We have done our market research, we have selected our target audience and we have set up our business. Now, we face the ultimate test: attract your first customers. We tell you some techniques to overcome this obstacle.
The big day has come. We finally have the keys to our company. We take stock of everything that has been done so far and we see that we have done our homework well: we have prepared a business plan, we have analyzed our market quantitatively and qualitatively and we have selected our target audience … But the telephone remains silent and the doorbell the door does not sound.
Do not worry! Below we offer you 15 effective techniques to attract your first customers …
1) Approach the cold door
It is the old technique of going door to door to offer our products. It is a strategy that burns a lot. The experts do not recommend it when the products are not very technical or when we go to large companies. Your practice would be more advisable in the event that you make a visit to a polygon or a business center. If you can not specify anything, at least you will have obtained information from potential clients.
2) Specialized ‘mailing’
The mailing or the e-mailing is effective if you take advantage of a moment in which you can be generating demand.
To do this, you should be very attentive to the market movements of your sector: search the specialized press and visit the fairs and congresses, so you will discover the signs to send your brochures or your catalogs. A variant of the typical mailing is the so-called marketing of expectations: it sends a brochure in which it is announced that something will happen from a date, and on that date you communicate other data and so … it is about generating expectations in your clients and in this way capture their attention. Another form of mailing is done on the door knobs of houses or cars.
3) Customize the offer
It is convenient to personalize the offer. According to the experts, this is a strategy with which you get the client to see that you care about him and take your time to satisfy him. It is what some call meta communication, a factor that predisposes customers to your favor.
4) Take advantage of your ‘partners’
An ingenious solution to attract the first customers is to use precisely your strategic partners or partners. They will be responsible for giving good references of your company.
5) Prescribers strategy
Another recommendation of the experts is to quantify the market beforehand and, through this analysis, identify which are the fastest channels to get the clients. The same for this process, the campaigns are not required but it consists in locating where our direct channels, our main prescribers, can be.
Work with the organizations and associations of the economic sector in which you move as well as the potential clients. It is important to identify these prescribers and take care of them so that they have an interest in sending us clients. So, for example, if you are going to set up a podiatric clinic, leave your card in the pharmacies of the area, in the drugstores, in the health center … In short, in all those places that can act as prescribers.
If you also potency the prescription, better: that is, there is another way of working to prescribers especially good to get our own customers to prescribe us and is to encourage the prescription based on gifts or points redeemable in new services, discounts.
6) Promotional meetings
Do not hesitate to invest some money to get clients because it will never be a free expense. There are many formulas to summon your potential clients, from the organization of breakfasts or work lunches to a training workshop. Summons no more than ten people. If you already have a client, invite them and others who are not. Convene them to a meeting to get to know each other better and do not hurry to sell. The important thing is to publicize your company.
7) 2×1 offers
The 2×1 or the 1 + 1 does not have to be the exclusive territory of supermarkets. It is a strategy that works very well depending on which sectors: in the clinics, in the aesthetic centers, in the dry cleaners … But increasingly it is extending more to other economic activities, such as an agency that offers one of its services for free in exchange for an annual contract.
8) Use gifts
The gift often obliges to buy something because the person who receives it is seen, consciously or unconsciously, in the commitment to correspond the detail. It is company psychology.
9) Special discounts
It offers special discounts to the first 10 customers or organizes a raffle before a notary for a specific gift among the first 100 customers. There are many formulas that do not necessarily have to be very expensive and that, however, can be quite profitable. These types of strategies will allow you to capture customers and information about them.
10) Products for NGO
Each time you take more Corporate Social Responsibility and it is very important to link your services or products to a social purpose: to say that a percentage of the price of your service or your product goes to an NGO sells a lot. In the face of two similar offers, the customer’s tendency is to choose that option in which, in addition to getting their good, allows you to contribute to a cause of solidarity.
11) Free conferences
It is about offering training courses, conferences or seminars in subjects of which you are an expert, but without trying to sell anything to anyone. It is about providing quality content from which the audience can also benefit. To arouse interest among attendees use marketing techniques that arouse their expectations. Equally valid is to send studies on the sector that may be of interest to your clients along with a cover letter or similar. The option of conducting market surveys, surveys or free tests is also useful.
12) Customer tracking
Keeping track of all our clients is a tactic that we always recommend, because when the buyer or contractor feels loved and cared for, he tends to acquire or contract more products or services. But, it can also be a recruitment strategy. The secret lies in carrying out relational actions that lead to closer ties with our future client: calls, invitations to events, sector reports, personalized studies …
13) Arm yourself to good tree
Become a client of a large company, using the technique of I stay with your crumbs. There are many companies that require minimum orders for an operation to be profitable so that, a company that starts, can be offered as a subcontractor to the big one. Many times even the big ones become your own customers.
14) Viral marketing
Take advantage of your contacts online and work a nice campaign, something curious, bold or powerful, in the form of a video, with original or groundbreaking ideas and pass it on to your contacts. Few companies can survive beyond the networks.
15) Open house
Invite all potential customers in the area to know your facilities for a day. Here you can combine some of the above strategies: conduct a marketing campaign of expectations or send a massive mailing or e-mailing creating expectations, then invite your potential customers to know your facilities and offer them a raffle. With this initiative, you get to know among many potential clients and, in addition, you can gather information to create a good database.
