Episode 32: 10 Simple Yet Effective Tips To Get More Clients and Customers For Small Business Owners
As a business coach, one of the most asked questions Fiona gets from people who approach her for help is how to get more clients and customers for their businesses. In this coaching episode, she shares her top 10 tips that she recommends every small business owner must do to achieve their goal of consistently gaining new people who would want to avail any of your services or products. Listen now!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction [00:54]
Business Coaching with Fiona [1:13]
10 Things That Will Get Your More Clients and Customers [1:45]
1. Ask friends, family and past clients for referrals or past customers. [4:19]
2. Nurture your existing clients and customers. [9:27]
3. Cultivate collaboration and partnerships. [11:43]
4. Hit up your local bloggers or even understand who they are. [13:19]
5. Tell people what you do. [18:36]
6. Make your business the “answer”. [21:18]
7. Step away from the screen. [24:06]
8. Offer something of value. [27:58]
9. Advertise [31:33]
10. Keep going. [34:31]
Conclusion [35:47]
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to Episode 32 of My Daily Business Coach podcast - 32.
Isn't it funny? Well, maybe it's not funny for you, but I have a thing with numbers. And 32 is the number of the house that I grew up at. Anyway, today's episode is a coaching episode.
So this is where I walk you through an element of small business. And if you're looking for business coaching in real life, I should point out, you know, don't hesitate to get in touch with myself or my team. You can do that at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Or you can hit me up on Instagram. I'm at @mydailybusinesscoach.
Or if you're like, “I am geared up, I'm ready to go. I just want to get this happening”, you can just go straight onto mydailybusinesscoach.com/business-coaching or just mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. And you can book a one on one session immediately.
Okay, let's get into today's coaching episode. So one of the most common questions that I'd get asked in my business as a business coach and particularly before COVID, when I was running a lot of in-person public workshops and classes, and also by people that contact me on Instagram DMs or come into a free consult call when I'm working with potential clients is, “Fiona, how can I get more clients and customers?” So this is exactly what I'm going to be answering in today's episode. Now, before we kick off into 10 things that I think can help you. I really want to point out here that getting new clients and customers or wanting to get more, more, more people in your funnel isn't always the answer.
Now, I feel like I need to have an asterix with always. But if you've followed me for some time, you know that I'm all about nurturing and building relationships with people who have already worked with you or who already know about you as their 6-7 times more likely to buy than somebody new. Plus, if they've bought from you, they've had a great experience, or even if they just interacted with you and had a great experience, they're more likely than to spread the word and help you and your business.
But I do get that small business owners, particularly those who are starting out, are also really keen to grow their business. And I mean, everyone's keen to grow their business, and that can mean growing your customer base and every business is different. You know, I get that and it serves different people with different needs. And I work with all sorts of businesses and people that haven't even started their business to people that had been running it for many, many decades. But regardless of where you're coming from, there are some common actions that everyone can take to grow their business. So whether you're looking to increase brand awareness or drive up sales or you just want to experiment with things, maybe you're doing new tactics or things in your business and you actually need a certain number of people to be able to test those things, then listen up, because I am going to go into 10 things or 10 sort of tactics, I guess that can help when it comes to getting more customers and clients.
Now, I should point out, if you're listening to this in a place where you can't take notes, you can find the full transcript and every link to everything that I mentioned within it for this podcast over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/32. Because this is episode 32. All right. Let's get into the 10 tactics.
10 Tactics
No.1 – Ask friends, family and past clients for referrals or past customers.
Now, I know that this isn't for everyone and I don't want people to be turned off like I would never do that. And it might sound super simplistic as well, but imagine for a minute that a good friend of yours has come to you and they've asked you for help. Now, it could be something to do with his or her or their family. It could be to do with home renovation. It could be about their work. It could be a personal matter. It could be a professional matter. But chances are, if they came to you and they explicitly said, I need help with this, I would imagine that you'd try to help them if you could, right? So why are we so reluctant to ask those same friends or family or even, you know, customers and clients or stockers that we've had great relationships with for help when it comes to our business?
