A Detailed Guide on How to Attract New Customers

Attracting new customers is half the battle when it comes to running a successful business, with the other half coming after you've got them through the doors. But with so many different vendors vying for the consumer's attention, every business has to shine their brightest to get the attention they need to succeed.

Below you'll find a how-to guide covering the easiest ways to start attracting new customers to your business. Whether it's savvy brand-building or expanding your market, there are tons of tips here for bringing in new blood.

Attract New Customers By Building a Rapport

The reason so many businesses fail in the first year or so generally has little to do with the quality of their services. In many cases, a merchant might be thrown into a market with several other competitors selling very similar products. If the quality of the product is equivalent, would-be successful merchants have to attract customers in other ways.

Attracting new customers can be broken down into two major parts: visibility and branding. To be chosen over other vendors and develop a strong base of new customers that will keep coming back, merchants have to show what they have to offer and who they are to potential customers and business partners alike.

Start Posting on LinkedIn

Many merchants and business owners don't even bother to use their LinkedIn page, but they're missing out on a potential gold mine when it comes to potential customer connections.

A consistent, kept-up LinkedIn page can give potential customers and business connections insight into your professionalism and what you're interested in selling, whether it's goods or services.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of LinkedIn for attracting new customers (Source: Hootesuite):

• Think about what potential customers would want to read. Customers are interested in quality service and attitude as well as whatever you have to offer them in your business. A LinkedIn blog should allow customers to see how you conduct yourself online as a vendor and how you interact with customers.
• Don't sell your service. There are many other places you can sell your services or products other than your LinkedIn page. Selling stuff on LinkedIn makes it look like you can't afford your own company website, which looks rather unprofessional. This will turn off many potential new customers.
• Don't skip information on your profile. Writing entertaining and informative blog posts on LinkedIn is one way to attract new customers. However, you also want to keep your profile up to snuff. Leaving fields blank can make a business seem untrustworthy since they don't pay attention to the details.
• Don't include misspellings. There are so many free grammar checks and spell checks available online that there's no excuse for including poor grammar or spelling in your LinkedIn profile or posts. Put each post and entry through a grammar check before posting it on your professional LinkedIn Page, and have someone read over it first.
• Do include videos. Videos are five times more likely than other content times to draw in new viewers to your LinkedIn profile, so if you're camera-shy, you better get over it fast. Videos can be made on your LinkedIn profile on everything from company milestones to mission statements.
• Do include graphics with statistics. People love statistics because they're easy to repeat to others and make the repeater seem more knowledgeable by passing knowledge. Include some business-related stats that you think your potential customers need to know and you'll grab their attention.

Many business professionals set up a LinkedIn profile and promptly forget that the network exists. By doing so, however, you're missing out on a large pool of potential business you could be carefully cultivating as you build your market base.

Writing Short-Form Posts on LinkedIn

Along with setting up a detailed business page with complete contact information, the other way business owners can attract new customers on LinkedIn is through blog posts. Short-form blog posts are useful for building new customers in three ways (Source: LinkedIn):

• Blogs establish credibility. Any merchant can enter a market and act like they know everything, but writing a consistent blog proves to potential customers that a business knows what it's talking about.
• Blogs increase visibility. Visibility is a huge part of making sure that potential customers have a chance to notice your business. In a sea of competing vendors, the visibility provided by regular social media posts can set you apart.
• Blogs build a bond. Building a blog of short-form posts on LinkedIn is almost like starting a conversation with strangers. If you keep the talk going, you'll soon find new people drawn into the conversation. This gives your customer base a chance to reach out and respond, too.

You don't have to post constantly on LinkedIn to see the benefits of doing it. Just one post a week can help you keep your business relevant while you build up your brand name and customer base. You can post up to a blog post a day, but be careful to only post information that is entertaining and relevant. If you post fluff or poor content, your audience will drop off fast.

How to Post Content on LinkedIn

Posting social media content for your business on LinkedIn is simple once you have your account set up. Here's the process you should follow for adding business-related content to your LinkedIn page (Source: LinkedIn):

• From your LinkedIn page, select the Start a Post feature to share content with your profile users. This is the feature you use when you want to write short-form text posts.
• From your LinkedIn page, select the Camera icon to add photos to your LinkedIn page. Adding photos of your business and products can help add visual interest to your page and draw the eye, keeping potential customers on your blog post longer.
• From your LinkedIn page, select the Video icon to add short videos to your LinkedIn page. Adding videos can give you a way to speak directly to your customers or show off dynamic content of your business.
• From your LinkedIn page, select the Document icon to add important documents to your LinkedIn profile. These could be anything from snapshots of your business license to your business mission statement.

