Getting Started on Getting More Customers – Roadmap to Success

Jun 29, 2017 Getting Started on Getting More Customers – Roadmap to Success

OK, you want to get more customers.  How many do you want?  This is very important for you to define.  Generally you need enough to take your company to the next level.  This might mean becoming profitable, or this might mean increasing profitability by a certain percentage.  You need to set a goal, and that goal should have some basis for the right number of customers that will give you the result you are seeking.  (Of course, if you are not sure how to do this, I would be happy to build a model of your business to determine this.  See my page on business modeling https://apollogr.com/profitability-improvement/).

Next, you want to make a list of the approaches or channels you can think of that might help you get more customers.  Examples are blogs, email marketing, search engine optimization, etc.  Then for each channel, you need to brainstorm and come up with at least one idea on how you would use that channel.

Next, go through and select what you think are the three best ideas (channels).  Devise a cheap, easy and fast way to test to see if this will work for each idea.  You need at least 3 ideas to test because you don’t want to take too long to determine the best channel for you.  If you do one at a time, you greatly increase the time it takes to get to the most effective channel.  You want to be able to answer the following three questions for each idea at the end of the tests:

1. What is the cost to get a single customer using the channel?
2. How many customers are in this channel?
3. Are the customers you can get in this channel the kind of customers you want?

Remember, the test itself will not likely get the volume of business you need but you want the test to validate the approach.

The last step is to select the best channel and put most or all of your focus on that channel.

If it does not work out, take the lessons learned from the effort and reevaluate the other 2 ideas you tested.  If these seem better now, do one of these.  If none look good, go back to your long list, pick three more and run more tests, etc.

Next week, I will start describing the channels you can use to get customers. For each channel, I will tell you what it is, what it is best at, and the tactics for using it efficiently.