How to Attract Ideal Customers and How to Keep Them

The success of an organization ultimately depends on the customers. The employees, culture, and leadership might contribute to this, but ultimately you cannot sustain a business without customers. Ideal customers may vary, but the strategies to attract them apply to most organizations. You will need to identify your ideal customer, and then use various marketing strategies to attract those customers.

Identify Your Ideal Customer

If you cannot describe in detail your ideal customer, you need to do some work. You could do this on your own, but Digital Marketer also offers a Customer Avatar Worksheet which is very helpful to kickstart this process. First, you will want to list your ideal customer’s goals and values. For example, if your business offers RV insurance, you will want to list goals and values such as travel, family, memories, safety, etc. This will give you some insight into your ideal customer’s needs. Next, determine the demographics of your ideal customer. Are they male, female, young, middle-aged, single, married, etc. You will market differently to a 30 year-old mom than you will to a 50 year-old bachelor. Lastly, consider how this person might get their information. For example, do they frequent social media, or do they read newspapers? You may be able to determine this information based on age, but you could also put together a focus group or send out a survey to your current ideal customers. Knowing how your customers receive information will allow you to develop marketing strategies that best suit those modes. 

Marketing Strategies

Now that you have identified your ideal customer, you can begin to develop marketing to fit both your business and your customer. A few strategies you may like to try are direct response marketing, hosting giveaways, and completing physical aesthetic changes. 

Direct Response Marketing

Direct response marketing is a sales technique used to gain a roster of potential or current customers. There are three parts to direct response marketing: offer, information, and call to action. First, you need to entice customers with an offer. This is different from a giveaway. An offer may be a free trial, an ebook, community access, etc. Offering something to the public for free will allow you to gain an email list of potential customers. Next, the organization needs to provide information about the offer in order for the customer to accept. According to Smarty Ads, a business only has 4 seconds to hook a customer. This means your information about the offer and your company needs to be quick and enticing. Lastly, you need to provide a call to action. This is something the customer needs to do in order to receive the offer. They might need to click a link, subscribe, provide an email, etc. This is how you get the list of customers who might be interested in your product. 

Giveaways

Once you have a list of potential customers, you can start hosting a few giveaways. The purpose of this is twofold, it allows those already in your circle of ideal customers to try your product and it potentially gets them hooked on the product, creating more customers through their testimonials. As a new organization, giving away product might seem counterintuitive, but it is worth it to get more people interested in your product. Some people need to try a product before becoming truly invested, while others are more interested in the company itself. 

Aesthetic Changes

Gone are the days when there was one option for every product. Now, people look for companies with aesthetically pleasing buildings and marketing maneuvers. If your building or marketing materials look like they did five or ten years ago, chances are you need to make some updates. Look into current popular companies to see what is bringing them success. Are they using clean lines, bright colors, or modern flair? Do they have bold fonts on updated signage? This is almost as important to a customer as the product because it is telling them about how updated your product is before they even try it out. Spending time and money making simple updates to your aesthetic will hook in potential clients, and possibly keep them coming back for more. 

Loyal Customers

Of course, the ideal customer is a loyal customer. This person keeps coming back to your business, tells their friends about the business, and their friends become loyal customers as well. In order to keep your customers coming back for more, you need to have great customer service and updated products. Customer service is one of the key factors in longevity of customers. According to a study by Bain & Company, businesses with highly-rated customer service increased customer retention by 2-5%. Providing customers with excellent service either in person or on the phone is an important part to keeping them around. In addition to customer service, your organization should also consistently offer updated products. If you have one great product, customers can buy that one product and never return, however if you strategically update your product or design new products, this will build longevity with your customer base. 

Although you might need to spend time and money to attract and maintain your ideal customer base, your business will be all the more successful for it. Start small by identifying your ideal customer, and work up to implementing marketing strategies. Having a loyal customer base will not only make your organization thrive, but it will also give everyone in your company more pride in building a business to which people feel loyal.