You never, ever know who they may know that needs what you offer or that you're just staying front of mind. And so next time they're like looking for a gift or something, you are going to be the first choice. So my first client, I started my business at the very end of 2015 or around this time actually of 2015 was when I registered and everything. I was still working at the time for an employer, but I started the business about five years ago and my first client was a friend of the family. So he was someone that I never socialised with. I had not seen this person for years and years, but he found out about my plans for starting my business when I asked my close friends and family for help in spreading the word about this.
So to kind of give you some context, I needed to work. I needed money coming in. I'm not from a really wealthy family that could just support me and my husband works, he has an amazing job. But I was not in a position of starting my business and being like, oh, it's fine if I don't have any clients for a while or I can take six months and just sort of find my feet. I wasn't in that position, so I had to generate clients. I had to make sure that I had enough money that was going to come in so that I could actually quit my other job. And so what I did towards the tail end of 2015 was that I started meeting with various people on weekends and evenings to try and find clients and to try and make sure that I had enough sort of in the bank and that I had contracts signed that I had, you know, this sort of consulting work, you know, locked in so that I could actually quit that Full-Time job and go in safely and securely with money coming in. But the way that I did that was to literally reach out to people to start with. And so before, you know, your palms start sweating, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, my God, I feel weird about doing that in an exhale, asking for help doesn't have to be sales-y. It doesn't have to be desperate, but it can be one of the best places to start. So could even just be the next time a good friend asks, how are you?
Consider responding along the lines of, you know, I'm good, thanks. Or maybe you're not so good depending where you are in the world and how challenged you are by COVID. But you might say, you know, I'm good or whatever you say. And then you might say something like, I'm really focusing on, you know, growing my customers and clients at the moment. This is a key thing that I'm trying to do. So if you know anyone who's in need of, you know, insert your service product here, I would love it if you could pass them my details. Now, that is a very casual approach.
And this is the thing like I think when people think, oh, gosh, I have to reach out to friends or family or past client, that it has to be this really sales-y me like kind of hardcore message. It doesn't need to be. It can just be casually asking. You don't need to go into detail of of why you're sort of looking for clients and customers. You can just calmly say it in such a way that I've just said. Likewise, you know, you might consider emailing close friends or customers or clients, stockers that you've got good relationships with, with the same sort of request. Or you could post it on social media and it doesn't. Again, it doesn't need to be desperate. You know, it doesn't need to make you sound like you've got no clients or customers or you're desperate or your business isn't working. It could be as simple as, hey, you know, we're opening up bookings from November or we're opening up bookings from April in case, you know, anyone who needs X, Y, Z. Or it could be sharing a testimonial and then saying something like, we loved working with whoever it was one of a business that was or person if you know a person or business like this that needs, (again, whatever it is that you sell) please send them our way.
Both of those are not super sales. But they are asking for help. You know, I get it. It can be it can be hard to do this. And it can be hard, mainly because our ego gets in the way. And in the words of Arthur Ashe, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
I get it. I totally get it. It can be really hard. But remember that friends and family and clients and customers that you haven't great stockerss that you have great relationships with, none of them can help you if they don't know that you actually need help. So, that’s tip number 1, you know, really try and think about reaching out to friends and family and past clients or customers or anyone that you think can actually help you and ask for the help.
So that's number one.
No.2 - Nurture your existing clients and customers.
As I said at the start of this podcast, I am all about this. You know, I found that many times when people have asked me about growing customer base, they really mean growing their revenue or their profits specifically. And one of the quickest ways to do this is to nurture the customers or the clients or the stockers that you already have. And like I said before, it's six to seven times harder to get a new customer to transact with you than someone who has previously worked with you or bought from you or interacted in some way.
Now, if you consider the buyer cycle, I know I talk about this a lot. It is literally the cycle, if you imagine a circle that people go through. So it has five stages. Awareness, research, evaluation, purchase and post purchase.
Now, if you want help understanding more about the buyer cycle, check out Episode 24 of this podcast, which talks about it in detail. But for now, you want to have a think about your business. You know, most people, a lot of people, a lot of small business owners talk to their customers only in the awareness and the purchase stage. And yet the biggest increase in revenue happens in post purchase. So the advocacy post purchase after someone's bought it and I've talked about this before, but when I was heading up the kitchen and home team of Amazon UK many, many, many years ago, I'd estimate probably that more than 90 percent at least of our marketing was post purchase marketing.
