How to Find New Clients for a Small Business

If you want to grow your small business in today's competitive business environment, you need to build strong customer relationships by finding successful ways to expand your customer base. Most importantly, you should find effective ways to retain new customers by constantly meeting customer needs and offering high quality products and services.

Here a few tips on how to find new customers for your small business:

1. Social Networking

With the growing expansion of the Internet, social networking has evolved into a key strategic tool to the success of a small business. If you are using Twitter and Facebook to promote your products or services, you are very likely to attract more prospective customers from a larger pool of visitors.

Your social network may include a wide variety of different contacts that can all be prospective customers to your small business. For instance, it may include current and former business colleagues, professional acquaintances, partners, suppliers , association members, family members, friends and other people from your community, school or neighborhood. All these contacts can turn into loyal customers of your small business if you understand their purchase preferences and satisfy their needs.

2. Networking Events

Networking events offer you the opportunity to develop a direct contact with prospective customers and directly promote your small business to a large customer base. The first step is to establish goals for your networking event by focusing on particular target groups that you can best connect with. You can get a list with the event's attendees and sort out the prospective customers from the rest based on their professions or common interests.

This small research beforehand can save you enormous amount of time during the event. Most importantly, you will avoid bouncing from person to person, handing out business cards to people who are not interested in what your small business has to offer.

3. Referrals

If your small business has loyal customers, referrals can be a really effective marketing strategy to generate new business leads. The key to get referral sales is to "use" your loyal customers as your salespeople through word-of-mouth advertising. Word-of-mouth advertising is widely regarded as one of the most credible types of advertising because loyal customers are putting their reputation on the line to recommend your business without having anything to gain besides the appreciation of those who are listening.

However, to get referral sales, you have to ask for referrals. Even the most highly satisfied customers won't give you a referral if you don't ask them to. Ask your most loyal customers to provide you with a list of five contacts of their social circle and ask for their help in getting in touch with these new, prospect clients.

4. Newsletters

Newsletters are a successful form of advertising that can inform clients about business developments, new products, potential partnerships, etc. By sending newsletters to prospective customers, you provide them with key insight into business challenges and give them the opportunity to voice their opinion, thus keeping your business on the leading edge. Most importantly, newsletters make your customers feel that they participate in your operation, and that you consider them as important stakeholders of your small business.

5. Professional Associations

Professional associations can offer you the opportunity to connect with new clients who share your interests. By hosting a wide variety of networking events, professional associations attract potential customers with whom you can exchange ideas, support common goals and participate in common forums or discussion boards. That way, you can promote your small business to a larger pool of people who can potentially turn into loyal advocates of your small business.

Sources:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/onlinemarketing/article77686.html

http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/promotio1/a/attractbizkr.htm

http://www.suite101.com/content/how-to-grow-a-small-business-a185000