That phrase is music to your business owner’s ears, right? Unfortunately, that’s not how most customers work. While we would love it if customers seemed to just fall from the sky onto our doorstep, marketing for business owners requires a well thought out strategy, clear messaging, and authentic relationship building. There are a variety of marketing resources and methods of attracting customers, so how do you know which methods will work best for your business and will capture your target customer’s attention?

What is the most effective way to reach consumers?

The most effective way to reach customers is to start with a well thought out strategy and step one is to get to know everything about your target customer. Crafting data-driven customer personas is a key element of a great communications strategy that will take your business from DIY to effective, professional marketing.

A customer persona should serve as the North Star for your business and helps you to answer key questions in a few different areas:

For Marketing: What messaging will resonate with my target customer? Where can I find them so that they hear my message?

For Product Development: What services can I offer that will help my target customer?

For Pricing Structure: What is my target customer willing to pay for my products and services?

For User Experience: How can I make the experience of working with my business better for my target customer?

For Market Opportunities: What are the gaps my clients are experiencing that my business can bridge?

Well developed personas help you create a niche focus that meets your target audience’s specific needs, behaviors, and concerns with clear, directed messaging that points them to your unique service offerings. 

If you need expert guidance in developing your personas, but don’t have the budget to hire an agency to help, Crafted Voice Academy offers clear, step-by-step instructions for using data to craft customer personas that accurately represent your target customer. Our affordable, on-demand e-course provides expert guidance for creating a high quality, professional marketing strategy that will result in custom, data-driven customer personas.

What are the six strategies to attract customers?

There are a variety of marketing resources and strategies to attract customers. Here are just a few of the options your business can take:

• Social media marketing – using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc to share your message.
• Paid advertising – paying for your message to be shared with a specific audience, such as on Google Search pages or on social media feeds 
• Content marketing – Blogging, email campaigns, LinkedIn articles, etc. 
• Word of mouth, or referral marketing – relying on others to share the word because of their positive experience with you
• SEO (search engine optimization) marketing – optimizing your website so that it ranks on google search result pages
• Affiliate marketing – paying others a small commission to sell your product or service for you

As a business owner who wants fresh marketing ideas, which is best for you? Your customer personas should guide this decision. Determining where they hang out and what type of messaging will resonate with them should determine where and how you engage with them. For example, don’t focus on Facebook marketing efforts if your target audience only uses TikTok! 

What can I say to attract customers?

Using your customer persona as your north star, you can craft a story that speaks directly to their pain points, motivations, and passions. Donald Miller’s Storybrand Framework is a great way to frame your messaging in a way that resonates and spurs your audience to action. You can use this framework to craft both short-and long-term marketing campaigns. 

Here’s a snapshot of the Storybrand framework:

• Set your customer as the character, or hero, or the story.
• Clearly state the problem they are experiencing. This can be external, internal, or philosophical. 
• Set your business up as the guide who understands their fear in relation to their problem.
• Give them an easy to follow plan that helps them overcome their problem.  
• Give them a call to action.
• Lay out the outcome of their journey to overcome their problem. It can either end in failure, or success. Make it clear what’s at stake if they don’t follow the guide’s advice, but also what they could achieve with your advice. 
• End with acknowledging the transformation that can occur within the hero if they take action.

Using a story to share your marketing message is a great way to evoke emotional response, or portray how your product or service will translate into a real life scenario and help them in their own situation. Say it with a story! 

The business elevator pitch

You should also have a short and succinct elevator pitch ready to go for each of your potential customers – you never know when you’ll be able to use it!  An elevator pitch is a quick introduction of yourself, your business, and a plan to help the potential customer find a solution to their problem. This should be between 30-45 seconds or 75-100 words, using simple language. 

So how do you put together the perfect elevator pitch? Here’s a quick framework that I use with my clients:

• Introduction | Who are you and what’s your current position?
• Establish Credibility | Describe your relevant experience in one sentence.
• Problem | What problem is this person currently facing?
• Solution | What solution do you have to their current problem?
• Plan | What’s the simple 1-3 step plan they can follow to overcome their problem and find your solution?
• Transformation | How will this plan transform their work or life?

As an example, here’s the elevator pitch I created for one (of three) of my customer personas:

“My name is Kristina Gorr, owner of Crafted Voice. I work with business owners from around the globe to successfully create a strong foundation for their marketing strategy. I understand that marketing is time consuming for entrepreneurs, especially if they don’t have skills to do it effectively. That’s why I offer affordable Do-It-With-You packages to support clients when and where they need the most help. I’m happy to set up a free consultation to determine exactly what services are right for you. With some help, you can free up your time and craft a professional marketing strategy that supports your business goals – all within budget.”

