6 Customer-Creating Strategies You Need To Be Using For Phenomal Success

posted on Jun 09 by Tim Conley in the Entrepreneurship, Internet Marketing category

I have met very few small business owners who get new customers through more than 3 channels.  Ask one and she’ll say, “I get most of my customers through word-of-mouth.”  This is code for I don’t have a clue how I get more customers.

I’m going to switch from talking about other business owners and managers to talking to you.  It might sound preachy or all “up on a soapbox” and that would be because I will be all preachy (and I just got a new soapbox in yesterday and I’m dying to try it out).

1. You have 2, maybe 3 channels for new business.
2. You have no idea which one is the most effective for time and/or dollars spent.
3. You have no idea what to do to make your 2 to 3 channels more effective.
4. You wish I would just tell you what to do so you can stop reading this and go put out fires in your business.

Here are the 6 Customer-Creating Strategies that are a MUST for a local business.

1. Referrals: I’m talking a real referral system not that nebulous “word-of-mouth.”  You need to have a formal structure to encourage your customers to not only tell people about your business, but to actively get their friends, family, co-workers, that guy you see once in a while at networking events—everyone they know—to spend money with you.
2. Public Relations: This isn’t about sending a crappy look-at-my-boring-company press release to the free local paper.  PR is the least used, though one of the most effective strategies a local business can use.  Hold events.  Invite the press.  Make sure your events aren’t boring.  Get involved with local charities.  Create something new.  Do something unexpected.  If you own a restaurant, make a new dish and name it after a local celebrity or tie the name into something going on in the news.
3. Print Media: I didn’t label this one newspaper or magazine or whatever because I don’t know where your customers are or what they are reading.  Odds are you don’t know either.  First ask your current customers what they read.  Then craft a compelling offer with a clear call to action and a deadline before you publish your ad in any medium.
4. Networking: You need to get away from your business and interact with other business owners and go to places where your prospective customers go.  Then just talk to them.  Crazy, I know, but people like to do business with people they know, like and trust.
5. Joint Ventures: When you get to know other local business owners, you will find that you share the same demographic base with most of them.  Why not do what has been so successful for online companies and promote to each other’s customers?  You create an offer and share a percentage of the revenue with the host company.  Be as generous as you can afford to be.  The goal is to gain long-term customers—not a one-time sale.  You do a dozen of these in a year, you could easily quadruple your current size.
6. Finally, I’ll talk about Internet marketing and specifically list building.  Not having a customer list in the offline world is a grievous sin and the same goes for your Internet marketing efforts.  If you are not building a list of email addresses, you are missing the chance to add tons of new customers.  In a recent email marketing campaign for a client, we sent out a series of 4 emails and made a gross income of $54,000.  You are giving up the opportunity to print money anytime you want by not building a list.

That’s the top 6 Customer Creating Strategies you need to implement right now.  No more of this, “I get most of my customers through word-of-mouth” non-sense.  You are going to have at least 6 ways to get new customers and I suggest you implement one per week or minimally one every other week.  In time, I can give you some more strategies and hopefully have about 50 or more ways that customers come to you.

Cheers,

Tim Conley

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