So it is nurturing clients who had already experienced the brand. Now, what does this look like? It could be sending an email to people X months or X weeks or X days after they've brought a product or app or one of your services to ask if they need a top up, if they need help or, you know, for service based businesses, it could be reaching out to clients for the new financial year or it could be reaching out to them, you know, before the crazy gifting by the end of the year. Or it could be just reaching out to them in general right now and seeing if they need help to get through the challenges of COVID or letting them know about, you know, an online class that you have coming up that might be relevant for their business.
So you might also consider incentives for repeat purchases, bundling products or mutual discounts if they refer a friend. So that is step two. So nurture your existing clients and customers.
No. 3 - Cultivate collaboration and partnerships.
So this is key right now, I'm recording this during lockdown 50. I think it's the second lockdown, that lockdown. I have no idea. I'm in Melbourne. We are in lockdown. It's 2020. And gosh, I have to say that this step, cultivating collaboration and partnerships is something that you should definitely get on if you are not already doing it. Some of my most interesting work has come through partnering with agencies.
So I've partnered with PR and digital and branding agencies. And not only do these partnerships financially benefit both myself and the business that I'm partnering with, but it also gives me the opportunity to work alongside some of the most incredible and creative minds in the industry. So if you sell products, consider joining forces with a like-minded business who sells complementary items such as baby clothes and baby food or furniture and interior design. And if you sell services, think about an agency or an individual who could really help you help your clients more.
Such as, you know, maybe your branding consultant and you could work with a graphic designer or maybe you are a website agency and you could work with a photographer to get better imagery. Maybe you're a business coach like me and you could work with a copywriter. I am always being asked to recommend graphic designers, web designers and copywriters. So you know here that people like me to partner with you. They could even be like a curated collaboration on an event or a social media photo shoot with a like-minded business owner. So that's number three. Cultivate collaboration and partnerships.
No.4 - Hit up your local bloggers or even understand who they are.
Check out things like a local business Facebook group in your area. And if you're lucky enough to still have them check out your local press. Now, where I am in Australia, unfortunately, many, many, many local press offices have been like local newspapers, country newspapers have been shut down, which is which is just awful. But if you have them, you know, this is definitely a place to check out. So I have been a published writer for 19 years. And when I say that, I mean, you know, like magazines online. I am also obviously a new published author of a book that just came out. But I've been a published writer for magazines and online for close to 20 years for places like Monarchal and Cool Hunting, Refinery29, The Design Files, Broadsheet, The Age, Sunday Life, all of that.
And while I still get at least 10 to 20 non-customised emails a week. PR companies across the globe. I will always stop and actually read an email that comes directly from a small business owner or sometimes from their PR or their publicist if they have actually tailored the email to me and it's not just a copy paste job, but consider where your audiences. And think about which publications or which bloggers are they consuming or even, you know, are they part of certain Facebook groups or memberships. And then spend some time researching, you know, regular columns if it's media or press or the types of, you know, Facebook lives that these memberships offer and start following and engaging with these people - these bloggers or the editors and learn the topics that they're interested in.
I mean, often with social media. Now, this stuff is so accessible, you can just jump on somebody's Instagram or Facebook and have a look at like what are the constant themes or the types of things that they're trying to help their audience learn. Now, this doesn't have to just be service like you might make products. And it's about potentially going into, say, you make furniture and it's going into a membership or a Facebook page with a bunch of interior designers and you want to get your furniture in front of those people.
So thinking about, you know, who is that? Where are these places? So whether it's bloggers or media or membership groups or just large Facebook groups and thinking about how could I help them. Now, you really want to follow and engage with these people and learn the topics that they're interested in and potentially then hopefully take the plunge to email them or contact them or send them a D.M.
Google Alerts is a great tool for understanding what is happening in some media. So you can definitely set up a Google alert for particular editors’ names or your magazines. You want to make their job, whether it's, you know, the host of a Facebook group, whether it's a blogger or an editor, you want to make their job as easy as possible. So when you're contacting them, you want to include relevant links in your email, as well as a Dropbox link or Google Drive folder with high res imagery and a quick frequently ask questions or a quick Q&A about your business. So all of that is going to help them make an assessment of whether you're right for their audience. And then if they do decide that you're right, they're able to quickly act on that because you've given them, you know, quotes or you've given them a Q&A or you've given them imagery. So much stuff is beautiful now and you've been able to give them access to a folder full of images.
