5 Ways to Get New Clients/Customers

Every business owner knows how important it is to constantly feed the stream of clients or customers they are doing business with.  Here are five tips that, if diligently followed, will help your business increase in clients or customers.

1) Provide Good Service/Good Products

First and foremost, you really need to provide a product that people want.  Providing good service or a good product will do two things with current clients/customers: First, it will keep them interested and they will return for more services.  Second, they will share their positive experience with friends and neighbors in similar situations and refer your services.  Existing clients can be some of the best marketers for your business, so it is critical that you provide them with as many great experiences as possible.

2) Create a Buzz

There are many ways to get people to talk about what you do or produce.  More traditional forms of working with traditional media can be beneficial in many instances.  Uses services like HARO and research local news organizations or industry journals in order to find opportunities to contribute on topics of interest.  Respond to those areas and issues that fit your circumstances and comment in articles that match your expertise.  Also, there are many opportunities to use new media like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to manage and increase the conversation about your products.  The most important elements of creating buzz are persistence and a little luck.  Stay the course and you find ways to generate interest in your product.

3) Talk to People

It is key to take advantage of every chance you get to tell people about your products or services.  Consistent communication with service providers or former clients will keep your business on their minds.  Talk about what you do at dinner parties, networking events and trade shows.  The more people you can speak with about your services, the more likely you are able to receive new clients or referrals.  Go to lunch with other people, seek out opportunities to meet new people and then talk with everyone that you can.  You never know who might be interested in what you do.

4) Get Exciting

For all of the above ideas to really work, you have to be excited and exciting.  If you are passionate about what you do or provide, people are going to be more likely to listen.  Otherwise, all of the above run the risk of coming off as annoying or pushy.  If you are enthusiastic about what you do and what you provide to others, that enthusiasm will rub off on them and they will be more interested in what you do.  They will want to learn more.  Some will turn into clients.  Others will spread that enthusiasm to others.  Get excited about what you do, be exciting to others and you will see increases in clients/customers.

5) Follow-up

Finally, it is necessary to follow up with people.  If you say that you will do something/contact them, then do it.  Some client or customer relationships make take several months/years to develop, but if you stay on top of the relationship, they often turn in to great client relationships.  The more ways you create opportunities to follow-up, the better able you are to track the effectiveness of all your efforts to get new clients.  Create benchmark/action items for each person that you speak with to track how you will follow-up.  Consistency in all of the above will create opportunities to gain more clients.