To get customers online, businesses can use various strategies such as maximizing social media, leveraging the power of enticing offers and personalized incentives, and integrating contact channels into the website.
So are you searching for ways to find more clients for your business? Did you even know you can find potential customers on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms? In this guide, you will learn practically how you can get customers online to increase sales and revenue.
For start-up business owner, the first thing that comes to your mind is how to get the first few customers?
First, you need to know that you’d be selling to people who have problems big enough to spend money on. But you should avoid the “reality distortion” effect of taking the easy road and getting a customer who’s not a customer.
How to get customers online for your business
here is a step-by-step tip to get started:
1. Write Targeted Blog Content
It’s no quick-fix, but writing authoritative, interesting content on your website will pay huge dividends over the long term.
Targeted content will help boost your site’s SEO bringing in new customers organically, and will also encourage your existing visitors to share your content more.
Here are methods of tailoring content to your specific customers, and ways to build a website content that resonates with their beliefs and values.
Step One: Interview your Customers
The best way to understand your customers is to speak with them directly. Start by creating broad categories that you believe your customers will fall into and then seek out anywhere from twenty to thirty people who fit into these categories.
Step Two: Create Profiles for Each Persona
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Once you’ve gathered enough information from your customers, it’s time to build up characteristics for each persona.
Step Three: Targeting Buyer Personas With Your Content
This is where all of your research comes into play. The final step in this process is creating content and posts that target your buyer personas. Before you start though, you need to ask yourself a few questions about the persona and what that customer is looking for when they reach the main page of your content.
SEO-hacker covered these three steps to creating customer targeted content in more detail. Click the link for more insight.
The honest truth is that every website should have blog content as part of its marketing strategy!
2. Target the Right Keywords
There is no doubt that effective SEO keywords play a great role in today’s online market.
If there is a single concept that has been the driver of much of the Internet’s growth over the past decade – not to mention nearly all of Google’s annual revenue of $25 billion – it is the concept of effective SEO keywords.
Highly-effective SEO keyword selection is fundamental to success when it comes to executing a paid search or PPC campaign. It is also integral to a website’s natural or organic ranking on search engines.
But keywords are not just about SEO.
They at the heart of a company’s marketing campaign at its most granular level.
Effective keywords are what make your search engine optimization effort complete.
When you write your content to target the right keywords with good commercial value or buyer’s intent, then you are just in the right path to getting customers who are going to purchase your products or services.
In this article, I covered how to choose the best and most effective keywords that can bring you paying customers.
READ: How To Use Google Keyword Planner | The Definitive Guide For SEO Keyword Research
3. Run Adverts
Advertising is one of the most basic forms of driving people to a product or service, but don’t forget about it!
Experiment with Google Ads since you can fine-tune your targeting and choose how much you want to spend.
READ: Online advertising in Nigeria: Different forms of online advertising
4. Partner Up
Partnering with a non-competitive but audience-complementary partner can be a highly effective way of acquiring new customers.
This can be something as simple as a traffic exchange – partnering with a highly trafficked site in your customer’s domain, putting up a banner to drive traffic to your shop, and paying the partner either a cut of the cart revenue or a flat fee for every customer acquired via the partner banner.
READ: 30 Fast Ways To Increase Website Traffic For Free
5. Engage in Social Media
In the age of social media, effective marketing is not just about getting people to come to you – it’s about participating in the channels that your customers are participating in whether that’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any of the other dozens of popular services.
Pick the channels that are right for your business and participate authentically – remember that social media is not there to simply drive people to your store, it’s also there to help you create stories about your business that people can share with others.
For instance, if your business is more of a visual product like fashion — then Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook might just be where your customers are. Actively engage with them via those platforms to drive qualified customers to your website.
READ:
- How To Generate Leads On LinkedIn | 5 key Strategies You Should Leverage
- 10 Tips On How To Generate Leads On Twitter To Drive More Sales
- 5 Ways to generate qualified leads using Facebook
6. Tap into existing relationships
It’s hard enough to make cold calls, but it’s extremely difficult to sell new, innovative products and services using that method.