So those things can really help if you are trying to hit up bloggers or groups or press. If you're not sure where to start first, consider a few hooks. So you know what are hooks? Hooks are kind of the angles or that or the kind of direction that an article could go in or alive. Facebook Q&A could go in.
So, for instance, you know, if you started a lingerie company and it's coming close to Valentine's Day. Well, there you go. That's something you could talk about as sexy underwear make a difference to relationships or if your home organiser and you might be like, well, I could share a weekly column for people in lockdown right now so they can declutter or destress through home organisation. And once you've got your hooks in, you kind of want to aim for four to five of these, then reach out. So this really is making sure that you're not putting the onus on the person who you're reaching out to, to come up with ideas for how your business could coming into their media or their blog or their group.
You are taking the initiative and showing action, I guess, and you're sending them four to five hooks or angles or of themes or topics that they could easily assess. “Oh, yeah, that would totally work for my audience.” So I have got every single writing gig I have by simply having the courage to contact the editor.
So people are people. My dad used to always say that people are people most won’t jerks. You know, they're not gonna be horrible to just reach out if you want to go deeper into this particular step. Then I have an online course on this exact topic, which is called How to Get Published in Online and Print. And you can find it at my daily business coach dot com slash shop. It's just like a mini training. It goes for about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes. And it has a workbook attached and you kind of work through it and we'll give you all of the tips and tools that have helped me, you know, get published in all of these places.
No.5 - Tell people what you do.
I'm still surprised by how many small business owners don't actually tell anyone what they do. You know, are they expecting potential clients to just know? So in the words of Donald Miller, who has a great podcast, he has a great book as well called Story Brand. He always says if you confuse, you'll lose. And what does this mean? It means making sure that your Instagram bio is super clear with what you do and how and why people could get in touch with you. You know, updating your LinkedIn profile, if that's a channel for you. So that, you know, old colleagues and contacts know what you're up to. Adding your services to your email signature or adding they let you know. And my email signature at the moment, we have a link to this podcast and we have a link to the book. And the same with my V.A. signature. And we change that up or signing up to Google my business. If you have an address that you are happy to share on the Web,
I'm guilty. I'm really guilty of starting my business, you know, back in the tail end of 2015, early 2016 and not doing these things. And I've seen a massive increase in people contacting me since I did. You know, side note - make it simple. I recently read there was an agency's bio on Instagram and it said, we help humanity. I mean, that's nice. But what does it actually mean? I didn't know what kind of agency they are. Like, you could help humanity in all different parts. You might be a website agency. You could be branding agency. You could be, you know, actually like a health care agency. I have no idea. So, you know, try not to be too clever with it. Like, people just want to get an understanding of what you actually do. And a really clear understanding and really think about, you know, read it back and give it to somebody who's not related to your business. Do they understand what you do with your key customers be searching for the things that you are putting into your bio. Keep it simple.
So we're halfway through these ten tips that could help you get more clients and customers.
Ask friends, family and past clients for referrals or past customers.
Nurture your existing clients and customers.
Cultivate collaboration and partnerships.
Hit up your local bloggers or even understand who they are.
Tell people what you do.
So before we dive into number six, I should mention again that you can find all the show notes and links to everything I've mentioned today over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/32.
No.6 - Make your business the “answer”
What problem does your business solve? Like this is the first or one of the first questions that I ask people when they're wanting to work with me know, followed by why should someone choose your business over a competitor. When you know the problems and the questions that your audience has, then you can use your answers to attract and engage them. So, you know, do you create Web sites for design led e-commerce brands? Then consider speaking on a panel or pulling one together, even an online one at the moment on e-commerce trends.
You know, if you're running a PR agency, consider discussing how to talk to the media on podcasts or blogs, and you can aim that at first-time business owners. I recently spoke on radio about my book and I had to do live radio interviews and I was freaking out. I mean, I've done a lot of live masterclasses for people's membership groups, and I do lives in my good business group on Facebook. And I obviously do this podcast, which is not live, but I don't necessarily script every single thing and I just talk. I do Instagram stories and Instagram lives. And I was like, I should be okay on radio. And I really was surprised at how nervous I got. So, you know, I actually text one of my friends who is in PR and I was like, you should totally run a short course on how to prepare for radio or how to prepare for live media interviews. So, you know, that's an example.
