How do I bring more customers in and get them to stay? What are the ways to attract customers to my products?
That’s why I have got you here to listen to us.
You must have noticed that despite being ‘locked-down inside homes, the non-physical-use businesses flourished.
For instance, Netflix’s total revenue in 2020 was around $25 billion, Amazon carried on its juggernaut legacy, and service providers such as DoorDash, GrubHub, Ubereats, etc., despite the pandemic, made good profits. WFH- Work From Home became the new normal for everyone.
Physical goods sellers-garment shops, book shops like UncleBobbies, eateries, etc., faced the pandemic storm but escaped out bravely, of course not overnight.
So, how did they accomplish it?
They shifted to digital platforms, but not so easily, some making their brand site and some selling their products by tying up to other platforms. But merely making a shift was not enough as they needed to magnetize customers towards their products and to establish them in the new world-order – online.
The latter is a crucial one without which you can’t survive.
Keeping in mind your marketing pocket strength, here I bring genuine and budget-fit ideas for you which you can try to ramp up your online business.
1. A Well Groomed Website
What would click to your mind first when asked why you need a website?
To expand the business and to reach a good number of consumers, driving traffic to your website will be what you usually think first of. Well, obviously, but that isn’t all!
If your customers find the site very slow, unresponsive, and an uncomely home page. Surely they will not risk their credentials on such a site and will leave it instantly.
It will not only incur monetary losses but also what it can also turn out to hamper your hard-earned credibility.
So what do we do?
- Get your website designed by an expert.
- A single page for all needs.
- Get a good navigation pane.
- Do not use very dark hues.
- Get it updated regularly. Work with a technician who can help you out in case your site becomes overloaded.
2. Identify your potential customers
Who is your potential customer? What are things they are concerned about? Which parameters are they keeping in their mind while they are out shopping?
These are a few questions that must be answered when you are, or you are going to run a business. Since you cannot target all of them at once and this must not be your focus.
So what are we going to do? Understanding the customer’s mood is the key to offering them good and desired products, thus building good relations and generating new leads through constructive and positive talks of recommendation.
A good research analysis about the preferences or purchase patterns of the customers to predict their needs is equally important. A few tips to understand the customer’ mood better-
- Monitoring the instantaneous behavior of the customer
- Identifying the various group of customers
- Taking care of customer’s personal tastes and experience
3. Post on Linkedin and maintain an Email list
Linkedin posts have become the first go-to site for finding jobs, making it the world’s largest professional social networking site. Making it the best platform for online businesses to reach a wide number of customers at a place.
What you need to do is keep posting on content on a regular basis, but too many useless postings should be avoided. Post less but something which is irresistible for the customer, compelling to visit your site, driving good traffic to your website.
A long e-mail list means a good customer hold. Building an email list provides a good opportunity to be always in contact with your customers. You get to personally connect with your customers, making it an indispensable way to create a lasting bond with the customers.
4. Be an active user of social media
Did you notice that the customer’s active presence on social media has overwhelmingly increased? They keep on navigating what’s new in the market.
Thus, creating a likelihood for online businesses to connect to a large number of customers at a single destination. You just need to catch their attention by making something that compels them to check the content inside it.
If your content grabs the attention of the customer, your half-work is done.
Design colorful pages, photos, and videos about your products and services, which inclines them towards the business.
5. What have your customers got to say?
Feedback is the backbone of every business to sustain for a prolonged period of time. What your customer says, feels and most important questions about your products and services matter essentially to your brand.
Respond to each question and comment by the customer, even the negative ones, constructively and helpfully, which will brush your positive image among the public.
Get the help or conduct surveys, polls or directly ask the customers their opinions to know much better than what they wish for. What are the changes they are looking out for?
Let your customer know that their needs are to be taken care of, and you are always there for them!
6. Endue Good Content Marketing
Good content always plays a key role in bringing the customer towards your products and services.
Place your trust in a good content writer for promoting your business to the customer.
SEO becomes very helpful here, as it encompasses a lot of things. Industry keywords provide you a chance to be on top of the google search results. On-page contents such as titles, descriptions, blogs, and images, etc., must be well designed and written and also must use colloquial language, which customers normally use when finding something.
Creating qualitative and valuable content which matches your customers’ wishes and acknowledges their concerns could be a silk route of reaching larger buyers and bringing them to your website.
I’ve got you easy tips to connect to buyers, which you can do by yourself-
- Share recipe secrets of some mouth-watering foods if you are running a restaurant.
- Offer beauty products or share skin-care tips with your daily customers if you run a salon.
