The Graphite Blog

We all want more customers, that's every business in your street, village, town and city all looking to attract pretty much the same people and it is getting harder and harder to attract them and to stand out from the crowd. We don't all have the budgets for huge marketing campaigns and can only afford to do small things so we need to make sure we do things smartly.

Our best advice if you have a marketing idea and are not experienced with online marketing is to at least chat to a digital marketing agency to see if they can give you some ideas.

Here are the steps you should consider:

1. Know who your customer is and where they are.
2. Consider giving away something your customer will value.
3. In return, ask for their contact details.
4. Continue to stay in touch with them.
5. Consider an offer for them.

Let's look at each in turn:

Know Your Customer and who you are Advertising to

If your marketing budget is small you need to make sure every penny you spend is used sensibly. Consider Facebook advertising - you can really pinpoint your advert to age, gender, interests, location etc. This means you only pay for your advert to appear in front of someone who think is your ideal customer.  Let's say you are a Nail Bar and want to do a Facebook Advert to your local area, here are 3 options you may consider:

• Fabulous nails are what we do every day so why not give us a call, quote Facebook10 to get 10% off your first treatment
• Fancy getting gorgeous nails for your Valentines date or night out? Make an appointment and quote Facebook10 to get 10% off your first treatment
• Looking for a great Valentine's present for your girlfriend/partner/wife that won't have you being nervous and biting your nails? Get 10% off your gift voucher by quoting Facebook10

Option 1 is a general advert which you may think is ideal as it potentially covers everyone who may want to get their nails done.  It has an encouraging offer and Call to Action but because it is very general, the message isn't very targeted and relies on the reader really wanting to get their nails done.  As the audience is wide (many people) you will pay Facebook more to reach more people.

Option 2 is more targeted - it takes into account the time of year (Valentines Day coming up), we are still talking to anyone who wants to get their nails done but now we've added an excuse to get them done that they may or may not have been considering. Moreover, you can consider a target age group who are more likely to be in this bracket - we are not discriminating here, just making sure you spend your budget on the most cost effective audience.

Option 3 is one that is often missed - the less obvious customer who is buying what you have for someone else. So we can't consider their personality, just the fact they may be looking for a gift for someone. This makes your target audience more like guesswork but it is perhaps an avenue of marketing/reaching people who wouldn't normally consider so may be worth running alongside Option 2.

But remember - if you are only advertising on Facebook you are only advertising to people who have a Facebook account, use it, meet your target criteria and are on Facebook at the time your advert is live.

We've covered items 1 and 2 above, in our next blog post we'll look at asking for contact details and staying in touch to help grow your customer list. Feel free to comment below and sign up for our regular email to get more marketing hints and tips.