Growing your small business clientele is essential to sustainability and success. A larger customer base will mitigate fluctuations in demand and reduce the risk of depending on a small group of customers. As your customer base expands, you gain more sales opportunities and higher revenue potential to increase your profitability. 

A substantial, more loyal customer base also supports your business with better brand awareness and growth in market share. So, how do you get there? The most convenient path for small businesses is practical marketing strategies that don’t require huge funds and outsourcing to marketing firms. This approach gives you the freedom to work at your pace and align your tactics with an audience that you already know well. 

Here are 7 practical marketing strategies that your small business team can execute:

1. Create a Referral Program

To create an effective referral program, start by identifying your most loyal and satisfied customers. Offer them clear and compelling incentives to motivate them to refer their friends, family, or colleagues to the business. Think discounts, freebies, or rewards. Regular communication and reminders about the program will keep it top of mind. Include the program in email marketing, on your website, on social media, or in flyers around your store. By leveraging your existing customer base, a well-designed referral program can lead to strengthened brand loyalty and increased customer acquisition.

2. Make Industry Partnerships

Find businesses and organizations in your industry that you admire. Choose an organization that is not a direct competitor, but compliments your business. Approach them with an idea to work together. You can partner on a variety of projects from marketing and sales campaigns to new products or services. Industry partnerships are an especially helpful strategy for businesses in niche markets with limited audiences. Your partnership gives you access to your partner’s audience allowing the both of you to grow together.

3. Get Free Press

While social media has become a dominant marketing strategy for most businesses, don’t forget how helpful traditional media can be, especially in niche or locally focused markets. Write and send out press releases when something particularly exciting is happening in your business like an event or new product. Press releases can generate news stories and social media posts that advertise your business at no cost. You can also approach publications with article ideas allowing you to share your expertise with a byline.

We’ve written a full post about this topic, so check that out here.

4. Build An Email List With Lead Magnets

Owning a business makes you an expert in your field. You have knowledge that can be shared to add value to your customer experience. To capitalize on this, create lead magnets that draw people to your website. These come in the form of informational eBooks, guides, checklists, tutorials, webinars, templates, and so on, but can really be anything useful or helpful to your audience. Place the lead magnet behind a form on your website meaning that an audience member needs to trade their email address or contact information in order to download the valuable tool. Growing an email list is helpful because it gives you a direct line of contact with your audience.

5. Nurture Leads With Drip Campaigns

If you already have a healthy email list of both customers and leads, work on nurturing those leads to convert them into paying customers. Drip campaigns are a great set-it-and-forget-it strategy to push potential clients through the customer journey, ensuring your company is top of mind when they are ready to buy. To do this, create a series of emails that automatically send at varied intervals. The tone, number, and frequency of emails all depend on your specific audience base. Do some research to land on the best strategy. 

6. Use Influencer Marketing

Consider who influences your customer base. The idea here is to discover who might have the best chance of convincing potential customers to buy your product or service. They might be a social media personality, a local celebrity, or simply an industry thought leader. Find a way to partner with this influencer, in a paid or unpaid capacity. Unpaid options could include trading blog posts on each other’s websites or collaborating on social media. A paid option would be to hire the influencer to advertise your product on their website or social media page.

7. Build a Social Media Audience

Building a social media audience increases brand visibility, drives traffic to your products or services, and allows you to engage with customers. To grow your audience, make sure to create consistent and quality content that provides value, entertainment, or education to your audience. Leveraging hashtags and engaging with relevant communities and influencers also helps you reach and attract new followers. Make sure to analyze metrics and adjust strategies based on what you learn.

Take Your Strategies to the Next Level With Our Social Media Managers

Marketing is an area of business that can deeply support business growth, but it might not be your specialty as a business owner. If that’s the case, it makes sense to bring in some reinforcements so you don’t lose out on opportunities. From strategy to execution, a fully-fledged marketing plan will help you grow your customer base and business.

Our Social Media Managers and content writers are experts in social media and other areas of digital marketing like blogging and email marketing. They have experience with small business owners and understand the best strategies to match whatever goals you might have from increasing traffic to your website to growing your customer base.

Schedule a free consultation to get started with digital marketing help.