You’re open for business, but need some customers. Image
We all know that a vital part of start-up success hinges on your ability to find customers. As a result, every entrepreneur tries their hardest to secure as many clients and customers as possible.
Generally speaking, there are a few expectations you have before doing this. You think it’ll be pretty easy, but the reality may be entirely different…
If I Improve My Search Ranking, I’ll Find Customers With Ease
The biggest error people make is assuming that their search engine ranking is the key to finding customers. This is incorrect – it’s just the key to driving traffic to your site. In reality, you have other aspects of digital marketing to focus on if you want to turn this traffic into paying customers. Most notably, your focus needs to be on conversion rate optimization, which basically helps you convert your traffic to customers more successfully. Don’t expect to see loads of customers just because you rank highly in various search results – it’s only part of the job!
Image from Flickr
Getting My Friends To Share My Business Page On Facebook Will Help Me Find Customers
Again, people assume that sharing their social media pages around friends/family will automatically help them find customers. In essence, all you’re doing is bringing more attention to your business, which may help, but won’t guarantee you find some customers. Instead, you should use social media more effectively than this. Yes, sharing your page can help give you an initial boost, but you should invest more time and money into your social channels if you want to lure in some customers. Consider things like Facebook advertising and running full-scale social media marketing campaigns. These things are far more likely to bring in customers than merely sharing your page with friends and getting them to share it as well.
I Need To Focus On Finding New Customers All The Time
Most business owners expect that finding new customers is their primary focus. So much so that this is all they think about and concern themselves with. I’m not going to sit here and tell you this is a bad idea – it’s not. But, the reality of the situation is that this will only get you so far. The best analogy I can give is to think of this approach as filling up a bucket of water with a hole in the bottom. The bucket will never be full as there’s always water leaking out of it. In a business sense, your customer base will never really increase if you’re just bringing in new customers. These new customers may buy one thing, but then never come back. So, you find new people but lose them as well. Ideally, you need to focus on retaining current customers alongside finding new ones. This helps patch up the leak so you can keep growing your customer base.
The reality of finding customers for your business may differ from your original expectations. But, if you know what really lies ahead, then you can start preparing for it and growing your customer base!