Every business wants more customers. After all, without customers, you don’t have a business. But attracting customers doesn’t always have to cost money. There are some simple marketing techniques you can use to start attracting customers straight away – here are 5 of the best and they won’t cost you a cent.
1. Ask For And Promote Testimonials
All businesses should be asking for testimonials. When you’ve worked with a new client, or have a happy customer – ask for a testimonial. When you do, also give some benefit back to them. Use their logo within the testimonial and give them a backlink from your website. It’s also important to place them in your marketing materials. When you offer this as part of your “testimonial package”, I doubt they will say no.
2. Be Easy To Talk About To Generate Referrals
Happy customers like to share great experiences. When you offer an outstanding customer experience, you need to make your business easy to talk about. Do this by giving customers a short statement, six words or less in length that:
a) Describes the key benefit of your business.
b) Describes what customers can expect from your business.
By providing a clear and concise statement, you become easy to remember and easy to share – and it costs you nothing.
3. Get Social
If you’re not using social media, start doing it now. Apart from being free, it allow you to build a community around your brand. There are many to choose from; the main being Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Personally, I would start by creating a LinkedIn profile for you and your business and then research Twitter and Facebook to see which suits your target market. If you need a hand with this, feel free to give us a call.
4. Build A List
The money is in the list. I’m sure you’ve heard this saying before. The facts are that email marketing has shown (close to $45 for every $1 spent) to return a greater return on investment than most marketing tactics. So how do you build a list for free?. MailChimp is a great email marketing service that’s free for businesses under 1,000 subscribers. You just register and place the subscription box on your website. Of course, you need to make an offer and give some value to subscribers – but the database is stored by MailChimp. It’s very easy and user-friendly.
5. Be Active In Consumer Forums
Forum marketing is a great way to build credibility and traffic to your website. Forums are specific areas on websites where registered users discuss issues on specific areas of interest. If you do some research, chances are there is a forum related to your product or service that’s used by your target market. Some key points to remember with forums are:
a) Create a signature – make sure you set up a signature for your posts with your name, business name, contact details, website address and you six words we spoke of earlier. You must provide a way for people to contact you.
b) Don’t self promote in posts – Forum members hate self-promotion. Let your helpful responses do the talking and don’t use them to plug your business. Show your value and expertise in the responses you give and members will click on the link in your signature if they want to contact you.
So there you have it. Five ways to attract more customers and you don’t have to put your hand in your pocket. If you want some more ideas, feel free to subscribe to our weekly marketing ideas and we will send you a new idea every week.
Let me know what you think by commenting below.
Chris Dale
Chris Dale is the founder and managing director of MarketingHQ. He loves to help businesses of all sizes get more out of their marketing – and by more he means more sales! Find out more about him here or feel free to connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.
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