One of the biggest problems most small businesses have is finding new customers and acquiring new work.
It's a never ending merry-go-round of advertising, marketing, answering questions, arranging visits and providing quotes for new jobs, and while all this is happening your also working on the current job.
In the never ending list of problems and headaches that you'll find when searching for that elusive customer is a very basic issue which is how YOU connect with ME to start the whole ball rolling. Most small business dont have a fantastic marketing & advertising budget (if they have one at all) and soo rely on all of the freebies that they can get their hands on.
This is where social media plays a major role in that connection, or at least thats what business owners think.....
They wait patiently scrolling endlessly through post after post looking for that question "can someone recommend" or better still "looking for a ….. to carry out ".
and then like a cat with a muse they pounce and write their usual reply hoping to get to second base with a phone call or email message asking for a quote.
Now this all seems fairly easy and I can see why a lot of people give me that puzzled look when I say that things are quite at the moment.
But here's the thing, a few years ago there wasn't so much traffic on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, etc, and this made connecting with people pretty easy. As time has moved on everyone (and their dog) is either using of social media as a platform to connect or are promoting it to others, which means that certain sites are now saturated with posts that there's to much competition.
As you can see from this very poorly edited post from Facebook.
A posts goes up for a request for a plumber and within 3 hours there have been 43 replies from different services offering their services.
So if your not on the ball and watching for these types of posts, chances are that your going to miss out.
There is however an answer to this problem and you've probably guest what it is. Thats right, if the mountain wont come...…..
Instead of chasing after the customers, get them to chase after you. How simple is that !!
To be able to do this you need to sit down in a dark room with pen and paper and figure out a few key things first and then you can get started.
What, Who, Why and How.
First off you have to know - I mean really know - WHAT your business is selling, everything it does and can do. If you can't answer this first question then there's a more serious problem.
Once you know what you sell, then you need the next piece of the puzzle, WHO will buy it from you, and before you say everyone, think again !!
Now you know what your selling and who your selling it to the next burning question it answer is WHY would anyone buy it from me, in other words what makes you so special and different from all the other businesses out there.
Finally, having the answers to life the universe and everything the final hurdle - HOW on earth do I connect myself with my customer bases and this is where our old friend social media comes into play, but rather than using it to sell your goods and services you use it to sell yourself. By writing posts and articles about your business and telling everyone what you've done recently and why it was so much better than Joe Blogs down the road. Use pictures, video's cartoons, music, jokes..... in fact anything that will make your post stand out and be remembered
Obviously, Rome wasn't built in a day in fact this Rome isn't going to be built any time soon, so patience and perseverance are needed. Keep at it and your business name will start to circulate and before long the customers will be coming to you and the chase will be over.