Help with Building Customer Base for a New Business

[dsmoove]

Hey guys,

I just started a website, www.coveredcalendar.com. Just to give you a quick rundown, we personalize gifts and cards for you on your behalf and ship em out, so you don't forget. This works well for days like your mother in law's birthday or that wedding anniversary you can't seem to remember. A problem I'm having is finding the best way to find customers. I currently do promotions on Facebook and stuff but it hasn't been very effective, minus a 1-2 orders.

If anyone has advice on how to build customer base, whether it be businesses or individuals, it'd be super appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Reggs]

I have a few ideas. First and foremost, try and be focused about who you will sell to. Is it going to be the average person who wants something sent to his mother, or is a business who wants to send a promotion to his customers for their birthdays and holidays? It should have a focus.

Look at what flower sites are doing. Their business is all based on events. They sell on the regular holidays that are predictable, but they are also very cleaver at marketing to you for birthdays ect. If you send your mother a birthday card this year, there should be a lot of effort to make sure you buy from them again the same time last year. This could be in the form of email automation, or offering a discount on checkout just to enter the dates of relatives birthdays ect...

If you are going to go after business, each client will bring in a large volume of orders. You could have a dentist's office as a client and he would be interested in sending birthday cards in some automated fashioned where he doesn't have to deal with it. He just sends you an excel spreadsheet of his customer base and you send him a bill and take care of the rest. He might want to try marketing to customers who just disappeared. "Come back now for [OFFER]." Youd call this direct mail automation. A few companies do it.

To grow your customer base, you need to get into PPC marketing. That will get you a lot of new customers. Once you do get a new customer, you need to have some sort of retention system in place where you make sure they keep coming back. Market to them ahead of national holidays. You can start out with AdWords which is pretty easy to get into, facebook, and linkdin as well. With Facebook go for advertising and not just making random posts for a page no one reads. All of this will require some learning on your end and there are a ton of youtube tutorial videos for it.

The endgame is going to be a strong PPC effort that will always bring in new customers, and a never ending retention effort to keep those people to keep on ordering for holidays or particular dates that are relevant to them. You also need to make it clear what you can do for them. Maybe some business owners you sell to might not think of using your business for a remarketing campaign. You have to tell them exactly what you can do and why it's valuable, and over time offer some case studies.