will email marketing be the most productive? There’s website design, blogging, Google ads, social media marketing, and print advertising.
Which will reach your target audience the most effectively.
Say you’re trying to reach an older demographic, then maybe print advertising in newspapers will be more beneficial than say a heavily TikTok or Facebook-based campaign.
4. Promotions & Discounts
Who doesn’t love a bargain? Using promotions and discounts are a great way to turn ‘window shoppers’ or ‘browsers’ into actual paying customers.
Now, more than ever, customers are second-guessing their purchases and are looking for the best deals and the best value.
A promotional offer is a great way to get new customers as well as keeping your pre-existing customers happy too. There are tons of options to choose from.
Maybe it's a 20% sale, maybe it’s 50% or Buy One Get One Free, maybe it’s free shipping, or something else altogether.
But one thing is guaranteed a sale makes your customer feel appreciated and also makes your products and services available to those who otherwise would not have been able to afford them.
5. Referrals
Referrals are always a great way to achieve new customers. And what’s great about referrals is that you let your current customers do most of the hard work for you.
All you have to do is put an incentive in place for your existing customers when they recommend you to a friend. So say, your service is a hairdressers, for example.
You tell your client they’ll get 10% off their next cut and blow dry when they refer a friend who comes in for their own haircut or style.
That way, you’re getting the word out to others that it may not initially have reached. And you’ll be surprised just how many new customers this can bring about.
One customer tells two friends, then those two friends tell another three, and then maybe those three tell five of their friends. You get the picture. It can really help you build up your client list.
6. Reviews & Ratings
Any promising business will be regularly checking, monitoring, and responding to reviews.
Tripadvisor is just one example, but there are many similar sites that people may use to write a review about your service or products.
These are really important because many customers will be checking these to see if they trust you as a business. So you really want to have an active presence on these types of sites.
You can use positive reviews to help you implement new strategies and ideas and you should always be responding to complaints and showing that you have your customers' interests at heart.
7. Don’t Forget About Existing Customers
For any decent business, you should have a database that contains the details of your customers such as their email addresses.
If you’ve not heard from a customer in a while, it is always worth reaching out to them to see what you can do to help.
Abandoned cart emails work well for this. You can also see if there are any services or products you can provide for them.
Email marketing, or even mailing flyers to their homes can help spark their memory about your company.
You can highlight all the new things that are now available and hope that you can entice them back to you again.
8. Think Local
If you are a new, or small, business, there’s a good chance that you are a local business. And if this is the case, you really need to focus on promoting your presence within your community.
You can do so by ensuring that you are listed on all the popular local directories. You’ll want to make sure you are listed on places such as Yahoo Local, Bing Places, and Google Places.
You can also try sponsoring a community event or promoting community-based events that can take place in your venue. Such as a knit and natter event in a craft shop for example.
9. Partnerships
The importance of networking should never be underestimated. A lot of the time it won’t be what you know, rather than who you know. And you won’t know all that many people if you are not networking.
It could be a great idea to reach out to other local businesses and see how you could work together to generate more custom for the both of you.
You could run a joint promotion or mention each other on your social media platforms to outreach new customers.
10. Keep Your Current Customers Happy
While you do certainly want to put a fair amount of effort into attracting new customers, it is also vital that you keep your current customers happy and satisfied.
Otherwise, your new customers will turn into old customers pretty quickly.
The best way for a booming business is to have a close relationship with loyal customers that come back to you for your products and services time and time again.
Therefore, you don’t want all of your discounts and promotions to be solely directed toward new customers.
Make sure that you put time aside to ensure that you are exciting and delighting your pre-existing customers too. If they are happy, they will inevitably and naturally promote your business for you.
If they are super happy, you’re going to be recommended to friends and such and you will still be able to gain new clientele from your day-one customers.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are lots of different ways that you can promote your business to help you gain new clients and customers.
The most basic approach to take is really just to show that you care about your customers. That you want to fulfill their wants, needs, and desires.
That you want to keep improving the best bits that you offer, and that you are constantly trying to fix any issues that can pop up.
To do this, you need to understand your customer from the inside out.
You need to understand your niche clientele and always think about their viewpoint when introducing anything new. You can always add promotions, benefits, and schemes to help generate new customers too.
But the best way to generate your customers, and keep them coming back, is to always keep them happy!