LinkedIn's user interface is seamless and easy to use. This simplicity is one of the reasons why LinkedIn is such a popular platform for attracting new customers and growing your base.

Tips for Posting Content on LinkedIn

Linking consistent, informative, and dynamic content on LinkedIn is more than just making sure you put up your dutiful once-a-week posting. If you don't include content that people are actually going to want to engage with, you not only won't attract new customers, you may drive off some of the ones you already have.

Here are some additional tips for making the best out of your content on LinkedIn:

• Don't be afraid to include emojis. While you wouldn't want to use emojis in a business-related email, a LinkedIn profile straddles the seriousness of a business email and a personal social media page. Emojis can be a way to bridge communication gaps as long as you don't go overboard and use too many of them.
• Don't go too short. Posting short, frequent blog posts comes across as attention-seeking behavior, and not in a good way. Posting slightly longer content shows potential customers that you actually have something significant to say and that you're invested in a real social media presence.
• Check your information. Nothing can wreck a company's credibility faster than posting inaccurate information or information that is controversial. Make sure to comb through your posts and check all facts to verify that what you say is true and isn't going to create a backlash.
• Be authentic. Showing your customers that there is a real person or people behind your company can help draw them in when the products or services alone won't cut it. Use social media marketing campaigns to sincerely communicate your company's goals and motivations.
• Encourage feedback and rapport. There are tons of people in the world that run social media accounts without getting very much validation in response. To get new customers interested in your business, you have to build a relationship with them. Encourage questions and take suggestions. Engage with customers one-on-one.

A successful LinkedIn social media account isn't something you can put together overnight. Instead, you'll need to commit to adding regular dynamic content to your page to bring in new interested parties.

Create a Simple Facebook Ad

The next step you can take towards attracting new customers is to create a simple Facebook ad. Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world, and its algorithms can help you get visibility with customers in a digital space where they spend a lot of their leisure time.

How to Set Up a Successful Facebook Ad

Before you set up a Facebook ad, you should ask yourself this question: What problem can I solve for my customer? The best way to endear yourself to new customers is to make your company useful to them. Modern life comes with a million little inconveniences, so at the end of the day your business should be based around making life easier for people.

Here are some tips for setting up a Facebook Ad that will successfully attract new customers:

• Keep it simple. Make your headlines short and catchy such as: Tired of ---? We Help You With ---. The headline of your ad should immediately address your customer's problem and potential solution.
• Choose a city where you know you have customers. Location is vital for any prospective business. Targeting ads in your local community can help you build a local customer base while also keeping your customers engaged with your business online.
• Add photos. Including high-quality photos of your products for sale or your services rendered can instantly make your company more appealing to onlookers.
• Start advertising at the minimum daily budget. For very little money, you can place an Ad on Facebook daily. Even if this only brings in a few additional customers, these customers can bring in more customers through word of mouth. When you're first expanding your customer base, every little bit helps.
• Provide free consultations. You don't want to give away too much for free as a business, but information is one thing that you can give away freely without having to take from your business to do it. The key is to convince your customers they must have your products.

An advertisement needs to cut to the chase to keep a potential new customer's attention. So when you're building your Facebook Ad, focus on these three points:

• Make sure you can solve the customer's problem. Don't advertise services or products you aren't 100% prepared to provide. Even just a few negative online reviews for poor business performance can sink a new company quickly.
• Explain why it's important for the customer to solve their problem. Some people may not realize how much they want or need something until they hear it explained to them. This act of persuasion is a big part of driving sales.
• Provide advice to make your company credible. The reason you'll see many business blogs include how-to guides and product reviews is that this content is informative to the audience. Once you've established yourself as a credible source of information related to your product or services, you'll bring in more customers.
• Distinguish your product or services as the best available. In online marketing, it's not just about selling your product as something that is needed. You also have to tell the customer why they should choose your version of that product or service over someone else's. Stand out in quality or customer service to get ahead of your competitors.

With Facebook you only have a few precious seconds to get a potential customer's attention before they scroll away, so every word counts. Make sure your ad gets the point across simply and is as persuasive as possible to attract new customers.

Find a Partner and Start Cross-Selling

If you want your business to expand and not stagnate, attracting new customers is crucial. One way you can do this other than strengthening your own brand is to reach out and start affiliating with other companies.

