Capturing new customers is what every business revolves around. You can have the best product or service in the world, but if nobody is buying it, then your business is useless. That is why it is so important to build customer reach and retention into your marketing plan right from the very beginning. If you are struggling to reach new customers or retain the ones that you have, then try applying these tips to your marketing plan and see if your results improve.
Everybody Loves A Promotion
One sector, where deals and promotions are particularly commonplace, is the iGaming sector. These businesses are well-practiced in running competitions, so there is a lot we can learn from them. Among the most remarkable incentives in history, one promotion held by a leading company gave winners the chance to be entered into a tournament with a $25,000 buy-in, completely free. These passes were given out to players over the course of a year and at the final tournament, one of the Platinum Pass winners ended up winning the whole tournament. This provided fantastic marketing material for the company.
Although your company might not be able to fork out for a set of $25,000 prizes, there are ways that you can give your customers fantastic offers, without massively affecting your bottom line. Service-based businesses can offer promotions to customers like free no-obligation consultations, or free taster sessions. These services will only cost you in time and nothing at all in terms of cash.
Of course, your time is important, but if you don't have a full diary, then you wouldn't be earning money with it anyway. Take the opportunity to reach new customers with these time-based promotions, and soon your diary will be so full that you won't need them anymore.
Out-Friendly The Competition
If you are a product-based business, particularly a low-cost, frequently-bought product, then loyalty cards should be your best friend. Most of us, if we look in our purse, will have a loyalty card for somewhere. The Starbucks card is the most held across the world and it retains a huge number of customers. Although many businesses won't be looking to reach quite the dizzy heights that Starbucks has, if you are a coffee shop for example, then it can really help to cement you in the minds of your customers.
Along many high streets, you will come across loads of different coffee shops. Most of them will offer coffee at a similar price point, with a similar selection of modifications you can make. The only real difference is the atmosphere inside the shop. Loyalty cards help to encourage customers to come back to you in order to get their free coffee, but also the mere presence of that card inside their purse or wallet is enough to build brand awareness. The coffee at the end is less a free coffee, but more a reward for loyalty, as many customers wouldn't come back so frequently anyway without the loyalty card.
Improve Your SEO Strategy
One of the biggest buzz words in digital marketing is SEO, Search Engine Optimization. All that this means is providing your website with the tools to reach the top of the search results list. It used to be considered a bit of a dark art in the early days of search engines, but nowadays it couldn't be simpler. Search engines want to provide their users with the content that is the most relevant to them, so in order to do that they need to ensure your website is genuine, unique, and relevant. These words should be in the forefront of your mind whenever you're listing an item or creating a blog post.
Search engines will spot copy-pasted text, keyword cramming, and shoddy links immediately, so instead of trying to hit all of those criteria, tell customers what your company and your product are really about. Write blog posts relating to the field that you're in and guest post for other sites. Write unique text to describe your products, with the information that your customers will find genuinely useful. Keep your keywords in your headings instead of cramming them all into your paragraph text. Not only will your website be more user-friendly, but it should also get more hits too. More hits mean more customers.
