Is your business Lost to potential clients or rather if they wanted to find you could they?
I’m absolutely a fan of proactive marketing, but before you put your money into outgoing marketing, you need to make sure you can be found by people who are already looking for your service. They are the low hanging fruit•The love group, so to speak.
Ask yourself: Is it easier to sell a car to someone in the market for a new car or someone who isn’t looking and happy with what they are currently driving? The answer is obvious. But what may not be so obvious is how to find you when they are looking. Who is your potential client and if they are looking for granite countertops or a shiatsu massage, where will they look?
Here are three simple tips that can be helpful for many companies in being found:
1)Website with Search Engine Optimization Yes, being found at the top of an Internet search is a big deal and not really that hard to do if you have the right help.
2) Current Client Awareness Programs Let’s say you have 3,000 customers. 800 of them are regulars and the other 2,200 you’ve only seen once or twice in the last couple of years at most. Do your inactive customers know all the services you provide? They’ve already shown they like a few things you do but perhaps they don’t know they can host a corporate Christmas party at your restaurant or that your golf club offers networking events with local big wigs. They won’t know unless you tell them. Electronic newsletters, a flyer in their shopping bag, emailed birthday coupons, and referral incentives are all simple ways to help bring in new business to from your already loyal customer base.
3) Signage Sounds too simple, right? If you have a local business and local patronage is important, make sure you can be found from the street. That could mean advertising on a nearby billboard, listing your business using Google Local Business Listings so you show up on the map at the top of the search, and even making sure your brochure is located at concierge desks for local hotels. If you do business in other states and not locally this can mean being listed on industry web sites and directories, being found at large industry tradeshows, or building partnerships with local brick and mortar companies that have a local presence and can showcase your products in person.
Try these three simple steps. You might be surprised how making your business accessible is the easiest thing you can do to bring in additional dollars.
