Not to mention the ugly capitalist companies that aim for growth at all costs, all companies, associations, organizations lose customers every year (10% according to the Harvard Business Review): they have found better or cheaper elsewhere, they have moved or put the key under the door… It is therefore vital to ensure the longevity and continuity of the company, (or even to face the various charges) to find new customers . We give you in this article 10 effective strategies to find new customers.
Make yourself known to your personas
It may seem obvious, but before recruiting an army of
cold-callers on an offshore telephone platform, invest heavily in consumer
advertising; clearly define your targets: your personas (link). Who is your
offer aimed at? What problem (s) do you solve? What type of customer are you
targeting? CSP? What geographic area? The more precise your offer will be, the
more optimized your advertising spend will be, and the more new customers you
will sign.
Maintain your social networks daily
Having a Facebook page to do like everyone else, or because
your competitor has one, is a good start , just like owning a business Linkedin
page . However, not having a photo on the Linkedin profile, posting a series of
promotions for your products and services or even posting once every 4 months
will not help you and could, on the contrary, be harmful to you.
What will your prospects think if your last post was in
September 2015 ? The most pessimists will think that you no longer exercise,
that you have gone bankrupt, the realists that you will take 3 weeks to answer
them .
Either way, you've lost the ability to start a conversation
with the barge. Not maintaining your networks is a bit like not maintaining
your window, your point of sale: do not clean the windows for months, let your
plants die: no one will push your front door anymore.
Bring your networks to life, interact with your community of
fans and subscribers : share content that interests them, promotional offers
that are worth it (and not 5% every 2 hours on unsold items from 1997),
organize contests to grow and qualify your database.
Your “ community management ” will only be effective if you
are constant, regular, invested. And this also applies to the next point.
Create a website and optimize its SEO
Because a Facebook page will not replace a website where you
can do whatever (or almost) you want. It is important to have a
“mobile-friendly” website because today it is from their smartphone that your
future customers are looking for you.
Today, if you are not present on the internet, you do not
exist . If we want to be teasing, having an unreferenced website, or not having
one at all, it's almost the same.
You trusted your son-in-law's cousin, or an agency that
developed a fully personalized site for you that cost you Burkina Faso's GDP,
but when you google it: nothing, nada, nichts, niet, walou.
It is therefore important to design your site in accordance
with good natural referencing or SEO practices (link). Anyone can do paid SEO
on Google Ads (a credit card is enough), but you will be displayed during your
campaign and disappear. Think long term: optimize your content, your pages,
your netlinking and the authority of your domain.
Do you want to have your site audited? Book your free audit
Create a blog on your site to prove your credibility
With rare exceptions, a site without a blog is not a site.
At a minimum, it's a storefront, and at best, an e-commerce site that purrs and
converts your visitors into customers while on vacation .
According to Wikipedia , and many other publications that
have copied the varianttes that can also be found on Le Larousse or Le Robert:
“ A blog is a type of website… used for the periodic and
regular publication of articles… generally brief, reporting on news around a
particular topic ”.
Your site should be design so that users quickly find
information on products or services they are looking for . This organization
should not be disturbed by your news and promotions. Optimize your user journey
so that they contact you and place an order or request a quote, a test, an
appointment. Don't mix up news, expert articles and product sheets.
The your business blog is the journal in which to publish
content that interest your audiences every step of the customer journey, announce
product launches. Not only will this one allow you to be better referenced by
search engines, but this one will be able to prove your legitimacy . Don't tell
your prospects that you are the best: prove it with expert articles, frequent
and interesting posts.
Capitalize on customer loyalty
Winning new customers is expensive, very expensive . Once
these hard-won clients are in your portfolio, do not abandon them to start
chasing the prospect again. Pamper them, set up a loyalty program or at least a
system to stay close to them and their concerns, while offering them from time
to time additional, complementary products or services.
The market is now extremely competitive (18 competitors on
average in 2019 for a company against only 6 in 2014 according to Hubspot
Research), and this in the majority of activities and industries.
We hear in all of our Client Meetings “ Yes, but with us
it's different, it won't work like with your other clients ”. Breaking news :
No matter what you're selling, you're reaching out to prospects who often have
more choices than you think, more information about your products and
competitors than your own salespeople, and who prioritize the customer
experience.
A prospect is difficult to convince, but when he becomes a
customer , you enter another dimension: he expects the red carpet to be rolled
out for him , he expects preferential treatment , unforgettable customer
experience . He trusted you and now expects something in return: faster
handling of his orders or complaints, privileged offers, private sales,
comprehensive and reachable after-sales service.
There you are saying to yourself: "what is the point of
point 5, it advises me to take care of my current clients, not to find new
ones": FALSE.
Your best ambassadors will be your satisfied customers .
