How to Reach Customers Effectively in Today's Oversaturated Market
How to Reach Customers Effectively
Reaching new customers and maintaining great relationships with existing clients has always been one of the most challenging aspects of running a successful business, but in today’s changing world it can be even more difficult. Here is what you need to know about how to reach customers effectively in our current climate.
Do You Need to Actively Engage Customers?
You run a great business with outstanding products and/or excellent service. Perhaps you’ve been in the community for a long time. So do you really need to work to actively engage customers?
If you want your business to remain steady, you need to continuously attract some new customers. If you want your business to grow then attracting customers is absolutely essential.
Strong engagement with your community is one of the best ways to secure your business against competitors and changing markets. Loyal customers stay with you. A community of customers with whom you are actively engaged enables your business to be more flexible.
Why is Facebook and Other Social Media Important for Small Businesses?
However you feel about the social media trend, using Facebook is just a good business decision. With nearly 2.5 billion users worldwide, Facebook is the biggest social media network. A lot of your customers and potential customers are on Facebook. If you’re failing to reach out to them, you’re really missing out on an opportunity.
Facebook lets you reach customers in the same place as they are interacting with friends and family and learning the day’s news. With targeted marketing and a post plan that gets shares, you can use your resources to market directly to the people most likely to engage with your business.
When it is done correctly, your potential customers won’t feel as though they’ve seen an ad. They’ll be excited to have discovered your business and eager to share with their friends. These are just a few ways that Facebook can work for your business.
- Promote your other marketing efforts, such as blog posts
- Share promotions about your business from clients or other businesses
- Share promotions for other businesses to help build relationships
- Repost useful information that you’ve found to earn trust with customers
By analyzing data on demographics, which posts get the most engagement and shares, and even when during the day or night posting is most effective for your business, you can continuously improve your marketing success on Facebook.
Furthermore, these analytics tell you a lot of useful information about your customers and demographics off of social media as well. One of the most important elements of how to reach customers effectively is to understand their habits, so this sort of information can be invaluable for your business.
Other Relevant Social Media
When considering how to reach customers through social media, Facebook isn’t the only social networking that can be of benefit to your business, although it may be the biggest. Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, among others, all offer your business important opportunities for connecting with your audience.
The platform that is best for your business may depend on your specific company:
- If you have a visual company like landscaping or interior design, a visually-focused platform like Instagram may be best.
- If you often have short snippets of information to share, Twitter will be ideal for you.
- Businesses with video footage worth sharing may excel on YouTube.
Choose the platforms that are most appropriate for your business and be careful not to overdo your commitment. It is important to invest in these platforms if you expect them to be successful.
Become an Authority
One of the advantages of small business product distributors over buying online or going to large stores is expertise. Expertise may be even more important in the service industry when individuals are debating about doing a project themselves or investing in a professional.
High quality information distributed over social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, put out in newsletters, and published on a blog all help to establish your business as an authority in your area of expertise. Whatever you do, make sure that your business is distributing the most interesting and pertinent information.
By entering into conversations with customers and potential customers, you can build relationships with entire communities. If you are the best source for local events and information, you can feel confident that your pages will be followed and content shared.
Build Relationships
Perhaps the best promotion that you can get is customers publicly supporting you in the community and encouraging their friends and family to use your services or buy your products. When thinking of how to reach customers effectively, strong relationships cannot be overlooked.
Strong loyalty to your brand can help your business to handle competition and fuel growth. If you already have strong relationships with certain demographics of the community, build relationships with new potential customers.
Understand your analytics to see what your business or service’s demographics are. If you are missing a segment of the population, ask yourself why. Make a plan to market to that population and build relationships with new clients that will encourage them to want to invite their friends and family to your business as well. Growth can be exponential when you reach into new communities.
How to Reach Customers Effectively - Reach Out to Your Community
Connecting to the community physically around you is one of the most overlooked but effective techniques for how to reach customers effectively in today’s technologically driven market. Most people are thinking of how to reach customers online, but they rarely consider how much social media attention is driven by community events.
Hosting an event, running a charity drive, or doing something else to connect with the physical community that your business works in is an awesome way to reach customers online and on the street.
Put on Events
Putting on a music show, a food festival, a garden sale, or some other event is an excellent way to make people think about your business in a positive and memorable way, draw positive marketing, and get new customers.
- Positive associations. Events that are associated with your business will make it more likely that customers will remember your business. Customers will associate you with the event that you put on.
- Conversation about the event. You will have discussions on social media and other platforms about the event before and after. These conversations will build relationships with clients and make it much more likely that they will support your brand in the future.
- Shared marketing. Your name can be in the event name and so your business will share in all of the marketing that the event has.
- Attract new customers. If you want to make a particular impression on the community or attract a particular demographic, this is the perfect opportunity. This may be an especially good idea for businesses that may not create much of an impression.
Charity
Not only is charity a wonderful thing to do, but it is a great way to form lasting relationships with customers, build trust in your community, and get a unique marketing opportunity. Any number of events can be put on for charity.
Running a long-standing drive is a great way to cause your customers to associate your business with something positive over the course of months or years. Be the company that people remember for sponsoring homeless dog’s adoption fees or buying equipment for school children every year. Furthermore, being associated with a positive charity is great for your employee’s morale.
Community Presence
Make sure that your business has a presence at as many community events as possible. Whether it is a farmer’s market, a street festival, or an art show, having a table gives you an opportunity to interact directly with potential customers.
Raffles and competitive games give you an opportunity to collect email addresses and other important information about potential customers in your community. Furthermore, conversations begun in person at such events can be extended to social media, broadening your reach online as well.
You won’t be able to make it to all of the events in the communities that you serve, but having a physical presence at local events is a great way to reach customers in an effective way that is less emphasized in a digital age.
Incentivize
Sometimes, no matter how many events you put on or charity projects you take part in, customers may be unlikely to share your posts or participate with your business. Incentives encourage your customers to participate in ways that will benefit your business.
Coupons. It’s hard to pass up a good deal. Encourage people to join your newsletter mailing lists in exchange for great coupons. Ask your social media followers to share a post in exchange for a coupon. If you provide a specific url or other trackable information for people to access the coupon you can also use this information for important analytics.
Giveaways. What’s better than a good deal? Something for free of course. You can collect email addresses to add to your mailing list in exchange for the opportunity to participate in a contest or raffle for a free giveaway. You can also reward shares by promising a free giveaway to one of your followers randomly selected if they share a specific post.
Loyalty rewards. Sometimes your customers will be happy to participate with your business just because your business is publicly grateful. Hold a photo contest of customers with your product and publicly post the winner. Thank a great customer. Think of ways to reward your customers’ loyalty whenever you can.
How to Reach Customers Effectively with Perfectly Optimized
It can be very challenging for you to juggle creating and enacting new ways to reach your customers, tracking analytics to make sure your efforts are effective, and running your business, all at the same time. Perfectly Optimized can analyze your business, recognize untapped opportunities, and create a customized marketing plan that will reach your customers as effectively as possible. Call us today to get started reaching new customers for your business!