Since no business has unlimited money, the question is not only “How To Get More Customers For My Small Business?” but also how to do so without increasing your marketing budget.
Get to Know Your Customers Day” was celebrated recently. And diving into the concepts associated with this day may shed some light on how to get more customers for your small business in a cost-effective manner.
Get to Know Your Customers Day is an opportunity to get closer to your customers. To make a construction analogy: No matter how beautiful the skyscraper you build, if the foundation is not solid, it will one day crumble like a pack of cards.
What this means for your business is that your relationship with your clients is the foundation, and your repeat customers make up this beautiful skyscraper.
Here are 3 tips on how to skyrocket your customer base, retain old customers, and increase the lifetime value of your customers without adding a dollar to your marketing budget.
1. Know your Customer:
Get to know Your Customer Day highlights the importance of knowing your customer. I wrote another article titled “Who is Your Ideal Customer?. As the article title suggests, it is important to know who your ideal customer is? Check out the previous article for more details on that and on how to build an effective customer targeting strategy.
2. Serve Your Customer:
Knowing your customer means not only knowing who they are but also identifying what is important to your ideal customer. This information provides insights into how to serve them best. And when you deliver the products and services that your ideal customer wants, you’ll get more customers, get more referrals and retain more customers.
3. Utilize Online Customer Reviews and Word of Mouth Marketing:
When you solve their problems, treat them with respect and serve them well, your customers/patients/clients will continue to do business with your company.
Not just that, they will return with their friends and associates.
Isn’t that better than paid advertising? Positive online reviews on major business review sites or word of mouth marketing results from serving your existing customers well.
Customers freely give positive online reviews without soliciting for it because they were served well. This becomes a free advertising channel for your company.
If you’ve asked this question before, “How To Get More Customers For My Small Business?” I believe you’re seeing actionable steps you can start using starting today, but that’s not all; keep reading.
How do online reviews from your existing customers affect getting new customers?
When people are trying to make a buying decision, they go to one or more business review sites. These sites collect and verify online customer reviews.
Since Google is the top search engine, many people land on the Google review site.
Hence Google reviews carry a lot of weight.
“Google My Business (GMB) is the single most crucial review and listing tool for local businesses. It is one of the top review sites, replacing what was previously called Google Local. An essential tool for garnering a credible online reputation, it can also help rank your business in various search results.”
Once you’ve got the Google My Business reviews handled for your business, there are various other business review sites of importance to look into.
Small BizTrend compiled a list of other business review sites. Their importance for your business may vary by industry.
What’s The Importance of Online Reviews?
Knowing that most new customers want to know what others have said about you before buying from you makes the things your previous and current customers say about your business carry more weight.
Study after study links a business’ success to the opinions and loyalty of its customers. Customers who experience excellent service and are loyal to a brand, service, or business are willing to pay more for that service or product.
According to Reputation X:
- 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- Nearly 3 out of 4 consumers trust a company more if it has positive reviews.
- 60% of consumers say that negative reviews made them not want to use a business/product.
- 49% of consumers need at least a four-star rating before they choose to use a business.
- Consumers read an average of 7 reviews before trusting a business.
- 97% of consumers search online for local businesses. 12% of consumers do so daily.
- Every additional one-star Yelp rating causes an increase in the business’s revenue as high as 9%.
- Reviews that only gave 1 or 2 stars failed to convert 86% of prospective customers.
- Americans report telling more people about poor service (15 people on average) than about good experiences (11).
The above data should convince you that knowing your customers and serving them well is more important than having a high marketing budget. If you serve them well, you will benefit from the goodness of online customer reviews on business review sites.
Below is a statement to take to heart in this blog post:
“Once a customer is lost, it costs more to find a new one. Providing excellent customer service and a unique customer experience fosters customer retention and referrals”.
This is how to get more customers online and build a solid relationship with your clients over time without increasing your marketing budget.
I am not saying that you won’t need to increase your marketing budget at one time or another, but putting everything mentioned here into action will cause massive growth for your company.
I want to assume that you are ready to put this to use. If so, I can help you make your current marketing budget more rewarding—no need to increase it yet.
Over the years, my agency has been assisting B2B businesses to leverage LinkedIn to get qualified leads monthly.
We will take your business from not-enough-clients to overbooked, just as we’ve done for many happy clients.
Imagine the combination of having a continuous influx of clients while practicing everything you’ve read today. Just imagine that; it will be a perfect example of building a beautiful skyscraper on a solid foundation.
Are you ready for this massive explosion in growth?
Noble Wise Marketing is a full-service marketing agency; we can help with branding and all your marketing needs. And we have done-for-you online marketing strategies.
Learned how online reviews answer the question “How To Get More Customers For My Small Business?”
It is time to practice it and start getting the results. One of the ways to get started is to sign up now for our free Online Reputation Management Webinar.
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