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Your Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business Customer Acquisition

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Acquiring customers as a small business is crucial to success. 

And yet, this is sometimes the most challenging aspect of building a business. 

This speaks directly to marketing. And the unfortunate truth is that, as a small business owner, you’re probably really good at helping your customers with your products and services—but not quite as confident in your ability to generate business through effective marketing. 

This is a super common problem. In fact, this is an extra hurdle that’s even more difficult for small businesses to overcome than it is for medium or large-sized businesses. 

Why?

Because as a small business owner, you’re likely tasked with figuring all of this out on your own. 

That means learning a whole new skillset in addition to building your business and serving customers. 

But not to worry. 

In today’s online marketplace, it’s easier than ever to crush it where marketing is concerned. 

And you don’t even need a massive budget to get it done. 

All you need is a bit of elbow grease, a can-do attitude, and a willingness to learn the ropes. 

Let’s walk you through the basics and get you started. 

1. Determine Your Market

This basically means to figure out who your unique customer avatar is, and to also figure out how to best reach them. 

The biggest and most obvious thing to figure out here is if your customers need to be local (if you’re running a gas station, convenient store, baby-sitting service, or local construction company, for example, your clientele will be local—and your marketing efforts will need to match that), or if you can serve them at a distance (either online, via mail-carrier, etc.). 

If you’re selling information products, offering services that can be conducted digitally, shipping products around the world—these are examples of businesses that can market on a national, or even international level. 

Now, let’s take a moment to talk about each of these pathways, and what you really want to be doing as a first-step plan of action in each case. 

2. Finding Local Clients/Customers

Of course, every business is going to be a bit different. 

But never forget that the overarching goal of small business customer acquisition is to figure out where your customers are focusing their attention, and then to place yourself there. 

If you’re doing B2B work or are seeking referrals, then local business networking may be a great way to dip your toes into the local market. 

Consider looking for some local networking groups on Meetup to get started with this process. 

If you’re needing to attract more direct customer foot traffic, consider using social media, a website, and local advertising to make customers aware of what you have to offer. 

You can also engage in content marketing practices to help you build local online traffic to your social media sites, website, and storefront. 

3. Finding National/International Clients And Customers

If you plan to service customers who aren’t within local distance of your business headquarters, then the plan will change slightly. 

You’ll find that local networking won’t be quite as effective. 

Therefore, content marketing practices, social media, and other forms of online marketing and advertising will likely take precedence. You can also use live streaming to make your company stand out from your competitors. Users can stream on Mobile, desktop, or tablets, or you may be interested in the Pearl Nano streamer and recorder. Businesses and organizations are increasingly using live streaming to connect with their audiences Despite the physical barrier of location.

Once again, it all depends on how you plan to acquire customers—but one super effective way to do this is to utilize SEO practices through a blog, YouTube channel, social media sites,or podcast to grow an audience who’ll grow to know, like, and trust you—and to then gather email addresses and market directly to your customers via email. 

Of course, you want to make sure to create quality content, and not to ‘spam’ your viewers/potential customers with offers. 

This speaks to Gary Vaynerchuk’s jab, jab, jab, right hook method of marketing. 

If you need some help understanding all the nuts and bolts of how to make content marketing work, consider watching this informative video by the SEO pros over at Ahrefs. 

You can also watch Neil Patel describe how to get started with content marketing right now in this video

4. Always Put The Customer First

One trap that many content creators and content marketing novices tend to fall into is creating content that isn’t serving their customers. 

Once you get started down this path of producing blogs, podcasts, videos, social media posts, emails, etc. It is super important to keep your mind focused on the concept of value. 

If a post isn’t bringing real value and/or making the day better for your customers, is there really any reason to publish it?

Always think about quality, and how you can best help your customers to achieve their goals. 

This is how you rise to the top and prove yourself as a valuable business with a lot of value to offer. 

5. Keep Learning, Adapting, And Sticking With It

As you grow in your knowledge of how to market to potential customers, you’ll also come across ‘blind spots’ that you could invest in to improve your acquisition rates. 

But in order to notice these blind spots, it’s super important to always stay focused on learning and adapting your methods, to make them work even better. 

Nobody is perfect. Even the SEO and marketing masters/gurus are constantly doing research to try to stay on top of the newest tools, techniques, and processes. 

You don’t have to go crazy or obsess over this stuff. But you do need to invest in yourself. 

Consider taking a couple of online marketing or SEO classes every year, just to keep yourself up-to-date on how all of this stuff works. 

It’s actually really useful, and it’ll never be a waste of your time or money. 

Need some help getting started? Consider taking an Authority Hacker course. 

Their courses are super in-depth, and they show you step-by-step how to do things like set up your own website, optimize it, build an email list, etc. 

Conclusion

That’s it. 

Everything you need to really jump in and get started with small business customer acquisition. 

Personally, we believe that online content marketing is always a great bet. 

All that’s left is to get started and make it happen.

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