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So you’ve launched your business, your business cards are printed and your products are on the shelves, but customers aren’t coming through the door or visiting your website.
There could be hundreds of reason why this could happening, but one of the first questions to ask yourself is whether your customers can actually find and interact with you. Obvious question, right? But certainly worth investigating.
Think about it, if your target customer can’t find or contact you easily, you can bet they’re contacting your competitors. To make sure you this doesn’t happen to you, here are 4 ways you could be making it hard for your target audience to interact with you:
The usual suspect, the difficult-to-find-contact information. This could be a simple of case of not having your website or telephone address displayed prominently on a poster or leaflet. Obvious I know, but you’ll be amazed how many businesses make the classic mistake of not putting their contact information on the obvious pages.
Quick tip : Look at your marketing material -offline and online – is your address, email, phone number – even Twitter or Facebook accounts if you have them – clearly visible on every piece?
If you haven’t got the space to put all your details on your printed marketing material, make sure your company name and a contact detail are visible. You could even add a QR code with a clear call-to-action explaining that all other contact details can be found through scanning your QR code. In fact, create a mobile business card! You can use this both as a business card, and on any marketing collateral as described above.
No matter what product or service you offer, whoever is going to place the order is a person. Your contact form needs to show your customer that when they deal with you, they’re dealing with “real people”. It’s as simple as putting a live link to your email account in front of your target audience or having visible business contact details of someone who will help them if there’s a problem. If you’re a “one man band”, you could use your name. Just make sure people know who to contact and how.
Quick tip :Include a photo so that your customers can see what you look like/who you are. And don’t forget to promote your social media accounts if you have these.
We’re in an age where consumers expect every business to have an online and recently a social presence. The hard truth is, some of your target customers are unlikely to believe you exist if you don’t have a social media footprint. Social media shouldn’tbe taken lightly, so before you dive in, you need to determine where your target customers interact on social media and take it from there.
Quick tip: Make sure that you claim your personal name and business name on all major social media accounts – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, Google+. Even if you’re not quite ready to do anything on these networks just yet – at least claim your names before someone else does, and before this “someone else” grows on the back of your business.
A quick way to get started is to research what your competitors are doing on social media. If you like what you see, print it out or make a screenshot and remember to make a note of what you think works well/ what you would like to do as well. Add this to your Marketing Inspiration file.If you already have a public profile, make sure you have included on this a link to your website along with a business contact phone number.
Never underestimate your personal brand. You could be an expert in your field or simply a person who loves sharing your passion via Youtube videos, blog posts or Flickr photos. You should ensure that anyone that comes across your content is exposed to your brand in some way. You don’t have to obvious or brash either. It could be as simple as embeding a link to your website and Twitter page in the author bio at the end of the post.
Quick tip: If you have, or if you are developing video content, make sure you post it on Youtube as well. Make sure that your Youtube channel is branded correctly and that it will appeal to the target audience you have identified. And while you’re branding everything, don’t forget the little things like putting your logo inside your QR code on your business cards!
If you ingrain a mindset of ensuring every touch point you have with potential customers is branded, your customers won’t be able to help themselves but to click on your link, make that call or buy that product! The last thing you want is to put up unnecessary roadblocks in front of customers that actually want to do business with you.
- Article Source: http://www.pitneybowes.co.uk/pbse/blog/Why-Your-Target-Audience-Cant-Interact-With-You.shtml#sthash.qGfh3X74.dpuf