What can I write to attract customers?

So what are 4 ways to attract customers through your writing? I’m glad you asked!

Use language that is true to your brand. When it comes to business, customers are attracted to authenticity and relatability. Establishing brand voice guidelines is a great way to ensure your message is consistent and authentic. 

Write messages that are clear and don’t require a lot of brain power. It should be easy to follow what you are saying, without the need to process or interpret it. Don’t use jargon, big words, or riddles. 

Acknowledge their pain points in your messaging. People want to know that you understand what they are going through. Empathy and understanding go a long way towards building trust with your target audience. 

Don’t forget to give them a call to action! Every single message that your customer hears needs to make it easy for them to respond to it. After all, if you are asking, they aren’t buying. 

When it comes to actually putting pen to paper and writing out the message you want to send, establishing brand voice guidelines first is a critical step in communications strategy that you don’t want to miss. These guidelines should include your missions, vision, and purpose statement, your core values alongside outlining your brand personality, tone, and style.  Dos and don’ts, an elevator pitch, anchor messaging, and customer personas are a few other sections that you don’t want to forget. When you are finished, you will have brand voice guidelines that will help anyone who writes for your business to stay true to your brand, while also reaching your target customer. 

What should I do to attract customers?

There isn’t a magic answer here that works for everyone – sorry, I know that’s not what you are looking for. But the bottom line is that you must tailor your marketing activities to your target customer, which will look different for you than for me than for the next business owner. 

First, use your customer personas to help you decide where, when, and how you need to reach your customers. Whatever methods you decide are right for reaching your customer, actively and regularly engage. If it’s social media, post regularly. If it’s email marketing, send emails regularly. If it’s SEO, publish new, optimized content consistently. 

Consistently showing up in front of your customers is the best action you can take in your marketing and communication execution.

How do you attract customers quickly?

Your target customers won’t become customers if they don’t know about your business. The first step to attract customers quickly is to simply spread the word about your business. 

Digitally, the quickest way to do this is to pay for ads. You can run ads on social media, Google, or even a platform like outbrain that will help you get in front of your target audience within hours. With the right message and call to action, you’ll start seeing an increase in website traffic as people learn about your business.  

In person, the quickest way to attract customers is to, well, show up in person!. This could mean setting up a table at a local festival, going door-to-door in a local neighborhood where you want to increase your customer base, or giving out free samples at a sporting event that your business sponsors.

Don’t forget, the key to reaching your customers is to first know who they are. Developing customer personas is the best way to ground your strategy and customize your marketing outreach efforts. Use this as your basis to determine how you can reach them quickly, and authentically showcase your brand as a solution to their problem. 

What is an example of a creative strategy in marketing?

Beyond simple brand awareness, brainstorm unique campaign ideas that are customized and tailored to their needs and motivations. It certainly helps to have a few creative ways to attract customers in your strategy that move beyond the expected. Take a critical look at your customer personas and brainstorm ways that will awe and delight them based on what you know: their motivations, pain points, interests, background etc.  

I once saw a commercial for a cereal that was built around 1990’s nostalgia. As a kid who grew up in the 90s, I was fully invested in that commercial because it touched a few of my motivations: my love for nostalgia and my sweet tooth (it was a sugary, chocolate cereal). It was a creative ad that knew me first, then used my motivations to reach me. 

If you want out of the box ideas for marketing, you must begin with a strategic foundation: customer personas. 

How do you impress customers to sell a product?

I recently had a conversation with an established business owner who was so impressed with a potential advertising vendor’s product pitch that he immediately said yes. The advertiser gave him an offer that he couldn’t refuse: “Give me $50 to run one ad. If I do a great job, it’s a quick trial that proves my services are worth it. If it doesn’t work out, I don’t get your business and you are only out the cost of a nice dinner.” 

The advertiser promised a small win to eventually gain more business that would hopefully turn into a long term relationship. The business owner loved this approach, as it required a small investment and allowed him to try out the product (the advertisement) before making a large commitment. 

You can see this type of strategy working every time you walk down the halls of a local mall. Nail care businesses set up shop in the middle kiosks between stores and offer passersby to try their product, usually a hand cream or nail buffering system. By seeing the results first hand on one hand or fingernail, customers can decide for themselves if it’s worth their investment. 

How can you use this strategy in your own business and product? Using these two examples as a starting point to brainstorm marketing ideas for products like yours is a great first step.