If you are operating an accounting firm, you know, why not write up a financial checklist for new business owners and then pitch that to business magazines or blogs by positioning yourself as an authority and continually, you know, getting out there and answering the questions that your ideal audience has. You not only increase brand awareness, but you actually help people, which is awesome, and in turn factors into them spreading the word about your business. And, you know, sharing that with other people.
So if you need help or ideas with knowing, you know, what questions do people want answered or just some ideas on how to actually answer these questions, definitely check out the free search listening tool, Answer The Public, which is just answerthepublic.com. You can use that. You can enter in any word or subject. And you can basically find a bunch of questions that people are looking for answers to. And when you click on them, you can find the top ranking answer to that question.
What you can also do. And to the public on the free version as well is you can download a CSV file so you can literally download. You can put in a subject, say you have a coffee shop, you put in coffee or coffee beans or a version of something around coffee, and you'll find all of the questions and then you can just sit down. Download CSV file. And there you go. You've got like so many content ideas that people are actually searching for right now. So that's number six.
No.7 - Step away from the screen.
Now, I think this is a little controversial, given that, you know, I'm in Melbourne lockdown. You actually can't go outside and talk to people. But hear me out.
So I am incredibly scared of spiders, which is not so great considering I have chosen to live in North Warrandyte, which is a very bushy, leafy part of Melbourne, Australia. There are many, many spiders around. And I'm confident, though, that one day I will overcome this. How do I know this? I know it because I used to be incredibly scared of public speaking. And while you know, I'm not an expert at public speaking at all in the last few years, in the last five years, my business, I've managed to do it many, many, many, many, many times from guest lecturing at universities through to hosting public workshops and classes or, you know, giving a keynote at trade shows or conferences, sometimes with 500 people plus in the audience. And obviously, this is pre-COVID.
But I figured out that my fear was an obstacle in growing my business, both in the awareness and the sales for my business. So when you step away from the screen and you meet with potential clients and customers in real life, you have the chance for genuine human connection to happen. You know, some say as much as 93 percent of communication is non-verbal. I think that is probably also adding to, you know, the decrease in good mental health that we're seeing because we're all stuck inside and we're all speaking on video.
Well, you can't always see all of the body language that you would see, if you like, in real life. So and also thinking about, like these sorts of things, getting out there and meeting people, it doesn't have to be huge to start with. It doesn't have to be, like I said, me speaking to 500 plus small business owners. It could be a lot smaller. It could be you know, you might be a personal stylist who offers to host a style tips night at a local boutique.
If you're a furniture maker, you might host a workshop for DIY makers on how to select materials or create perfect finishes or if you're furniture maker, you could also offer, you know, a workshop or something to interior designers so they understand the actual process of making furniture, which actually could help them when they are specifying projects.
If you consult like me or you sell services like me, you could hit up places like General Assembly. They are all over the world and they run a lot of free classes, but a lot of affordable classes as well in all sorts of things for business. You could hit up universities. I'm a marketing consultant and I guess lecture in marketing at some universities. You could hit up coworking spaces and institutions with, you know, workshop and class ideas. I've been able to grow my business massively by branching out to public workshops and classes. Now, even though I'm in 2020, I'm not doing that as much. Definitely when I started, I started doing classes at General Assembly years and years ago. And I still would run classes there. And I think it's been an amazing place to understand who my audience is, what type of people are coming to these classes, what questions they have. Even the format for certain things that I offer. So, you know, I remember my first General Assembly class on marketing for small business. I thought I could run the whole thing in three hours. And those poor people that attended that class, because I was just rushing through it and, you know, I didn't I don't even know if we took a break. But that class is very much an eight hour full day, sometimes two days to half day workshops.
So it definitely was a great place for me to step away from the screen and get real life experience and get real life interaction with my ideal customers and clients.
Now, I should point out, you know, I would say it's not possible right now for some people listening who may be like me, still in lockdown, but there's nothing to stop you starting to think about these things or plan for what you'd like to do in the future, such as even intimate classes, workshops or even retreats where you just have, you know, six to 10 attendees. It doesn't need to be huge.
