6 easy steps to find new customers

The market’s crowded

The average business person is subjected to hundreds of marketing messages every day. The internet is well past the 1 billion page count, and a staggering 10 million pages are being added every day.  So how do you make yourself heard above all of this?

There are 6 easy steps that if followed will make a big difference to your ability to find new customers. They do require some careful thinking – but if you are prepared to put in the time and effort, you will be rewarded.

Step 1 – Clearly define your benefits statement/s

Potential customers want to hear about how your offering will help them.  Typically they will want to move away from an undesirable situation, or move towards something they want.  If your offering can satisfy either of these, then they are potentially a customer.  It is crucial that you describe and talk about your offering in these terms – i.e. what it will do for your potential customer, rather than just what it is or how it looks.

Step 2 – Know who you are trying to reach

With around 5 million companies in the UK, and over 50 million consumers, you need to work out who is most likely to need what you offer.  This process is known as ‘targeting’, and is the next step to finding new customers for your business.

Companies can be targeted using a number of factors such as location, industry sector, and company size.  As well as the type of company you want to sell to, you also need to be clear on which department or particular job titles within the company are likely to buy from you.

When targeting consumers, think carefully about what types of people are most likely to benefit from your product or service.  Marketers typically make use of demographic profiles as a way of describing a particular section of the consumer market.  For example, you might want to target the single, female, middle-class, age 18-24, college educated demographic.

Step 3 – Your ‘marketing mix’

Many people view marketing as a very narrow range of activities centred around advertising (trade press, local newspapers, radio).  In fact successful marketing to find new customers is a combination of different activities.  As well as advertising, you can include trade shows, email marketing, direct mail, on-line marketing (digital), telemarketing, PR, networking and events.

Step 4 – Your activity plan

Think of finding new customers as playing the ‘long game’.  In other words, you will become more successful as you establish and continue your marketing activity.  This means having an integrated plan of what you are going to do each week to attract new customers.  It is easy to allow your marketing work to slide towards the bottom of your priority list – making time to do just a little will go a long way to reward you.

Step 5 – Measure your results

Finding the best ways to attract new customers is to some extent a case of trial and error – this makes it all the more important to be able to easily see which of your activities have worked well and which have not -  measuring the results of your efforts is essential.  For example adding the question “where did you hear about us?” to your website enquiry form will provide you will invaluable information that you can use in Step 6.

Step 6 – Do MORE of what WORKS, and STOP doing what DOESN’T!

This seems very obvious.  However, our experience shows that there are many companies who continue with the marketing they have always done – without knowing whether or not they are being successful at attracting enough or the right new customers.  Review your results regularly, and do more of what works.

You can learn more about successful lead generation and customer acquisition in our training courses, improving your business skills is just a click away.