Attracting more customers to your business
How to attract customer attention will be something that you should frequently think about, as it is continuous and important for growth, of course.
Considerations of how to attract customer attention
How to reach more audiences and possible investors and what avenues should you focus on particularly for your brand that would be most effective.
You might be looking at competitors (if there are any that come close!) and wondering why they are getting more than their fair share of attention, even though you feel like your product or service is more special.
Or you may be feeling that you want to spend more time on developing new products or taking time to research for ideas and to focus on key areas and add strength and expansion.
Having a vision of where you expected to be right now with your product and your story could leave you feeling frustrated if it hasn't happened yet. Investing so much energy and time and getting good advice; doing everything the right way could leave you frustrated if you just seem to be stuck. You may have regular customers, a website, post on social media...are working endlessly...need more sales... need more investment...wonder continuously how to attract customer attention and there just aren't enough hours in the day.
Steps in how to attract customer attention
Create a plan. Consider: Is there scope for you to meet with current trends and demands on a wider scale, through the media?
Think about your values and your brand message. Are you able to provide customers with solutions and make their lives better with your product or your service? Are you sharing this information in your social media posts and on your website? Are you being clear about how how you can fulfil people's needs with what you can provide?
Think about how many online platforms you are on and are they in the right places to attract customer attention? Are you posting engaging information and lovely images across them? You could re purpose an article on your website as a video and post it on Twitter, Vimeo or Youtube, for example. You could post an article, create a video and share the link on LinkedIn, perhaps.
Can you connect with others that might benefit you both, by perhaps retweeting their posts and you asking them to retweet yours? Can you link each other's information on your websites. That way you will gain favour and followers.
Engagement is really important. People buy people, remember. People want to know who they are doing business with and being connected to and if you engage well, you engage loyalty. It all takes time but they will show results if you are consistent and give the right messages with engaging information.
Don't just focus on online communication. What about press and print? These mediums are powerful in attracting attention and not everyone is in the same place. Depending on your product or service, who are your audience? They may just use Instagram. They may be Telegraph readers. They may love women's magazines. Do these audiences pick up the paper to read advertising, though? If you have a vegan product, a vegan magazine may be perfect for advertising. Is advertising the way to go or should you try and get some coverage of your amazing product and build your brand at the same time for the long term and more cost effectively, as PR would do?
What exactly is the difference between PR and marketing
One thing to make certain is that Public Relations is very different than Marketing but both work hard to achieve greatness for companies.
For the purpose of the content of this article, PR means 'How to attract customer attention' for the long term, hold it and build up your reputation. Public relations is about people. Similarities are that they utilise and benefit from a lot of what marketing achieves, within their strategies, short term.
The benefits of public relations are immense, felt immediately and are long lasting, brand building and all about people.
Just to clarify further, since there is a lot of confusion surrounding this question, since a lot of people do not really know the difference between public relations and marketing. Knowing that difference may save a lot of time and money. There are quite a few:
- Both marketing and PR have different target audiences: Marketing aims to reach new potential customers and PR maintain positive relationships with anyone interested in the person or brand (audience, media, investors, shareholders, employees).
- Marketing and PR have different goals: Marketing is aimed at making consumers do something that is sales focused for direct revenue. PR is managing positive communication channels through strategies.
- Marketing and PR have different tactics: Marketing is promotional, advertising and direct marketing for direct sales. PR is reputation management through positive media coverage and communications.
- Length of time on investment is the difference between marketing and PR. Marketing is short term and instant for sales success and PR reaps benefits for long term investment over a long period of time.
- ROIs (Returns on Investment) for Marketing and PR are different because new customers are gained through paid branding and promotional activities for Marketing and PR is classified as earned through image, ethos, credibility and reputation over a long period of time.
The overall difference is that Public Relations is focused on relations with the public and maintaining a positive image and reputation for a person and a company as a whole, thus driving sales and brand long term. Think media interviews, live events, managing talents' careers and utilising the right strategies to allow for people and brands to be heard and seen; raising profiles, images and reputations.
Marketing is focused on promoting and selling a product, short term (or long term campaigns) to achieve direct revenue. Immediate goals of marketing are sales and immediate goals of public relations are positioning and mutual understanding with the public. Marketing seek profit and PR seek positive perceptions which will lead to profit. Success for marketing would be an increase in revenue and success for PR would be public opinion and public support. The value for investing in PR is copious since it is more cost effective, too.
It is all a matter of choice if you are asking yourself how to attract customers' attention and obviously we are rather biased to the positive far reaching results of using a good PR agency. Consider even, one that integrates marketing with public relations in their strategies.
The bottom line is that to attract customers, you need a good consistent message and be visible to your audiences.
If PR is for you, how do you go about choosing the right PR firm?
An amazing PR firm that only deals with Fashion my not be able to get your vegan food products in front of the right eyes! A creative PR firm that deals with all industries, possibly could. It may take a special collaboration but it isn’t impossible.
This article may help you that will hopefully assist with choosing the right PR agency.