Ten Creative Ways of Attracting New Customers

The key to the growth of any business lies in acquiring new customers, but in this
economy, not many can afford an aggressive marketing campaign. Fortunately, with a
little creativity and dedication, you can use alternative marketing techniques to attract
new customers and grow your business. Ways to advertise for little to no cost include
forming partnerships, starting a referral incentive program, and creatively pursuing
media coverage. Increase your web presence through blogging, commenting, article
writing and social media.

1. Generate a Newsletter:

Offer an email newsletter which includes short articles, links to important events or news
relating to your business, helpful tips, and customer comments. Make this newsletter
available to your customers and your affiliates. Your customers will feel more connected
to your company and will remain a customer longer. Your affiliates will stay abreast of
any changes within the company and might even send the newsletter out to their clients,
increasing the number of recipients. Potential customers will also be reminded of your
product or service every month when your newsletter gets delivered in your inbox. In
addition to email you can advertise your newsletter by including a link on your blog.

2. Set Up a Referral Incentive Program:

People love freebies, even little ones. By offering some product or service free when
customers refer other paying customers, you are setting them up with a good reason to
tell their friends about you. Your customers may love your product but they aren't
necessarily going to tell everyone about it without a little nudge. Personal gain is
probably the best incentive out there so let your customers speak for you by rewarding
them with a free gift.

3. Become a Company Standard:

Targeting a group of related customers, like a franchise, can result in rapid growth of
your brand. Do some research and target a set of companies that would benefit by your
product. Start selling to them. Once a few of these customers are yours, approach the
headquarters with a proposal to become the company standard. If you are successful,
you can go from having 16 new customers to 60 with very little effort. The corporate
office will recommend your product to new franchises, which is effectively free
advertisement for you.

4. Form a Partnership:
Another way to advertise free is by partnering with a company that will recommend your
product or service. Consider a product or service that is closely related to your own. If
you own a bakery, for example, consider partnering with a local restaurant. If they serve
your baked goods, you will benefit by their recommendation of you. In return, you send
your customers their way.

If you own an internet based business, consider what other online products your
customers are likely to use. Online time tracking software could benefit by partnering
with a payroll company since the two go hand in hand. Not only can a partnership cut
advertising costs, but it also establishes stronger business credibility since someone
else is recommending your company.

5. Pursue Unconventional Media Coverage:

Be on the lookout for unusual places to drop your name. Remember that your name
does not have to appear solely in market related media. For example, a musician might
have a chance to promote his business in an article about an upcoming show or on the
bio of his music web page. This kind of exposure does not target an audience that is
necessarily interested in your product, but keep in mind that the people that need your
product have varying interests. In other words, you never know where you might get
noticed. Take advantage of the diversity of possibilities.

6. Hire a Search Engine Optimization Expert:

Attract search engines with proven SEO techniques. Search engines scan Internet
pages for keywords and content to determine the placement of your page on their
search query. You want to appear high on the list for the greatest exposure. You can do
some reading about these techniques and implement a few of them yourself. SEO is a
complex field in and of itself and requires technical skill to master. For the best results,
hire a good web developer that has proven experience and success with SEO
techniques, or go out and get a few good books on the subject and start to work.

7. Start a Blog:

Blog pages have several business advantages. They keep your clients abreast of the
latest company news. They attract search engines which will generate more hits to your
site. They are also one of many ways to establish yourself as an authority in your field.
In order to run a successful blog - i.e. get your customer's attention - you will need to
write compelling and relevant entries. This can be about anything within your field, not
just about your company. Blogs can be a great waste of time if they are boring or if they
are not updated regularly, so take your time with them. Consider whether you would
care about this topic if you randomly ran into it. If you wouldn't, no one else would either.

8. Write Articles:
This may not be an immediately obvious way of attracting new customers because it is
impossible to know how many people that read your article actually buy your product.
Nevertheless, if you can get your article in places where people will read it, it will help
establish you as an authority in your field and generate exposure. This isn't the easiest
thing to do, of course. It takes time to write articles. It also takes a little ingenuity to
come up with compelling subject matter. Chances aren't good that many people will
want to read an article describing your product, but they may want to read an article
about some issue your product resolves.

9. Write Press Releases:

Writing a press release is a lot easier than writing an article but it still can generate
plenty of exposure. There are many press release publication sites available which all
offer free services in addition to premium paid service. Getting your press releases
published can help attract editors who might want to mention your company's news in a
major publication. But even if no major publication picks it up, it will help increase the
SEO for your website. For small news, you may chose to publish some of your press
releases only within your own news page, but even this helps your company look like a
dynamic company.

10. Use Social Media Outlets:

This is an important marketing technique these days and involves constructing a web
presence within forums, blogs, and other social Internet groups like Facebook and
Twitter. This will generate more hits in search queries and generally increase your web
presence. By plastering your name all over the walls so to speak customers will find you
more easily.

If you can retain customers, you will reap the following benefits:

 stabilize your revenue base when you retain customers.

 Old customers bring in new customers for you.
 It cost less money to retain customers than it costs to find new ones.

Retained customers can double your revenue.

Scenario 1: No Repeats - Your product costs $1000. You have 1000 new customers in
your first quarter that provide you with $1,000,000 in revenue. In the second quarter you
get 1000 new customers and none of the old ones return. Each new customer spends
$1000, which makes your total revenue for the second quarter $1,000,000.

Scenario 2: With Repeats - You again have 1000 new customers in the first quarter
who provide you with $1,000,000 in revenue. This time you get 1000 new customers in
the second quarter and all 1000 of your customers from the first quarter return. That
gives you a total of $2,000,000 and you double your revenue.
Now you can see just how profitable a retained customer can be!

To retain a customer, keep him happy.

That is how you retain customers. It's easy to say but much harder to do. Here at
WebTY's we treat our clients like gold. It takes a lot of work but it always pays off.

Here are a few ways that you can have the success that we have had:

1. Treat customers like they are the most important person on the earth. After all,
they are the most important people! People won't spend money on a second bad
experience so make them feel good.
2. Go the extra mile! If a customer has a problem, the entire company should work
to fix it. We ensure that our clients have an excellent experience and they
appreciate it by coming back again and again.
3. Offer incentives and let them know they are appreciated! Loyal customers are
hard to come by so we occasionally give them freebies and we always tell them
how much we appreciate them. Both of these actions reinforce the fact that we
value them. That way we can retain them easier and everyone is happy.
4. Make things easy! We use a lot of automated tools to give our clients 24/7
access to us. This lets them know that they can count on us 24/7. If they want to
ask a question at 3AM, they can. If they want to check on their project on a
Sunday, they can! We give them what they want so they stay longer.

The most powerful advertising you can get.

Word of mouth advertising is the most powerful advertising there is. And you only get it
from happy retained customers. If a trusted friend tells you something is good, you will
most likely believe it and try it out for yourself. When your customers love you, they will
tell people about you and they will shop with you again. Nurture this phenomenon by
treating your customers like gold and making them happy. They will have great things to
say about you and you will have great things to say about your profits.