Where Are Your Clients? 7 Ways to Discover New Customers

Oh, brother, where art thou? – that’s probably a question every CEO, digital marketer and sales manager had asked at least once in their life.  Discovering new customers is a crucial part of your business strategy. After all, you can have an outstanding product or service, but you simply won’t survive if you don’t have any clients and revenue. So where exactly do your customers hang out? And how to reach them? Let’s find out!

How to Find New Customers

Finding new customers is probably one of the most difficult tasks that await every business owner.

In our oversaturated, always online world, finding, attracting, and converting new customers can be a pain in the butt. It’s hard to come up with a unique message, choose the right platform, and deliver it to the right audience at the right time.

Although every business is different, there are some common techniques you can implement to promote your business and generate leads.

Let’s find out what exactly can you do to find new customers in a blink of an eye!

Here are 7 ideas on how to find new customers. Click on each link to learn more.

1. Social media
2. Social media listening
3. Referral system
4. Live customers’ testimonials
5. Networking
6. Teaming up with other businesses
7. Being part of professional groups

1. Social media

The good, old social media channels. You’re probably already tired of hearing about them, but they are the best spot to discover your potential customers.

In the ever-evolving world, getting a grip on all social media channels is becoming a bit confusing. Where your brand has to be present? Which channels are the best for you? How do you make them profitable?

For starters, you should get a look at Quora.

The platform has more than 200 million monthly unique visitors and covers about 400 000 topics. Quora provides an excellent opportunity to discover new customers.

By reading the questions and answers, you’ll learn what your potential customers’ pain points are, and what exactly are they looking for in a product. You can show how your product or service meets their demands and could facilitate their needs.

If you have no idea how to start your way there, take a look at tips from our Community Manager, Kuba.

He also shares some great tips on Quora (how he manages to get 650 leads per month from that platform) inside this video:

Another platform that has been growing is Instagram and, more importantly, Instagram Stories.

If you don’t have an Instagram account yet, you should create one. Especially if you’re in the highly visual industry, like clothing, cosmetics or interior design.

With accurately targeted ads and clever hashtags campaigns, your new customers will discover your brand on their own. How cool is that?

If you want to reach out to potential new leads, think about a direct hashtag campaign. Find which hashtags users created for your niche and get in touch directly with your customers. 

Do you need a great Instagram tutorial? My colleague Gloria has been publishing her tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your Instagram account, and her articles are rich in useful insights!

2. Social media listening

It’s important to know the difference between social monitoring and social listening.

Social listening provides insights on how your product meets, exceeds or falls short of users’ expectations. It’s all about collecting data from broader customers’ conversations and analysing them to make better decisions for your customers and answer their questions before they have a chance to pose them. To gather all the mentions, take a look at our selection of social listening tools.

Social media monitoring is a more reactive way to interact with your clients. You respond to incoming queries and comments to help customers.

Although both applications of social media monitoring tool, like Brand24, are advantageous, social media listening is indispensable when it comes to attracting target customers. It allows you to recognise the places your potential clients are hanging around and getting ahead of the problems they might encounter.

Here’s an example of social monitoring from our field.

Kuba is providing an answer to a specific question. If we want to use social media listening to this project, we would have to gather the information about queries regarding LinkedIn and prepare a solution.

Social media listening allows you to learn a lot about your audience, especially what are they looking for and how they feel about your product.

Gaining access to all those pieces of information is easier than you think – you just need to set up a project in Brand24. 

In the project creation wizard insert the keywords you’d like to monitor. Think about:

1. the name of your company;
2. the name of your product or service;
3. your branded hashtag. 

You can access all the essential information via a dashboard, and you’ll receive a daily email with the most crucial data.

Thanks to social monitoring you will get a feel for the problems your audience may be experiencing, and you’ll be able to offer solutions.

3. Referral System

Referral system is the growth hack Dropbox used to get its product off the ground. And we’re talking about some awe-inspiring numbers here – 3900% increase in the number of users in 15 months!

The plan was simple – every customer that recommended Dropbox to their friends gained extra storage space. The person accepting the invitation get extra MB as well.

Nothing is more powerful than word of mouth – that’s how you build a loyal customers base. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know, and they’re four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. That’s one reason a customer referral program is a good idea.

The second incentive to invest in referral program should be customer retention. Referrals are the type of customers with the lowest churn rates.

The proof is once again in the numbers – according to studies done by Bain & Company, increasing customer retention by 5% can lead to an increase in profit of 25% – 95% and the probability of converting an existing customer into a repeat customer is 60% – 70%. The likelihood of converting a new lead? At best, 5% – 20%.

4. Live customers’ testimonials

A referral program is strongly correlated with my next point – live customers’ testimonials. Imagine being praised by happy customers on social media. Up until now, you could only see the mentions in your Brand24 project, not directly on your website.

Recently, we released a new widget, which could help you spread the word of your greatness to others.

Live customers’ testimonials is an embeddable, customisable and clickable online mention of your company. By clicking on it, your customers will be redirected to the source of the mention, and be able to talk to the author.

Your potential new customers will be able to see who is talking about your brand and where they are doing it. That way you’ll boost your online credibility and increase sales.

5. Networking

Never underestimate the power of networking. Being a total introvert myself, I find networking a huge undertaking and a step far outside my comfort zone.

But do you know the saying that magic happens outside your comfort zone? Well, it’s true.

I never regret going to one of the networking events – you can not only learn a lot from other business owners but also identify potential customers. Here’s what our CEO, Mike, has to say about our presence at Social Media Marketing World 2018:

SMMW is the best conference I’ve ever attended and exhibited on. With almost 5000 attendees and around 25 exhibitors, we’ve had a really good flow of potential customers coming by our booth.

6. Teaming up with other businesses

What about sharing your customers’ database with other businesses? We tend to be focus only on ourselves, fearing the potential competition would steal our clients, but what if we can help one another?

Take a look at booking.com, a site where you can find holiday accommodation, and Wizzair, a budget airline.

Every time, a customer books an accommodation and shares his Wizzair customer number, the air carrier will refund 10% of the booking value to customer’s account.

That way both parties are referring clients and the cashback is another reason to choose Booking.com and Wizzair combination.

7. Being part of professional groups

Professional groups are a goldmine of potential customers. The key to success in this environment is not to be too selly.

Focus on helping people. Helping others make you a leader in your niche, it proves that you’re a team player. 

Most of the social networks are in the process of turning into places where people can build more meaningful relations. That’s your opportunity to get ahead of your competition. Answer people’s queries but don’t push your product too hard.

There’re plenty of possibilities to find, attract, and identify new customers.

And what are your favorite ways of finding new customers? I’d love to hear them! Share this article on social media and use the keyword “Brand24” in your message and we’ll find you!

HANDPICKED RELATE READ

• The golden rules of PR crisis management
• How to measure PR campaign?
• 10 affordable news monitoring tools to keep you in the know