You need to meet with people who have some connection to you, no matter how slight.
When I started my first company, I was able to come up with a list of everyone I knew who owned a business and came up with a few names. This was very discouraging.
But I decided to grow my list by tapping my existing relationships, so I met with almost every person I knew who might have ties to the business community and asked people to introduce me to business owners. I was surprised by how willing people were to help. I quickly grew my list of prospects and even snagged a few early customers.
READ: How To Use WhatsApp For Business Promotion | WhatsApp Marketing Strategy
7. Stalk and awe
Some potential customers will always be totally out of your reach but might make incredible early adopters. I like to employ my signature “Stalk and Awe” campaign.
First, I stalk these people — not the kind of stalking that’s an unwanted, obsessive intrusion on someone’s personal space that can lead to arrest.
Find anyone who might have a connection to the person you want to meet and ask for an introductory email or a warmup call. The harder this person is to reach, the more recommendations you’ll need.
Next, send a letter of introduction and follow up with a call. Locate opportunities to attend events where the person will be so you can “run” into them (networking and business events only). I’m not suggesting crashing a wedding or joining the person’s gym.
If you’re able to arrange a meeting, now awe this person. Do research on potential problems in his or her business.
Spend the first half of the meeting asking questions to locate possible pain points for that person and try to offer something of value independent of your business. Then if you bring enough value to the table and awe this person, he or she will be a lot more interested in you and your company.
8. Accentuate the positive
When you speak to potential customers, they might have all sorts of questions without great answers: “How many other customers do you have? How long have you been in business?”
Try to answer them by accentuating the positive: “How many other customers do I have? That number isn’t as important as the fact that of those who have tried my product or service, 95 percent would recommend it to their friends.”
Or “How long have I been in business? I have years of experience in this market segment but recently opted to bring the same quality service that I offered through such and such big company but at a much lower rate.”
9. Incentivise First Purchase
Sweeten the deal for first-time purchasers and you’ll increase the amount of conversion from visitor to customer.
Some online stores offer a small discount for first time purchases, the key is to make it tangible and obvious what the customer will get if they purchase right now.
10. Become an expert
When you don’t have a track record of happy customers, the next best thing is having expertise in your chosen domain.
If you can get your early customers to trust you as a knowledgeable resource in your subject area, they will buy from you.
The key here is not to fake it. Before you start to prove your expertise, you have to develop it.
Once you’ve developed your expertise, express it through any media resource. Tweet, post on Facebook or your blog or write a guest blog to spread the message. Write a white paper and email it to target clients. Put together a “lunch and learn” seminar and invite customer prospects to learn about your subject area.
Fight the urge to spend all your communications trying to sell your company. Use your platforms to try to help people and your first customers will follow. The first customers will breathe life into your start-up.
11. Measure Your Progress With Analytics To Attract More Customers
It’s important to create content and build relationships with customers. But it doesn’t stop there. To learn what’s working and what to improve you need to measure what you’re doing.
How?
Well, by using business analytics of course!
To learn how successful your marketing efforts are, you measure your return on investment, or “ROI.” But this isn’t easy when you use traditional marketing – it’s difficult to measure how many people see your campaign, how many take action based on that campaign and how many actually become customers.
So to see what you are doing right and what you can improve on to attract more customers, you have to rely on your understanding of Google Analytics tool.
And this has been thoroughly covered in our digital marketing training course. Click here to find out about the course.
12. Hold a Sale Discount
Discounting is not a long-term strategy but it can be highly effective in driving new customers to your business.
Figure out your customer acquisition cost and from that, how much of a discount (on a limited amount of quantity/product) you can afford to offer in order to acquire new customers – then announce to the world via your blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.
Just be careful of attracting deal-hunters, since these customers may not be of long-term value to your business.
13. Customer testimonials
These are a powerful form of content. Every business today should seek customer testimonials in multiple forms: written, audio, and video.
This content adds important trust-building endorsements and makes for great brand-building assets out there on Google and YouTube.
