8 Strategies to Attract New Customers to Your Small Business

Discover how to captivate new clients and grow your small business with these eight innovative strategies. From understanding your target market to offering value and embracing authenticity, learn how to make your business irresistible to potential customers.

1. Know just who you’re on the lookout for

Long ago, when you started your business, you probably had to generate a business plan. Remember researching your target demographics? Remember nailing down just who your product and services were meant for? Probably not.

But, when you know just who you’re looking for, you’ll be able to look for these exact types of people—and exactness is important here.

Be as specific as you can and avoid making broad classifications like “women” or “baby boomers” or “people who like motorcycles.” When you really get down to it, targeted strategies will work most efficiently and effectively.

2. Know where your customers “live”

Okay. This isn’t as creepy as it sounds. With these targeted customers in mind, where might you find one of them on any given day? Is your target customer always on a smartphone? Using social media? Watching videos on YouTube? Checking their actual mailbox in their driveway for letters? Around town, what stores might your perfect customer frequent?

Once you figure out where your message might find the best landing place, weasel your way in. Actively promote your business on forums and social media pages where your targeted customers are already hanging out. Collaborate with like-minded businesses and tag team your way to success. Their customers may just happen to look a whole like the customers you’re hoping to find…

3. Offer something of value

When you’ve found what works in the digital sphere, consider what might be possible back in the real world. Offline, there’s a chance for even deeper connections to be made. Create opportunities that might lure customers into the store for a curated, one-of-a-kind experience. Don’t push the sales aspect, but instead offer them something special and of value. Let them assess your worth. Once they’ve made up their mind, they’ll be making a purchase, too.

4. Know who you are

Have you ever met that person who is completely comfortable in their own skin? There’s something about them, right? As you really settle into the nitty-gritty of your small business, make sure you have a complete understanding of who you are, what you do, and how your business is making a difference.

Know this inside and out. Feel it in your bones.

This sense of engagement to your industry warrants you a professionalism and a dedication that potential customers will flock to. When people see how interested you are in your work—and how knowledgeable you happen to be—they’ll inevitably seek your assistance.

5. Team Up for Success

Capitalize on strategy that supports the “all for one and one for all” mindset, your success is also their success—and vice versa.

Take advantage of the synergy that happens with complementary businesses team up together. This sort of experience may have success as the end goal, but along the way, expect to also meet new business colleagues, capitalize on potential customers, and build new relationships with fellow business owners, neighbors and community members.

Successful businesses are all about relationships. When you establish an honest connection with another person, they’ll not only keep coming back for more—they’ll also tell all of their friends.

6. Make time to follow up

In the small business world, working hours extend beyond the 9-to-5 norms. Small business owners have to make do with the same 24 hours in a day that everyone else has.

To capitalize on success and to make these hours in business really count, follow up. Blooming leads shrivel up and die when you don’t follow up.

Make notes. Have a scheduling system. Touch base with customers and let them know you both see them and appreciate them.

7. Use the data that’s out there

To convert the people who stop in and peek around on your website into being paying customers may require your use of and interpretation of analytics. Understanding and optimizing the market channels that are the most successful in bringing customer ins—search engines, social media, and the like—can be extremely insightful. Numbers don’t lie.

8. Share honestly and be a human. Authenticity matters.

Embrace honesty. Within the world of small business, gimmicks and teasers and false promises can run rampant. People are seeking brands they can stay loyal to for life. These customers are hoping for transparency. They’re eager for honesty.

Listen to the feedback you receive from these customers, and along the way, incorporate small touches, like a handwritten note in a shipment or personally call people to share new information. This mode of doing business is simple, but it’s powerful.

Small touches like these are both human and powerful. That’s what will resonate with potential clients. Be yourself. Dream big. That’s when new clients will start coming of the woodwork.