You want customers but can’t spare the time to communicate or converse with them?  Are you serious?

I was speaking to a group of small business owners and although they think online marketing is an excellent way to gain more customers, they tell me they have no time for it.

Business owners are busy, no one can dispute that.  But I often wonder if they want customers.  I presume they have enough and are not looking for more.  When I asked them if they want more customers, their answer was a big YES!

How To Find Time To Engage

You can’t find time – you make time.  There is 24 hours in a day.    Time is there and is available for you.  The  way to make time is to prioritize your activities and make time for certain actions that can contribute to more customers.

But you must first decide if talking and engaging with your customers  is part of your business strategy to gain more customers.  If it is, then consider adding CUSTOMER ATTRACTION into your activities.

Here’s how it can be done:

1.  Join and use Facebook correctly.  I say correctly because some people  join Facebook without a strategy or plan on how to use it for business.

2. Join Twitter and use it correctly.  Again, have a strategy.

3. Join Linkedin  to connect.

Set-aside 5 hours per week at the very least to converse, update and connect with your pears or people unknown to you.

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Perhaps one of the most asked question in any business is “how can I get more clients or customers”? If you ask this question to a room full of people, you might get a hundred different answers, but all the answers will only mean and head on to one single idea – marketing.

Marketing is the process of introducing your potential customers and clients to your products and or services that you offer.  The key word here is the word “process”.  A process is a series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result.

Target Market Marketing

Marketing also involves determining your specific target market, or target customer. You have to determine their general profile, social strata, buying habits, preferences, trends, etc. Then find out where they hang  out online and offline.  For example, if you are targeting moms; there are mom forums,  and twittermoms is also a popular online water cooler.

Your products or services should then cater according to these parameters to capture a much larger target market. These involve research, tests, advertising, continuous evaluation, networking and of course, sales. This is why marketing is considered as a process.

Marketing Your Business Online

Luckily, with the advent of the internet, this process has been simplified. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you might know that online marketing is the most cost effective marketing strategy these days. Did you know that with the internet, you can actually find out about your potential customer or client? In fact, you can even monitor the number of visitors who browses through your site, their place of origin, and even their browsing history which will give you an idea on what they are looking for. You can capitalize on this information to help you in modifying your marketing strategy. Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or Myspace can even increase your clientele by tenfold. Years and even decades ago, this was just a dream.  Now it is a reality and business people are reaping the benefits regularly.

If you operate a small business, home-based or otherwise, you should at least have the following in place:

1. A website that will convert website visitors into buying customers.  If your site is not doing that, you need it reviewed.   It’s worth the time and money and it should be done first before anything else.  A good site can be your research machine, sales team, and your marketing arm.

2. E-mail marketing is one of the most important customer retention actions that is not being used as often as it should.  Again, it is very cost effective.  Once it’s set up, it’s dirt cheap to maintain.  People who have bought from you are the easiest people to sell to unless you gave them lousy service.  Some people using this strategy are satisfied with their customers who keep in coming back that they don’t need new ones.

3. Online Marketing is not just your website although it’s a big part. It should include articles  marketing ,  online advertising, press release, and the utilization of social media networks.

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Content is defined by Wikipedia as,  “information and experiences created for an audience.”
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Content marketing in many forms:

•    Print and online newsletter
•    Custom magazine (creating and sending your company magazine)
•    Digital content (video, mp3 clips, audio presentations)
•    Websites and Blogs
•    Social networks including forums
•    White papers
•    Webcast, web seminars, web conferences, podcast
•    E-mail blast
•    Events
In essence, if you create a message that is valuable, and relevant to your target audience in order  to attract, acquire and engage them into action, then you are involve in content marketing.  You are also a publisher by the virtue of your published content.

Do this well and your customers will see you as the leader in your industry.

You become an expert, a giver of information, and a problem solver.  Soon, they’ll  come to you for solutions.  That is called inbound marketing-where people come looking for you, instead of you chasing them.

Can you see how this can help you bring in more sales and expand your business? Tell me what you think:)

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I received an excellent newsletter today from Jim Cannolly entitled the Marketing Power of Attraction. I’ve been reading his tips since I started following him on twitter and I have to say, he is one of the few people that don’t preach.  He just practice what he does which is marketing and tells people what he does for free. Simple but very effective judging by the number of people that reads his blog.

Although attracting clients is not a new concept – creative entrepreneaurs have found ways to put a little twist on this old concept and make it work.

The biggest question that most of us entrepreneur

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