As a business owner, you’ve been doing everything you’ve been told to do to grow your business. You’re identifying the exact customers you want, you’re creating special offers and marketing directly to them, and you’re tracking the results of every campaign and following up with every lead.
Yet, with a large number of customers online, at least 87% according to the Pew Research Center, you might wonder if there’s something else you could be doing to get customers online.
There’s quite a bit, but these steps highlight the most important things you can do. Your online presence starts with your own website and email list – the only two things you own online — but permeates through social media, third-party sites, and search engine results. Prospects can find you through any of these avenues, but turning them into new online customers takes a little work. Here are some things to think about to attract new online customers.
How to Get Customers Online
Advertise
The quickest and most direct way to immediately find customers online is to advertise to them when they are searching for your product or service. Ads is the most established and most widely used means of doing this through the pay-per-click program. As a Google Premier Partner, Salesgenie has a dedicated team of professionals that provide you full access to your Ads account and industry-leading rates and performance.
Monitor reviews
There are nearly countless third-party review sites where your business can take a beating or get a boost. Think about all the places you could show up, from Yelp, to Google, to Angie’s List to Trip Advisor. Depending on your business, you may be on all of them. In order to best determine what review sites matter most for your business in your community, do a search for your products and services and the word “review” and look at the results. Also try a search of your business name + reviews to see what comes up specifically when a prospect is researching your business.
Proactively watch for negative reviews and put forth your best customer service efforts to resolve any issues as quickly as possible. Always respond with the highest standards of customer service (the world wide web will see this after all), but even more importantly, take the conversation offline. When someone searches for your business, they will see the good reviews and your efforts to make any poor experiences better. You can attract new customers online through your review presence because it not only helps your business rank higher in searches, but it also immediately tells a new customer something about your standard of service.
Great reviews also make great testimonials and content for your blog, email and social media.
Blog
Your website should provide the basics like your contact information, hours, locations, services and prices. How about answering their other questions about the product or service you offer? Writing a blog for your website creates educational content so readers can learn from you and build trust in your brand. According to an Entrepreneur.com article, this is the place to start for your content strategy. A blog also gives you more options to direct pay-per-click viewers, for instance Ads customers, to your website without being overly pushy.
Building relationships helps keep the focus on the human interaction of business. If you leave a stack of postcards with your special offer at the repair shop, your offer is now trackable and you have hard evidence of how well that offer does.
After all your hard work identifying customers and designing offers just for them, don’t forget the last step – the follow up. A quick check-in can say a lot to a prospect. For example, it can say that you’re thoughtful, dedicated and offer excellent customer service. Let Salesgenie help you manage your leads, and you’ll turn them into repeat customers.
Email
Blog posts are also great material to use in an email blast to your existing customer base or to a new group of ideal prospects. By targeting look-alike customers with Salesgenie and working either with our Do-It-Yourself tool or your dedicated Salesgenie representative, you can reach a whole new group of potential customers with email messages that you have tested and proven on your existing customers.
Use social media
Using blog content for email is just the start. You’ve probably created your free profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and any other outlets you care to use and where your ideal customers are engaged. Take a second to stop and think about the content you’re posting on these media. Make sure you’re linking to the right places from your profiles and posting interesting images and videos. Additionally, go out and be active on social media “fan pages.” For example, if you run an auto parts store, you should be monitoring local car club pages. You can easily find new customers online by sharing common interests on social media.
There is likely more you can be doing to drive your business with new customers found online. Let Salesgenie help you develop new sales leads, create and manage a marketing campaign.
