11 Tips to Help Small Businesses Attract New Customers

Small businesses have a lot of competition in the global marketplace today. Big companies with long histories have taken the lion’s share of consumer revenue because they can afford to be bigger and louder no matter what tactics other companies try. It might seem impossible to compete but here are a few tips that, aside from how you present your business, may help you set your company apart and offer a lure for new customers.

1. Understand Your Business First
   It seems obvious, but knowing your business in terms of attracting new customers can be a different animal than what you might believe. Not only do you need to know what your company does and what kinds of customers you are designing your services and advertisements for, but you need to know things like how does your company solve problems and how does it reward loyalty?
2. Know Your Target Market
   Knowing who you want to buy your products or seek out your services is important because it will dictate how you market those products and services. You wouldn’t sell to a highly professional market through the use of farm animals or talking balloons, you likely wouldn’t do well if that was your target and strategy.
3. Attracting Your Target Market
   Knowing your target market means knowing what appeals to them. In order to draw in your target market, attracting them to your products and services, you need to focus on making those products and services as appealing as possible. Know what attracts your target, what the latest trends and fashions are and play to those advertising strengths.
4. Determine Your Advertising Approach
   There are practically as many ways to advertise as there are product types these days. Be innovative, but keep in mind your consumers while you do so. How will your consumers know about your products? What method will reach the highest number of your target?
   • SEO content
   • Pay per click ads
   • Direct Mail
   • Billboards
   • Print Ads
   • An accessible website
5. Offer Excellent Customer Service
   This should be a focus of every company offering services or products to consumers. Customer service is the key to a good experience from a consumer perspective. If you offer excellent customer service and actively seek to meet consumer needs and handle any problems your customers have, you will win exposure through word of mouth, which is a powerful form of advertisement on its own.
6. Network
   You can’t compete with every other company out there with similar product or service offerings. You can eliminate some of the competition and elevate yourself above others by offering exceptional quality, but for the rest, networking may be a better way to eliminate competition. As the saying goes “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” and it actually works. Identify other companies that have complimentary products and services, network and develop partnerships to eliminate competition and increase your exposure.
7. Create Referrals
   Capitalizing on your loyal customers is a way to generate more interest in your products. Ask for referrals and create opportunities where your customers will want to share your information, even for such perks as incentives or discounts. Social marketing works and your loyal customers have a hand in making you more successful.
8. Keep Your Customers
   Considering how important your customers are to your success, don’t forget to keep the ones you already have. It’s more cost effective to keep one customer than to advertise for 2 new ones and loyal customers, as mentioned above, offer opportunities for word of mouth and social advertising, both of which are free and – if it’s positive – also very powerful for winning you more success.
9. Look Out For Large Customers
   You don’t have to be a big business to have large customers, but you do have to know how to treat large customers in order to maintain your relationship with them. Large size companies often look for small scale businesses to fill their needs not because they like to help the little guys, but more because they know the value of personalized service and a small company can offer that where a big company might not.
10. Have An Engaging Website
    Mobile accessibility is one of the fastest growing marketing techniques of today’s business world. A good website is an advertisement tool all its own and because it is so easily accessed by today’s consumers, it can have a dramatic affect on your sales and attracting new customers. Designhill offers services to help you capitalize on web-based exposure. When you utilize Graphic designing at Designhill to create an engaging website, you’re investing in a presence that will do more than just hold your place on the web.
11. Look Large
    Have you ever noticed that big businesses normally have very sophisticated brand images? Polish is one way to imply that your company has more size, without actually moving out of the realm of a small business. Making your website a store or imply a standing advertisement isn’t in your best interest. Instead, learn from the big businesses and use your website to tell your company’s story and sell your image, not your products.