It’s the dream of all businesses to generate more customers and grow. If you are not growing, even if you are doing well at the moment, sooner or later your competitors will outpace you and steal your customer base.
Yet, achieving growth is often easier said than done, and it’s something that’s very challenging to do without the right strategy.
Looking for ways to grow your business but don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place. Here we will share some of the most effective strategies and tips you can use to grow your business and your customer base, and without further ado, let us begin with the first one.
1. Define and truly understand your target audience
In this very saturated marketplace, one of the biggest challenges in growing your business is to get your audience to notice your brand amidst all the competition and the noises. If you can’t win the competition for attention, then you won’t be able to attract new customers and your business won’t grow, period.
In this situation, while it’s easy to be tempted to target as many different potential customers as possible, in most cases it’s not the best strategy. We can’t please everyone, so it’s best to identify who should be our primary target audience and put your focus there.
Perform market research and develop your buyer persona.
If you already have past customers, then you can use this data as a foundation for your market research. Identify the demographics data of your existing customers, as well as their behaviors, values, spending patterns, social media activities, and so on.
The better you understand your target audience, the more effective your marketing and sales strategies will be, and the faster your business will grow.
2. Social media marketing the right way
In this social media age, it’s fairly obvious to market our business on social media.
The thing is, everybody is also doing the same thing, and again, we won’t be able to win our audience’s attention if we are doing what everyone else is doing.
So, the question is, how should we do social media marketing?
First, we have to remember that social media marketing today is a pay-to-play game. If we want to succeed on social media, we will need to spend some money, but on the other hand, it’s crucial not to spend our money blindly.
Paid (News - Alert) advertising (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn ads) will guarantee quick results, but they can be very expensive if you are not careful. So, we’ll need to balance it out by having our own organic presence on social media, as well as partnering with relevant influencers in the industry.
Finding the right balance between organic efforts, paid advertising options, and influencer marketing are key in using social media for growth.
3. Google (News - Alert) Maps SEO
This is especially important for brick-and-mortar businesses or any businesses targeting local customers.
Most customers nowadays learn about local businesses either via social media (i.e. recommendations from people they follow) and via Google search for queries like “restaurants near me”.
For this type of search query, Google will pull results from Google Maps, so by ranking on top of Google Map results, we can effectively reach more customers. This is where Google Maps SEO comes.
While Google Maps SEO or local SEO might seem quite complicated at first, actually it will involve only four key steps:
- Claiming and verifying your Google My Business listing
- Optimizing your listing, focus on including accurate information for your customers
- Build local citations by listing your business on relevant online directories (based on location/city and industry)
- Get more (positive) reviews from your existing customers, especially on Google Maps listing but also on relevant third-party site
4. Make it as easy as possible to purchase your solution online
This one is crucial. Most people now do business online, especially in this post-COVID-19 pandemic world.
It’s already very challenging to attract the right prospects and customers to your business, and the last thing we want is for them to forfeit their intent to buy from you because it’s difficult to purchase your product/service online.
If you are selling physical products, make sure to set up a functional, well-designed eCommerce website, and list your products in relevant online marketplaces and social media networks that enable online selling. Nowadays, platforms like Shopify make it very easy for us to set up an eCommerce site, so you won’t need to hire expensive developers.
If you are providing services, then make sure it’s as easy as possible to book your service online. You can integrate an appointment booking and scheduling platform like Bookeo so people can easily make reservations on your website and social media platforms.
Also, make sure your website is mobile-friendly and loads fast. You wouldn’t want people leaving your website just because they can’t navigate your site on their mobile devices.
5. Focus on building long-term relationships
A key principle to understand when aiming to grow your business is that acquiring new customers is often more expensive than retaining existing ones.
On the other hand, the most natural and effective way to grow your customer base is by turning your existing customers into advocates: when happy, satisfied customers promote your brand (for free) to their peers and family.
81% of customers trust family and friends over promotions from businesses, and this is why it’s crucial to invest in real and long-term relationships with your existing customers.
It doesn’t have to be too complicated. Show appreciations to your customers by sending a thank you email after their purchase, and make sure they feel heard. Respond to their inquiries and social media mentions, even and especially if it’s a bad review. Ask them for their feedback (and incentivize them for doing so if necessary), and use their suggestions in future products.
Look for actionable ways to build long-term, healthy relationships with your existing customers and treat them as an extended family of your organization.
