Sales are essential to any business. After all, sales are the only way that you can keep a business up and running. That being said, one of the many ways to help boost your sales is through marketing.
Unlike other business strategies, marketing allows you to implement different approaches to promote services and products and most significantly, increase your customer reach.
Why does customer reach matter for your business? Well, it’s crucial because it encompasses the number of customers your company can reach using various marketing channels, including social media, TV campaigns, email marketing, SMS marketing, etc.
MessageMedia states that SMS texts can help businesses grow their ROI since 90% of SMS messages are read within 90 seconds. SMS messaging simply cuts through, enabling you to effectively reach anyone with a mobile phone.
Alternatively, if you’re using TV commercials to market your business, your reach is the number of customers and potential customers who will see that commercial.
If you’re aiming for optimum growth of your current customer base, you should focus on increasing your customer reach right away.
A study from CBInsights showed that bad marketing choices are what led 14% of the startups to their end, so this characteristic will eventually cause substantial losses and even the failure of your business.
Here are a few ways you can avoid that, and improve the outcomes of your marketing efforts, increase your brand awareness, and boost profits throughout the process.
Improve your network and partnership
One thing to bear in mind before planning your marketing strategy is your business networking and partnership.
Why? When you’re running an online business it is critical to understand that your customers or potential customers might already have some connections with other businesses.
So, each time you choose to partner with other companies that provide complementary services or products, you’re more likely to reach a new audience and potentially improve your customer reach.
Another great way to create profitable business relationships and increase your reach is through market research.
According to experts from Sapio Research, conducting market research can provide you with valuable information about your audience, your competitors, and how your services or products will do in the marketplace.
For instance, let’s say you already have 2000 subscribers on your email list, and you’re planning an online event or a webinar.
If you already know where your business lies in the marketplace, you can choose to partner up with a more successful business that targets the same audience to expose your brand image to a broader audience than you already have.
The all-mighty social media
Having an online presence is essential for businesses everywhere.
It’s one of the most popular and easy ways to promote your business. Many businesses nowadays rely on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to generate fresh leads and engage their customers.
By using social media, you can measure your customer reach by looking at the increase in content views and the number of followers you’ve gained on each social media platform.
That being said, when you are looking for better customer engagement and brand awareness, everything you share on these platforms is vital for the results you’ll obtain.
In short, the amount and the quality of the content you provide on social media platforms are directly linked to the increase in customer reach that you experience. Here are some key steps that will help you optimize your customer reach through social media:
Don’t forget to promote your social media pages on your business website. If you already have a well-designed website, you can add social media follow buttons to allow your potential customers to follow you on social media. You can also add sharing buttons to all of your blog posts as each share you obtain will increase your chances to get seen by new potential clients.
Share useful and creative content: Quality is a must when it comes to social, and people are already overwhelmed by the amount of useless content they scroll through every day. Ensure you come up with useful and engaging content as often as you can without being monotonous.
Engage and connect with your new followers and fans. Because the number of customers expecting to receive “social customer service” is expected to boom, it’s vital that brands are listening. One study has shown that 71% of customers who had a great experience with a brand are likely to share it with others. Offer amazing customer service.
Believe it or not, customer service can have a huge impact on your business’s ability to retain and reach new customers. In some cases, poor customer service is more likely to affect your customer engagement and retention than help you.
How? Studies have shown that while providing customer service has a relatively low impact on increasing your customer reach; it has a huge effect on losing their loyalty and even engagement when it’s not good enough.
A simple way to avoid losing your customer is to make their life easier by giving them what they’re looking for and right away. For instance, lots of companies refrain from using automatic support as they fear alienating their clients and losing their personal touch.
Indeed, personal touch matters a lot when getting in touch with clients, but you should also remember that new generations don’t necessarily enjoy communicating with a person as most of them would rather click a few times and have their problem fixed.
Today’s customer service is all about Chatbots and for a good reason. With smart self-service, you can give your customers solutions quickly at any hour without having to deal with them personally.
Consider free trials
Who doesn’t enjoy free giveaways? It’s almost impossible for people not to need or appreciate free gifts, promotional sales, or discounts. This will not only help you nurture your current customer relationships, but it also gives you a chance to boost your marketing reach.
So, instead of giving services or products for free, you can come up with a condition where they can get discounts and giveaways which will further motivate them to share the news on one or more social media platforms.
Keep in mind that there is no shortcut when it comes to marketing. For this reason, you should be willing to examine the state of your business in order to increase your customer reach and brand awareness even though you’ll face many failures.