Member Article

How to attract new customers with smart marketing

At Royal Mail MarketReach, we work closely with companies of all sizes to help them achieve their marketing objectives. Earlier this year, we commissioned research to better understand the ambitions and challenges faced by UK SMEs. It revealed that they are highly ambitious, with nine out of ten looking to grow their businesses and client bases this year. What’s more, 95% of small businesses recognise that marketing has an important role in helping them achieve their business aims.

While SMEs want to grow and know that marketing can help, there are obstacles. Promoting your business isn’t always easy, and nearly half of small business said that finding new customers was their biggest challenge. To help, we have set out five top tips for SMEs looking to find new customers.

1. Be personal, timely and relevant

It is important to understand who you are targeting and what they like, and consider how they like to be communicated with. It sounds obvious but your message is more likely to be positively received if it is delivered by your customer’s preferred medium.

Email seems like an obvious starting point, but more than half of people claim that receiving mail makes them feel more valued than email, and they take mail more seriously. As a result, Royal Mail has created a new online tool, MailShotMaker to help SMEs quickly and easily create professional mailshots to reach new customers , Find out more mailshotmaker.royalmail.com

When it comes to securing business from new customers, first impressions count. The best way to guarantee a positive impact is to ensure that your marketing is personal, timely and relevant to the individual.

2. Stand out and be memorable

Consuming different media at the same time is part of modern life: around nine in ten adults now do this each week, according to the IPA – the professional body for marketing and advertising in the UK. Often the moment at which a customer discovers a new business isn’t when they are looking to make a purchase. This is why it’s so vital to have a distinct brand and message that stands out from the clutter, which potential customers can build a connection with.

Think about what you can to do help potential customers remember you, by highlight how your product or service can benefit them, so that they recall your business when they are ready to make a purchase. 71% of the decision makers we spoke with said they would like to create marketing that customers can keep hold of, for future reference.

Physical communications, such as mail, makes customers feel more emotionally connected with the sender, and stays for longer in the home. Kantar Media’s TGI survey uncovered that 80% of adults kept mail from some companies in the last four weeks.

3. Incentivise new customers

Talking to SMEs, we know that offers are a great way to drive footfall to stores, increase online traffic and drive higher event attendance. By offering something in addition to your product or service will give potential new customers an additional reason to try your business, and by having an expiry date on the offer you motivate them to try it now.

You can offer incentives through one or all of your marketing channels. If you include a unique promo code you can measure the performance of an incentive and compare how different channels perform.

4. Follow a strategic multi channel approach

We found that SMEs on average use over 3 different marketing channels to reach customers. The most popular channels are email (82%), social media (62%) online advertising (50%) and direct mail (56%).

Email is a great cost effective way to communicate with your customers, social media marketing can enable you to accurately target those interested in what you offer, and direct mail is tangible marketing that can cut through the on-screen distractions in customers’ daily lives. Most importantly your website is your showroom; it is where all these marketing channels will lead to. Anything promoted via other channels should also be present and easily found on your website.

It is important to recognise that each channel does not exist in a bubble. Consider using your messaging, offer or content across all your marketing, tailoring it for each channel’s unique format. This will enable customers to see it in as many places as possible and enhance the impact.

5. Measure and refine your strategy

To make sure your marketing delivers a good return on your investment, it is crucial you measure the results. Set objectives to begin with, and measure success against them. Make sure you track sales to see if there is a spike after you run a campaign, and measure what marketing activity has led to that new customer introduction.

Measuring marketing success is crucial for small businesses to plan activity and budgets. For each channel there are different tools that you can utilise to understand the impact they are generating. On social media you can track clicks through, engagement, likes and number of shares. Using Google Analytics you can see where visitors found your site, either by search engine, Facebook or Twitter, and which channels and promotional activity actually led to sales.

Overall, do prioritise what is working – you may love something, but if it isn’t working then it’s best to find an alternative.

For more tips and advice check out the free guide, from Royal Mail MarketReach Smart marketing for small businesses

By Emma Springham, Head of Marketing and Channels at Royal Mail MarketReach

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Emma Springham .