The recommendation of a friend or a member of his family has
more value in the act of purchase than the search for information, your blog or
your social networks ( source) . According to Nielsen, 83% of people say they
trust recommendations from loved ones more than any other form of advertising (
source ).
Interested in the loyalty theme? Discover 5 good reasons to
invest in customer loyalty.
Take care of your testimonials and customer reviews
As we have just seen, your current customers will easily be
able to convince their relatives. Okay, it may be that these steps are not
completely altruistic and that your customers sponsor their uncles,
grandmothers or their best friends because this allows them to benefit from 15%
on their next order thanks to the sponsorship program that you set it up, but
the purpose is the same.
Referral from a loved one is extremely effective, but the
referral can also come from complete strangers . How? 'Or' What ? Thanks to the
publication of customer reviews and testimonials on your site, your Facebook
page and your Google My Business page or, more rarely, on the yellow pages ...
If you are in B2B (Bizness Tou Bizness), the testimony of a
peer can be important. If you are in B2C (Business All Consumers), allowing
your customers to rate the products purchased or their experience following one
of their order can also reassure the prospect.
A company recommended by twenty real customers inspires
confidence, just like a site (E-Commerce or not) whose Trustpilot or Verified
Reviews score exceeds 4.8 / 5.
Optimize your customer appointments
After 11 months, 78 calls and 37 e-mails, you have finally
succeeded in obtaining an appointment with the Management Committee of the
company that your Sales Department has been courting since the 1980s.
Do not spoil everything by arriving as a tourist , prepare
your appointment : select the offers that are most suited to your prospect's
needs and problems, be prepared for the various potential objections. Contact
your general or commercial management to find out your negotiating margin, the
terms and clauses that you can accept.
Unless the appointment has been requested by the prospect
because you are an essential supplier, you will have to put out your best
shoes, your best smile, and especially arrive at your appointment with rage in
your stomach, determined not to let you impress with an unforeseen question.
Train your salespeople
Optimizing a client appointment can be learned . Either in
specialized books or on expert blogs . For training to be effectives, it must
be adapted to your activity , personalized for your sales teams : all salespeople
have the same objective: to sell; but not all respond to the same stimuli,
motivations.
You will therefore have to coach your sales teams beyond the
sweet words you whisper to them during the very effective weekly reviews and
monthly performance reviews. You will have to identify areas for improvement
and involve training organizations to improve your team's skills .
Everything will depend on the different individual needs of
your teams, but you can train them on:
• information
research: is the prospect you are going to canvass a good fit for your offer?
do the people contacted have real decision-making power?
• customer
negotiation : a salesperson can quickly analyze a prospect's “pain points”,
offer the most adequate offer, and stutter when announcing the price, and
“closing the deal”
• their
sales tool : optimize the time spent on administrative tasks to free up time
“to sell”
• social
selling : social networks are not only used to share your vacation photos, they
can also allow you to build relationships with professionals in your sector
(customers, partners, suppliers). 25 years ago, you had to be tricky to get
around the executive assistant and reach a decision-maker. Now you can contact
him directly via Linkedin (or Viadeo…). However, just like on the phone or face
to face, it can be learned.
Have your products and services tested for free
Ok, we go from rooster to donkey, but this strategy can be
useful, once you have put in place all the above strategies, and if your
activity allows it.
You get into Organic Tea, it's quite easy to set up, if you
are in on-board electronics for fighter planes, that's another story.
Let's say you are in “the service”: offer your prospects to
test the service for a week or a month . From a customer experience point of
view: this allows prospects interested in what you offer to be able to try the
service requested in real conditions. Usually, if you haven't deployed an
application full of bugs, convince the user and get him to settle.
You are launching a new yogurt flavor, a new packaging,
offering samples in supermarkets, offering tasting ...
Our technological partner has chosen to make its CRM
available free of charge . And this is not a discount product since it is quite
simply the best CRM on the market for over 2 years.
This so-called freemium technique (a bit like the levels /
options that you unlock by paying on candy crush), then allows you to sell
additional bricks or options.
Call on prescribers / influencers
Let's finish on the subject a little “hype” of the moment:
appealing to influencers or prescribers . If your business allows it, try to
get in touch with prescribers, offer them products. If they are satisfied, they
may speak of it of their own accord.
If you want to increase your chances of seeing your product
featured on TV or on youtube, you can also sponsor one or more of its videos
(product placement or test).
Latest trendy subject: “influencers”. Find out about the
growing “Insta”, “Snapchat” or “'TikTok” stars. Are they followed by your
personas? Are these social networks used by your target customers?
Sending hearing aid samples to a 19-year-old Tiktok
influencer young person isn't going to be very relevant in our opinion, just
like asking Jannie Longo to talk about your latest iPhone.
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