People are always asking us for small business marketing help finding their ideal clients. I hear a lot of people saying they can’t find the “right” clients. While yes, you can rent mailing lists, that is not the end all or be all answer for building a strong, loyal community of clients and prospects. A better way to build a powerful database is by adding clients one at a time. This means lots of writing notes, getting involved in your community and finding ways to prospect. For this marketing idea to be effective, I don’t mean sending impersonal marketing materials to strangers. This is different. This is about finding people who are in your target market and making them feel special. This is about finding a creative, unexpected way to reach out to them. This must be a genuine effort, will help you gain popularity and it gets people talking about you. Here are some simple steps to get your week started on a high note.
1. Subscribe to and read your local daily newspaper. When reading the newspaper, look for people you know and people who are in your target market that you don’t know. Newspapers and magazines talk about people who are doing interesting things, being promoted in their jobs, winning sporting events and changing the world. Those are people you want to connect to.
2. Cut out the articles and put into a folder. If you try to do something with these press clippings every day, you will not be using your time efficiently. Whether it is a folder or a box, create a place for all of these articles when you clip them out. Then, when you are ready to use them, you have a stack all ready to go!
3. Once a week or once a month, spend an hour or two writing personal notes to these prospects. At my photography studio, we want to be the “it” place for high school seniors. While we are on the top end of the price scale, we realize that not everyone will be our client. However, we at least want people in our target market to be aware of us. By reaching out to over-achievers in the newspaper or in local magazines, we are hopefully weaving our business with many little threads who are linked around our city.
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