14. Reviews
Ratings and reviews sites such as Yelp, MerchantCircle, and CitySearch have become mainstream, user-generated content hubs.
Throw in the fact that Google, Yahoo, and Bing all allow folks to rate and review businesses, and you’ve got an increasingly important category of content that you must participate in.
15. Add calls to action
On a smaller, more immediately actionable level, there are plenty of strategies you can take with your marketing that can conceivably draw in new customers.
Add a call to action for every piece of marketing you send out—whether that be an Instagram post, a weekly newsletter, or one of your offline marketing strategies.
“After establishing a marketing plan, you will begin to execute multiple strategies each day,” says Nicole Munoz of Start Ranking Now.
“It is not enough to just write a blog. After it’s written, you must add in a call to action that clearly states how clients can work with you (i.e. ‘Sign up for my…, Click here to…’). Make this a part of all your speeches and networking actions as well.”
Calls to action don’t have to be elaborate or ask much from your customers; often, the goal is as simple as increasing engagement. Ask them their opinions, suggest that they tag you with a certain hashtag, or provide a link so that they can sign up for your email updates.
I am going to stop here, if you want more innovative ways on how to get your first few customers online, do check out our digital marketing course page, to know how you can acquire the right marketing strategies to grow your customer base.
How can I get more customers online?
To attract more customers online, consider the following strategies:
1. Improve SEO: Optimize your website for search engines to improve visibility and attract organic traffic.
2. Create content around long-tail keywords: Focus on long-tail keywords to target specific search queries and attract relevant traffic.
3. Leverage social media: Engage with your audience, share valuable content, and build a strong social media presence.
4. Partner with creators and influencers: Collaborate with creators and influencers to reach new audiences.
5. Run flash sales and promotions: Offer limited-time deals to incentivize customers to make a purchase.
6. Build a referral marketing program: Encourage existing customers to refer their friends and family to your business.By
implementing these strategies, you can attract more customers to your online business and position yourself for long-term success in the digital marketplace.
Why Is It Important to Attract New Customers?
Attracting new customers is important for several reasons:
1. Business Growth: More customers lead to increased revenue, enabling business growth.
2. Market Expansion: New customers help reach new markets and expand the business.
3. Customer Base Freshness: Attracting new customers keeps the customer base fresh, ensuring business relevance.
4. Energy and Innovation: New clients inject energy and demand new ideas, fostering innovation and growth.
5. Profitable Growth: While acquiring new customers is important, retaining them accelerates profitable growth.
FAQs
How to attract customers to buy your product online?
- Create content around ‘long-tail’ keywords, which are more specific and targeted, to attract a wider audience.
- Utilize social proof, such as displaying customer reviews or testimonials, to build trust and credibility.
- Offer promotions, discounts, or limited-time sales to incentivize potential customers to make a purchase.
- Collaborate with influencers or other businesses to reach a larger audience and increase brand awareness
By doing this, you get customers online for your business and service
How can I get free customers online?
- Leverage the power of user-generated content, such as customer reviews or social media posts, to attract potential customers.
- Utilize email marketing to nurture relationships with existing customers and reach out to potential ones.
- Participate in online communities, forums, or social media groups related to your niche to engage with potential customers
- and showcase your expertise.
Offer referral programs or incentives to encourage existing customers to refer new ones, expanding your customer base
How to get clients for digital marketing
- Know Your Target Market: Define your ideal client based on their industry, company size, geographic location, and marketing goals.
- Establish yourself as an expert in your industry by creating valuable content and building a strong online presence.
- Collaborate with Other Businesses to reach a larger audience and increase brand visibility.
- Attend Networking events and conferences to meet potential clients and build relationships.
- Offer free workshops and courses on digital marketing to attract potential clients and demonstrate your expertise.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are numerous strategies to attract get customers online and grow your business. By implementing these tactics, you can increase your online presence, engage with your target audience, and ultimately boost sales.
Remember, the key to success in the digital marketplace is to be consistent, innovative, and patient in your efforts to reach and convert potential customers.
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