No.8 - Offer something of value.
Now, this probably should be much closer to the top. But alas, one way to differentiate yourself from others in your industry is to offer something of value. So when you look at many small business, you know, social media accounts, for example, it comes across as sell, sell, sell with just a load of hype and not much to actually help their audience. Even it could come across as just product, product, product, product. And there's no kind of breaking up.
So say you sell furniture and you've just got all these lovely photos of your furniture and that's great. But like, what type of timber is best for, you know, if I have children and they're gonna, you know, write on things. Are they going to spill stuff. Should I be going for one versus a different type or should I have a different type of finish to it?
Is that going to help sustain it through lack, you know, very messy household, for example? That is a helpful bit of information that is also useful to me to make a purchase decision to buy your furniture. So you don't want to just be hyping the whole time, like, look how great this chair is. Look how great this table is. You want to be helping people who are like, well, I don't really know. This is the dimensions of my living room. Do you think this type of table is too big or too small or those sorts of things? Again, you might have animals and so you might be like the dogs always sit under the table, you know, should I have a metal leg? Is that going to be better than a wooden thing that maybe they're going to chew on or scratch or something like that?
So, you know, really thinking about are you just hyping or are you helping people? So I try to help people through, you know, posts on Instagram, a weekly email, which if you're not already subscribed, you can subscribe over at mydailybusinesscoach.com. I also obviously have this podcast which comes out twice a week. Thank you so much for listening. But for you, it could be, you know, something similar, like a podcast. It could be a free e-book. It could be a checklist. It could be an event or even a monthly Facebook live where you discuss a topic that's relevant and important to your audience. Or it could just be incredible service when they come in store and knowledge of the products that you're selling.
Or it could be, you know, all sorts of things going live on Instagram stories. I have an amazing person that I worked with, Danielle from Soda Art, and she works with artists and she does incredible installations and all sorts of work. If you're in Australia and you're looking to connect with amazing arts. Definitely check Soda Arts. But she runs a live on Wednesdays at two o'clock, I think. And she does a live with different artists. And it's just a 15 minute chat.
And what she's doing there is, you know, helping these artists get out to a wider audience. But also she is showing her authority and she's just really not hyping her brand constantly. She's really helping her audience decide if it looks like a great artist. That would be something amazing for this new project that we're putting together. So that is an example from Soda Arts on really providing value. I have had so many strangers, you know, tell me. Oh, I subscribed to your email. It's the only one to actually open or they listen to this podcast and they send me IDM and they're like, oh, thanks for this podcast.
Or I've had people hit me up on LinkedIn and be like, ah, thank you for explaining X, Y, Z. And that is lovely. It's also helping me get my business out there because these people are taking that value and they're sharing it with friends or they're leading a review or they’re posting about it on social media and they're suggesting it to, you know, other business owners and again, sincere, sincere, thank you on my behalf for that.
But really, this point is to look at how are you offering value? Are you really helping people or are you just hyping your own brand all the time? That's step eight.
No. 9 - Advertise
So I've purposefully left this tip to number nine because I see so many people pour thousands, thousands of dollars into Facebook advertising or pitching, seeing, you know, display ads. And I know. I know. Surprise, surprise. People still do that. And they do it without trying any of the other things that I've just listed. You know, I get that Google AdWords and social media advertising plays a role in brand awareness and sales, but it shouldn't be the first thing that you try. You know, if you do advertise and you've decided I'm going to advertise, really consider the return on your investment and whether or not you're chosen advertising channel is the one that your audience actually interacts with. And you can find this out by surveying existing potential customers instead of, you know, buying space at a trade show, for example. Could you pay to speak on a roundtable at that same trade show, giving a keynote or presenting at a closed dinner that they might be hosting?
These are things that will position you as an authority and potentially give you much more direct access to your key audience than standing behind one of hundreds of store spaces. That's not to say trade shows don't help. They really, really can help but really be thinking about who is your exact audience.
Again, if you're buying digital ads, you know, do you have a really clear path to purchase, including customised landing pages and email sequences and things set up to target specific audiences with enough social proof on each to elicit a transaction or at least elicit a step towards transaction? You know, A-B testing imagery and text with these ads. And how often are you checking into analyse performance?
