Growing your customer base

Finding success as a business owner means sustainably growing your customer base. Getting customers is not easy in today’s competitive startup landscape, but there are several best practices that can help you encourage that customer base to grow. Below, we will provide some tips for growing your small business’ customer base.

1.  Get to know your existing customers

Before growing your customer base, you must get to know your existing customers. What made them become a customer of your small business? What do they love about your business? What could you be doing better? Answers to these important questions can provide so much insight into your business and what you need to do to grow. You should also note what demographics are frequenting your business so that you can effectively market to those communities. Spending time to get to know those early customers will be pivotal in growing your business and keeping those customers around for a long time.

2.  Develop a realistic marketing plan

We say “realistic” because every business is going to have a different capacity for marketing. A marketing plan should be something that is measurable and achievable in a given time period. For some businesses, this might be hiring a full-time marketing employee to manage marketing or hiring a marketing agency to control the entire marketing strategy. For very small businesses that aren’t ready to hire professionals, a realistic marketing plan might start by creating a website and developing a manageable social media strategy. Marketing is vital to growing any business, so have a plan in place to reach the right audiences.

3.  Encourage customers to leave reviews

Reviews are huge for growing a customer base. Customers are going to trust what other customers say about your business before they trust what you are saying about your own business. As you start getting your first customers, create incentives for them to leave a review. Sometimes that might look like a small discount on future products/services or whatever incentive makes sense for your business model. Customer reviews will help legitimize your business and encourage others to give your product or service a try.

4.  Invest in business growth

Sometimes growing a startup means investing some money into your startup. If getting a startup to be profitable and popular among customers was free and easy, everyone would have a startup. Financing your startup will be a huge need as you look to reach more customers. Whether that money is going toward marketing to new customers, increasing your product offering, or building a team to better serve those customers – investment in your business is vital. Look for financial lenders that are familiar with startups and small businesses and can be flexible to meet the needs of your specific business.

Grow your business with the help of Lendr

Lendr is working to make startup financing easier and more transparent. Financing is the lifeblood of a startup and small business growth, and we work to find the funding you need to meet your startup’s specific needs so that you are able to continue growth. Learn more about how our cash advances help businesses of all sizes to thrive. Apply now to see if your startup is eligible for financing and to make the first step toward growing your small business and customer base!