If you want to grow your business, you’ll need a strategic plan – which should include how you’ll find new customers and get your products or services into new markets.
Here’s what you need to know to identify new customers and markets.
Profile your existing customer base to re-establish your target consumers, and then determine different distribution channels that you could exploit. Think about selling:
Bring your target customers to life by creating marketing personas. For example, if your ideal customer is a 30-year-old stay-at-home mom, give her a name, learn more about her, and write up a detailed profile that describes her lifestyle, education, income, problems, and other important demographic attributes.
The better you know your target customer, the better you’ll be able to find more customers that fit the profile.
Where do people who match your marketing personas live and work? Is expanding into different geographical locations an option?
If so, research consumer demand for your goods or services in different locations. If the demand is large enough, determine how to go about serving those customers. For example, do you want to open and run a physical location or would franchising be an option?
If you’re a wholesaler, can you add a retail outlet? Likewise, if you’re a retailer, it might make sense to add a wholesale channel.
Are there any competitors or complementary businesses looking to sell? You might be able to buy them out to extend your reach and customer base.
Selling online creates a new avenue for your customers to purchase your offerings. You’ll also widen your audience – and therefore your reach – to potential customers. Consider:
What are you doing to attract new customers to your business? Use the following three strategies to attract new customers:
If you’ve exhausted the growth opportunities in your existing market, or your existing market feels flat, finding a new market may be the way forward.
Overseas markets offer opportunities to expand your business, but there’s a lot to consider. Exporting can be both risky and highly rewarding, making research crucial.
Conduct high quality, on-the-ground research in the countries you’re considering. Make sure to find out what regulations, tariffs, and business risks are present in your new target market.
You’ve built a business serving a particular slice of the pie, but other segments could also be receptive to your offerings. For example, if you’ve built your business with a focus on consumers (B2C), consider whether your goods or services would be of use to other businesses (B2B). Perhaps the government or education sectors have opportunities to explore.
In either case, you may need to tweak your offerings slightly to appeal to the new market. For example, while your existing products or services may be useful to both B2B and B2C markets, businesses and consumers have different:
You may need to adjust your marketing to address these differences and position your offerings as the solutions.
Finding new customers and markets could open the door to business growth, but it requires foresight and action. Get started today.