Win customers: Advantages and Advertising – Starting your own business #8

Winning customers – The easiest way to win customers is advertising. Henry Ford (who is revolutionizing the assembly line of the employment office) already said that for every dollar you put into the product you have to have another one ready to make the product known. Anyone who is willing to invest € 100,000 in the development of the business idea and business model, up to the proof-of-concept and the ongoing business, should have the appropriate amount ready for the announcement.

Communication channels for customer acquisition

There are then various strategies for customer acquisition. From special prices to market launch through the various channels of advertising. From flyer marketing and city light campaigns to Facebook advertising and retargeting campaigns. From guerilla marketing from small start ups to TV campaign from big start ups. Attention in the right target group is important. New brands are allowed to exaggerate a little, be more colourful, be louder, be wilder. The main thing is that you are recognizably different / more interesting than the competition.

Everyone has to find their own individual concept, because every target group is individual, every product and of course every process, from online shop to agency business. And not everyone wants a big company with a lot of responsibility, some prefer to work alone and as digital nomads from many places in the world: Miami, Dubai, Bali, wherever it takes you. A good idea off the CO2 balance if it is more suited to the type of founder. Of course, such digital business models rely entirely on digital marketing. But if you want to earn your money by selling cars, you need a local customer. The customer wants to see the extra equipment live, the colours, the shine of the rims, the feeling of the interior leather. So local advertising is definitely part of the business. Online, offline, you make the decision.

attention ensures sales

The predicted growth of customers must also be taken into account in the business plan. As an entrepreneur, winning customers often takes place in incalculable ways. The ideal graphic for planning the number of customers would of course have a predictable curve on which you as an entrepreneur can perfectly orient yourself. Steady, predictable growth through new customers. In reality, however, the situation is different. After all, your customers don’t arrange their appointments according to a calendar, so you don’t have to deal with order peaks or droughts. Business is dynamic.

When do the first customers come?

Basically, customer growth, especially at the beginning, is an exponential curve. Who e.g. founds its own agency, that will get after a few weeks or months, the first inquiry, which did not come by own doing (active Akquise), but passively, by recommendation or search machine optimization or advertisement. Slowly the requests become more regular, one request a week, four requests a week, then it becomes daily and suddenly it becomes daily more and more. Accordingly, personnel must be well planned, job advertisements, review of applications, job interviews, induction and everything that goes with it. From “how do I put the dishwasher away” to “how do I file a receipt correctly”? If several customers knock on the real or digital door during the day, the structures must already have been set up.

Customer acquisition includes the business idea itself (benefits), marketing and the internal structures for order processing.

Customer retention through benefits, advertising and communication

Once you’ve won a customer, you have to keep that customer. Regular customers, returning visitors / bookings, facilitate the business in general. Also from our own experience, digital products such as software, for example, are one of the absolute ideals through scalability, little operational effort and subscribers. The development is based on a very smart business idea, so no big code is needed, just a clever idea and a good (with me external) developer. Before we therefore come to the topic of “keeping customers”, a brief look at the glamour of regular customers or even better subscription customers (regular payments) or even better subscription customers for software (regular payments and little operational effort). No office, no warehouse, no logistics, no physical products, no appointments, only passive income.