Founder at ReDahlia & Entrepreneurs.ng. I help new entrepreneurs start businesses in 30 days & guide companies to scale impact and revenue.
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The objective here is to help you master how to leverage your existing networks and other sources to find and onboard clients. This is an area I have leveraged successfully for my businesses.
Leveraging Your Existing Network
A challenge that businesses that are just starting out often face is getting paying customers. This weighs many founders down and often discourages them in their business pursuits.
The best place to start as a fledgling business is with family and friends. Tell your inner circle about your new business, and mandate them to also tell their own families and friends. You will see that your circle expands quickly as soon as they do that. Think about how many people you know and extrapolate from that to get a sense of just how big that circle can get.
Depending on the service you provide, you can get tons of referrals from this channel. Word of mouth works magic, especially if you are good at what you do.
Let me emphasize that you should not ask for referrals if your service is not stellar. Ensure you do amazing work so that even if you do not get a referral immediately, you can include such a project in your portfolio.
This simple step can unearth valuable business and work for you just from your circle.
Sources To Find Targeted Customers
Targeted here means the specific clients who want your products or services. A few useful places to find your target customers include:
1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great place to connect with businesses and build your clientele. Search for people in related fields who are decision-makers and introduce yourself or your business as new in the space.
It may surprise you that they have been looking for the kind of service you offer. For LinkedIn, you may not have any direct connections with a person and therefore may have to pay to send them a message.
You can also explore finding a mutual connection with such a person and then asking to be introduced. You can then establish a connection and introduce your business.
2. Targeted Events And Conventions
This is particularly helpful if you have just moved to a new city and are about to start your business. I did a lot of this when I first moved to Lagos. But there is a caveat here.
Do not just attend every event and convention; be strategic with your choice of events to attend. For your time there to be meaningful, an event must have your target audience in attendance. Ensure you are well prepared before attending by doing some research on some of the attendees and organizing your marketing materials, business cards and brochures.
Follow up promptly with people you have exchanged business cards with by at least writing them via email as soon as possible.
It is also possible to attend such events and conventions as a vendor; in this instance, you may have to pay for a booth or a stand at the venue.
3. Local Businesses
Local businesses in your area always need help. They need to advertise their business, design their website, develop content, register their business and train their staff.
Usually, such businesses may not have huge budgets, so you can offer them good discounts on your product or service or you can offer them the freemium model of your product. This is great because it can spark word-of-mouth referrals in your locality. If you become the go-to place for your kind of business in your town, you can potentially serve a big market just by getting the local community to talk about you.
Companies, no matter their size, have wide networks you can benefit from by referrals, especially if you do very great work.
4. Advertising Online
By advertising online on Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc., you will be targeting specific people in your niche with your ads. You can target certain demographics, locations or people who have an interest in your kind of industry. You can get to the exact audience who need your product or service.
5. Content Marketing
In addition to advertising, another way I have grown my brand is content marketing. Content includes articles, videos, books, tutorials, courses, podcasts and more.
You can give content away for free to build search engine optimization (SEO). The greater the traffic to your site, the wider your reach and potential customers. Once they visit your website, deploy your opt-in form to get them to subscribe to your email list, and you can then email them about your services and products or new developments in your business.
Content marketing is a long-tail approach to getting customers as it involves more steps rather than simply walking into your store to buy your product, but it is quite effective in converting fans into customers and customers into fans. This can be powerful in the long term as brand loyalty and repeat business are easier to achieve when customers become real fans.
This approach is time-consuming, as a lot goes into content creation, but given that such content remains online indefinitely, the extent of its reach is invaluable. When I started ReDahlia Workspaces, I created a lot of content about the co-working industry, which I published on my website, Medium, LinkedIn and other sites. Most clients who have used our space found us through that published content.
6. Offline Distribution Of Marketing Materials
I extensively utilized this method during the launch of ReDahlia Workspaces. We researched and reached out to complementary businesses, especially hotels without meeting spaces, proposing mutual promotion through brochure exchanges. We highlighted the appeal of off-site meetings for clients seeking privacy. Using this approach, we struck various deals with multiple hotels.
Intentionally going through these steps and aiming to connect with three to 15 people in each of these categories can help seal business deals for you, so you must take the time to do them, starting today.
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