7 Steps to Attract Customers to Your Business
All MSP owners at some point face the challenge of attracting new customers. So this is how to attract more customers to your business.
1. Define your perfect customer.
When you define your perfect customer (what we call your character or your avatar) you can start marketing to and engaging with them. This makes it much easier to attract customers to your business.
This is often difficult for small business owners who feel that they are limiting their market by reducing the number of people they sell to, but in fact, the opposite is true: the more narrowly you define your target customer, the larger your market. The reason for this is simple: when you try to attract everyone, you attract no one; your message is too generic. But when you narrowly define your niche, your customers can easily identify themselves as your customer and decide to work with you.
Also, far from limiting your market, you will end up attracting many more customers who are similar to your target customer.
2. Know where your customer lives.
Your customer exists in their world, not your world. If you are going to talk to prospects who will become your customers you must step into their world and meet them where they are. Understand their likes and dislikes. Where do they find information? What online groups do they frequent? Meet them there.
Digging into your character avatar helps you get into their shoes and connect with them based on what is important to them. Get our character avatar template here.
3. Understand the problem you solve for your customer
Remember that your prospect is interested in themselves. They are not interested in you so you have to talk to them about the problem you solve for them. Most people prefer to talk about what they do and how they work, but this does not attract, engage or intrigue your prospects.
Show them you understand them that you can solve a problem they have, and they will be attracted to what you offer.
People are always running away from something or toward something. They are searching for solutions and transformation. So ask yourself: what is the transformation that you offer?
4. Update your website and develop a digital strategy
97% of transactions start online and your prospect will go through 57% of the sales journey before they even meet you. So is your digital footprint helping prospects make the decision to work with you?
If your website looks like it is from 1995, or even 2015, it is time for a refresh – this doesn’t have to be a huge, expensive, endeavor, but a clear, well-written, website is KEY to attracting your prospects. This isn’t a nice-to-have it is a must-have.
Once you have the website written you want to think about how you will engage your prospects online. What social media channels should you use to promote yourself? Where can you stake your presence? Don’t just post randomly, post where your customers are with information that is relevant to them, information that is all about the problem you solve for them. Have a digital strategy.
5. Define your customer journey.
When creating your digital strategy, you will want to define the journey that takes your prospect from becoming aware of you to be your customer.
(And then buying more and bringing in referrals).
A strategy has three components, a documented journey, tools and tactics and actionable metrics:
One of the biggest mistakes that we see focusing too much on tools and tactics which is a bit like being a bull in a China shop: you run around and try new things, breaking old ones as you go and not getting value out of anything. A documented journey helps you create a very specific strategy that will speak to your prospects.
This also allows you to get out of the endless drive to find “organic” traffic. Once you know what you are attracting customers to you can profitably run advertisements on Google and Facebook that will drive interest in your offering.
As a part of this strategy, you will have to give some thought to how you attract your customers and where you will meet them. But you will also have to define what comes next… just meeting people is not enough check out point 7, you will also have to follow up.
6. Study what others are doing
A bit of market research helps you in two ways:
First: you understand what others are doing. This gives you swipe file material and somewhere to start in terms of creating content for your prospects.
This doesn’t mean that you copy them, but rather by looking at visuals, titles and what they do you will get ideas for what will work for your prospects.
Second: looking at the competition will help you hone what you do. Your solutions will be different. You will look at their work and find what you perceive as holes, mistakes, or just not how you do things. Those are opportunities to separate and differentiate yourself.
There is plenty of room for everyone in this market.
7. Follow Up
The single most important action you can take to attract new customers is to follow up with the leads you do identify. You MUST follow up. It takes TIME to build a relationship so that people will buy from you; if all you do is ask people for the sale it is like asking people you don’t know to get married. And that is not very effective.Asking strangers to get married is not a great way to find a mate or a customer.
Put in place an automated follow up machine that will help you turn prospects into leads and leads into customers.
