7 Ways to Attract Customers to Your Small Business

When it comes to doing business these days, the deal is – no one wants to be sold to. You must give consistently to eventually get business, especially if you are a professional service business. Here are my 7 ways to attract customers to a small business

1. It’s all about service. You must first try to be helpful when building relationships with prospective clients. It’s all about providing valuable content, engaging people to build a relationship, being a good listener and making sure you are a trusted resource before you attempt to sell anything.

2. Understand Your Business First: What do you do and how does it serve your customer? What is your (UVP), Unique Value Proposition? How do you serve your customers and solve their problems?

3. Focus On a Specific Customer Develop a detailed customer profile. Who is your customer? How does she live? Is she married with children or a single working professional? Is she a Baby Boomer or Millennial? Create a mental image of her, and make sure your marketing messages and content speak specifically to her. Remember – if everybody can use your product or service, no one will!

4. Attract Your Niche Customer Depending on who your customer is, some marketing methods will work better than others. Once you develop your customer profile, figure out how to reach them specifically. The more niche focused your business is in the marketplace, the easier it is to reach your market. Start by developing a list of your top 4-6 keywords. These are the top search terms people use to find your products and services online.

5. Determine Your Marketing Approach Your marketing approach will be determined by your niche target customer. Try a few of these ideas to reach your target customer.

• Develop a Great Website
• Content marketing/Blogging
• Email marketing
• Pay per click ads
• Direct mail
• Vehicle wrap
• Flyers/ billboards
• Newspapers/magazines

6. Create a Referral Machine Turn your happy customers into an unpaid sales force for your business. Incentivize your customers with discounts and special sales to tell their friends about your business. Find unique ways to reward and acknowledge your most loyal customers. Host a customer appreciation event or give a social media shout out to your customers. Everyone loves acknowledgement.

7. Keep Your Customers It’s cheaper to keep a customer than to go chase a new one. Your best opportunity to generate more revenue is to upsell an existing customer. The best way to upsell customers is to keep in touch with them. Here are a few ideas to incorporate into your business.

• Contact customers within 7-10 days of a sale
• Conduct an online survey about your customer service
• Invite customers to leave a review on your website, LinkedIn, Yelp, Angie’s list, TripAdvisor, Google+ local, or Yahoo local listings
• Send an email newsletter at least monthly (weekly is best)
• Send birthday cards
• Send holiday cards (It’s not just about Xmas, try Valentine’s Day or 4th of July cards, too)
• Ask for feedback on Facebook and Twitter

If you start using these methods of marketing and sales in your business, you will see more repeat customers and that means your business will become sustainable. Remember anyone will buy something once; you need to build a relationship to get them to buy it over and over again from you.

Source:http://succeedasyourownboss.com/7-ways-attract-customers-small-business/
My School's Web:http://www.amikom.ac.id/

4 Things You Must Do To Attract Customers Women in Business Online

Google research conducted in 2011 showed that people spend more time accessing the internet using a laptop or computer, ie 6.1 days per week. This figure is higher than the habit of watching television that is 5.5 days per week, also read newspapers (4 days per week) and listen to the radio (2.5 days per week).

"Men are still dominant in internet usage but female Internet users will continue to grow," said Erika Oktora, Google's Online Sales Manager Asia Pacific, when the conference Wired Woman Weekend at fX Lifestyle X'nter Jakarta some time ago.

According to Erika, women love to shop using the Internet, especially online shopping needs of fashion and cosmetics. More than 13 million Searcher per month are women who shop online beauty products and fashion. For Erika, the internet is a place for women to develop themselves, not only as users but also as a player. "Everyone has a chance so players on the internet," he explained.

Many examples of successful women entrepreneurs who are able to maximize the internet to supplement their income. Many of the applications on the Internet that enables women in business. If you are interested in optimizing the Internet to do business, there are a number of things you need to consider especially in targeting the potential market, women.

Erika mentions four factors must be met if you are targeting the female market, namely 4B (Be Found, Be Relevant, Be Acountable, Be Engaging).

1. Be Found.
Google says global survey, 65 percent of people believe the Internet search can help find the information needed. So, online businesses have great potential ahead. If you have a website to market a product, or an account on an e-commerce site, it will be more and more people are netted when they are looking for information related to the products you sell. Especially if you're selling fashion and beauty products targeted women.

2. Be Relevant.
The last five years, mobile is more developed than the desktop. All the people will turn to mobile to access the information it needs. If you want to hook customers mainly women market continues to grow, you need to adapt to these changes by using mobile applications.

3. Be Acountable.
You can measure the extent of your achievements in business using the internet. With the measured data, you can gain the trust of Internet users. For example, more and more visitors to your website, of course, Internet users will be more confident to transact with you. "Take advantage of your site's performance measurement tools that can provide real time data," advises Erika.

4. Be Engaged.
Wake attachment with female consumers who become your market segment. Women like searching, browsing, using apps, watching video, so use these ways to get closer to your market. Follow the development of female Internet users. Currently trending interactive video applications on the Internet that can be used for various purposes, including selling products Anda.Gunakan creative ways to closer business with female Internet users by understanding their lifestyle in cyberspace.

