How to entice new clients and increase your revenue without resorting to snake charmers, voodoo, or other nefarious activities
American magician, David Blaine, appears to have some seriously unearthly powers. He is so good at his craft that when you watch him perform an act, it’s hard to believe your eyes.
I recently watched a video of Blaine being interviewed. Throughout the interview, Blaine sprinkled in a few feats of illusion. One of them involved sticking a large pin, it looked a lot like a knitting needle, through his right bicep. I was nearly sick to my stomach as he begin to push the pin into his arm. With some effort, yet while showing very little discomfort, Blaine continued to push the pin through his arm. It didn’t take long until the pin could be seen prodding against the outer layer of his skin on the opposite side of his arm.
And then, rather slowly actually, the pin pierced through his skin. Blaine had a freaking huge pointy piece of metal right through his arm. His interviewer was grossed out, and so was I. How Blaine pulls off stunts like these is a mystery to me.
There’s no mystery to attracting more clients to your business.
Fortunately, you don’t need any magic tricks or illusions to increase how many customers you have. Understanding and applying fundamental marketing concepts will broaden your customer base and strengthen your client-relationships at the same time. In this article we’re going to cover:
- The information to be presenting
- The audience to be seeking
- The platform to be using
Let’s get started by digging into what information you should be presenting to potential customers.
Why do you think people buy from you?
Unless you have zero competition, there must be something unique about your product or service that persuades people to buy from you. The only way around this is if your business has a monopoly. Very few businesses can claim to have a monopoly on their market. Therefore, if you don’t have a monopoly, and if there is nothing unique about your product, then there is a problem.
If your product is in no way different from the competition, then it’s a race to the bottom. The bottom being selling for the lowest price. This is the worst position to be in. To avoid this scenario, your business needs to clearly define its’ Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
Potential clients need to hear your USP
It gives them the logic they need to justify their emotion-based decision to buy from you. Your USP will portray what makes your product, and your offer, different from everyone else. Potential clients will have a better understanding of your business and the value it offers them. Sharing your USP needs to be a significant component of all your marketing tactics. Most businesses aren’t clear on their USP, and their sales suffer as a result. Now that we know how important it is to share your USP with potential clients, this leads us to the second point — who is your audience?
Do you have seven billion potential customers?
Probably not. If you’re selling women’s jeans in Sweden, would you market them to men in Argentina? Hopefully not. Would you sell hockey equipment to a football team? No, of course not. Unless you are selling clean air or water, there will be a defined audience for your product. How can we determine that audience?
Let’s look at your current list of clients
Do you see any similarities in them? Do you have more clients in a defined geographic location? Is there an age group that buys more from you? Are there common interests between most of your clients? There are many more ways to look at your current client list, the goal is to find one, or several, very clear commonalities within your list. The audience to market your product to is a projection of those commonalities. This brings us to the third point — the platform you should be using.
Where does your audience hang out?
Another way to phrase that question is — where do they consume the most content? Do they spend a lot of time on social media? And if so, where? Does your audience read certain magazines or newspapers? Which ones? If a large percentage of your audience lives and works in one city, is there a common road where most of them travel? Where your audience is, that’s where you want to be as well.
You want to be in front of your audience
Don’t market in places where they aren’t present. If your audience is a younger demographic, Facebook is not the best place to advertise. Much better would be Instagram or Snapchat. If your audience is conservative males aged forty to sixty, then The New Yorker is probably the wrong place to place an ad. Knowing where your audience is should dictate where your advertising dollars go.
You may be thinking that your business is different
That getting specific on the information you present, to a specific audience, on a specific platform, won’t work for your business. Perhaps your client base appears too spread out, that there aren’t any commonalities. I’d challenge that notion. You may simply need to dig deeper into who your clients are. You may need to refine your USP and create an irresistible offer that they can’t refuse in order to see a pattern in your audience.
For example, let’s look at Derek Emrey
Emrey, the owner of “Cash 4 Used Cars”, had a pretty successful business. They were buying and selling between two hundred and three hundred cars each month. Emrey wanted, but didn’t think it was possible, to increase their sales numbers. He was very wrong. Emrey dug deep and discovered a common need of his customers. He created a USP that exactly touched that need and advertised in a media that got in front of his ideal audience. It wasn’t long before Emreys’ business was buying and selling more than one thousand cars each month.
Your business has a lot of potential
Perhaps more than you may imagine. By understanding and applying proven marketing fundamentals, it’s possible to achieve that increase you were hoping for. We’ve covered how to increase the number of clients in your business, and how to strengthen those relationships, by discussing:
- The information your business is presenting
- The audience your business is seeking
- The platform your business should be using
Isn’t it a relief to know that there is no mystery behind attracting more clients? We don’t need to be a magician like David Blaine. We don’t need any deceptive illusions to acquire more customers. All we need are solid marketing fundamentals.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. If you enjoyed it and found it helpful, please share it on your social media. The next article to read in this series on marketing fundamentals is titled “How To Create An Action Inducing USP In Less Than One Hour”. In it we discuss exactly how to come up with a USP that perfectly presents your business while understanding the needs of your clients.
Originally published at https://stevekehler.com on October 24, 2020.
