How do I get new customers?
A new customer is, as the name suggests, a person (or company) who has not bought anything from you before. This may seem obvious, but the difference between new and existing customers is important to highlight. Getting a sale from an existing or previous customer is significantly different (and usually easier) than getting a sale from a new customer.
New customers can be hard to come by. You've probably asked yourself at some point "how do I get new customers?" If you are starting from scratch, with no existing clientele, you have no good basis to start from. In that case, you'll have to make educated guesses and try things out.
Here are some questions you should seek answers to:
- What are the demographics of your customers? Age, gender, interests, income and employment status?
- Where are they geographically located? In Denmark, abroad, in Copenhagen or in the provinces?
- Online vaner? Do they spend most time on Facebook or Instagram? Do they make most purchases via Google, Amazon, Facebook Marketplace or something else?
- Where did you find them? or: Where did they find you? Via online marketing? If so, was it SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads or a third channel that brought them in?
- What are the best channels to contact them? Newsletter, SoMe, phone, in person?
These questions will help give you a good idea of who you should be targeting when you are looking for new customers.
How do I get more customers?
If you already have a few customers, it can be a great help in trying to get more. If you have made just a handful of sales, you can already start to get a picture of what your new customers look like, simply by looking at your current ones.
If you already have a large customer base, you can go one step further. Data should always be a cornerstone when you're analysing and strategising, and that certainly applies when it comes to expanding your existing customer base.
In this situation, you should consider segmenting your customers and look at the following:
- In which segment have you made the biggest and most profitable trades?
- Which segment is easiest to reach?
- Which segment converts best when it comes to online marketing, for example?
- Which segment is the largest?
In this way, you will find the easiest and most direct answer to the question, "How do I get more customers?
Get the real customers
The questions above give a good picture of your potential new customers. At least in quantitative terms. However, they do not tell you much about the most important aspects of your customers. You need to dig deeper. The real task is not just to find customers, but to find new customers. And most importantly, to find the right customers.
After you've asked yourself, where are my customersand what do they look like, the next questions should be: What do they want or lackand how can I best give it to them?
By the time you get here, you'll begin to understand that customers aren't just customers. There are not just good, mediocre or bad customers. There are outright wrong customers. Customers you shouldn't spend effort on.
This is true whether we are talking about personal powers. Such as trying to persuade a potential customer to make a sale in which they have very little interest, or when it comes to spending money on advertising, both online and elsewhere. For example, if you target your ads at people who aren't interested in what you're selling, you're missing the mark.
Not only do you have to spend far more effort (or money) than necessary, what's worse: The few, expensive customers you actually get are of poor quality. They're unlikely to be very happy, and they're unlikely to return.
This should highlight the importance of getting the right customers. Real customers are customers who have a genuine interest in buying what you are selling. They are customers who want a good service and who are grateful if you deliver it. And most importantly: Real customers are customers who come back again and again. So our clear advice is to make sure you get the right customers from the start.