Source:http://tipssuksesberwirausaha.blogspot.co.id/2014/05/4-hal-yang-harus-anda-lakukan-untuk.html
My School's Web:http://www.amikom.ac.id/

11 Best Business Opportunities By Industry

Starting a business is always risky, especially if your business is trying to swim against the larger economic tides. That’s why many savvy entrepreneurs take a broader view of the forces shaping supply and demand before taking the plunge and founding a company. What those broader forces reveal: Now is a great time to get in the game.

The economy is growing again, with gross domestic product up 2.3% compared to 1.7% last year. Interest rates also remain at historic lows, with no sign of significant inflation. There is also plenty of capital to be had, as venture capitalists continue to make deals at a brisk rate. Even the IPO market seems hot these days, especially with Facebook set to debut this week. Add all that up, and you've got some pretty favorable business conditions.

But what type of business, exactly, should you start? After scouring the data, the team at Inc. has identified the industries with the best business opportunities for start-ups. Here are 11 industries that the smartest entrepreneurs will be targeting this year:

• Big Data
• e-Commerce
• Environmental Consulting
• Full-service Restaurants
• Internet Publishing & Broadcasting
• IT Consulting
• Mobile & Social Gaming
• Pet Care
• Residential Construction
• Supply Chain Management
• Water Conservation

This year’s list is the product of old-fashioned reporting, boosted by data and insight supplied by a trio of independent research firms: Sageworks, which performs financial analyses of privately held companies; Plunkett Research, a business intelligence firm that studies trends affecting the world’s most vital industries; and IBISWorld, which provides industry growth figures, five-year revenue projections, employment growth, profit margin averages, and industry competition ratings.

To make the list, industry have to be not only fast-growing but accessible to entrepreneurs. In other words, we excluded growing industries like energy production, nanotechnology, and auto dealers because they are typically too capital-intensive for most start-ups to break into. We also omitted several professions that are growing nicely but require years of additional education or training: law, medicine, and accoutancy, for example.

Economic drivers

The list also reflects macro- and micro-level economic drivers that continue to shape the U.S. economy. For example, not only are millions of Baby Boomers now reaching retirement age, some 90 million so-called Millennials or “Gen-Yers” are now entering the workforce—and creating new patterns of consumption and demand, says Jack Plunkett, CEO at Plunkett Research. Those Millennials are one key reason Plunkett is high on the growth prospects for the residential housing market—an industry that was severely hit by the Great Recession. “We are already seeing steady improvements in the existing housing market where unsold inventory is drying up,” says Plunkett, noting that new building permits were up 34.3% in February 2012 over a year ago. “That means we are going to see a significant new demand for housing from this maturing demographic over the next several years.” 

Another trend with wide impact is the increasing demand for eco-friendly products and services, says Nikoleta Panteva, a senior analyst with IBISworld. Not only does that boost the residential housing market, where 'green' homes and renovations are increasingly in demand, but it also drives business-to-business demand for services such as environmental consulting and water conservation. “There is a definitive shift toward finding ways to make things more efficient and longer-lasting,” says Panteva, who notes that government programs such as Energy Star are also helping drive consumer demand for eco-friendly products.

As the U.S. economy continues its slow recovery, consumer confidence also recovers. That promises to unleash some of the pent-up demand that has built up during the past few years. “Both businesses and consumers are sitting on tons of cash,” says Plunkett. “As their confidence increases, we’ll start seeing some spending sprees, like we’ve been seeing with people replacing their automobiles.” Full service restaurants will be one beneficiary of that swing in spending. “When the stock market goes up like it has, it makes people feel better, which feeds demand for little luxuries like dining out,” says Plunkett. “People are little less likely stay home and eat leftovers while watching TV.” While margins are typically razor-thin in running a restaurant, the barriers of entry are fairly low, especially if you want to start with a trendy new food truck.

Increased discretionary spending is also good news for the pet care industry—particularly pet grooming businesses. “There is a clear trend where more and more people are living alone and delaying having kids,” says Panteva. “People are now spending their money on their pets instead.”

But it's the mobile and social gaming industry that is projected to show the highest growth over the next five years.  Plunkett cautions that low barriers to entry make this market highly competitive, which could make starting a venture here risky business. “It might not be the best industry to start a business in for the entrepreneur who is faint of heart,” he says.

Selling to businesses

It's not just consumers who are expected to increase their spending -- there's plenty of opportunity to be had selling to businesses, too. And here, no trend is more powerful than the continued burgeoning of information technology throughout the global economy. “There was an expectation that e-commerce would peak several years ago, and that simply hasn’t been the case,” says Plunkett. “A growing number of people and companies have turned to e-commerce as a way to save money and gain efficiencies.”

The growth of the digital economy has also spurred demand not just for IT consulting services, but also for Big Data services. Big Data companies provide sophisticated software tools that mine and analyze the terabytes of information created by each purchase, doctor’s visit, and new 'friend' on Facebook. These Big Data firms help other businesses better understand their markets and customers using the data they collect.

Transportation and logistics companies are also expected to be winners over the next five years. “Supply chain management can involve anything from just-in-time sourcing in China to buying a truck and offering a delivery service,” says Plunkett. “It’s all about creating efficiency and saving clients money.”

source:http://www.inc.com/best-industries-2012/darren-dahl/best-business-opportunities-2012.html
My School's Web:http://www.amikom.ac.id/