 Attracting new customers to your business can be a difficult, time-consuming and expensive exercise. There are a number a tried and tested techniques that can bring new business in your direction. Many companies offer great services and packages that will help you find names and addresses, but this can be costly and you may end up buying details that are not appropriate to your business.
A simple and inexpensive way to find new customers
For the purpose of this exercise, we are going to assume that you have a database of existing customers. This database can be as small or as large as you wish, but it should be accurate and contain the names and addresses of people who have bought from you in the past. The information you keep about existing customers will help you build a profile of the type of people who buy from you, where they live, the amount they spend, the frequency of their spending with you and much more.
Addresses and postcodes are quite possibly the most important pieces of data that you should have about your customers. They should be kept up-to-date on a regular basis.
This very simple exercise involves plotting onto a map where your customers live or work. You will need a map, preferably with street names visible but this will depend upon how widespread your customer base is. You can download a range of maps with different scales on them from the internet. Next you will need to plot (a simple coloured dot will do) the address of the customers from your database. At the end of this process, you will be left with a map covered with lots of dots showing your customers' location.
Identifying your new targets
When you look at your completed map covered with small dots, you should be able to identify 'hot spots'. These 'hot spots' are clusters of dots that are close to each other. You may find a street with a high number of dots along it, you may find that an area of a town has a larger number of dots than others, or you may find a town in your catchment area with more dots than other towns.
These 'hot spots' are very important to you as they not only tell you where your existing customers live or work, but also tell you that households or businesses within the 'hot spot' area are likely to be made up of a similar demographic profile to your existing customers, they are therefore a target for your business. You may find that you have a number of 'hot spots' on your map.
You are now in a position to think about target marketing. You know where existing customers live to target with loyalty promotions, and you know where your 'hot spot' customers live to target new business.
What next?
Your next step is to create a marketing strategy for these two groups and start communicating with them straight away.
Apple Pie can help you:
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Set up a database
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Clean up existing databases
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Plot customers onto maps using our software
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Provide completed maps with customer locations
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Source names and addresses of new and potential customers
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Create a marketing strategy for new and existing customers
Contact Apple Pie on 01962 732392 for more help and information.
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