Once you’ve registered your new business with the government and gotten the legal paperwork squared away, how do you go about, you know … acquiring customers ? What’s the strategy? Before you can receive any significant funding for your business (which we’ll talk about in the next section), you need to start building an online presence and marketing your business, as well as getting a sales process together and beginning to sell your product or service.
Turns out that generating demand and earning customers needs to come before you can viably ask for funding from an external source. And once you start generating customers, you’ll need to retain them – which is where customer service comes in.
A new company needs to start drumming up interest for its product or service even before it’s ready to ship. But there are a million different platforms and avenues you can use to drive awareness … so where on earth do you start? Below are some marketing strategies.
1. Narrow down your target customer.
It all comes down to your target customer. You won’t be able to position what you’re selling to meet customers’ needs without knowing who they are. One of the very first questions you need to ask yourself is: Who wants what I’m selling? Who would find it useful? Who would love it? Then, you need to dig in to who that person is or those people are, and what kind of messaging would resonate with them. That includes their backgrounds, interests, goals, and challenges, in addition to how old they are, what they do every day, which social platforms they use, and so on.
Creating very specific buyer personas can dramatically improve your business results. , which includes buyer persona templates you can customize yourself. Once you’ve picked a buyer persona or two, print them out, tack them onto your wall, and think about their interests and needs before making every business decision.Develop a brand identity.
In addition to researching your target customer, when you’re first starting a business, you’ll need to build the foundation for a strong brand identity. Your brand identity is about your values, how you communicate concepts, and which emotions you want your customers to feel when they interact with your business. Having a consistent brand identity to promote your business will make you look more professional and help you attract new customers.
2. Build your online presence.
With your target customer and your brand identity under your belt, you can begin building the core marketing elements of your small business, which includes your website, your blog, your email tool, your conversion tool, and your social media accounts.
3. Generate and nurture leads.
Once you’ve started building an online presence and creating awareness for your business, you need to generate the leads that will close into customers. Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into leads, and if you build a successful lead generation engine, you’ll be able to keep your funnel full of sales prospects while you sleep.
