10 Ways to Grow Your Business and Expand Your Customer Base

Starting a business is a dream for many, and many times it just remains a dream forever. For every business to be successful, you need to have a demand for your product/ service. Without demand, your business will never get started. To increase demand, you need customers who are willing to pay for your products, and they need a product/ service that is worth value for them. Hence it all boils down to a single thing that your products should be excellent and address the customers' needs.

How to grow business and how to attract customers who are willing to buy your product? This needs a solid plan as chances are your product's alternatives are already in the market, and people are using them. How can you shift a large segment and drive them to your product? It requires planning and consultation with your product manager. If you don't have a product manager yet, then this blog will help you with this. This blog tells you about how to increase your customer base without spending a fortune on marketing strategies.

1. Discounts & Promotions: Customers want the best products at the lowest price. That's also a reason that Chinese smartphones have an extensive market share in our country. You can lure them to your funnel by giving attractive discounts and deals where they feel comfortable spending on your products. Often when starting, you will need to keep your prices lower than your competitors, so it starts gaining traction. Many new players do this in the market, and they gain their first customers from it. You can check this phenomenon when you go to the supermarket; many items offer buy 2 get 1, 40% OFF type discounts. Once you get your first customers and your business gets revenues, you can retarget these customers with more relevant offers. This is the first answer to your question about how to grow your business? If you go by the example of Freecharge who occasionally gives discounts to the users, you will see that it has leveraged this marketing strategy very well.

2. Ask for referrals: Once you have your first customers in your business, you can start to get referrals based on your good service or products. It also gives you mouth-to-mouth publicity that is often the best marketing source and a potent lead driving tool. To get started with this, you need to keep your customers active and engaged. Once you leave the passive pool of customers, it will be hard to restart the whole engagement process. You can also install a referral prize system and offer more discounts to customers who bring more customers. Many businesses are using this system to get new verified customers. Google Pay uses referrals and awards the user who brings more users. They have expanded their current user base manifolds.

3. Recontact old customers: You will have the data of your old customers who are sitting idle without repurchase. Email marketing is a way to establish a relationship with your old and inactive customers. You can hire an email marketing expert who can intensify your marketing process. Make sure to use some custom and personalised messages that appeal to their emotions. Something like, 'We miss you' will work.

4. Networking: Networking means connecting with new people who are relevant in your domain. It helps build brand awareness with new customers and also can be used for lead generation. To start with networking, meet people from your trade associations, people from the business domain, or a relevant field that needs your products. Try to incorporate politeness in your behaviour; otherwise, networking can go wrong. Zerodha is a prime example of growing with networking.

5. Make an interactive website: We mean that your website should have the authority to rank on the search keywords. For this purpose, search engine optimisation is required. You can hire freelance experts who specialise in SEO and can revamp your website with new SEO trends. The website also needs to be graphics-oriented to lure the visitors into staying hooked on your website. It doesn't matter if the content is fabulous; until you have full-fledged graphics and SEO parameters, people will not stay on your website.

6. Partner with complementary business: While starting, it is good to take help from allied services and partner with them. You can leverage their customer base to direct new customers to your product/ services page. Partnering with complementary businesses is one of the best business growth tips.

You must have seen that many applications offer different types of payment options from third-party apps, which helps them create their brand awareness and let people know about them. Similarly, you need to take out an allied business that is not your competitor and partner with them. In cinema halls, you will see that people are willing to pay even more for popcorn and snacks. You can understand the complementary business benefit from there.

7. Promote your expertise: If you have been wondering how to increase business, now is the time to let the industry know that you gave a product/ service many times better than your competitors. You need to promote your expertise in various business forums and other industry seminars. Let people know that you are an expert at your service, let the media create a buzz, and people will flock to check your products/ services out of curiosity.

8. Take advantage of online ratings & review sites: Before buying anything new, people generally like to see the feedback of other customers who have tried that. They are also looking for ratings and reviews associated with the product. Leverage the positive reviews in your favour, as you can install your people to start giving you positive and wholesome reviews so that other people are ready to check out your product. Social proof is an influential driving factor behind any purchase.

9. Participate in community events: Try to get more social and represent your business in community events. Raise your profile, interact with people, answer their queries and create a good image. You can start by sponsoring any community event like sports, holidays or more. This will take you closer to your prospective clients, which can be easily converted as you have the social proof.

10. Introduce campaigns like bring a friend: This means that the customers can bring one more person to your business to avail of your service. You can offer one-on-one free so that you have more footfalls in your business. Campaigns like ‘bring a friend’ are excellent business tips to induce growth and establish a personal rapport with the customer.

Conclusion:

Many businesses are inclined towards growing their customer base from conventional marketing techniques in vain.If you are seriously wondering how to grow your business, these simple business tips should help you out. This is the age of the internet, and if you can make the best use of digital marketing and other state of the art marketing hacks, then sky's the limit.

Also Read:

1) 10 Reasons Why It's Easy to Start a Business in India
2) What business ideas make people billionaires?
3) How to raise funds for a business start-up?
4) 10 Best Business Sustainability Strategies & Solutions For Business Growth

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FAQs

Q. What can I do to attract more customers without spending much money?

Ans. Every business needs demand to attract customers. You need to make them comfortable with your product. You can start with giving generous discounts to ensure that the customers have the first interaction with your products/ services.

Q. How to grow a small business when you are just starting?

Ans. You need to do a good business and marketing plan before rolling out the product in the market. Try to get to interact with more and more people and let them know about your products. You can start with informational intent blogs and start taking customers inside a marketing funnel.

Q. What are some business tips when you are just starting?

Ans. Networking is the initial step in connecting with newer prospective clients. You can start with interacting with people on social media profiles like Quora, LinkedIn and more. There you can build a fan base and redirect this traffic to your website. Many people use this tactic, and it is very helpful during the start.

Q. What are some ways to attract new customers?

Ans. You can start with marketing yourself. The above blog post contains in-depth information about how to attract new customers to your business.

Q. How can marketing strategies help you in gaining new customers?

Ans. With the use of the internet, many businesses have started using online platforms to sell their products and services, effectively reducing advertising costs. With online marketing, businesses have started giving importance to digital marketing and other such platforms to reach their target customers. Following are some marketing platforms you can use for your startups:

Email Marketing
Search Engine optimisation
Social media marketing
Public relations
Content sponsoring
Advertising