Here's what you should look for when you're looking into finding an affiliate or partner business:

• Look for a business that isn't a direct rival. You'll want to look into partnering with businesses that sell similar products and services to your own, but not the same ones. You need to look for products and services that dovetail neatly together. For example, a pool-cleaning service might partner with a landscape maintenance team.
• Look for a business with a similar business model. You'll want an affiliated company that has the same level of social media engagement and intentions for growth as your company. Neither company in the partnership should feel like they are carrying the other when it comes to social media marketing and customer relations.

Once you find a partner company, it's important for both businesses to stay on the same page with regards to joint promotional ventures and how you handle customers.

Tips for Cross-Selling

Cross-selling is usually a good sign of growth for a small company since it indicates that they're strong enough to branch out and offer additional services and products other than their flagship line.

Cross-selling makes the business more attractive to new customers. It also indicates subtly to customers that a business is financially strong. Customers interested in building a long-term relationship don't want a fly-by-night business to work with them, so proving longevity can go a long way towards helping with customer retention.  

Here are a few extra tips for getting started with cross-selling in your company (Source: InstaPage):

• Look into drip social media marketing campaigns. Feeding regular customers a steady stream of relevant information can help increase customer engagement. However, you have to walk a fine line between reaching out to your customer base and harassing them with spam, so tread lightly here.
• Provide multiple complementary options. For each product or service you provide, brainstorm and see what other products or services you could reasonably provide that would add significant value to your original offerings. Giving people even just two or three options can make a huge difference.
• Investigate customer needs. The best way to launch successful cross-selling campaigns is to know exactly what your customers want and deliver it to them. You can find out what your customers need by performing customer surveys or analyzing your customer demographic by watching them on social media.

Cross-selling is a long-term business strategy for bringing in new customers, so don't try to offer too much all at once. Instead, schedule the release of new products, services, or content regularly so that customers know you're in it for the long haul. They'll appreciate a deliberate, thoughtful approach to a new product line over an opportunistic cash grab any day of the week.

Respond to People in Groups and Forums

An easy way you can build your customer base and attract new customers is to directly engage with potential customers in social media "town squares" like Facebook Groups, Reddit, and Quora. Engaging with potential customers on a one-on-one basis in social media accomplishes the following goals:

• It increases visibility. Any time you write something online that is associated with your company, it brings attention to your company to new potential customers. As long as your comment remains on a public forum, it will continue to act as a small advertisement for the business (for good or bad).
• It establishes your business as an authority. If you're helpful and answer questions representing your business online in forums where your business knowledge is relevant, you can gain considerable credibility as a subject matter expert. This makes people more likely to buy from your company.
• It humanizes the company. Any time a real person represents your business online, it makes the business look more friendly and approachable. This is a quality that new customers will appreciate in your brand, making them more likely to take a chance on buying your product.
• It gives customers a way to reach out directly. A customer who might never have approached your business for service may be intrigued by your Reddit comment and reach out to you for a sale or a business opportunity. You never know what kind of opportunities this kind of networking can result in.

Engaging directly with customers this way can be a double-edged sword. While it gives you a chance to attract new customers, it also demands that you present yourself in the most professional manner possible. Never insult people online while representing your company or make inflammatory comments that might reflect badly on the business.

Provide Quality Service

Attracting new customers is partly persuasion, but it isn't a good marketing campaign that will keep your new customers around in the long run.

One of the most unpredictable measures of success for a new business is the number of word-of-mouth recommendations that it has. Word-of-mouth is one of the most potent types of marketing available that can never be truly bought by merchants. Instead, it's something you have to earn with quality service and products.

Quality of Service Determines Word of Mouth Marketing

The basis of a company's reputation rests on word-of-mouth. Just as easily as a customer recommends you, they can also badmouth your company to everyone they know.

This power of persuasion is why you have to provide good service no matter what. If someone presents you with an issue they had with a product or service you sold them, do everything in your power to resolve the situation with a happy customer.

While some customers will never be satisfied, it's often easy to smooth over a defective product or a poor service experience with the right words and compensation. Even easier than that is going the extra mile to make sure your products and services are excellent to begin with.

Attracting New Customers Is Key to Company Growth

Many business management courses stress the importance of retaining long-term customers, and it's true that this is an important aspect of running a successful business. However, bringing in fresh blood and new clientele is what helps your business to expand and develop the financial security it needs for long-term success.