- Rather than posting too much and senselessly, post less but as good.
7. Use paid advertising services
Paid advertising services like Facebook ads, Google ads, etc., helps you to find customers depending on the area, interests, and a lot of other specifications. It has double benefits- one, being less expensive and the second, lucrative.
Facebook has a large user network, and using Facebook ads for advertising will help in covering a large audience; while Google ads, you can have unique and exact keywords to pick a top place, also increasing trust within the service users.
Build strategy, target the users and get them hooked to your website.
Courtesy: eMarketer
8. Lend a hand and Earn the profit
You must have come across the word ‘sponsor’; more or less, you must be knowing it also. And, you might find the idea suitable but do not know how to do it?
Chalking out a good strategy will make every penny worth it.
Depending on your pocket’s strength, sponsor events or organize events. Let’s take an example, suppose you run a bookshop with a good customer base, promote events that focus on education initiatives and various other programs.
Now count the benefits-
- Attract more customers
- A successful event will make you their first choice in the near future.
- Free advertising of your products and services
9. Organise events on different eves
Eves like Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas celebrations are coming closer by. Most rush periods for businesses. Sales of services will boom as the demands will sky-rocket.
This could be the best time to make considerable profit leveraging these.
So, to attract more customers, you can launch small programs or events. Here are some tips to make the event successful-
- Offer special menus with new.
- Add the aroma of discount.
- You can also try BOGOs- Buy One Get One Free (Never out of trend, are they?)
- Fourth, Choose a lucky customer and let them feel special.
10. Engage in Good-Cause works
Giving back might feel like emptying your stores, but on the opposite, it brings more customers and credibility to your business. Begin from tiny benign works.
Ask for help from your customers, enjoin them for works, get them on board, and it is not a prerequisite that you do it on a very large scale in the very first attempt. Go slow but be consistent. Create a large directory, mailing list, and eventually, you will see the public will start admiring your work, will start connecting with your brand.
11. Keep an eye on the calendar
Turn the calendar, and I don’t believe that you can uncheck any day as unimportant. That being said, and the clock is ticking.
Let’s take the situation of students. Students could be your most lucrative customer, who, by nature, always tend to explore new things and most instantly adapt to the change. Also, most of them have very tight pockets. Students who are good in adaptability but affordability hinders them.
So, why not offer them something attractive and worth it that also solves their concern of affordability. A single destination that offers them both quality service and where money is not the issue will automatically attract more customers.
Giving cashback options, offs on various products, promo codes, gifts, etc., will increase traffic on your site. For example, Grammarly doesn’t offer any student discounts, but some brands might offer student discounts using partner links.
12. Identify and Adapt to the change
It’s the change that’s permanent, and the markets are changing vigorously. And now that you can’t alter the flow but you definitely can change old ways to go with the flow.
Which way is the trend shifting? What are your competitors doing to increase their profit? Most importantly, what do you need to look at?
LG, a South Korean brand of consumer electronics, has recently closed its mobile manufacturing unit. LG, despite being the third biggest smartphone brand in the US after Apple and Samsung, as reports Counterpoint Research, took to closing down its mobile business unit strategically. This allows them to concentrate their resources in other areas of growth like AI, electric vehicle components, B2B solutions, robotics, etc.
Why did LG take such a decision?
The decision to pull the plug comes after six consecutive years of losses. The reason, as stated by the tech company, is recurring hardware and software issues and a conservative attitude in design. Also, cheaper and attractive designs by Xiaomi, Oppo et cetera aggravated the situation.
Let’s take another example of Netflix, the over-the-top American platform and original productions company.
But did you know that Netflix was only a content distributor and not an original creator till 2013?
In 2013, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings released an 11-page memo to its employees informing them about embarking on original content production by Netflix.
No wonder Netflix has grabbed several Emmys and also Oscars for its original content like Mank(2020), Two Distant Strangers(2020), and many more.
Apart from evolving techniques and novel ways to connect to customers, here are a few things that you can’t keep out of the playing field.
- Leverage social listening and monitor services chats, phone calls to dig deeper into the customer behavior relevant to your brand.
- Short-term gain for the firm isn’t advised on the cost of customer trust.
- Answer common questions of the customers by creating proactive messages on social media, emails, and the web.
- Adapt the marketing plan to societal changes as the response of your marketing team in any adversary is the first thing that the public notices.
We at McElligott Digital Marketing have closely scrutinized market developments and created compelling marketing techniques for our clients of all sorts and challenges. So what will you have us do today for you?
