6 Marketing Strategies That We Can All Use to Increase Our Customer Base

Small businesses are dependent on new business as well as the return of loyal customers to survive, and the way they market themselves is the key to attracting new, and keeping old, customers. Marketing is nothing new to business, but in a world where a client or customer can start doing business with people on the other side of the globe, ignoring your marketing strategy is a sure fire way to make your business profits decline. Here are some ideas for a marketing strategy that you would be foolish to ignore.

Social Media

Social media marketing may be relatively new, but it has taken the marketing world by storm. Having your company “liked” or “shared” on sites like Facebook and Twitter is a sure fire way to bring it to the attention of the public. The public as a whole trust their friends and family more than you, and are more likely to use your service when they have been introduced by them than a poster in the high street. New it may be, but there can be no doubt that it is effective.

Image Source: Pixabay

Cold Calling

Unpopular as it may be to some, cold calling still works. Many industries still use cold calling to gather information and to find customers; and it may be suited to your particular business. The modern variation of the telephone cold call is email marketing, and if  have never considered it, this could also be an avenue for you to explore. You can take an online email marketing course that will cover everything that you need to know, and that could open up a whole new customer base. Cold calling may seem like an antiquated approach, but having spread its wings to emails, it is now considered a modern marketing technique again.

B2B Networking

If your business involves working with any other businesses, then you need to start networking among yourselves to generate other business customers. B2B networking is often overlooked by small businesses, as they strive to increase their customer base. However, business customers are as valuable as any private customer; and the more you know, and deal with, the further your B2B network can stretch.

Internet

Getting your business onto the internet through a website is vital; and even though many small businesses may not have a website, the most successful ones do. If you don’t have a site already, you should find a good web designer, and a company like Umbee Hosting to manage it once it is on the net. If your business is only local you may not think you need to use the internet, but if you want your customer base to come from a wider area, using the internet is the best option.

Referrals

Any business that concentrates on quality and efficiency should be able to market themselves through referrals. After all, we tend to employ services that we have been told about, or buy products that have been referred to us. If you give a shoddy service, or produce low quality products, you will not get many referrals, so improve quality to market yourself through referrals.

Flyers

For a personal touch in your area, flyers are still a great marketing tool. Not so much a long term strategy, rather a way to advertise a sale, or to drum up business in a quiet period. This is a cheap way to get your service or product to a large number of local residents. It may be seen as hit and miss, but a lot of marketing techniques are.

If you don’t market your company, you are going to find creating a customer base a long, difficult process. Trust the successful businesses you see, and start to plan your marketing today.