You know, advertising can be an awesome way to grow your business so long as it's done with purpose and not just because you think you should be doing it. And also on that note. I am forever telling my clients, if you are going to go down the path of, say, Facebook advertising or something like that, try and work with a specialist, at least if you're thinking, oh, it's so expensive. They've got, you know, huge amounts of money per per month retainer, maybe just work with them at least to set you up because they know what they're doing. This is what they look out day in, day out. They might make a tweak or suggest something that is going to completely change the results for you that you wouldn't have known if you just sort of testing it out yourself.
And on that note, I should point out that I have actually been running some tests lately with my own business. And I'm used to Facebook specialist and I am loving Pinterest ads. I know total side note, but I'm loving Pinterest and they have huge volumes of traffic and much higher rates of conversion. That's what I'm seeing, at least.
And I'm definitely going to be doing an episode on this because I think Pinterest is such an underrated platform. I have raved about Pinterest since day one. I'm always talking to clients about Pinterest and now, you know, recently testing some ads on that platform. It's just reiterated to me how amazing it is.
No.10 Keep going.
So this is not a specific tactic as such. But when it comes to finding more customers or clients, you know, giving up on your business is 100 percent guaranteed not to work. Things might take a while to get going, especially if you're new and you'll definitely experience peaks and troughs in customer acquisition and retention. You've got to try not to take things personally. Instead, review what's working. Ask your customers for feedback, tweak and test and tweak and test. And then test again and try again. And if you feel like you know, you're really needing some motivation, consider just one thing, just one thing that you've done since starting a business that you're super proud of. So it could be reaching out to an influence. It could be getting on a particular media.
It could be opening a bricks and mortar store or launching an online store or being asked onto a podcast or winning some sort of award. We so often focus only on the goals ahead of us without celebrating the small wins behind us that have helped us get to where we are today.
And I guess if you think about it, what if you had given up then if you'd given up way back before that thing happened, then that proud moment that you've just thought about would never have happened. So keep going. That is number 10. Keep going. You're not going to get new customers if you just give up.
So those are 10 ideas to consider if you're trying to ramp up your customer or client base.
To recap,
Ask friends, family and past clients for referrals or past customers.
Nurture your existing clients and customers.
Cultivate collaboration and partnerships.
Hit up your local bloggers or even understand who they are.
Tell people what you do.
Make your business the “answer”.
Step away from the screen.
Offer something of value.
Advertise
Keep going.
Look, every business needs people to buy in order to exist. But panicking about this, “Oh, my gosh. I've got no customers. I've got no clients or I don't have enough or that I have it as much as that person seems to have”, it's going to do nothing to help you grow thinking it like that. So if you're stuck in a customer rut, you know, test out some of the tactics that I've mentioned in today's podcast. And while there are so many more ideas that could also help after working with hundreds of small business owners over the last five years, I know that these tactics, what I've mentioned are some of the best that will actually have an impact on the goal of growing customer base.
If you want more help with this, you could definitely check out my new book, Passion, Purpose Profit, which I linked to in the show notes. Or if you're wanting to go a bit further, you can always book in a one hour laser session with me. Those are done online even before Kovar. They're always online. So you can book that anywhere in the world as long as you can, you know, deal with Australian time zones. But you can find out more about those at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop or my book. You can also check out your local bookshop or gift shop, you know, supports more business if you are going to buy a copy.
So that is it for today's podcast episode. As always, you'll find all the show notes and links to everything that I've mentioned over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/32 as in Episode 32.
If you found this episode or any of the episodes in this podcast useful, I would be super appreciative if you could take a minute to add a review on iTunes or to add it within your Apple podcast app on your phone. This really, really helps other people find My Daily Business Coach podcasts and of course, it helps the podcast, so. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to my daily business coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
Don't hesitate to get in touch with myself or my team. You can do that at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Or you can hit me up on Instagram. I'm at @mydailybusinesscoach.
Or if you're like, “I am geared up, I'm ready to go. I just want to get this happening.”, you can just go straight onto mydailybusinesscoach.com/business-coaching or just mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. And you can book a one on one session immediately.
If you want more help with this, you could definitely check out my new book, Passion, Purpose Profit, which I linked to in the show notes.
You'll find all the show notes and links to everything that I've mentioned over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/32 as in Episode 32.
