How to Identify New Business Markets and Grow Your Business
It's important to keep your existing customers, but your business will quickly stop growing if you don’t reach out to new markets and target new customers. In a perfect world new customers would find you, but unfortunately that isn’t how business works.
If you’re trying to grow your business by targeting new customers keep reading to learn some tips and tricks for approaching and identifying these new markets.
Build a profile of your target customers
You may have already done this when you first started out, but if you’re trying to grow it’s time to revisit those demographics. Think about your new target customers in excruciating detail: what are their problems, what is their ideal budget for your services, how old are they, are they a specific gender, where do they live, what types of marketing are they most receptive to… no question is too trivial, because answering these questions will ultimately help you figure out where to find these ideal clients.
Give your brand a refresh
Do you have a strong brand identity? Cultivating your brand will aid you in your quest for new customers in new markets — these clients won’t be attracted to a dated logo, a subpar website, or confusing brand messaging.
You might even need to complete a rebrand, and that’s completely okay. Strengthening your brand can only help business get better and better and taking care of this before you grow is one way to make sure this important tasks gets completed.
Revisit your marketing strategy
How did you find your current customers? Look at your existing marketing strategy and analyze whether it will work for targeting new markets. In all likelihood you’ll need to change a few things, and now is the perfect time to make those adjustments.
Perhaps it’s time to focus on digital marketing and optimize your website’s landing pages. Maybe your new customers respond best to email, but you don’t have an email marketing campaign. You may need to revisit which social media platform is best for your business. There are so many different ways to market your products and services and there’s bound to be a strategy that speaks to your new target customers.
Tap into your network and industry events to find new customers
As a business owner, you undoubtedly already understand the importance behind your network of contacts. Consider expanding that network by talking to the people you know about your expansion efforts, but don’t stop there. You can also attend local business events, like events held by your local Chamber of Commerce. You’ll meet new people in other industries who may be able to help you grow in any number of ways.
Take those new connections a step further with strategic alliances. Think about ways to round out your products and services so that your business can become a one stop shop. For example, a freelance copywriter and a graphic designer might form an alliance to work together delivering beautifully formatted white papers for technical clients. Even a simple “gentleman’s agreement” to send referrals to each other can be huge for growing your business. With any luck, you’ll have a stable of new customers and markets to serve.
